2007-06-23

London G8 debrief meeting notes

The Camps

• amazing organisation at the Reddelich camp, especially given the numbers of people. Lovely showers, hot food always available etc.

• good to have dry nights before action – encouraging sensible pre-action behaviour

• was a shame there was no eco-feeling to the camp – but this would have involved a massive extra effort and is probably impossible for a camp that size.

• Reddelich camp was simply too big to be blocked by the cops.

• Rostock camp had a very different atmosphere – strange mix of communist groups, punks, parties, leftist groups, NGOs, music.

Information for actions

• flows of information to the protesters was very good – especially with info points on the roads/towns etc.

• information on the camps a bit more problematic – very good to have the ticker up on the board, but wrong information wasn’t always corrected.

Indymedia Dispatch

• really good!

• People used the information from dispatch to plan their actions, accessed sometimes by mobile phones, especially when on actions in Rostock.

• Was very helpful in gaining some perspective of what was going on elsewhere, often difficult in these situations. This also helped morale!

• There was other information available on the camps which wasn’t reported on dispatch, perhaps because it wasn’t easily verifiable. Was dispatch not hooked into these sources, or just unable to verify them and so couldn’t use them?

• But disappointing that pretty much only “Indymedia friends and family” were ringing in with their reports. Indymedia being seen as a service-provider, not as dependent on everyone’s contributions.

Actions

• media centre was very effectively blockaded

• lots of little blockades

• very strong mass walk-out on the Thursday morning (9am)– 2-3000 people – amazingly all kept together trekking for hours through fields and forests.

• Blockade on West gate – allowed to stay because there were other gates open, way for the cops to keep an eye on us, keep us from causing trouble elsewhere. Reinforcements were brought in when the mass moved along the fence. By then they had to use the ferry ports to get people in.

• At the other gate – the middle gate – those who went there were charged and tear-gassed.

• People were unable to get to the town Vorderborhagen at all.

• Very upsetting that there were some on the camp telling people not to get involved in the mass walk-out because it was ‘just about killing cops’.

Plan B

• in Berlin the biggest group was about 200 people but were outnumbered by the cops. Had a Reclaim the Street party – was fun apparently.

• difficult – perhaps impossible – to get the same people to do both rural blockades and urban actions – too tired, and logistics of transporting that many people from the fields to the city.

• City action could have been framed as another type of blockade – blockade of the circulation of capital and police forces. Could use local city issues.

• Could have done the two things simultaneously, but not involving the same people.

Block G8

• lots of problems (didn’t really go into in this meeting) – except to say ‘they would block people who broke their guidelines before blocking the roads? wtf?’

• but were amazingly organised

• there was a split! One group left to go to the other gate.

Camp security

• stupid young inexperienced people trying to fight the cops at the camp – vvv bad

Flash Radio/ other media

• worked well that they’d organised all their stuff before and so weren’t relying on others. Where they were relying on others (e.g. for power supply) problems occurred.

• media bus had solar power so less power cut-out issues

• Indymedia tent at Reddelich not up to previous standards!

• Not enough people to use the IMC in Rostock near the harbour (not the Evershagen one)

International organising

• began 2 years ago

• but seemed to die down after a bit

• but didn’t feel like internationals were involved in the organising

• felt like about 70% German, 30% internationals there – good work! And broad range of nationalities present.

[http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/373692.html]