Prague Anti-NATO Dinner Protest (wednesday)
IMC'ista | 20.11.2002 17:28
The area where the delegates from the NATO conference is sealed behind a whole load of barriers blocking off several streets, lined with police, some wearing riot helmets, protecting the posh nosh arms dinner. Meanwhile....
...just up the road around two hundred or so protestors are holding their own dinner on the streets, giving out free food under a banner proclaiming solidarity with the argentinian people.
People had gathered at the bottom of wencelass square and moved off further up Na Prikope street at about 5.10pm In the surrounding streets packs of corporate journalists prowled around looking for the action.
The time is now 1815. There were many anti-nato banners with slogans like "The world is not a military training ground", "No war in the name of the oil industry" (with the word 'democracy' crossed out for the 'oil industry'), and lots of peace symbols and words in czech which i could not understand. A picture exhibition of the victims of warfare was also displayed and people were handing out flyers.
People were drumming and dancing with a loud sound system also blasting out music (it's pretty cold so moving around helps :-)
Everything is peaceful at the moment. Further up at the other end of the street near to the NATO dinner, the road was blocked off by a barrier and riot police, a lone trumpet player playing in front of them.
There are so so many corporate media people here it is amazing, and a little strange. There must be thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tv cameras, stills cameras and audio equipment - you can't move 1m without knocking into another journalist. Predictably they flock around punk types eating free vegan food on the floor, scores of flashes illuminating the scene, and any other cliche images they can get their hands on. Quite a few people have done interviews with the tv and radio people so let's hope some of the messages get out instead of the normal anti-protester propaganda sensationalism.
More reports with pictures later on prague indymedia
People had gathered at the bottom of wencelass square and moved off further up Na Prikope street at about 5.10pm In the surrounding streets packs of corporate journalists prowled around looking for the action.
The time is now 1815. There were many anti-nato banners with slogans like "The world is not a military training ground", "No war in the name of the oil industry" (with the word 'democracy' crossed out for the 'oil industry'), and lots of peace symbols and words in czech which i could not understand. A picture exhibition of the victims of warfare was also displayed and people were handing out flyers.
People were drumming and dancing with a loud sound system also blasting out music (it's pretty cold so moving around helps :-)
Everything is peaceful at the moment. Further up at the other end of the street near to the NATO dinner, the road was blocked off by a barrier and riot police, a lone trumpet player playing in front of them.
There are so so many corporate media people here it is amazing, and a little strange. There must be thousands and thousands of dollars worth of tv cameras, stills cameras and audio equipment - you can't move 1m without knocking into another journalist. Predictably they flock around punk types eating free vegan food on the floor, scores of flashes illuminating the scene, and any other cliche images they can get their hands on. Quite a few people have done interviews with the tv and radio people so let's hope some of the messages get out instead of the normal anti-protester propaganda sensationalism.
More reports with pictures later on prague indymedia
IMC'ista
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end round up
20.11.2002 21:59
The street was full of shops, this being one of the main tourist shopping areas, from marks and spencers to macdonalds.
The noise protest wound up at around 8pm with no arrests reported and only one tiny incident which was calmed by people immediatly. The sound szstem switched from dead kennedys to gabba and ended on some chilled dub as the last of the protestors danced against nato, militarism and war.
see prague.indymedia.org
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