Here's a personal account of the day of action for freedom of movement which took place in Paris on Saturday.
Background:
http://parisactionday.wordpress.com/
Background:
http://parisactionday.wordpress.com/
THE LEAD UP
The strategy of the the authorities for 15th was to paint us as a bunch of troublemakers who were intent on making things kick off, one of the reasons an agreement had been reached to have zero communication with the mainstream press.
By early Friday evening, the Gare du Nord was absolutely crawling with cops. Water canons were on standby. They had left notes on car windscreens telling people not to park in the area, and warned local shopkeepers.
They had also been and 'had a chat' with the migrants we had invited to the demo, telling them that they would be arrested if they participated and they told No Borders activists that if they stepped out of line on Saturday they would make trouble at the benefit gig the following evening.
In fact the authorities have been so determined to clampdown on dissent in Paris of late that when 110 protestors were nicked following the last big demo (an anti-prison demo in march), it transpired that the arrestees had been surrounded by 50 undercover cops.
The situation is obviously pretty dire, as one French woman would come up to me on the demo ad tell me how brave we were, and that she was really glad were were speaking out about the repression of sans-papiers in France, as “it desperately needs to be done''...
DAY OF ACTION
Possibly as a consequence of recent events, a lot of more mainstream migrants' rights groups stayed well away, and we numbered only a couple of hundred.
The flipside was that we were able to - very publicly - express, in unadulterated form, the anti-authoritarian politics of the No Borders movement.
On the day itself, the police had surrounded the Gare, metro stations, and nearby streets, and there were police on the water for the part of the demo where we were to go along the canal. Coppers were wondering round armed with large 'flash-ball' guns. One Paris activist commented that they hadn't seen such a deployment of force since the anti-CPE protests in 2006. A small group of us met up beforehand, and realized we were surrounded by quite literally dozens of not-so-undercover police.
The demo was lively and everyone was well fired up. We occupied busy streets, stopped at various locations of significance, such as Square Villemin, a park where Afghan migrants who were sleeping rough were evicted in August, and where they have been unable to seek shelter since. We stopped at the bridge and communicated messages of solidarity for the many Afghans who were observing the demo, who had effectively been barred from participating by the authorities.
Lots of other onlookers were listening to our speeches and taking leaflets.
As we approached the Gare du Nord, we could see that access was blocked by the police. We went for it anyway, but were stopped in our tracks before reaching the station. Flares were let off and it started to look like the cops were going kettle us & charge, so we made a quick exit and continued the demo along the pre-agreed route.
The day finished with music and vegan food at the Place de la Rotonde, which some migrants did come to. I chatted to Afghans I knew from Calais, who after enduring five months of police harassment and violence there had come to Paris for a 'break'. They were to head back North the next day...
OTHER ACTIONS
A number of affinity group actions had to be put on hold perhaps for obvious reasons, although around 15 members of a non-violent group did manage to get into the Gare du Nord in the morning. They gained access to the Eurostar platform armed with a couple of hundred paper planes inscribed with messages denouncing migration controls, and sent these flying into the crowd below whilst shouting various messages about elitist immigration policies. Surprisingly, no-one was arrested.
Meanwhile, a simultaneous (impromptu) demo took place at the French consulate in Berlin, which resulted in several of the building's windows being put through.
Its a shame numbers in Paris weren't higher – not just of French activists but internationals too. However, overall, the day was well worth it and needing doing. The security costs must have been enormous, and we succeeded in letting the authorities know that there's a price to pay for the continued repression in Calais, as well as rendering more visible the persecution of migrants in France.
Videos to follow...
The strategy of the the authorities for 15th was to paint us as a bunch of troublemakers who were intent on making things kick off, one of the reasons an agreement had been reached to have zero communication with the mainstream press.
By early Friday evening, the Gare du Nord was absolutely crawling with cops. Water canons were on standby. They had left notes on car windscreens telling people not to park in the area, and warned local shopkeepers.
They had also been and 'had a chat' with the migrants we had invited to the demo, telling them that they would be arrested if they participated and they told No Borders activists that if they stepped out of line on Saturday they would make trouble at the benefit gig the following evening.
In fact the authorities have been so determined to clampdown on dissent in Paris of late that when 110 protestors were nicked following the last big demo (an anti-prison demo in march), it transpired that the arrestees had been surrounded by 50 undercover cops.
The situation is obviously pretty dire, as one French woman would come up to me on the demo ad tell me how brave we were, and that she was really glad were were speaking out about the repression of sans-papiers in France, as “it desperately needs to be done''...
DAY OF ACTION
Possibly as a consequence of recent events, a lot of more mainstream migrants' rights groups stayed well away, and we numbered only a couple of hundred.
The flipside was that we were able to - very publicly - express, in unadulterated form, the anti-authoritarian politics of the No Borders movement.
