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Empowering anti-war protest in Edinburgh

ab | 28.03.2003 21:14

quick native reporting :-) about Critical Mass.

I am feeling quite exhausted now.
Today there was a bicycle demonstration against the war happening in Edinburgh. Basically we cycled around and across the city centre for about 1 hour, enjoying ourselves and it was a great demo.
We were not as many as for the first Critical Mass at the end of January, but it was a good crowd to have a demo with, very supportive and everybody contributing to make the demo a success. Somebody brought some music and others some nice colourfull flying wind things, whereas there were also some posters and a devils head.
The police were a bit overexcited and nervous, and had a verbal go at some cyclists who happened to be in front for some time when the police van in front was getting lost, but police representatives excused themselves later after the demo.
The demo was a bit too fast for the pedestrians who turned up,and sadly we lost them quickly at the beginning, especially downhill, but it was quite a comfortable speed for the cyclists as it kept rolling round the castle.
In general it was a nice, successfull and empowering demonstration, we hope to see more often.
Atmosphere was getting quite relaxed inside the demo, but the hostility of some bystanders towards anti-war protesters and anti-war opinions seemed to become more confrontational and less tolerable in the last days of this week.

ab