PLATFORM

CASEY VAYAN-TODOS

TO COMPLAIN, as Duncan Hamilton did in his column last Monday, that "anti-capitalist" networks like Dissent, in which I play a small part, offer no alternatives to global capitalism is both incorrect and misses an important point. There are as many ideal worlds as there are people and this diversity is our strength. Far from offering no alternatives, we recognise that there are thousands of alternatives possible. What we can do is work together to find a way that we all can live with each other.

This idea of "one no, many yesses" means it is also incorrect to claim that we are anti-everything. Plainly if I am anti-hierarchy, I must be in favour of working in a way where everyone has an equal say, truly democratically. The way Reshape Glasgow and other Dissent-linked anti-G8 groups are organising stands in stark contrast to the self-appointed Group of Eight (or seven). We want to work as equals with anyone who shares our goals.

Why do I want to stop the summit? The G8 leaders are a profoundly undemocratic clique that has no legitimacy and no right to issue edicts that effect the other 6 billion of us. They aren't meeting to convey the wishes of their people but to decide what they want to do and how to sell those decisions to "their" populations, regardless of their wishes.

As much as I want to see an end to poverty and a massive reduction in carbon emissions, asking "world leaders" and the market to solve the problems they have created is akin to employing Herod as a nursery nurse because he has prior experience of working with children.

Here in Scotland we're lucky to have even the illusion of access to power. This isn't a courtesy extended to the majority of the world. Mexico's Zapatistas and Brazil's Landless Peasants' Movement may be fighting the same struggle for a better world, but no-one passes them canapés. The same system that pretends to offer us its ear shows the rest of the world its true, violent face. I can't in conscience ask for anything from the G8; that would be recognising its right to make decisions that affect us all.

So rather than engaging in another protest that asks those above us to rule us in a different way, I choose to confront them directly. By setting out to blockade Gleneagles, we will achieve two things. We will make it harder for the ruling class to cut deals behind closed doors and impossible for them to present their decisions as ours.

TV cameras will show contextless images, newspapers will report the protests as isolated aberrations, "failures of the democratic process". Those who are there will know better, that we're reaching towards a better, more directly democratic idea.

We know that with the chains we break and the friendships we make this summer, we will take more steps towards building the new world that exists in all of our hearts.

• Casey Vayan-Todos is an anti- capitalist activist.