By Jong Pairez

June 29, 2008-- As the G8 summit in Japan progresses various groups of people and individuals around the world, critical to capitalism, continue to grow like wild flowers on a field- always ready to swarm the decadent world. This is how the benefit gig against G8 happened last Sunday night at the backstreets of Cubao in Metro Manila. The supposed dregs of society, stigmatised as incapable of upbringing the revolution, came together amidst the hot sweaty night to plot the resistance. A new way of resistance!

"The protests at the Toyako G8 Summit have the potei\ntial to mark the opening of a new cycle of struggles, the third in the era of blobalizarion. The most important events, of course, will not be those surrounding the Summit itself but will be the encounters among activists from Japan and other countries throughout the world. These encounters may open avenues toward new kind of actions and new form of organizing in the years ahead. In some respects this new cycle will have to revive some of the elements of the first cycle, which emerged in the mid-1990s with a series of actions in Mexico, Britain, and elesewhere, but was recognized fully by the mainstream media at the 1999 Seattle WTO meetings. It isi useful to remember now that those struggles were so exciting in large part because of their multipplicity and refusal of centralized organization.(...) In the third cycle of struggles we will need to recapture that multiplicity and expermentation in democratic organizing that characterized the first.(...) The protests at the Heilligendamm G8 in Germany last summer were a prelude, where a multitude was beggining to form through new experiments of organizing and new creative practices. May the actions at the Toyako G8 be the coming out parrty of the new cycle of struggles!" (Michael Hardt "A New Cycle of Struggles (2008)")

#Aklas Laban sa G8 Benefit gig is an initiative of NonCollective and AID for the upcoming series of local protests this week of July.

Keywords: Communities, Alternatives, Culture,