On the day itself, the police had surrounded the Gare, metro stations, and nearby streets, and there were police on the water for the part of the demo where we were to go along the canal. Coppers were wondering round armed with large 'flash-ball' guns. One Paris activist commented that they hadn't seen such a deployment of force since the anti-CPE protests in 2006. A small group of us met up beforehand, and realized we were surrounded by quite literally dozens of not-so-undercover police.
The demo was lively and everyone was well fired up. We occupied busy streets, stopped at various locations of significance, such as Square Villemin, a park where Afghan migrants who were sleeping rough were evicted in August, and where they have been unable to seek shelter since. We stopped at the bridge and communicated messages of solidarity for the many Afghans who were observing the demo, who had effectively been barred from participating by the authorities.
Lots of other onlookers were listening to our speeches and taking leaflets.
As we approached the Gare du Nord, we could see that access was blocked by the police. We went for it anyway, but were stopped in our tracks before reaching the station. Flares were let off and it started to look like the cops were going kettle us & charge, so we made a quick exit and continued the demo along the pre-agreed route.
The day finished with music and vegan food at the Place de la Rotonde, which some migrants did come to. I chatted to Afghans I knew from Calais, who after enduring five months of police harassment and violence there had come to Paris for a 'break'. They were to head back North the next day...
OTHER ACTIONS
A number of affinity group actions had to be put on hold perhaps for obvious reasons, although around 15 members of a non-violent group did manage to get into the Gare du Nord in the morning. They gained access to the Eurostar platform armed with a couple of hundred paper planes inscribed with messages denouncing migration controls, and sent these flying into the crowd below whilst shouting various messages about elitist immigration policies. Surprisingly, no-one was arrested.
Meanwhile, a simultaneous (impromptu) demo took place at the French consulate in Berlin, which resulted in several of the building's windows being put through.
Its a shame numbers in Paris weren't higher – not just of French activists but internationals too. However, overall, the day was well worth it and needing doing. The security costs must have been enormous, and we succeeded in letting the authorities know that there's a price to pay for the continued repression in Calais, as well as rendering more visible the persecution of migrants in France.
Videos to follow...
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Solidarity
17.05.2010 19:42
a friend
But it ISN'T "the authorities"
17.05.2010 22:41
We do NOT have "the people" behind us on this. Rightly or wrongly the overwhelming numbers of our people are NOT for "open borders".
Please don't get me wrong. I am NOT saying shouldn't be demonstrating, even doing civil disobedience "because it's the right thing to do". But the forces we have to deal with aren't really "state oppression". In THIS case the forces of the state are intervening. Were they no doing their job and removing us, angry mobs of citizenry would do so.
ORGANIZE. And avoid self deception. We have a very long road ahead of us if what we want is to convince a majority of our people to wnat "open borders". It isn't going to help our efforts to pretend otherwise.
MDN
Communication
18.05.2010 09:06
anon
beyond Paris Calais and London
19.05.2010 09:56
I also think the work to inform and educate the people is very important, creating links between the settled communities* and the migrants and gap divisions...** People do not know their own history, else they would know that closed borders are a very recent invention.
I do not think that political action such as demonstrating is less important or less useful than doing day-by-day work with the people. I wonder why we are having this conversation, after two hundred years or more of class struggle it should be pretty clear that one thing does not exclude the other, it is the combination of the two that produces the best results. While I am personally more inclined to work all year round and do the more humble work of supporting those trapped by borders, campaigning , collecting and spreading information etc. I very much like to organize or take part to demos, actions and high profile events.
The fact that there were few internationals at the demo in Paris is probably due to the fact that people who is active are always pretty busy doing what they are doing, sorry for so obvious explanation, which seems to be a drag when it comes to trans-national demos, and the no borders Paris group is pretty new. The demo in London -A Day Out of Control- wasn't big either, and not many people came from France, pity the two demos weren't organized in conjunction- but I guess for those in Paris was too early. Above all it takes more time to organize trans-nationally, looking forward to the Brussels no borders camp that will certainly help strenghten and consolidate our networks. What surprises me is why so few groups from Paris took part, not that I was expecting the trade unions but what's about the grassroots, I always think of Paris as a very lively spot for radical politics and especially around migration, after all the struggles of the Sans Papiers...
All together I think it was a good initiative and a possible start for something more.
............................................................................................................................................
Settled:* It looks like we all come from a tiny region in Africa called the Rift Valley, if that is the case the 99.99999999999 etc.% of the world population must have migrated at some point before they settled.
Divisions:**...between those who have papers and those who don't - gosh, what am I talking about, looks akin class or race divide... is the world split between 'papers' and 'no papers'? Is there a world for it akin to classism or racism? What has happened to internationalism? And are we gone completely mad?
Why the politicians and the mainstream media keep talking of illegal immigrants? How do we stop them doing that? (After all they had to scrap the expression 'bogus asylum seeker' after a complaint from the NUJ)
Chiara