May Day and corperate worlds

Wook

DeVore

The people who run those sorts of chains are often franchaisees just trying to keep a business going.

I employ 10 people, does that make me scum?

I hate people who just get on the Dublin-4-driven moral high ground and then go and smash stuff. Work shy bunch of loser a lot of them are.

I agree with protest against the over globalisation of commerce and its effects on our world but dont tell me some mommys boy from Castleknock out with his "activist" friends to "fight the power" is going to make a difference kicking in a Micky D's window before going for a Heiny with his SWFie mates.

DeV.

Keeks

Agreed DeV...

I've asked several ppl who have being on protest why they do it. the nornal reply is to make ppl "aware" of <enter whatever they are protesting bout here>. But what normally happens is a confrotation with the police force, and the debate afterwards is about who was right or wrong in the resulting melee. The whole meassage that the protesters were trying to put across gets lost and the general public just becomes more interest in weather or not the police were heavy handed. THe public spilts into two camps because of this, not for the original reason of the protest.

Wook

Just to clarify,

i think you are both right , the picture though does tell us a lot of how people can get used to things ...fast. how strange or how weird they may seem.
Also the futility of it..intense

colinsky

I read this story after one of the last big protests in Washington, but can't find the original source at the moment:

"Folks rallied against all sorts of alleged corporate injustice on the streets outside the headquarters of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, both at 18th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. They protested Citibank, derided Coca-Cola and held signs that read "Starbucks" with a thick red line through it.

Except, Starbucks had something they needed: bathrooms.

Or, to be more precise, the Starbucks at 18th and H had a bathroom, a women's room, because the men's room was locked and no one had a key. So protesters of both sexes had to wait in 20-minute lines, where they talked about corporate injustice, universal health care and why there were no porta-potties."

seamus

LOL colinsky. Just shows that they're hypocrits the world over.

I'm very interested in their choice of 'Reclaim the Streets'. Reclaim the streets from whom? The streets were built with the income and motor tax gained, and as such, belong to the whole state. Without taxation, there would be no streets to 'reclaim', and under socialist rule, you can be damn sure they'd be in even worse repair then they are now.

So can someone who is with these protestors explain to me? How does walking on roads built for driving on, 'reclaim' them?

Boston

The police, werent heavy handed. As dev said these guys must be upper class twats from foxrock or some other such ****wit breading ground. If they grew up where i did, they would have known that if you start **** with the gardi, you get a batton in the face.

One of these gob****s ran up behind a gardi, took his hat and tosted it in the canal. 10 gardi preceded to beat him within an inch of his life.

They draged a car into the middle of the road and started to smash it up, and expected that gardi to do nothing because it was their car. what bull. These people thing they are a law onto themselves, that they have a right not to talk to the gardi about the route of their march and to do what they want and feic the ordinary people of dublin.

IVe been on protest marchs and none have been violent because basically them weren't run by cabbages

Aspro

Whether they were yuppie twats/krusties or not Boston the coppers were completely out of order from every report I've come across - local residents, RTE camerawoman etc. The problem is that the gardai are a law unto themselves and only too fond of knocking the shíte out of people (as many of us all know from our teenage years).
There is a democratic right to protest, whether you agree with their motives or not. I despise Sinn Fein but I wouldn't agree with banning them from protesting or holding a march or gardai attacking them on a peaceful protest.
This boils down to a complete lack of accountability on behalf of the gardai and the feeling that they have carte blanche to do what they feel like because literally any form of protest/demonstration/gathering can fall foul of the Public Order Act.
I'm not a member of Reclaim the Streets but I sympathise with their motives. The problem with groups like theirs is that they are anarchic in their organisation, don't build support for their ideas in the communities and therefore can be tarbrushed with the anarchist/krustie/unemployed etc. etc. cliché by kneejerk reactionaries who are too blind to acknowledge that the world is a fúcked up place that needs major change.

As for colinsky's comment - in the absence of public toilet facilities they could have píssed in unison on the street, couldn't they? I'm sure the authorities would have loved that.

Boston

What gets me is the surprise, "omg the gardi are beating the **** out of us, who would have expected, but we did nothing"

and

"all we were doing was expressing our democratic right to block traffic and cause a public disturbance, wont someone think of the new aged hippies?"

"down with this sort of thing"

Victor

Hang on, remember when the Gardaí blocked the streets during the 'blue flu' - I didn't see them being baton charged.

