Dear Geography, here are our postcards from the edge. Mobilising identity through imagination, we subvert and reconstruct spaces of domination and resistance. We are the Butler Inquiry into the Butler Inquiry, the Normal Patrol in Copenhagen, hooded Guantanamo detainees in Cardiff, a Trident-eating dragon at Faslane, Fat Cats making history poverty in Edinburgh; we are Rebel Clowns at the G8 in Rostock, at the Manchester Time to Go demo, having a not-nice day in McDonalds, ‘helping’ at an open-cast coalmine in Wales, cycling critical mass in San Francisco. We parody, we plead, we party, we pedal… We perform and so make ridiculous the gross imbalance between practices of domination by the transversal state and citizenly resistance, loosening the knot.

Exploiting and transcending always perceptions of identity, we transgress boundaries. Encountering such resistance, the state’s enforcers are unsettled and feel out of place. Our actions are invitations to shift, to be different in a world of such potential difference, to run away and join the circus. Our images of ourselves capture a process of resistance where we put ourselves in place; from where we can reflect strategically and emotionally on the autonomous spaces and the difference ‘wes’ made.


· Imaging resistance: wish you were here!

· Your country needs...

Time To Go demo, Manchester 23 September 2006. Be alert! Indeed! Rebel Clowns rally against the state that went to war against all alertness, protesting voices, sanity. Knowing this must not be forgotten and never sanctioned by indifference. As Seasoned activist, Starhawk, puts it: ‘Be your own fascist’; don’t stand up and be counted!
 

· Enter the Dragon

Faslane 365, 13 November 2006, Wales blockade. 365 days of blockading Trident submarine nuclear missile base. The Welsh dragon, symbol of a national tradition of non-conformity and peace, defies the British state, evoking Scotland to do the same and chuck out Trident. In wind and rain, in your face, in hope. Against barbed wire fences, barriers, signs, police, all odds. Such feelings of pride, joy and unity!



· Critical Mass

San Francisco, 28 April 2007. Critical mass: claiming the streets for bicycles and changing the car culture? At home in Aberystwyth with our, at best, 20 riders, it seems a far cry, but here in San Francisco with 3000 other cyclists it is real. We return inspired, hoping we can change the usual comments of ‘Get a f...ing car!’ to ‘Getting a bicycle, be with you next month!’


· Derring do

Ffos-y-Fran Open-cast Coal Mine, 5 December 2007. The mine overlooks Merthyr Tydfil, digging a 200 metre deep hole 36 metres from the nearest houses, operating 7am till 11pm. The residents are constantly bombarded with dust and noise. The planned extraction is 10 million tonnes, releasing 27 million tons of CO2 when burned. A human and environmental disaster. ‘Leaving the coal in the ground is the only safe option’ (Monbiot, 2007). As Rebel Clowns we helped the diggers extract the coal as good and loyal citizens but, being Clowns, we kept getting in the way of the diggers and fear we may have been less help than hindrance. We felt an immense sense of power and justification, a few little people stopping the monster machines. If only for a day. What could thousands do? 

· Desperately seeking Ronnie

Rostock 2 June 2007. World Agricultural Day, celebrating slow, organic, locally grown food. What better way to celebrate than paying a visit to McDonald’s, bringing our own organic food, looking for Ronnie to wean him off McSalt, McFat, McGM, McImport, McNon-organic and McPackage and sing him a happy little song:

I like the flowers, I like the animals
I don’t like burgers, I think they’re horrible
I want to live in a burger-free society,
With no McDonald’s, no McDonald’s, no McDonald’s, no McDonald’s
NO! 

A day full of contradictions. Stopped by the police, but never surrendering. Bonding with an amazing group of Rebel Clowns but also with some of the police officers, whom we got to know during a long day of encounters, learning of their 24 hour shifts and their longing to be back home in Lower Saxony. There is always a person to reach beneath the hat!


· Dusting down old symbols

Athens, 4 May 2006. The European Social (main) Forum firmly organised by the good old parties in the good old way with the good old symbols, which were given a good old dusting before we escaped to the Autonomous Playground. This was where the new thinking lived: Artist caravans travelling through Eastern Europe, anarchists teaching Greek to immigrants, G8 protest organisation, Rebel Clown training. And, unlike the rigidly organised official ESF that made us paid-up consumers of an event organised for us, the Playground was fully democratic with everyone responsible for organisation, food, clearing and washing up. Being the change we want to see! It was inspiring and re-affirmed what we’d asserted a week before at the first Wales Social Forum: ‘Democracy is not for dummies!’ 


· Guantanamo Mac

Paul Robeson Civil Rights Day, Cardiff, 21 October 2006. Having learned that Starbucks and McDonald’s had just opened up shop in Guantanamo Bay, a day of speakers and workshops ended with an appropriate action. Time to serve both outlets in the high street with ASBOs and do a little customer advertising: ‘Eat a Guantanamo Mac and wash it down with a cup of Starbuck’s bloody coffee.’ Highlight of the day? McDonald’s staff applauding the action!

 

· Hoping against hope

Hope is not about what we expect. It is an embrace of the essential unknowability of the world, of the breaks with the present, the surprises. Or perhaps studying the record more carefully leads us to expect miracles – not when and where we expect them, but to expect to be astonished, to expect that we don’t know. And this is grounds to act. I believe in hope as an act of defiance or rather as the foundation for an ongoing series of acts of defiance, those acts necessary to bring about some of what we hope for while we live by principle in the meantime (Solnit, 2005).

 

· Lest we forget

Make Poverty History, Edinburgh 2 July 2005. Fat Cats – the truth: We are the rich, they are the poor, all is well. The general feeling of the march was jubilation, but we felt cynical and needed to remember who caused the poverty in the first place – and who continues to do so! ‘The Earth is not dying. It is being killed, and the people killing it have names and addresses’ (Utah Phillips).

Christiania, Copenhagen, 30 August 2003. Christiania, autonomous community for more than 30 years on a piece of polluted land nobody wanted; now fighting the Danish state for its existence. We are the Normal Patrol inspecting for conformity, bigotry and xenophobia – without any of which you are not allowed to call yourself a true Dane!
 

· Return to the normal 

Lotte: ‘For me this was about Christiania, but even more so about the soul of the Denmark I grew up in, where difference was encouraged rather than tolerated, criticism and debate welcome and I was proud of my country. I wanted to rescue my Denmark from its new narrow-minded, greedy, arrogant and bigoted self – and I loved being there with so many creative and principled people, who cared enough to take to the streets in their thousands.’

 

· The Butler Inquiry

Aberystwyth, 13 March 2004. The Blair government appointed Lord Butler to investigate the information upon which Britain was taken to war against Iraq – specifically not whether it was right to go to war, so it was only ever the intelligence services that were under scrutiny. The inquiry was a mere whitewash of Tony Blair and his involvement. The Other Butler Inquiry duly set up to inform the public of the goings on and invited the people of Aberystwyth to sign a petition to impeach Tony Blair as well as literally whitewash him – an invitation taken up with much vigour and enthusiasm, not least by an initially tentative white-haired lady, who felt deeply betrayed by the government she had voted for with such hope. A true - and thoroughly satisfying - day of serving the public interest!