Report of the Blockades, 6th June

Voluntari@s IMC-PT 08.06.2007 01:45 Themen: G8 G8 Heiligendamm
I want to write about the thing that, so far (second day of the blockade) is a complete success:

The 10.000 against the prison of Heiligendamm.
Three camps:

Camp Wichmannsdorf
Camp Reddelich
Camp Rostock

10.000 people advancing in a “chaotically organized” way towards the fortress entrance gates.
The tactic:

Five fingers – the purpose is that big blocks of people act in na organized but at the same time chaotic way, in order to pass through the police barriers. The block divides in five fingers (although the number can change) and each time it faces the police, it disperses totally in order to cross through the police lines, rejoining and reorganizing later.

The result? So far, the efective blockade of the G8 summit!

NOTE: for further info vide -  http://de.indymedia.org/ticker/en/

West Gate - confrontations between massive ammount of police and 2500 people.
East Gate – Complete control by the protesters. East Gate is completely blocked, even the police is prevented from crossing it (for example, reinforcement)
Northeast Gate – Peaceful situation. Very few policemen. Some 1000-1500 demonstrators.

Besides these blockades there’re others with dozens of individuals blocking small accesses to the police, delaying reinforcement and, generally, annoying “our friends”.

All these actions are pretty descentalized and work in an independent way.

Report from group of Camp Rostock:

We left the camp early in the morning (we, particularly, came from the Convergence Center in Evershagen – also seat of the IMC, among other groups, where we had been working, important to mention the support given by part of the portuguese delegation to the nocturnal security teams of the Convergence Center). People started to arrive around 8 (time set) and everyone was present one hour after (2000-3000 people).

- As we got there, we were informed of the predictable: the police had blocked the buses and shuttles that were supposed to transport us. Therefore, plan B – we walk.

- We started our walk through the city of Rostock, with not big police presence (they don’t like to be in big presence when, besides us, there’s also the rest of the population). But as we left the city as started entering the fields, we were stopped by the first police check-in that, as all their actions so far, is much less police than intimidating. In fact, some people still get intimidated, but the majority doesn’t care about police presence anymore. Almost all of us were searched, although that search was made without any strictness.
Short time after we were stopped by a second group, highly agressive this time, and set for anything – the clown army that, after their uncountable workshops, managed to assemble not only national and international committees, but also the “intergalactic committees”. They were thus prepared for anything, but they didn’t know in detail our five finger technic, so they formed a line in front of us, making us laugh (their most terrible weapon, besides total desobedience to police forces… well, everything that gives orders) and they made us run to them, using the very secret tactic of the five fingers, what we did with pleasure.

- The tactic ended up being very efective even against this group of highly prepared profissionals. Now we did believe it to be possible to block G8.

- We walked a bit more until we gathered together around 10h30 in an amusement park. The mood was good, the day was beautiful, and the police could confirm our fear of the police intervention when some groups layed getting sun and other started football and voleyball matches.

- A while after, the flags of each one of the five fingers were raised and people joined their “squad”. The “squad” we were supposed to go in was called off, probably because there weren’t a well prepared group to assume the leadership of that group, and so we joined another flag. The four fingers started their march through the wheat fields. (Halfway we also passed through a lettuce plot. We thought it important to mention this detail to all the policemen that, worried about the details, will read this and a lot of other texts. The lettuces looked all very well – none was hurt.)

- The police was far from us and did nothing else than accompanying the more than 2000 people on the streets. Reason? Try to walk with the invencible (heavy and loose) body armour in the middle of a wheat field for 10 minutes and you’ll understand why is it that being a policeman is a risk profession. Several helicopters were also there, this time fatter ones, so that they could carry the policemen (also fatty). At a certain point we counted 9. People down here waved hands, sent kisses, showed that finger next to the index-finger and laughed. We could hear "We are wining!", "We are everyehere!" and "This is what democracy looks like!", among other sentences and words.

- 12:30. After more than 3 hours walking, we saw the first police blockade. A, we have to say it, very inteligent blockade, what makes us think that there’s demonstrators infiltrated in the police, as no policeman would be capable of such meditation (we’re sorry, but we couldn’t help from making this comment, as people talk so much of the policemen infiltrated in the demonstrators). We explain:

- Our group was spread in the field and divided into 4 big columns (fingers). In the middle there was a street, towards the direction we were going. Paralel to that street, a big street, forming a T. Well, the top of that T was where the police was standing. To make myself clearer, I explain that the exact T zone (which is, the street) is a little bit more elevated than the other fields, what made it impossible for the fingers in the fields to see the fingers at their right and the other way round. That was demoralizing, but not much. Besides that, we couldn’t see anything further than the top of the T (besides the street, the field was not visible, so the number of policemen in the field wasn’t clear. In the center of the T and near around, some houses, that would make difficult the use of the five fingers tactic.

