Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
'We Don't Want Violence, We Want to Get Our Voices Heard' Say Protesters
Protesters on 'Reclaim Power' day set to face zero-tolerance approach by police
One thousand of them have already been arrested, and tomorrow will bring protesters' largest, angriest demonstration in the Danish capital - right outside the building where the crucial negotiations are underway.
A climate activist takes a moment to reflect as two Danish police officers tie his hands. 'We Don't Want Violence, We Want to Get Our Voices Heard' said a spokesperson for Climate Justice Action, one of the major organizing groups for the upcoming Reclaim Power march in Copenhagen. (Photo: flckr ClimateJusticeAction) Mass arrests are likely as a predicted 5,000 demonstrators descend on the Bella Centre on the same day as many world leaders are scheduled to arrive.
The hardline climate-change activists have come prepared with maps, bicycles - and swimming goggles, to protect against police use of tear gas and pepper spray. The event is being billed as "Reclaim Power" day, threatening both the security of the building and the fragile state of the talks within.
The activists have divided into several groups co-ordinated by Climate Justice Action. One group has been awarded an official permit allowing them to demonstrate just outside the site, while another will remain mobile. Still more protesters will form "bike blocs", arriving on contraptions made from reclaimed bicycles welded together. All will be provided with detailed maps of road blocks and precise instructions on where to go. As at the G20 demonstrations in London in March, protesters have signed up to a text message service allowing them to change their plans at short notice.
This time the demonstration is likely to include members of the extreme fringes of the green movement - many of the NGOs which took part in the G20 demos, such as Greenpeace, have their own tables in the Bella Centre.
Richard Bernard, a spokesman for Climate Justice Action, said: "It's going to be a day where we really disrupt the summit and say 'You're not talking any more, we're talking now,' because we are the people who are affected by this. We don't wish to be violent in any way, but we do want to get our voices heard."
The group said they intended the demonstration to be "non-violent but confrontational", admitting that there was no way they could prevent activists who might have different ideas from attending.
The demonstration will put added pressure on the conference organisers, who have been struggling to cope with the sheer number of people descending on the site each day. Yesterday, hundreds of delegates, NGO representatives and journalists were left standing outside in freezing temperatures for up to nine hours after the UN's accreditation system broke down.
Police have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to the activists, handcuffing anyone who commits minor misdemeanour and sitting them on the street for at least an hour. Yesterday morning, they persevered with this pre-emptive policy, pulling over cars and bicycles on the main routes into the city and searching them.
A police spokesman said: "We're stopping people and removing things that could be used as protective gear in protests, such as gasmasks and shields. We want to stop them before they reach the targets. If you're bringing with you protection gear then your intentions aren't peaceful."
As four people appeared in court yesterday for offences committed over the weekend - two for assaulting public servants, one for disturbing the peace and another for trying to free an arrested person - any hope that the police might relax their tactics was extinguished.
Lars Borg of Copenhagen Police said that his force were prepared "24 hours a day" for anything the demonstrators might be planning.
"We know that some will try to get into the Bella Centre... but we are very prepared. They do not have a chance."
"We will keep up the pressure on the violent activists. As long as they are peaceful, they can do anything they want. But we are also ready to use force if necessary."
- Posted in
18 Comments so far
Show AllThe structure of violence has been established by the state. The global imperatives of making this "a movement with muscle', as defined by Naomi Klein, is needed to awaken the corporate and governmental climate criminals. We are hoping that a swarm of activists and Cop participants can achieve a just demonstration of the dire circumstances waiting for us in the future, if we don't act now to cool down the earth.
The global taskmasters logic is beyond belief:
Those who ruin the climate should be rewarded and have all the time needed to reap more profits-and those who are inflicted by the situation and whose civilizations are dying out should pay more and wait around to breathe, drink and experience the results.
Bring on those gas masks and shields-you naughty boys and girls whose intentions
are not peaceful-because they won't be giving them to you when the hammer comes down.
Strike the first blow against the power that wants to kill Mother Gaia.
Nature, justice and common sense are on your side.
Unfortunately, folks, you don't seem to realise that making your voices heard IS a form of violence toward those whose interests rely upon maintaining control over public perceptions.
Frankly, I think the paranoia of those interests is somewhat overblown, especially in the case of the U.S. populace who, as Bruce E. Levine suggests in his recent Alternet article ( http://www.alternet.org/politics/144529/ ), appear to have reached the point where revelations only increase their demoralized passivity.
Victimless self-defense is entirely peaceful. In fact, for protestors to protect themselves reduces the effects of police violence. They should not surrender their shields and masks under any circumstances.
"Police have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to the activists,..)
The protesters should take the same approach: Zero-tolerence for the criminals who are killing our planet as well as for the thugs who protect them. ZERO.
Godspeed to the protesters.
"If you're bringing with you protection gear then your intentions aren't peaceful."
Bullshit...If I am bringing protection gear, it is because I know that YOUR intentions aren't peaceful.
