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Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 14:47:15 +0100
From: el desaparecido <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [mayday2k] (en) DAVOS - a personal account
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From: "el desaparecido" <[log in to unmask]>
Dear all,
as there has been little feedback from the Davos demonstration against the
WEF (World Economic Forum), here’s my personal detailed account of a
pretty inspiring event.
I came down to Davos with 3 other friends from Germany. We decided only
at the last minute that we wanted to be there. I knew about the World
Economic Forum and that Davos was somewhere up the Alpes mountains in
the East of Switzerland.
This years’ demonstration was the 3rd demonstration organised against the
WEF, the meeting of the 2000 self proclaimed world leaders in business and
politics. In the previous years, only 200 people made it up the mountain,
holding banners in the snow, surrounded by a large police presence that
wouldn’t allow them to move and get anywhere near to the Conference
Centre.
This year, the WEF had a special significance, since it was the one after
Seattle and we know that TNCs and industrialised governments are still keen
on opening more markets, do further trade liberalisation and finding new
ways of capital accumulation as a (temporary) solution to the overproduction
crisis. Even Bill Clinton made it to the WEF to try and convince the world
business community of the necessity to go ahead with the Millennium
Round, he’d never been in Davos before.
The anti-WTO co-ordination in Switzerland cleverly used the media to
announce their demonstration. As a matter of fact the demo was prohibited
for Saturday 29th, which was the day Billy Boy was coming. The reaction of
the anti-WTO co-ordination was clear: no compromise, we’ll hold the demo
on saturday 29th no matter what.
The mobilisation was surprising. Many people crossed half Europe to make it
to the Swiss Alps. We ended up being 1300 people, from France, Germany,
Switzerland, Italy....probably more.
Several busses loaded with people had arranged to meet beforehand and
then make it in convoy to Davos, so in case the police stopped the busses,
they’d be able to demonstrate together wherever they got stopped. Surprise:
the police let all the busses come up to Davos. They were not expecting to
see so many people. It seems to me that the strategy was the same as in
Seattle, pretending to want a so called ‘dialogue with civil society’.
People gathered at the train station and as they outnumbered the police
forces, they simply broke through the police barriers, marching towards the
conference centre.
The mood was good, kind of euphoric. The demo was fluid, not divided too
much into blocks, it had a nice diversity of people and statements in French,
English, Italian and German were totally natural for everybody. It had a clear
internationalist character. People’s banners and shouts were very diverse
also including anti-fachist, free Mumia, against corporate rule, solidarity with
the people in Ecuador, TNCs won’t rule the world, anti-capitalists and the
usual ones personifying social relations into evil capitalists and TNCs.
Jose Bove, the French farmer from the Confederation Paysanne was in the
front of the demo. The French press has turned him into a pop icon of the
resistance against global trade liberalisation. His strategy seems to have
been one of being both in the street, doing direct action and trashing mac
donalds and at the same time being ready to dialogue with Mike Moore and
accept a plane ticket to Seattle paid by the French ministry of agriculture.
The Bovemania surprised us also, half the bus that had come from his region
was filled with journalists. At the same time it was an ideal tactic to have so
much press in the busses to make it to Davos.
The anti-WTO co-ordination had a clear ‘no dialogue with the WEF’ position.
Jose Bove respected that and announced previously that although he had an
invitation to the WEF, he was going to request Claus Schwab (the organiser
of the WEF) to come out and speak with him in the street with everyone
else. The idea was Bove would go in, only if all his friends were allowed too.
The 3rd police barrier was the one preventing the demo to come too close to
the conference centre. The demo wasn’t able to breakthrough here. Most of
the people walked back.
The small group which stayed there included Jose Bove. They did not
succeed in getting Schwab out and were penalised with pepper spray and
rubber bullets. This was of course filmed by all the press and it was one of
the pictures that made it to most newspapers: Jose Bove in his Asterix look
in front of the police line, as always dressed to kill. The interesting thing is
that the following day, a press release was sent around signed by the
Confederation Paysanne, Droits Devant and the representatives from ATTAC
groups that made it to Davos, urging the NGO community to stop all
dialogue with the WEF.
A friend of mine said “nothing politicises more than a police truncheon”.
Although this was all probably strategy, it will be interesting to see if these
groups will continue their NGO line of pretending to represent civil society
and willing to call for a citizens control of the WTO.....we’ll see.
