Reclaiming the Streets

submitted by Sarah Nicholson
contact: sassn@hotmail.com

"Reclaiming the Streets" is a discussion paper about Reclaim the Streets, Sydney examining RTS and its relationship to public space, subcultural identity, community, performance, dance, carnival and culture.



"Reclaiming the Streets" is a discussion paper about Reclaim the Streets, Sydney which was written as a thesis paper for Contemporary Arts Honours research (UWS). The following paper is an abridged version, adpated for presentation at the Centre for Popular Education (UTS) conference in 1999. It is important that this paper be read in context of the fact that it was written in 1998 as an academic analysis of RTS.

The paper is organised into the following chapters:
HISTORY , MOVEMENT, ISSUES
THE CAR AND URBAN SPACE
PUBLIC SPACE
THE PARTY
DOOF
RECLAIM THE STREETS AS SUBCULTURE
SUBCULTURAL STYLE : IDENTIFICATION AND COMMUNITY
RECLAIM THE STREETS AS PERFORMANCE
CONSTRUCTING REALITY
PLEASURE : DANCE AND THE BODY
CARNIVAL
CONCLUSIONS

---

RECLAIMING THE STREETS
HISTORY , MOVEMENT, ISSUES
Collective Reclaim the Streets and a couple of thousand of their good friends blocked off traffic and hosted a techno dance party on five blocks of King Street south of Newtown railway station. The event kicked off with a traffic jamming walk from Victoria Park down the centre of Broadway and up the hill to Newtown where four stages were set up in the streets. (Laanela, 1998:7)

"...heaps of people.. blocking off traffic.. music.. flags and banners.." "...couches, dj's, bands, bikes, tricycles, scooters, dancing, fire twirling" "It's a party protest rally" (RTS interviews, Nov 98)

Reclaim the Streets is a dance based street party and protest event which offers the opportunity of personal empowerment to the participant through active creative and physical participation. Trees are planted, roads are painted, music is heard, cars are temporarily banned from the reclaimed street space where people are dancing, cycling, chatting and playing.
The event situates itself as part of an ongoing movement for social change, Reclaim the Streets itself having spread from the UK, and being a part of the historical trajectory of other grass roots political movements of the 1990's and beyond. The first Reclaim the Streets collective formed in London in 1991 evolving from the UK anti roads movement when a small group of individuals got together to undertake direct action against the motor car. On the UK Reclaim the Streets website, the group states their belief that ridding society of the car would allow us to re-create a safer, more attractive living environment, to return streets to the people that live on them and perhaps to rediscover a sense of 'social solidarity'. (Evolution of Reclaim the Streets , 1998)
While the semi spontaneous, somewhat disorganised celebratory uprising of Reclaim the Streets has, as its primary focus, the ending of the cycle of car dependency there are, as the Reclaim the Streets Sydney web site explains, broader community oriented aims, such as...more urban leisure space, street gardening, livableneighbourhoods... (Reclaim the Streets, Sydney, 98)
In Sydney Reclaim the Streets events began in November 1997 and from the first were firmly situated as part of a worldwide movement. In May 1998 global Reclaim the Streets events, described as a "collision of love, rage, carnival and revolution, politics and party ", were reported as happening in thirty seven cities across the world in protest not just against car culture but in resistance to the social and environmental costs of free market globalisation (SchNEWS 168, 98 : 3)
In RTS the car is essentially used as a symbol to point to much broader oppressions. The movement is particularly opposed to the ideology of corporatism, which is seen as an oppressive force. Corporatism is seen as weakening democracy and eliminating citizen participation in public affairs, except through isolated acts of voting. Participation in democracy is marginalised and discouraged, essentially disassociating individuals from power. On a worldwide scale this denies and undermines the legitimacy of the individual as the citizen in a democracy. (Ralston Saul, 1997 :191)