Boston

well two things, that was legal, and agreed with before hand.

these muppets just decided without warnign they would sit down and block the street

Victor

Originally posted by DeVore
I hate people who just get on the Dublin-4-driven moral high ground and then go and smash stuff. Work shy bunch of loser a lot of them are.

I object!

DeVore

Read what I wrote again. Then read it slower.

Boston, you dont understand what I wrote and you are putting words in my mouth I didnt say.

The police acted disgracefully at the Reclaim the Streets protest.
I may not like violent "fight teh p0wa!" SWFiesque yobs but:

1. Not even a majority of the people who protest globalisation, urbanisation or other causes are violent or indeed yobs.

2. They have every right to protest peacefully. Just not violently.

3. The police are expected to follow a certain etiquette and standards. The right to freedom of speech, freedom of protest and the freedom of the press (aka Videocams) are very very important rights in any society and need to be guarded intensely.
(even on Boards people can complain about a Mod on the admin board)

Protest is an important part of any community and stifling it is a very dangerous thing indeed...

I just get angered by the "lets kick in a Micky D's window, it'll protest world globalisation" idiocy. I've been on the wrong end of the establishment for speaking my views too, and I've no great love for their tactics.



DeV.

Victor

Originally posted by Boston
well two things, that was legal, and agreed with before hand. these muppets just decided without warnign they would sit down and block the street

So payroll fraud is now legal? The 'blue flu' protest was not advertised as "we will be blocking all traffic through the city centre". I was held up for about half an hour trying to get back to work from site.

bonkey

Originally posted by Boston
One of these gob****s ran up behind a gardi, took his hat and tosted it in the canal. 10 gardi preceded to beat him within an inch of his life.

Riiiiight.

So - what you're telling me is that if a policeman had taken a "fight the power" sign off a protestor, and had thrown that in the river, that the protestors would have been justified in retaliating by getting 10 people to jump said garda and beat him within an inch of his life?

No? But its the same story - I just swapped the sides around a bit. Whats the difference?

Here's a newsflash. The police are supposed to uphold the law. The law requires that violence be justifiable (i.e. self-defense) and kept to a minimum.

The police appear to have failed utterly to do this, and no amount of slurs at the people they attacked will change that.

The original "Reclaim the Streets" idea was superb. Its initial successes were superb. Unfortunately, there is a major point which people have forgotten : it was successful because it was innovative. Now, its just cliched.

Gosh - look at that. A protest against globalisation which will shut the streets down again. Before the event I can predict that windows will be smashed, typically of global corporations.

Reclaim the Streets has become one of the things it is fighting against - it is nothing but replayed advertising. Before the event, you could probably predict the format, what will be written on the signs, what buildings will be targetted for damage.

Its a hollow, scripted event.

When people were expecting nothing and got a demonstration in the form of a street carnival - they were surprised and they took notice. When ad-jamming first became popular, people were amused at the wit and inventiveness of the vandals and they took notice.

Now, all we see is the same tired routine playing to the same tired script. All we remember is the violence.

Nothing to see here, move along.

jc

Boston

So - what you're telling me is that if a policeman had taken a "fight the power" sign off a protestor, and had thrown that in the river, that the protestors would have been justified in retaliating by getting 10 people to jump said garda and beat him within an inch of his life?

How many times have i said it isnt right, its just the way it is. ?
never clamed they where justified, but i could have predicted it would have happened, does that make me a telepath?

Victor, the gardi agreed, with themselves before hand that they would block traffic. so the gardi werent surprised and shocked.
:rolleyes: Sounds like something on bull island.

Boston, you dont understand what I wrote and you are putting words in my mouth I didnt say.

very true, i was also taking the piss and hoping to guess were your from, i knew i should have picked blackrock.

Victor

Originally posted by bonkey
Reclaim the Streets has become one of the things it is fighting against - it is nothing but replayed advertising. Before the event, you could probably predict the format, what will be written on the signs, what buildings will be targetted for damage.

Isn't "Reclaim the Streets" about streets, not buildings? And there is no suggestion of property damage on Monday (other than a Garda thrashing a 'street garden').

seamus

Still no-one's answered my question........

Aspro

Still no-one's answered my question........