The rest of the demo walked back towards on of the hotel where WEF
participants were staying. On the way Mc Donalds windows were trashed in
front of the cameras and the police who clearly had an order of not
intervening. A beautiful moment was when a few people torn down one of
these huge Mc Donalds ads saying ‘ think global - eat local ‘. It was just
such a provocation that it was enthusiastically torn apart by the crowd and
the tissue set on fire. The big smoke cloud resulting out of this fire went
straight into the windows of the hotel. People joked “the ghost of Davos was
exorcised” and things like that.
The crowd remained in front of that hotel for quite a while. Several statements
were made in different languages. An amazing thing was that a
representative of Ya Basta Milan who had phone contact to Milan announced
that the 20.000 people protesting against the Via Corelli (detention centre
where people are inhumanly tortured before being sent back to their
countries) had managed to penetrate. ‘This is a victory thanks to the only
struggle of the people’ he said. A statement from the people in Ecuador was
read out loud. Our resistance is more transnational than ever.
As the police was not doing anything, some people that were keen on
making property damage and hassling the police helped themselves. Flags
were torn down from the hotel and burned (the US and the EU flag of course).
Cars were damaged and snow balls massively thrown at the police line in
front of the hotel. Violent and non-violent convictions coexisted pretty well
next to each other at that particular stage. Someone said “we are playing
their game if we do this”. I think most people didn’t mind property damage
but felt uncomfortable with the fact that the violence was not used as a
defence from the police.
In fact a small group of people took in on two policemen. They got both
injured. These people were hitting them while the policemen even when he
was already lying unconscious on the ground. This incident was condemned
by everyone I talked to. People from the demo even started defending the
policeman as he was lying between two cars. It remained also unclear from
where these people came and what their motivation was, their act was
simply brutal and has nothing to do with fundamental social change.
Result: the press coverage especially in the Swiss German boulevard press
was mostly dominated by the pictures of Bill Clinton and the bleeding
policeman. There was not one single picture of a banner. The articles
reported only about the number of people, the temperature, the broken
windows, the time, the street we walked and of course nothing about what
kind of illegitimate bastards these self proclaimed world leaders are, nothing
about people contesting further trade liberalisation and capitalism or about
Ecuador or Mumia Abu Jamal.....ignored of course.
One bus coming from France did not make it and got stopped by a police
barrier about 10km before Davos. The people got off their bus, broke through
the police line and walked up the road provoking a huge traffic jam. They
arrived in Davos when the demo was finishing, but they felt like had they
contributed their bit too.
Several people that had come a long way to Davos stayed overnight at the
Reithalle Bern, which is a huge squatted autonomous centre. [ To anyone
passing Bern, I recommend you to have a look at it, it’s huge and you’ll find
very nice and friendly people there.]
The Reithalle was a good opportunity to have more in depth exchange with
people. Something that became clear to me after talking to several people, is
that Seattle marked the end of a period. The idea of Peoples Global Action
was launched around the idea to focus on the WTO and “free trade”. This
chapter is over now. Most people by now are aware that this is simply not
enough: The discourse is easily recuperated by the NGO reformist
community which goes hand in hand with the governments that playing the
trick of so called “dialogue with civil society”. Almost everybody agreed that
we need to extend our discourse and analysis if we don’t want to end up
contributing to the stabilisation and modernisation capitalism. The WTO and
“free trade” are nothing but expressions of underlying social relations in
which we are all involved and which need to be examined, understood and
tackled. If we don’t manage to formulate what we stand for, our protest will
be easily recuperated and incorporated in the capitalist development.
Quite a few people felt like using the opportunity of mayday2k to bring about
more in depth discussion and exchange with many different social sectors.
The spirit and mood was cool, we all felt exhausted but inspired.
I came back from Switzerland with the feeling of having closed a chapter and
curious about the next steps we will be taking.
Love, rage and c h a o s
Luciano
Freiburg, Germany 2.2.2000
for more information on the World Economic Forum:
For more information on WEF: www.weforum.org
Anti-WTO-Koordination Schweiz
c/o Reithalle Bern
Postfach 5053
3001 Bern
tel: 031 302 66 60; fax: 031 302 78 74
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
homepage: www.reitschule.ch/reitschule/anti-wto
Peoples Global Action
www.agp.org
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D.J. McKnight
Room 107
Department of Geography
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University of Liverpool
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