Reclaim the.. ?
Reclaim the Memories
Introduction
I read and replied to this comment made by a fellow Aussie today.
Fellow Aussie: love it. I have similarly been calling the Canberra Convoy protest (inspired by the Canadians) as the turning point in this country. The pollies never even acknowledged it, but the power of that mass gathering was palpable to those who were there...
His comment's resonating in response to a long-winded tweet about the undefeated Canadian Truckers which I tried to read yet could hardly manage to read 1/4 before disengaging from it's intended emotional hooks. Rebuttals of reality in Canada (as I perceive it to be) piled up in response to the tweeter's tallying of the Trucker's victories. Food prices, inflation, poverty, mass immigration straining public infrastructure and health services, sky high excess deaths, a Canadian parliament practically enslaved to the WEF. Canada's battering ram of federal policy & regulation laying continuous siege against Canadian citizen's civil liberties.
I didn't reply to her tweet (It's a Trap!) on these lines. Surely, this lady would know my list and more if she lived in Canada herself. Closed that subconscious link and moved onto the next online reply chain: the Aussie's comment.
**My Reply: ** The potential of the power would have been palpable to those part of it first hand. Both the Canuck and Arsetrailer govts really did a number on their nation's people by strangleholding and aggressively censorship as much of the good news from nationwide protests as they could.
There could have been so much more of a lasting impact upon our collective psyches if we were all able to view a most humble and heroic moment like that. To feel like we were part of something greater, something that stood for me and mine
I remembered an example of media-diminished impact of several popular protest that I'd experienced first hand. When I lived in Sydney during 2005-2011 is the time I view as having a lasting impact on my psyche as well as impressing upon me how blessed I was to be part of something greater.
I look back at these experiences wistfully. Shocked by my describing of fellow Australians of wanting "to feel like we were part of something greater, something that stood for me and mine." Times are broken today. Reticent to say "changed," because change is a word tainted through use in a American Presidential Campaign.
"Moved." The shift along an axis is the difference between humanity as a whole today compared to humanity as a whole dancing full of soul then...
I miss the Free Party.
The DSS Channel Parties
The best parties of my life. Not just parties but actual events of transcendence.
I know several of the people in this video, and have been at many of the Channel Parties. I will have to dig through hard drives to find my collection of photos and videos so I can try sharing with you some of the suprahuman magic shared by all attendees once they opened up their hearts to respect and love. The wonderment felt and shared when we understood what the will of a few good men, working in unison, and staying true to purpose could achieve.
Here's a few links I found from that era;
Check out this channel. Plenty of video clips from that Sydney free party era.
As my time drew to an end with Sydney, I sort of slowed down on incessant partying and music events. The City of Sydney itself is a marvel and I began to explore it's architecture with friends by going on long walks.
My friend (photographed) and I would alight the Sydney North Shore train at Milson's Point, or we would meet at that station after work. From Milson's point we would walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge as dusk and twilight fell around us. It was a spectacular sight and something else to behold, one thin man standing & striding through the howling Southerly Buster winds. Carrying Winter's last sting and so typical of Late August, the shearing bitter wind added more depth to my memories.
We walked along, giddy and freezing, all a whirligig with banter and stream-of-consiousness. Trying to keep warm, nimble when extremities numbed and flow of words faltered. Then, suddenly huge flocks of bats. Leathering winged black bats, only their silhoulettes swooped under the Sydney Harbour Bridge and above us, squawking, snicker-flittering and snk snk-ing. Stark black silhoulettes surfing massive cold gusts up and away, into a sky of dying vermillion, burgundy, violet and midnight blue. Many hundreds of metres high, very quickly after did the sunset's last embers die.
Brrrrr. Delicious life!
Mark N @ Gilkinson's Dance Studio - Perth, Western Australia (October 2013)
I moved back to Perth around 2011-2012 and decompressed from all the life unbridled I'd absorbed living it up in Sydney. I still loved dancing and it wasn't long before I attended another rave.
Wish I had the live recording of his all vinyl DJ set. He went all out on turntablism and mixed in a lot of tracks from his OVERCAST - 3PM Eternal Hip-Hop/Dirty Gabber crossover project. I put on my red dancing pants and bloodied the dance floor, anointing my recently purchased copy of OVERCAST's - 3PM Eternal 2013 2x LP Vinyl reissue. I managed to score one of these last reissue copies by being facebook friends with Mark N lol. Them were da dayz.
So until I find a recording of the above event and upload it for y'all, please enjoy 24/7 webcast of BLOODY FIST RADIO.
Oh mah skillz! I found it! Please enjoy!
DJ Mark N @ Dominate, October 2013
Reclaim The... Streets - 2016
9. Do It Ourselves Culture - Reclaim the Streets explosion
Recommend checking out the entire Do It Ourselves culture through their youtube playlist, or purchase as a DVD/CD package through the Ohms Not Bombs free party crew's long-running blog.
Reclaim the Streets March 2016 - Sydney Lockout Laws Protest
I watched this from my West Coast crow's nest and marveled at the many pictures of joyful, peaceful, eclectic revelers. Nostalgic and a little heart-torn because all of my friends and supernode-sized amount of acquaintances were there, dancing and marching through Sydney's busiest central streets.
