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Doing it Yourself: Direct-action Currents in Contemporary Radical Activism 25fail in that we did not manage to carry out our main plan, but alsobecause a street party in Trafalgar Square, followed by newspaperfront pages with “Anarchist Riot”, “Attempted Murder”, etc. is notpolitically effective’ (Jordan 1997).While the minions of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black havecontinued to ignore the political motivations of street parties,choosing to focus instead on their ‘violent’, ‘irrational’ and ‘selfindulgent’aspects, the rapid spread of RTS implies that it possessesa certain sort of viability. What began as a tactic of a local coalitionagainst the motorization of Britain has since been employed at theSummit of the European Council in Barcelona, the NATO meetingsin Munich, and the World Economic Forum in New York City, allduring the first few months of 2002. RTS is an excellent example ofthe dispersal of a non-branded tactic, on the basis of what the Londongroup call ‘disorganization’:In relation to past and expected future press reports concerning trials ofRTS ‘leaders’, Reclaim the Streets London would like to emphasize that it isa non-hierarchical, leaderless, openly organized, public group. No individual‘plans’ or ‘masterminds’ its actions and events. RTS activities are the result ofvoluntary, unpaid, co-operative efforts from numerous self-directed peopleattempting to work equally together. (RTS London 2000a)If this approach sounds anarchistic, that’s because it is self-consciouslydriven, among other influences, by anarchist principles. ‘The theft oftime and space by capitalism, and resistance to it, along with a fusingof green (ecological), red (socialist) and black (anarchist) politics hasalways been central to London RTS’ (RTS London 2000b).GETTING HEAVY: IMPEDING THE FLOWS OF STATE AND CORPORATE POWERAt the same time as the RTS tactic subverts the existing order in aserious-playful way, it also provides an example of another importantapproach, that of impeding existing forms. Obviously, when a majormotorway or downtown street is barricaded for a party lasting severalhours, it becomes more difficult for the dominant system to operateas normal. This is the logic that drives an array of direct actionnetworks, such as Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), and itsprogenitor, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Like RTS and the othernetworks discussed so far, these groups tend to favour an anarchisticmode of dispersal over centralized organization. 8