THE CAR AND URBAN SPACE
In inquiring as to what participants at the October 31st event considered were the major philosophies and issues informing Reclaim the Streets, some major themes emerged. The event, they mused, was about cutting down the amount of cars, pollution, environmental destruction, getting more sustainable transport, particularly public transport, bikes and bike lanes and closing down the cities central business district to cars .
The main Reclaim the Streets website in the UK, speaks of the development of car culture from a historical and ideological perspective. They posit that the original conception of the automobile was as a luxury good designed to give advantages only through use by select individuals. When everyone claims the right to a car and the right to travel at a certain speed, everything comes to a halt : Boston, Paris, Rome, London and most major cities are cited as examples.
The proliferation of this purely individual transport solution, the private car, has transformed our landscape and social spaces. Suburbs spread out from city centres, sprawl leading to further dependence on cars, and I quote (Gorz, RTS UK)

the great city which for generations was considered a marvel, the only place worth living, is now considered to be a "hell"... the car has made the big city uninhabitable. It has made it stinking, noisy, suffocating, dusty, so congested... You have to have (a car) ..so as to escape from the urban hell of the cars.

Reclaim the Streets can be seen as a rebellion against the retreat from the natural that is enforced by the spatial nature of the city, a retreat from relationships with others and with the environment. As Dr Campbell Gray so eloquently puts it,

..the occupants of the city are enveloped in a vast web of relationships upon which they utterly depend... the magnitude of that network of systems is so large and complex that any individual is prevented from being able to comprehend its entirety...In this vertiginous state, psychologically and literally disconnected from the ground, consumed in an incomprehensible web of relationships, the occupant of the city retreats from the outside ground of the landscape which is no longer knowable, to interior spaces of rooms, closets and self.

RTS proposes that the solution is not just comfortable mass transportation but habitable communities where a unified life is sustained by the social fabric of the community . Rethinking the approach to traffic problems provides an opportunity to rehumanise cities, and providing alternatives to car dependency is an essential aspect of providing the transition to more livable cities. If cities are viewed as 'built thinking', spaces where development and planning are predominantly focused on traffic flow, infrastructure and the provision of amenities, it leads to the questions: What cultural values are rooted in the experience of highly constructed urban lives? And how do these artificial landscapes structure attitudes towards local and global environment?

PUBLIC SPACE
Linked to Reclaim the Streets automotive issues is the idea that the movement is about reclaiming the public space that once belonged to the people. As one interviewee stated, we all own the land and we are taking it back for our own use rather than it being kept away from us and given a specific use
The evolution of city development has also lead to a fundamental change in the availability and use of public space.The notion of a "village commons".. has been replaced with commercial venues particularly that of privately owned shopping centres...This mass privatisation of public space has had major ramifications as community based public spaces are now designed primarily with business interests at heart. (White, 1997: ii)
Access to and regulation of public space, has been isolated as a key youth issue, as these spaces are some of the only autonomous spaces available to them. The increased privatisatisation of community spaces has lead to a squeezing out of "undesirable presences", which are frequently characterised as youth (Skelton & Valentine, 1998:7).
In examining urban landscapes one of the clearest demarcations of power and influence is the ability to invest space with personal meaning. The rise of graffiti writing, as part of the hip-hop movement in the 70's, inverted traditional relationships to urban landscape, as youth were able to inscribe their own meanings on the public spaces from which they considered they had been excluded. This cultural production was taken to be a means of constituting their own community and establishing their own identities through resistance to the meanings that had been assigned to their lives by more dominant social forces. (Breitbart in Skelton & Valentine, 98)
Within Reclaim the Streets this is evidenced by the enthusiastic manner in which paricipants emphasised notions of freedom of physical expression within the normally restricted street space.

THE PARTY
In the essay The Evolution of Reclaim the Streets, which can be found on the UK RTS website, the UK's Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 is located as a key event which, in criminalising civil protest in the UK, was a motivational force which united the very groups, such as travellers, ravers, anti road activists and hunt saboteurs, that it sought to repress. It also worked to politicise the rave scene, as clauses 63 to 71 of the act were directed at open air events featuring amplified music, defined as sounds "wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". Organising or attending such unlawful events in the UK became punishable by maximum of three months imprisonment, a fine or both.
As this clause locates raves in the context of public protests and demonstrations, it has lead to comparisons between them and the massive music festivals of the 60's such as Woodstock and Monterey which unified music, party and protest . The criminalisation of aspects of the rave scene in the UK lent it force as a social movement committed to free expression emphasising through dance and music the right to live and play as one chose.
These issues of criminalisation have also surfaced in the Sydney rave scene, albiet on a lesser scale. State and local government crackdowns on rave parties, implemented by the police, have been fuelled by media hype, often reactions to drug related events both in Australia (such as the Anna Woods ecstacy incident) and overseas. Criminalisation of the movement by the media and increasing regulation has worked to instill the rave scene with a sense of oppression.
The international rave scene whilst often characterised as a community, embodying certain positive attributes, such as optimism, tolerance, and egalitarian values, is also politicised. Berlin's Loveparade event is an excellent example of this. It is described as a political demonstration for peace in which up to half a million youth (in 1995) physically taking control of some of Berlin's most culturally and geographically important thoroughfares with dance and celebration.

