the mass set off
banner at marks and spencer
crowd leafletting outside marks
approaching tesco
police asking what it's about
handing out leaflets
anti-capitalists text
engaging with locals
street theatre
police watch the mass leaving tesco
hackney high street reclaimed
safe driving!
texaco demo
police follow the mass home
after about twenty minutes, the convoy moved on to the next stop point, the huge tesco supermarket in mare street. there, security guards ushered the group off their 'private land', and tried to ban photography and video. they also called the police, who seemed content with the demo taking place on the footpath next to tesco. the activists handed out a lot more leaflets, staged some street theatre and again chatted with people who were very friendly.
they rode off again after a while, and on down hackney high street towards the texaco garage. one car driver played silly buggers trying to scare cyclists by driving at them at speed. when one slapped her car in defiance, she then got on a mobile phone to call the police, who turned up in a van and two cars a little later as the group occupied the forecourt of the texaco. once the police had heard both sides of the story, she was sent off, and the protesters stood in front of the garage with their banner for a while.
one police car then followed the group, but they'd pretty much finished their actions for the day, split into smaller groups to stymie the cops, and returned to base for a quick debrief.
this small action was very visible to a lot of people, received general support, and made quite a few folk stop and think about where they shop and how these simple decisions help shape the world.
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Comments
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shame you missed the demo
14.08.2006 23:04
DOH!
hackney local
few things
15.08.2006 15:21
we or some of us did partecipate to many demo in the past here and we get to the conclusion that this form of demostration doesn't go anywhere. remember 2 million people before the irak war?
we were present at the assembley in clapton few week ago and honestly what we saw was somebody talking like if in the previous demo organize by them they menage to stop the war. lot of ego and lot of showing of.......how good we are, we did this and that......no analysis or critics. why wars happend?who is responsible? just the people in power or all of us being part of a system that to survive needs wars?
Of one things anyway yuo are right we should be there to get in touch with more people living in hackney, but our resources are limited in number of people involve in the space and the ammount of work we are doing to keep the place open to anybody sometimes does't allowed us to be everywhere.
i hope that you will come to visit us in the future to talk and listen to each other point of view about war and everything else.
apologize for my bad english grammar
take care T
tacho