A video activists account of reporting the G8/globalisation protests in Genoa 20

We arrived in Genoa a few days before the demonstrations were due to start to help setup the Indymedia Centre (IMC). I travelled in a tiny camper van with my friend Marion from Munich. The border caused no problem - the border guard asked us why we were going to Italy and we said we were holidaying on the coast, with a little knowing look on both sides. Arriving in Genoa the police presence was heavy.
The protest Convergence Centre was being set up down near the beach. Just a hundred yards away there was a huge police head quarters at the stadium. After wandering around for a while, we camped the night parked out of sight beside one of the big tents of the half finished Convergence Centre. In the morning after meeting up with other groups we made our way to the protest organisers, GMC situated alongside the IMC in Diaz school.

We found a place to stay at the IMC up at the head of the stairs at the roof, which was out of the way. The video room was full of technical equipment but none of it seemed to be available for public use. The centre was well equipped with computers supplied by the city, all networked together. The techie crew had obviously put a lot of work into the setup. Linux (a grassroots alternative to Microsoft) on all the computers with no applications and no system of support to help people make the transition to this ”non-standard” operating system – a powerful gesture of what is possible but practically useless for what the PC’s were for. This non-joined up thinking is a recurring theme in the techie-journo divide.

The video room was a bit of a fiasco: a lot of non-configured private computing kit – most of it password protected taking up the majority of the space. There were no shared resources and it seemed that none of the kit worked in a familiar standard way. It was an ego wank space with little of the supposedly organised IMC ethos.

Two PCs were ”requisitioned” from other rooms and Windows was installed (as there was no functioning linux video editing software). At one of the first meetings money was put aside to upgrade one of these computers to be a DV editing system with a new hard-drive and a firewire card. The other we installed an analogue capture card that B from KanalB brought along – so we had two shared editing systems. The second of these machines created the bulk of the video that was uploaded from the IMC centre during the summit – the DV computer broke down on the second day and never worked again.

Marion and I took to the streets to make the first report from the Convergence Centre. It wasn’t long before we were stopped and detained by a group of undercover police men while doing a piece to camera. We were outside the main police accommodation stadium that just happened to be right next to the Convergence Centre. We were held for a few hours while more and more undercover policeman arrived until there were 10 or 12 and two cars around us. They asked me for the tape in the camera. I refused. They took down all our details and checked our passports – it became a bit nerve racking… I secretly filmed some of the secret policeman.

Marion recalled ‘It was the first time i was in a big protest event like this, so I was rather naive about what to expect. I had come to assist my friend Hamish with video reporting the event for Indymedia and passed the first encounters with police as described by Hamish above with a feeling like being suddenly inside a movie, a sense of scurrility. Luckily I found people explaining to me in detail what to expect from police during the day of action, how to deal with tear gas etc. In that sense the Indymedia centre (IMC) was a somewhat casual but rather helpful and warm place to be.”

We continue to dodge around the streets trying to film the red zone barrier being constructed which would surround the G8 leaders. We were stopped and detained twice, for an hour the first time and 3-4 hours the second, arguing with the police and attempting to exercise normal civil rights proved fruitless. This was the first nagging Orwellian feeling that was reinforced over the week of demonstrating. The police were a state in themselves and there was obviously no respect for the role of law in their actions. Fear was starting to stalk the streets encircling the meeting of the cabal of world power.

The Raid on Indymedia
Following a heavy day of rioting and police brutality with one demonstrator being shot dead, I headed back to the Indymedia centre(IMC). After the shooting the tension was rising with paranoia about police repression. People began to leave the both the Indymedia Centre and Genoa. There was much discussion of what to do and no firm consensus. Many people made the decision to leave independently until the numbers had halved as the night wore on, and more reports of police movements came in. Some protesters threw stones at a police car outside the IMC, which only heightened the tension and paranoia. We held a meeting to try to decide what to do with the video material and people if the police did raid, which came to no conclusion. So the two of us decided on an own emergency plan, a hide out on the roof.

At midnight there were shouts that police are coming. I looked out the window but couldn’t see anything, people started to run around grabbing stuff and barricading doors .I ran to find Marion and reminded her about the hiding place on the roof I had checked out when we arrived. She grabbed the tapes and equipment and headed off. Looking out the side window I could not see any police around the front door so I shouted back to the people blockading the door… trying to calm the situation.

I went up to the roof and filmed the Carabinieri breaking into the school building oppositer, a van smashing through the front gate, police men breaking the windows with chairs, smashing down the doors with tables they found in the court yard. Worried for my safety and the video I was recording after a few minutes I decided to head back downstairs to see if the police were coming into the IMC building as well.

Everything calmed down at the IMC and I wondered, were the police invading this building or not? I decided to go down stairs and check. After two flights I turned a corner and came face to face with a policeman dressed in full body armour with his truncheon drawn panting his way up the stairwell. At this I turned and flew up two flights shouting, ”they are in the building” past the barricaded door to the IMC and up to the roof. Dodging the spotlight from the circling helicopter I headed over to the window of the water tower and lowered myself in, whispering ”Marion its me”.. No answer. Creeping there the darkness with the only light being from the infrared beam of my camera I made my way down through the corridor of water tanks whispering ”Marion are you there” starting to panic that she was not. This small and frightened voice came back ”turn that light off”. She was hiding in the space behind the last water tank.

We waited. She had brought a bottle of water and supplies. We talked about what we would do if / when the police came, would they come in and search? would they throw tear gas in? Would they smash our equipment and break our bones?
All of these options seemed very real. Meanwhile the helicopter circled very low with its spotlight lighting up the window of the water tower, shaking the building.

Marion said that the screaming went for what seemed like hours.” I was sure there were people being murdered. It was not just screaming in pain, it was screaming in fear of death. So I sat there waiting for my turn to scream like this when police had made their way up to searching the roof. Then the noises mingled into a frantic maddening mixture of screams of fear, shouting of angry cried of ‘assassini’, ambulance sirens, and helicopter motors just above our heads. Suddenly we hear noises of movement outside. Police were searching the roof. We kept very quiet and still for nearly four hours. When finally the helicopter disappeared, we dared to exit the water tower.

We met survivors of the raid wandering across the roof top in a daze. Grabbing our camera, we interviewed two English girls who had been in the IMC during the raid.. Then headed downstairs to survey the damage. Doors smashed open, computer dismembered, hard drives ripped out and monitors smashed. Across the street,much worse was awaiting. Blood covered the floor congealing into puddles and splayed up walls. Trails lead into huddled corners, clothes lay around in disarray, personal belongings covered the floor specked here and there by blood stains. Dazed people were searching through the piles as reporters stood in clumps. The trail of blood lead up the stairs, bits of skin and clumps of hair stuck to the walls following the trail of broken doors and hasty barricades. Looking in cupboards and under desks, searching all places were someone could have been. Heads had been bashed against walls and bloody handprints smeared left a smell in the building. The carabinieri had left their mark.