- An expected tactic – the use of police vans and water cannons that would make a little more difficult the crossing of the protesters through the police.

Notwithstanding – the vans and water cannons would never be enough to prevent us from passing.

- The advance started. When we arrived nearer the police, almost all of us raised our arms, showing that it was a peaceful group (a peaceful group in a non-allowed place and unregistered demo – is not a crime, but a breach as serious as a parking fine. To arrest 10000 transgressors at the same time to write them parking fines is complicated). Things as "peaceful protest" were said, among uncountable others that’re not important to put here. The mood was of absolute (but active) peacefulness.

- The first groups made it through almost completely – the police didn’t seem a bit interested in arresting people (we sould read: “didn’t have orders to”, and this is very important to clean a lot of myths about police and understand their working structure – that has a lot of failures). The body armoured agents just pushed people back to the fields.

- Only a few hundreds of people couldn’t pass through immediately and for different reasons. The group where we were found a problem advancing through the police – the section of street they were trying to reach were preceded by a quite big natural trench, what highly delayed the run of the people and gave time for the police to organize.

- Plenaries were organized in the three small groups that were left and between agreement (that talked about driving away from each other and waiting for the police to get tired) and chaos, each one withdraw from the others and as failures started to show up in the police line, the groups advanced more or less at the same time and all ended up in the other side. The police, as the first of the three groups made it through, seemed to quit the blockade.

- The rest of the people were on the other side of the camp and we both were celebrating each time any group could pass.

- It is important to mention the presence of a water cannon that shot several times against us and to the air. The water cannon that is nothing else than a dissuasion element, and that can be very pleasant (in this case it was, because there was hot as hell. Some people were standing in front of it asking them to send jets of water – what happened. A girl took off the t-shirt and was in bikini). The german police had also the attention of mixing some teargas (or is it pepper gas?) in the water, so that we couldn’t have too much fun. They were right! We had to block G8 and couldn’t waste our time in aquatic sports.

Note: The ammount of gas in the water wasn’t big and thus didn’t do more than irritating the eyes of some people (but not much). People with alergies, though, felt the effect of the gas – living in a fair world, police could be incriminated for using a product against peaceful and disarmed civils, product that already killed hundreds of people all over the world. But in a fair world, police wouldn’t exist, so, let’s move forwards...)

- Walking and walking and singing and shouting words, kisses and wavings to the helicopters, we got to the second police barrier. New street, new police barrier.

- This time, the fingers were more well prepared and tried as far as possible to keep together as possible until they were close to the police.
The police had two big intervention groups, apparently desorganized and in each of those groups a water cannon.
It wasn’t difficult to pass through the polices, as there were big holes in their lines. The middle of the street was occupied and a partial blockade in that center was organized, so that the late elements could pass without problem.

- The police, having failed their trial to prevent the groups passing through their zone, decided to advance in a careful way and always behind the water cannons, towards the center.
The blockade resisted to the police advance for a few minutes.
There were two groups doing this mini-blockade:

- the left one, the one that sitted down, dressed waterproof clothes and made a leg and arm chain,

- the right one that kept standing and, turning back, made a chain between them.

The group that was sitting down ended up retreating little by little, while the standing group kept more or less in place. Much of the people in that group had also participated in “blocs”, or were more active members of the resistance. Some people (your reporter included) jumped the trench between the street and the field and joined the standing blockade. Some minutes after we were obliged to retreat, but some people stayed blocking in every possible way the street. The situation only calmed down when all the people had passed through the police blockade.

- We heard the new that there was almost 10000 people around the Heiligendamm fence and that the blockades were eing made in the settled points. There were only us left.

- We kept going (with one pause only in the already mentioned cabbage plot) until we reached the small village of Börgerende-Retwish. Only there we understood which point we were going to block. Still spread in the field and in our affinity and finger groups, we advanced in multiple directions towards Börgerende.

- The police was completely messed up. So messed up that sent two police units with some dozens of men each inside the fields, towards us – with the goal, I suppose, of breaking the fingers. Maybe they didn’t understand that each finger was perfectly independent of the others.

Here, your reporter stops writing, because has to join one of the groups trying to get to East Gate, in order to support Reddelich people. We still have to figure out the best way to use, as the police is right now arresting people randomly in some of the train stations.

See you soon, we’ll try to continue this article late at night or, in the worst, tomorrow afternoon.

Go!
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