I believe they want to reclaim the streets from cars and other vehicles within city centres in particular - for pedestrians and cyclists - which I couldn't disagree with. It's a nightmare to drive in town anyway. Look at our city centre - buildings covered in filth from pollution and a river that stinks worse than your grandad's underpants. Cyclists and pedestrians take their lives in their hands on city centre roads.
With a proper and efficient public transport system traffic could be minimised on all our roads and city centres could be pedestrianised. Unfortunately successive government transport policy has flowed from the beginning of the state when it was geared towards the wealthy few who could afford cars - and subsequently public transport was underfunded and driven (sic) into the ground. We're facing the consequences of that now - gridlock and more gridlock.
Notwithstanding the usual clichés of "unemployed hippies" I'm sure the majority of the reclaim the streets people are taxpayers too and are entitled to make their point.

and under socialist rule, you can be damn sure they'd be in even worse repair then they are now.

You can be damn sure of nothing until the majority of people have a real say in what should be done. Since we've never seen the fruition of a genuine socialist society you have no idea what can or can't be done. By ridiculing genuine protest you ignore real issues. Real issues force change.

bonkey

Originally posted by Boston

How many times have i said it isnt right, its just the way it is. ?
never clamed they where justified,

Actually - I was going off the fact that you clearly stated :

The police, werent heavy handed.

Bearing this in mind, I think I was asking a valid question. If you dont think they reacted excessively, then you can hardly say that they werent justified.

I'm guessing from your response that what you meant was something else. Perhaps "the police werent any more heavy handed than I've often seen them" or something like that?

jc

Boston

How heavy handed they were is relative to how you view the police. Standard pratice.

Also these situations have a habite of going out of control, i saw in the reports, on protester resisting arrest, kicking and screamign at a single gardi, now we dont know what happened before that but we have to persume the gardi was right in atempting to arrest him. Now another gardi seeing this jumped in with a baton flying and bait the **** out of your man, slip his face open.

the think is that, the gardi wasnt interested if your man was being arrested for a minor offence or not, he was resisting arrest and the gardi responded.

I think this would be a far different story, if a gardi had been stabed.What all of a sudden those people arnt innocents anymore?

the important thing to remember is that most protest where there is any amount of violence in this country usualy end in this way. The ones that dont are the ones that are well organized, the planner are responsible people, there are seawards there to handly any trouble before it happens, this was not the case with the anti gobilas::) protest.

Resist .

new footage shows police beating women and one garda saying
"i'll assualt who i wana assault"

check
http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=31220&group=webcast

or

http://www.indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=4717

or just click here -

http://uk.indymedia.org/local/webcast/uploads/policebeatgirls.mpg

to download the video

Slydice

I coulda sworn i already saw this post

Saruman

You did... in phantomFM the same post!

amp

Yes and Politics also. Sending the same message to multiple boards is not allowed. Not locking as it's a valid topic for Humanities. If the Phantom and Politics want to move their versions of this thread here I'll merge them.

If these people had been serious about a peaceful protest, then the march would have been sanctioned beforehand. They would have applied for a permit, and upon receipt of it, the march would have gone ahead. Instead they decided to march without any authorisation. We live in a free and democratic society, however, to protect the majority, these forms need to be followed. This march went forward in the format of Mob Rule. And all governments fear a Mob.

The Gardai were a bit excessive, however, when a crowd resists to be disbanded, how are they to enforce their authority? A baton charge was a bit much, however i can't think of a way to disperse a crowd, without such methods. Regardless of what the gardai could do, apart from a baton charge, would also be critized by everyone, since these situations are still relatively new in Ireland.

All i can say, is that i lay the blame of this incident not completelywith the gardai (although the gardai are to be held accountable for their actions) but with the organisers of the march. It is their mentality that all things linked to the state are bad, and must be destroyed.

I've looked at the posts in Indymedia, and most of the posts mention things such as the RTE are state controlled, so the March wont receive accurate news coverage. I find this to be completely stupid. There are other posts that are equally stupid in content.

These people have the right to protest. However, they MUST follow the law in regard to the rules, laid down for such marches. Next time these people have a march, i hope they apply for a permit. If they're refused, they can appeal. But continuing with this MOB MENTALITY that socialists have will end up in bloodshed, and all blame will land at their feet.

If you're so concerned that you must have a march to protest. Get organised. Loose the thugs that cause violence. Don't destroy property in front of the Gardai ( Which is against the Law, even if you DO own the property ).

In this, while excessive, i lean more towards the Gardai response than the marchers, since this march was against the Law.

amp

In fact we don't need two threads on this so I'm merging it with the May Day one.