Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

Figure 3.3 Pink and Silver in retreat, Prague 2000.
‘Empire’ resulted in a group of thirteen women marginal to established
actors within the network of networks becoming the nucleus of a street
‘swarm’ (Chesters 2003) several hundred strong. Having performed their
particular version of TF the wider trope of pink and silver was donated to
the movement of movements. Following its debut on the international stage
in Prague, Pink and Silver and carnivalesque performativity became recurrent
features of subsequent summit sieges in a process of continuing
hybridisation extending to the London European Social Forum meeting in
October 2004 (see Figure 3.3). CMC played a central role in the creation
of the Pink and Silver diaspora as part of the process of reflexive framing,
themes we return to in concluding this chapter. Before this can be done it is
important to offer an account of the Italian group Ya Basta, a clear example
of a well-established actor within the network of networks.
Yellow – Ya Basta
Identities, protest dynamics and technology 59
‘Ya Basta!’ led the ‘Yellow March’ towards Nusle Bridge, the main traffic
artery to the Congress Centre, that was heavily fortified by the Czech Police
and Military using security barriers, officers in riot clothing and gas masks,
armoured personnel carriers, water cannons and buses (see Figure 3.4). Ya
Basta! were by their own admission coming to Prague to ‘Liquidate the