from agent geek sorbet

Revolution is about doing things out of the ordinary. I think about what it will be like everyday and I expect to be shocked and surprised by any revolution. Pie throwing embraces so many beautiful aspects of humanity it’s strange it doesn’t happen everyday.
First of all there’s the great video footage. The look on the victim’s face is unique, unreproducible in a script or on a set. Do they taste The Pie? Does the sweet flavour complicate their outrage? Most news presenters, and a nation lapping it up, are surprised and shocked. It is proclaimed as violent, although in a time when it was ‘entertainment’, at the turn of the 20th century, similar acts of ‘propaganda by deed’ were more likely to be bombs. Violent indeed.

Second, it is merely the act of a clown. That lovable self abusive humour merchant. It’s funny to watch. Despite yr ‘outrage’, deep down you see the humour, yeah? A little Pie never hurt anybody. It follows in the tradition of the larrikin.

Third, it’s pleasant to be again reminded we are merely monkeys. We are all human, even the richest and most powerful. You could be forgiven for believing that these people are somehow untouchable, special, above or separate from us.

This uprising has its roots in the belief that our planet is not dying, it is being killed; and the ones doing the killing have names and faces.

The revolution in Chiapas against neoliberalism and globalization, the struggle for 'tierra y libertad,' has influenced us profoundly. As Marcos and others have demonstrated so effectively, in today's world of ecological and social meltdown, we all live in Chiapas. But the Zapatistas have encouraged us to bring zapatismo to our own communities, and we have done what we can to follow through on that. In other words: think globally, act locally ... and when the likes of Shapiro and Watson came to our home territorities, we pied the polluting lollies.

The great moments of revolutionary history have all been enormous popular festivals - the storming of the Bastille, the uprisings of 1848, the Paris Commune, the revolutions of 1917-9, Paris '68. Conversely, popular festivities have always been looked on by the authorities as a problem, whether they have banned, tolerated or semi- institutionalised them. Why does power fear free celebration? Could it be something to do with the utopian urges which seize a crowd becoming aware of its own power? From the middle ages onwards the carnival has offered glimpses of the world turned upside down, a topsy turvy universe free of toil, suffering and inequality.

Carnival celebrates temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and the established order; it marks the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival is not a spectacle seen by the people; they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people.

Ultimately it is in the streets that power must be dissolved: for the streets where daily life is endured, suffered and eroded, and where power is confronted and fought, must be turned into the domain where daily life is enjoyed, created and nourished.