DOOF :

...techno music.. the sort played at raves and parties when all you can hear from afar is the bass amplifier's "Doof, doof, doof". (Column Eight, 1997 :1) (further definitions in appendix)

An organiser from Reclaim the Streets Sydney's first organising collective, described the events first organisational meetings in Sydney as being brought together by English activists who had travelled out to initiate RTS in Sydney, as it was already successfully happening in the UK. Its organisation and advertising initially targeted the "doof crew", those who organise and attend "underground" urban electronic dance parties. He mused that this was because there was already radical political awareness within this subculture, and doof was already being used in protest parties in Sydney.
Many of the subcultural values and practices of Sydney's Reclaim the Streets can be seen to stem from a collective called Vibe Tribe which operated from 1994-6 and whose web site is located on the same community access server as that of RTS, Sydney. In their description they address their beginnings as embracing

...the excitement of the present day, technology and techno.. we set about implementing our ideas of free space and autonomous safe zones..

Their objectives included acquiring and creating shared resources ... for the love of it, a communal energy spill.. Their free gatherings attracted ...disillusioned ravers and fringe dwellers, all questioning the 'conservatism' and morals of the commercial dance scene. (Vibe Tribe Multi Media, 98)
One of the self professed anarchist issues that the parties set out to address was the utilisation of public space for public use, that is for raves or "community doof events".

RECLAIM THE STREETS AS SUBCULTURE
Reclaim the Streets? nature as subculture, can be gleaned from identifying features isolated from crowd definitions given to me by participants at the October event . Participants described the crowd as colourful, alternative, political, diverse and vibrant. They were freaks, a different species, who were crazy, unique, bizarre, often characterised by dreadlocks and a certain dress code. They were predominantly labelled as hippies, ferals and activists, seen as a cross section of left wing Sydney youth (Appendix, Reclaim the Streets interview 8) who were for the most part integrated with the doof or techno culture. Whilst virtually every interviewee agreed that in terms of age the Reclaim the Streets crowd could be predominantly characterised as "youth", yet the qualifications to this age grouping seem to be beyond the normal scope of youth. The group was described as falling within the 20 to 30's age bracket, or 15 - 35 years .
Interviewees identified overall similarities, particularly of thought and philosophy in relation to lifestyle issues , citing things such as integrity and responsibility for environmental issues, vision of society. The crowd were characterised by an appearance and lifestyle focused on looking for alternatives to mainstream culture, capitalism and consumerism and also by distinct musical tastes .
There is still certainly a display of the subcultures? own fabricated codes through signs such as dress and music. In this subculture style is asserted through appropriated objects reassembled in distinctive subcultural ensembles which reflect and express aspects of the groups life, displaying their central values and their collective self image (Hebidge in Gelder & Thorton, 71: 137). The doof scene revels in second hand clothing, in primarily bright colours, with an emphasis on the celebratory, playful and cyber.
Kaleb Williams, curator of the exhibition Thirty years of Dissent at the Police and Justice Museum,defines Reclaim the Streets as an anti-commercial youth culture that values individual forms of dress and self expression. It offers a new way of expressing individuality and collectivity together. (Williams in Laanela, , City Hub, 1998: 8)

