This morning 20 persons, accompanied by press, occupied the Permanent Mission of Bolivia to WTO and the UN in solidarity with the Bolivian uprising which is demanding the departure of "el gringo" (Bolivian president Losada, a millionaire brought up in the US who speaks spanish with a gringo accent!) and the re-nationalisation of the natural gas that has been practically given away to BP and Repsol.
Significantly, it was a complete and easy success. First of all, it was nearly all organised by a magnificent bunch of Bolivian companeras who surged out of nowhere 48 hours ago to tell us that something had to be done (the Bolivian community in Geneva wasn't like this before!). Then the ambassador, like 99% of Bolivians, is obviously wondering about Losada's chances of staying president. (When a journalist asked him if there was an alternative solution to Losada's resignation, he answered with a long, long diplomatic silence and then said that he didn't want to give his personal opinion!) So he was incredibly cool, didn't ask us to leave or talk of calling the police, sat down on the spot to write a covering letter to ours, faxed it off to La Paz in front of us and then asked us what else we wanted to talk about !
The softest occupation we ever did! I very much recommend Bolivian diplomatic missions right now. And the press are interested !
Pictures of the action and the text will follow soon and be on the Bolivia page of
http://www.agp.org Tomorrow we are going to meet to make giant banners and do Bolivian danses at the outdoor market of Plainpalais, then go hang them on the better placed squats in town.
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