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I'm back, after a long sweep of organising and travelling. Right now in Genova, after Gothenburg, Barcelona, Tarifa.
I was one of the people trying to set up confrontative and protected but non-violent direct action the White Overalls style. Things were working out pretty good, exellent communication between various groups, a general consensus even with people more reliant on direct confrontation ("black bloc") that the initial confrontation was to be strictly non-violent. Let the cops show what bastards they are.
Ooh, how ignorant we were.
What happened in Gothenburg, from my point of wiew:
The day before the civil disobedience-protests were going to start (Thursday 14.6.2001) at around 10 in the morning, hundreds of police surround the three schools that were serving as a 'convergence center'. Not only police, mind you. Horses, dogs, riot geared cops. And the big scary one: huge (maybe 15 meter long, 3 meter high) metal containers used for shipping goods, that they drive in with trucs and place in the streets surrounding the three schools with a complete wall of steel.
At this point there had been NO provocation from protesters.
There was no communication from the cops. Eventually the around 400 people caught inside the school learned that the police 'had learned' that weapons were being stored at the schools. This was a pure lie. Yes, there was protective equipment (padding, armguards, helmets) being stored inside the schools. They were to be used for our civil disobedience actions, to protect from police violence. They were soon to be needed.
Individuals who wanted to leave the school were allowed to do this, if they agreed to have the belongings they carried with them searched, and had their I.D. checked. Also, political materials were not allowed to be taken out from the surrounded area. Banners and signs prepared for the demonstrations were to be left behind. A trotskyist group that decided to leave never saw their 70 painstakingly prepared signs again. Many people left, but maybe 250-300 people refused to accept the conditions given by the police and their sweeping actions against the diverse people inside.
No mainstream media was present inside the school area. None were let in during the whole day.
We who were trapped inside the school complex, the Hvitfeldtska-school, demanded free passage, our right to demonstrate and to be allowed to take our prepared materials with us.
This was denied. There was a meeting held, which decided to try to non-violently force our way out, if negotiations with the police failed.
We (about 20-25 people with body protections and shields, a very small group) walked up to the police lines, followed by a bloc of anti-fascist militants, about a hundred of them, maybe.
After the police refused to negotiate, we tried to push our way out. After several push-out-attempts, it became clear that this was not working, we were too few. Some pictures of what happened next.
As we started retreating back towards the school buildings to rethink what we should do, 12 police horses attacked us. Especially this picture shows what happened. The police horses, when trying to charge against our shields, stopped in confusion. This probably saved lives, since in our protection we were too slow to run away, like the antifascists behind us sensibly did. However, I feel that in this moment our form of action got it's legitimisation: we were the only group in Gothenburg which was not forced to disperse when the horses attacked.
Unfortunately we were few, and the police horses were able to ride around us and surround us. They started beating upon us with batons, the nasty, telescopic kind that acts like a whip with a metal head. They were everywhere around us, beating, beating for what seemed like an eternity. The riot cops on foot arrived, and they, too, were beating. Only at this point did our tortoise formation break up, and the police started arresting people. I fell to the ground, and a cop pounced on my back, forcing me against the cornerstones of the sidewalk. Good thing I was wearing padding all around...
ONLY at this point did the protesters use violence, after being attacked by manic club-wielding horse-riding armed and dangerous policemen, and I'm damn glad they did.
The anti-fascist bloc went on a counterattack, saving us in the White Overalls from a mass arrest. All I realised was that suddenly the cop on my back vanished, and a helping hand pulled me up and away. The cops were fought off with cobblestones, which mainly bounced off their protective equipment, just like their batons had off ours. A few of the people in the White Overalls were arrested, but most of us were freed, thanks to the cobblestones.
We ran into the school buildings. Some people gave themselves up and were arrested, others made breakout attempts, climbing over containers and running for it. Most of these were stopped and arrested, some beaten. I got beaten.
The next day the police presented the weapons they had 'known' were inside the school. Metal cans with small stones inside. Obviously the cops had never seen the rhythm-shaker of a samba-band...
After being let out of the arrest-bus the next morning (I was never even interrogated) it soon became clear that all our plans for civil disobedience had been effectively devastated by the police. The whole chain of communications had been arrested. All the equipment seized or 'disappeared'. Everyone exhausted, bruised, battered.
All that was possible was either to try climbing over a fence and being arrested on your own, or stone throwing. All possibilities for anything that might look good to the media had been wiped out, samba band, White Overalls, banners, everything.
So, the demo on the morning of Friday the 15.6.2001 started, not in too good a mood. And there it stopped. The police attacked, again, with no sign of violence from the protesters. This time, no metal containers blocking the way. No, this time the whole black bloc was DRIVEN into the main shopping street. With predictable consequences.
I've been thinking about this, and, while there clearly was a mass of incompetence and lack of understanding of the situation by the police on the street (which probably led to the shootings later that day), the whole thing showed... cunning. Cunning and careful planning. Someone in the police wanted a discredited movement, split into the extremes of absolute non-confrontational non-violence and the stone throwing militants. And they realised that to accomplish this, they had to wipe out everything in between.
There is much I could write about the Street Party that ended with cops shooting into a crowd, the demo against police violence on saturday, of the MASSIVE (20.000 people) peaceful demos that got almost no attention...
But now I'm tired, and there's much work to do for the protests against the G8. Take care, you all. |
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