SUBCULTURAL STYLE : IDENTIFICATION AND COMMUNITY
In terms of subculture I relate RTS to analysis of club culture which locates clubbers as clusters of taste culture, communities with fluid boundaries where taking part in the culture builds further affinities. (Thornton, 1997: 201) The result of identification within these communities is often celebration, which reinforces the achievement of commonalities through collective determination and solidarity. (Kershaw, 92: 245)
The concept of identification in club cultures is established where a group comes together to form a collective "subject" or an "emotional community", in that there is a shared outlook, albiet temporary, towards the rest of society. One of the key features of group identification is that fact that although most clubbers and ravers characterise their own crowd as mixed or impossible to classify they are generally happy to identify a homogeneous crowd to which they don't belong (Thornton,1997:204)
This is concurrant with the notion of "other" that surfaced in RTS interviews. Interviewees often came back to an emphasis on "other's" perception of "us" and the car was again a symbol, where "the normal human being in the street" was seen as part of the "city establishment of cars" , there was a "certain type of people who wouldn't identify with Reclaim the Streets" .
Many Reclaim the Streets interviewees would only identify themselves as being in a subculture from an external of "outsider" perspective. Participants also kept returning to an inability or unwillingness to describe or define the group or self. And yet interviewees often spoke of being able to identify with others at Reclaim the Streets, being a community with us, having common affinities, connections, links and similar beliefs. I quote one of the participants:"pretty much everybody knows each other.. if you don't know the names, you know the faces and it's really one group of people."
I found a key factor in defining Reclaim the Streets as a subculture or community is the idea that the movement is composed of linked "tribes within tribes". Analysis of "counter-culture", a movement described as having formed itself into multiple, independently operating communities which form interconnected networks working within broadly defined ideological boundaries, the unity of which is a resistance to the dominant order. The identification of communities was created through boundaries between what was included and what was not, as part of the community.
In discussing subcultural networks, one analyst works with the metaphor of a rhizome which I find participarly appropriate. The rhizome is,composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning or end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which it overspills... The rhizome operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture, offshoots (Deleuze & Guattari, in Skelton & Valentine1998: 110)
I find this as a visual metaphor particularly resonant as a description of the Reclaim the Streets phenomenon: a dynamic, diverse, disorganised, uncontrolled underground culture which maintains global links and yet is not controlled from one primary location, operating as a growing multiplicious network.
Timothy Leary's description of the New Breed struck me as a most apt expression of Reclaim the Streets nature as a subculture. Leary plots the evolution of youth cultures from the beats, through the hippies, the youth led revolutions of 1989 to what he terms the New Breed. He posits the idea that the emergence of youth power at this time is due to the communication and transmission on a global scale of "memes",

self-replicating ideas that sweep across human populations, bringing about cultural mutations. (Leary,95: 71)

Rapid technological change in the area of electronic media, he asserts has led to a mass of rapidly spreading global memes. The New Breed, as he describes them are alert, cheerful aesethically inventive and individualistic. They prefer techno music and utilise technologies that allow for personal creation. They are informed, open minded, irreverent, creative, flexible and responsive. Whilst the New Breed are tolerant, non sexist, ecological and global, they are also politically detached, rejecting partisan politics. (Leary, 95:81).

RECLAIM THE STREETS AS PERFORMANCE
Reclaim the Streets as an event is considered to encourage an interactivity, a participant says : "people bring their carpet and their drums and bridge that gap between the performer and the participant.. people create their own entertainment as well as be entertained" If RTS is analysed as an example of environmental theatre of which audience involvement can be isolated as a key element , this leads to an examination of inclusion and otherness.
A participant and member of organising collective, Adrian, remarked that, during Reclaim the Streets, the audience are the people watching it as the march to the site is in progress. Then it is an open event once the street is reclaimed. From this point all are participants and yet there is still a hierarchy of participation and performance.
Once again looking at club culture, analysts have suggested that clubbers are engaged in relationship of reciprocation where there are at once producing and consuming the experience, where they are both actor and spectator. (Malbon in Skelton & Valentine 1998: 277). Participants at RTS that I queried on the relationship between audience / performer / participant considered the positions interchangable, that there were no boundaries, or at least the lines between the two were insubstantial.
The question in considering Reclaim the Streets a performance space open for anyone's participation is : where are the boundaries to entry into the event? From my own observations I would suggest that barriers exist, although exclusion is on the most part through self selection. As one participant observed, "People who were there seemed to have links to one another.. it was quite a difficult crowd to jump into, if you didn't already know the scene." (Appendix, Reclaim the Streets interview 10)
Reclaim the Streets has clear meaning for participants because they bring a shared ideological understanding, shared intertextual links and relationships to (polysemic) signs, meaning in essence that the community is epistemologically linked. For those people participating in, or watching the event who are not linked into the Reclaim the Streets ideological or taste community, decoding it as a text presents much more of a challenge, the range of what can be read and what types of readings are available to them are likely to be compromised through not having an appropriate frame or lens through which to decipher meaning. Another key aspect of this is that the broader aims and objectives which are expressed on the Reclaim the Streets web site are generally not shown on posters for the event, or widely articulated at the event. This presents a fundamental problem, as one of Reclaim the Streets aims is the spreading awareness of its social messages.

