Action Direct from the Streets

I am one of the eco-scum who attended Mayday's guerilla Gardening event... I would like to say that Tony Blair and others who have vocalized their outrage at the graffity-ing of the Cenotaph and Churchill's statue need to recognise that these are symbols and represent nothing more to demonstrators than an available surface to write a message on to register discontent. Considering the lack of ways the population is allowed to register discontent, it is not that surprising that this has happened.

In addition, the police were so desperate to catch the few who mullered McDonalds and a couple of other shops, that they trapped a few thousand innocent people who had committed NO CRIMES for 3 hours in Trafalgar Square, not allowing anyone to leave, in the belief that the perpetrators were amongst them. They predicted a riot, and they got one. Not because of a few people in masks bashing 3 shops, but because of riot police trapping innocent people into a smaller and smaller space and preventing them from going home. Obviously this was enough to make even the most peaceful protesters angry.

The forceful surges of demonstrators at the lines of policemen that resulted endangered the peaceful demonstrators nearest the police lines (where they waited hoping to be the first allowed to leave), who were forced into the police as they were pushed from behind. The police, undoubtedly worried for their own saftey by now, reacted by hitting the people pushing into them with batons and smashing them with their shields.

Obviously the people (including small children) caught between the crowd trying to leave by pushing forward against the police line, and the police trying to push them back in the traditional violent way didn't have a chance. It should have been obvious to the policemen at the front line that the people they were hitting and forcing backwards through fear and violence were simply trying to get home and were not wielding weapons or being aggressive towrds them in any way.

This is how the police endanger the lives of many (including policemen themselves) in order to arrest a few, not to mention justifying the size of the police operation by creating their own riot.

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