In a busy London cafe, Pete Phoenix pushes his vegan mash aside and starts producing laminated sheets from his bag. He is talking me excitedly through the past three decades of direct action – the anti-roads protests, Reclaim the Streets, Occupy and much more.
The old photos, flyers and ancient VHS videotapes he and fellow activists have collated form a remarkable social history of the UK and global protest movement, and incidentally tell Phoenix’s own life story. Because whether it was the M11 protests, a gigantic Reclaim the Streets party or the occupation of a landmark building in central London (symbolising for the protesters everything that is wrong with capitalism), Phoenix was there.
A few weeks away from his 47th birthday, Phoenix is dressed in his activist “uniform” of baggy trousers and heavy boots, with small DIY tools hanging from his pockets. Should he need to make the point that people are sleeping on the streets while many habitable buildings have lain empty for years, he is agile enough to scale a wall at a moment’s notice.
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