CONSTRUCTING REALITY
Traditionally, performance is considered to stand for reality that does not exist, which is real and alive yet imaginary, allowing the spectator to engage in transgressive fantasies. The theatre as transgression is thus, a subversion that presents no danger as it is qualified by a negation: "That's all very well, but it's not true." The street though is a decontextualised performance space in which the protective suspension of reality traditionally offered by theatrical settings is removed and the audience is confronted with a collision of symbol and literal event.
Reclaim the Streets then, is a transgression made real, where distance is removed and fantasy is acted out as reality through the active participation of the crowd. And yet, it is a cry for social change, for a more permanent experience of the event as an integrated continuing reality. The events temporary nature reveals itself as the aesethically constructed fictional world melts, at the end of the days play, back into the folds of that which is considered "normal reality".
Reclaim the Streets in performing what is both real and not real, but what is in effect possible, engage the audiences collective capacity to engage in the construction of potential worlds (Hilton in Kershaw 1992: 25).

PLEASURE : DANCE AND THE BODY
When I read Brecht describing jouissance experienced by the spectator, sensual pleasure, I immediately related this to my corporeal or kinaesethic experience of Reclaim the Streets. It is the actuality of the event that lends most pleasure, through the experiential body. The events reverberates with group pleasure. Participants spoke to me of "powerful, intense vibes" felt in a rush of adrenalin and empowerment not felt at other events, and of the physical pleasure found through dancing with others on the street.
Johnathon Bollen's (UWS) analysis of dance as both a form of political resistance and transcendence at Sleaze Party quite aptly captures the doof experience of Reclaim the Streets in this context,

Within this "empire of the beat", within the huge hyperactivity of the dance party, the spectacular sensory overload of the dance floor, and the kineasthetic pleasures of nonstop dancing, relations between self and other emerge which are anything but conventional.

Dance acts as an embodied statement of resistance and release. The mind/ body phenomenon of "losing youself", as experienced by clubbers, is described as a temporary loss of consciousness of ordinary aspects of their lives and the experience of a state of "inward emigration", created by integrated aspects of the club experience, particularly with this genre of music which has been described as a sonic immersion. (Malbon 1998: 271, 275)
This form of dance harks back to the ancient Greek concept of catharsis based on shamanic experience, which is described as producing a much greater and deeper sense of satisfaction due to the action and participation of the audience. (Kirby, 1976:143)
Anarchist theorist Hakim Bey sees such experiences as opening a space which allows for change,

An uprising is like a "peak experience" as opposed to the standard of "ordinary" consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day - otherwise they would not be "non ordinary". But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. The shaman returns -- you can't stay up on the roof forever -- but things have changed, shifts and integrations have occurred -- a difference is made. (Hakim Bey, Tempoary Autonomous Zone,1985)

These shifts, as Bey posits them allow for fluidity and change within the social sphere, a notion which challenges Bakhtin's work on medieval carnival.

CARNIVAL
Reclaim the Streets UK, in plotting the evolution of Reclaim the Streets, explores and acknowledges the historical trajectory which connects the movement with popular festivals in the form of carnival and revolutionary uprisings. (Evolution of Reclaim the Streets 1997). Carnival is community organised for its own participatory pleasure, the distinctions between observer and participant are undermined, the event taking place outside existing social institutions and happening on the street in real time. The carnival is pluralistic and diverse, delighting in the body, accessible and excessive, exaggerating and parodying, inverting norms and challenging hierarchies.
Carnival as temporary liberation from the prevailing order has been criticised by theorists for its failure to do away with official dominant culture. It is considered a fantasy escape, dissipating the potential for real revolution. It has been argued that where carnival is utilised as a safety valve to regulate social pressure, the energy for change is effectively contained. (Stallybrass & White in Gelder & Thornton, 1997) The community uses the inversion of the acceptable as a transgressive space, but one which is bounded by a return to the acceptable.
But Hakim Bey, sees the "return" from the festival differently. As an uprising of awakening rather than conflict, Bey describes the experience of the TAZ as temporary power surges, "free enclaves"which deny the rigid designations of socially acceptable celebration.