If my intentions aren't peaceful, then I will bring OFFENSIVE GEAR, not DEFENSIVE GEAR.
Do I wear a seatblet when I drive because I plan on ramming my car into someone? Do I wear a bike helment on my bicycle because I plan and ramming my head into someones car?
Exactly right.
Also, I've often thought we needed our own security forces at protests to protect the unprotected. I picture Iraq and Vietnam Veterans for Peace putting their people in blue, or green, or blue-green, or rainbow-colored uniforms with helmets and padded gear to keep the baton-wielding and horse-riding police from assaulting those who are unprotected.
In addition, we need sufficient numbers at planned protests to overwhelm the security forces, to make it impossible for them to keep us out, to remove our shields, goggles, ear plugs, padded gear, helmets and gas masks.
Projecting one's own intended uses of "protection gear" onto others is hardly surprising, especially since they never seem to question the validity of their own "protection" and its objectives.
Military indoctrination has nothing to teach the civil authorities and their policing agencies -- certainly not in the area of self-righteous justifications for brutality.
Well said, mujeriego.
Government:
do not open;
no consumer servicable parts inside.
Refer to professional service personnel only.
And So The Dying Will Begin
(I'm feeling cynical today)
Pete
These are the real heroes.
Jeevee
ONLY COURAGEOUS PROTEST ACTION CAN CHANGE THIS UNHINGED MONOPOLY
GREED.
"THE ABSENCE OF COURAGE IS...CONFORMITY." — JIM HIGHTOWER
"We're stopping people and removing things that could be used as protective gear in protests, such as gasmasks and shields."
Hello? Last I heard Britain wasn't a fascist dictatorship and citizens had rights.
What the heck has happened to our democracies? They have become shams.
I think they have all borrowed a page from the US handbook on political control. The US security forces have long since perfected the arts of political repression and coercion, and the European security forces, who had long marveled at the ability of US forces to control pesky demonstrations, are now playing catch up. I sincerely believe that US police agencies are cooperating with the Danish police, advising them on effective methods in control and coercion.
"This time the demonstration is likely to include members of the extreme fringes of the green movement"
You mean those people that won't just sit by and watch the capitalists and the imperialists destroy the planet? The youth that have had enough of the polite chatter about the needs of industry? Those that don't take capitalism and the needs of industrial civilization as a pre-requisite for negotiation? You mean the youth that recognize that nature doesn't negotiate with heads of state?
Well, it may just be that the only thing that will save humanity from extinction are the so-called "fringes" of the movement, while the polite chattering class drags the rest of us towards a watery grave.
Welcome to Global Corporate Fascism!
They are not fearful of the "terrorists" that are outside the border. They fear the "terrorist" inside you. Once the citizens of the planet realize there is no more justice and the grand democratic experiment is put down. They know millions will riot and demand their "rights".
Those rights are not going to come back through a vote or typical citizenry measures. The police have their military weapons not for anyone but you and your family when the you try to take back your rights.
The coming years are a battle for resources and they want yours. They want less of us. They want to provide for none of us. Once we do not represent profit to them they will remove us.
Largely, corporations are inhumane and need to be eradicated like a plague.
Corporations are the enemy of Democracy, Liberty and freedom!!
Man you said it.
But half the Nation isn't going to get it until Florida goes underwater, imho.
Then, we'll have the numbers to oust these phucks and start over. 2050 is my guess when Greenland breaks up and floods us, plus or minus thirty years. But I'll be 90 years old by then!
So until then educating red-necks is job number one. If we can just get the goons boned-up on Global Warming perhaps they will refuse to arrest protesters like in the early American colonies.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
As Jose Ortega y Gassett wrote in Man and People, "every man perceives another as a threat." That is instinctive.
In a one-to-one encounter between strangers, they announce their intentions with open and empty palms and shake. Thus asking for friendship or a truce.
Not so when an individual encounters the "armed/uniformed personnel" of a state. These armed personnel are the actual instruments/tools of its "use of force" policy. They exist and were recruited to coerce and impose the will of "the state" by force.
Those who join the ranks of the states' armed branches/forces, do so with the intent of submitting their "will" to the dictates of the state. They voluntarily become the tools of state policy.
Anyone who approaches these governmental "tools" approaches a hostile force, a priori. To believe otherwise is to delude one's self.
The degree of force used by these "tools" will depend to a greater or lesser degree on the force used by citizens.
If the citizens "state" they are unarmed they will "merely" be batonned, gassed, cordoned off, shackled and arrested. They will suffer a "minimal" degree of the state's force. Those who use any force beyond passivity risk being shot and killed.
The sole weapon in a democracy is the vote. But the vote, contrary to popular belief, is not a popularity contest. The vote should go to a candidate who demonstrates he is not sponsored by corporations and is not beholden to such crass, profit-driven entities.
Only statesmen beholden to voters will not turn the instruments of force against the People...
It behooves us to seek out authentic statesmen, not corporate front men.