Mayfair
K...my day. I can't quite work out whether this Mayday (or at least my experience of it) should be seen as a step forward or back. I shall elaborate...
I started off my day with the WOMBLES solidarity demo, on which it was good to see a nice bunch of suited-up protestors, as well as the appearance of Critical Mass (along with Mark THomas). After that I wandered for quite a while (I do have a degree, and thought I'd better do some reading) before distributing some leaflets along Oxford Street and then making my way to Hyde Park for the circus. Unfortunately, the circus block had precious little circus activity, and no band (I can't complain, I have no drums either, but it wasn't ideal). THis led to us very quickly fragmenting and going our seperate ways...I ended up with a group of maybe 50 people...unfortunately not very militant, and so we ended up wandering the streets for ****ing ages just looking confused, which wasn't exactly good for the image of the protests. "Join us in Mayday, get lost and wander like a drunken fool". We managed to get a few chants going, but at that stage it was not looking good for the forces of goodness and light.
HOwever, things brightened up as we decided to chance our luck at going to Grovesner Square...as we went along Marble Arch again we picked up a fair few people (people who were confused by all the decentralised actions were often wandering around until they found something to join) and by the time we hit the US Embassy must have been a few hundred strong. We couldn't get to the Italian Embassy to protest Carlo Guiliani's death, as we would have been trapped by the police (it looked as if some already had been) so we turned down another road...and really started to pick up steam, intersecting with several other groups until we were going down small streets in SOho with at least 800 people. "WHose streets! Our Streets!", people were finally chanting. That was the high point, tho there were lots of other adventures until I went home about 5.00 (sounds like, from Indymedia at the moment, that I missed some dramatic events afterwards).
So...how did it go? We certainly avoided being boxed in this time...although we did so by confusing our own side as well as the police. The totally decentralised nature of this years protest meant that a lot of people were left feeling isolated...but on the other hand, when groups did meet up it was a very powerful, quickly building thing, which the police couldn't necessarily react to and channel. I was worried by the seemingly high proportion of people who were blatantly there to get pissed, and weren't concerned about the political aspect of it all...I'm not being a snob, fair enough people want to enjoy themselves, but when they obviously couldn't give a shit about the reasons for Mayday as a festival, it gets a bit worrying. THis was compounded by the non-militancy of a lot of the groups I was with...probably due to the constant walking for miles and miles. Basically, it was a decentralised Critical Mass for people without bikes! This led to tiredness, and quite often onlookers just laughing at us as we tried to work out where the fuck we were going. ANy actual explanation of why we were there didn't often get given.
I was going to say that on the plus side it was totally nonviolent...but that looks like it may be untrue (I'm not prejudging, I don't know the facts so it may be police intervention...don't jump down my throat!), which I think would be a shame if it was caused by us. I'm not anti-property destruction per se, but with all the predictions of gloom and doom by the media I would have loved to have proved them totally wrong. 'Hardcore mob of anarchists' my arse.
I've probably forgotten stuff, but i'm tired...
Venceremos!
P.S. Ken Livingstone is a tit.
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