The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State, a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen before the State can crush it. (Bey, 1985)

An organiser from United System, producer of free festivals in the UK, commented that

The whole point of festivals is that they are temporary autonomous zones.. they are self organising... Nobody is told where to go or what to do, everybody just does their own bit, meaning that they are much more forceful as citizens. (Brass & Koziell 1997: 89)

This style of autonomous behaviour is described as DIY culture, which emerged as part of a new aggressive environmentalism where people frustrated with political structures, led by a concern with quality of life responded by taking matters into their own hands. The anti capitalist DIY movement in the UK , of which RTS is a part, encompasses such issues such as land and civil rights, employment and sustainable practices. The movement as they define it is about individual action and empowerment, networking, building community, the sharing of information and the gathering of resources, operating outside the usual parameters of profit orientation. (Brass & Koziell, 1997 : 8)
UK Reclaim the Streets web site advocates direct action of this type as a strategy, designed to unite and empower individuals to change things directly by their own actions. (Evolution of Reclaim the Streets 1997) Reclaim the Streets advocacy of direct action as a tactic , reflecting their

.. belief in a society where people take responsibility for their own actions. It is about enabling people to unite as individuals with a common aim...Reclaim the Streets does not make demands on some one else, such as the government. We want direct action to be seen as the norm, the standard way to take action . (Moxham, 1995, 8-9)

If loyalty to corporatist ideology is as Jung described it "that gentle and painless slipping back into the kingdom of childhhod, into parental care" (Ralston Saul, 95)
Then, by constrast, the carnivalesque DIY style of Reclaim the Streets in its transmission of new modes of social and cultural production, empowering people to act creatively and autonomously in taking social change into their own hands, can be seen as cultural rites of passage : as part of the trajectory of social growth, perhaps a cultural adolescence.

CONCLUSIONS
In analysing the social impact and efficacy of Reclaim the Streets I believe it is important to be examine the event not just as a carnival, or party , or protest event but as a contextualised movement. The efficacy of Reclaim the Streets is located not just in performance itself but in the entire constellation of related events. Reclaim the Streets contributes to changing patterns of cultural production through the collective non hierarchical process of creation. The event allows for a subcultural performance of community identity, expressing the validity and strength of the network, and through the physical nature of the event opening spaces for participant empowerment through emphasising autonomy, personal creativity, expression and interaction.
Another significant aspect of Reclaim the Streets as a movement is its evolution of the form of protest. Through bringing people together to celebrate and affirm an issue in a positive, less confrontational , non violent way Reclaim the Streets moved away from traditional rallies which use anger as their primary method of expressing a desire for change.
Whilst few Reclaim the Streets participants spoke of the event developing and reinforcing networks, I would suggest that this was one of its major functions. The event allows for the development of cultural alliances and networks both social and inter movement based. The Reclaim the Streets Sydney web site already operates to provide links and network with group that they see improving "the quality of our environment and our lives" such as other Reclaim the Streets and Critical Mass groups, but also environmental groups, community activist information sites, anti uranium mining, anarchist info services, corporate watch, and artist collectives.
Where some interviewees spoke of awareness raising, educating and informing people and getting media and local government attention, a few saw Reclaim the Streets as just a good party that had little social impact, or a clearly articulated social narrative.
In examining the lengthier history of Reclaim the Streets as a movement in the UK, it has recognised the common ground between social struggles and moved towards diversity through forging links between movements. In 1996 Reclaim the Streets held parties in support of the RMT rail union in their dispute with the London Underground over staffing, and in 1996 and 1997 held 10000 strong parties in conjunction with the Green party, Eco Trip, The Freedom Network and other DIY groups in support for Liverpool dockers sacked during a strike over labour issues. (Brass & Koziell 1997:119). In this context the efficacy of Reclaim the Streets is increased through organisationally grounding itself in relation to wider cultural movements.
The further Reclaim the Streets extends itself to build broader links with the community at large, the wider its potential to generate social change.