Searching online for photos or videos, it was obvious that I couldn't easily find anything. I no longer have facebook and easily accessible mainstream media articles were irreverent in tone, if not diminutive towards Reclaim the Street's core purpose.
While the mainstream media of 2016 was diminutive when reporting a topic super close to my heart, and while it lacked the sufficient level of details that Sydneysiders expected from their media, 2016's utterly unrecognizable compared to 2023's aggressive, manipulative, repetitive & frankly nasty mainstream media!
'Reclaim the Streets' protesters leave feculent deposit at Star Casino - 9news.com.au (20th March, 2016)
Lockout law protesters target Sydney's casinos - abc.net.au/news (19th March, 2016)
Reclaim The Streets To Stage Huge Casino Protest This Weekend - themusic.com.au (14th March, 2016)
Notice the rather minimal appearance of Reclaim The Streets' crowd size? Media sure is good at portraying reality through a lens and frame of their own choosing.
Social Media sources
Reclaim The Streets Sydney facebook page
The rainbow flags from prior to 2020 look to be of higher quality. Or less offensive or something. They were definitely more rare to see, even in a global LGBT mecca like Sydney!
Reclaim the Lanes
When I first moved to Sydney, I lived in the Inner West which was a short walk (or stumble) away from Newtown.
Newtown was an alternative hub. Coming from way out west yonder, where my version of the big smoke is the world's longest city (and apparently, world's most isolated capital city) was quite a culture shock.
I loved it though. It was overflowing with bric-a-brac, pubs, clubs, drugs, music, sub-cultures, music scenes, partying, oddities, events and a jarring eclecticism that drove little old fine arts college graduate me into states of creative ecstasy.
Newtown's brazen & at times brash charm wore off during the time I lived in Sydney, gentrifying at a pace that frightened me. Each subsequent holiday back to Sydney had the Great Harlot Whore of Sin City lose what it was. By the time it was 2018 and I made my last holiday over to Sydney, I couldn't reconcile the clicky-clacky tacky mega mass manufactured multi-unit residential complexes thrusting skywards inside the inner city suburbs and streets of only a couple a years ago.
In terms of residential property prices however, Sydney was blossoming and it was horrible. Sacrilege, blasphemy... It couldn't have gotten any worse.
It did though...
I'll end on this satirical note.
It only took a couple of years and free parties for the sake of fun and a decentralized communal gathering are probably never going to be resurrected. I hold my memories of participating in acts of rebellion through music, dancing and going hard all the more valuable today.
Today these memories are crystallized into a rarer substance than I held in my mind's eye at the time. The treasure of self-assembling for temporary autonomy with like-minded Sydneysiders who might have been strangers to you until meeting in kinship, dancing together on a reclaimed and regulation-ignored public space. There is no better display, no finer spontaneous performance that shows our oppressors we can have fun in freedom without them lifting a fucking finger.
So, what now?
I'm listening to Bloody Fist on headphones as I wrap up this article, giddy & fervent from that hardcore energy that can't be tapped and sold as a commodity for the privileged.
"They can fuck off, can't have it motherfucker!" Jeers the crowd of heavily intoxicated body wobbling spastic dancing Australians; their fearless & playfully irreverent banter channeling characters and archetypes lost in our national archives.
Yet this as well - this implacable desire to tell cunts to go get fucked - is currently being forgotten. I can see it getting extinguished in those around me too... Although... I'm an allopathic terrorist arsonist art practitioner, specializing in arcane allied health therapies & humanity's soul derapturing. You don't believe me?
That's ok though. We're waiting to die from a combination of covid-19 and mRNA gene therapy injections or we're imploding recognition of self in the face of endless mainstream media memory erasure, identity erosion and crippling cognitive warfare. Isn't it wonderful to have your mental faculties, your cognitive abilities fully engaged by a daily battle of displeasures? It's wonderful for you because it's much easier to attempt defense against such assaults by utilizing a cognitive security strategy known in common parlance as COPE.
You'll find ways to cope as the ramping up of #5GW, #CogWar, #Mis-Dis-Malinformation accelerates. Ways are going to be suggested to you from sources you might not worship yet. You'll scoff and guffaw at such a suggestion but the cognitive horror awaiting to implode your mind is that this digital dystopia of "communication" and "democracy" is entirely your master now. Much like those who consented to jabs etc etc, you are consenting to the opposite of whatever their consent is projected to you as.
Humanity is much easier to control when it's presented with a dilemma to which only two choices are made apparent as answers. Oldest trick in the book.
Resonating... try to remember that. I'll explain next article.
If you follow me, you will have to find a way between the above because I'm done with it (as it is now). I'm done with the oldest trick in the book constantly repeating itself to a public that's enthralled more than ever by the trick.
The trick is digital now and it's like new, like! Totally different, like but..
..But like with no difference of purpose, only in intensity.
Digital Obituary.
OK one final song. This one's a ripper. My favorite Passenger of Shit track. Pure Aussie Shitcore. C U on the Dance Floor
Passenger Of Shit - Shit Smeared Cunt (Remix) from SHIT WANK RECORDS on Vimeo.
^ **Make Sure You Check Out the Lyrics posted in the vimeo comments section**
Awesome! The spirit of Anarchism. Just wonderful.
Me before 9/11