Disarm DSEi (REVOLUTION Nr. 1)

REVO does DSEI: day 1 (auf Englisch)

REVO does DSEI: day 2 (auf Englisch)

Fotos von REVO

Augenzeugebericht von den Protesten

REVO does DSEi: day 1

hi comrades! greetings from London!

The Defense Systems and Equipment International, DSEi, an arms fair where 950 companies sell weapons, is taking place in London this week. Plenty of people are disgusted that cluster bombs, nerve gas, machine guns, and land mines – weapons used to kill millions from Afganistan to Iraq to Liberia – are being sold in the middle of the "civilized" world. Sold to terrorist countries, and I'm not about the small-time terrorists like Turkey, China, Syria, etc., I'm talking about the countries that terrorize the whole world like the US and Britain!

The protests have been enormous! I want to keep this short but there's so much to say! Please forgive my rambling in advance.

This weekend was the counter-conference against the DSEi. REVOLUTION organized a session called "War: what is it good for?" which was supposed to be about how the imperialist system causes war, but in the end covered all kinds of topics, from the war in Iraq to arming the anti-war movement to supporting the struggles of the semi-colonial world to Gandhi to sexism on the left (i.e. super-macho elitist black block tactics). We did a stall during the whole conference and sold all our copies of the REVOLUTION manifesto, and must have had about 1,000 discussions. And a really obnoxious police photographer got right next to the door and snapped shots of all of us – we felt like celebreties!

FLUFFY DSEI DAY OF ACTION

But today (tues. sept. 9) was the awesome day! It started with a protest by the "Catholic Workers" (shame about the religion, good action) at 7am when they got on the pedestrian entrance to the convention center where DSEi is held and poured dozens of litres of red paint on the ground to represent all the blood worldwide that is spilled by the weapons being sold. As far as I can tell they were all arrested!

REVO showed up at 8:30 at a park across from the convention center for a protest organized by Globalise Resistance. From the train we saw at least 100 orange GR flags, but when we got closer we discovered that those flags were just planted in the ground and there were only about 20 people. "GR can't mobilise any people, but at least they can mobilize lots of flags!" Oh well. We held a meeting, and since GR didn't have any plans for their demo, it was decided to wait for the next demo which was starting in the same place at 10am. That was annoying because we could have slept in! But the funny thing was that a cop asked for one of our leaflets because he was "interested in the movement." We told him that we only give leaflets to people who we think might support our cause, and since he was a servant of capital... He got all indignant and was explaining how the police are there to help us when we get robbed by people who need to buy crack cocaine! But we replied that Blair is robbing millions from the people in Britain to finance the war in Iraq, and we're all getting robbed every day of our lives by capitalists who take the wealth we produce, and the police don't seem to help much then! He shut up after that.

So the big demo started at 10. There was a big cardboard tank and lots of red and orange flags. We walked right parallel to the convention center and could see the arms dealers getting out of their luxury cars in the parking lot. "SHAME! MURDERERS! HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE YOU KILLED TODAY?!?" You almost expected them to reply "I've killed about 27 today." At the end of the demo there was a big rally with speakers from different groups who pointed out that the imperialists fought a war against Iraq because of supposed weapons of mass destruction, when in reality everyone knows that the weapons of mass destruction were right across the road. The fucking reformists started saying that the sidewalk was the "negotiated protest area" and we had to leave the road – to which the demonstrators replied "Whose streets? Our streets!"

BLOCKADES

After lunch is when the direct action began. We went around the perimeter of the ExCel Center where the DSEi was being held, and at every street heading to the center there were groups of 50-100 protesters being caged in by the cops. We kept going past the center and ended up on a little foot path through the woods. Right parallel to the path was a giant Autobahn (highway) leading to the centre. We climbed through the bushes really quietly and jumped out onto the street – unfortunately we weren't too well co-ordinated. As soon as we were on the street we heard a siren and pigs started running towards us. A few brave comrades ran along the highway towards the centre (they were arrested but released soon after without charges, cause it's no crime to be on the street) while we cowards went back into the bush and made our way back to the foot path.

We continued down the path looking for more protestors and ended up on a bridge going over that very highway. By this time there were about 50 of us – much better than the 10 or so who had tried the previous action. We weren't sure what to do but soon we saw a group coming down the highway from the other direction and we decided to join them. We ran down the embankment and we blocked the whole underpass. We were dancing, chanting, blocking traffic, handing out flyers to sympathetic and irritated drivers – that is until the pigs called reinforcements and we had to retreat back to the bridge.

CHAIN THEM UP

We kept getting more and more people until we must have been at least 200. We went to the end of the foot path and ended up on a roundabout at the beginning of that highway, i.e. an intersection for all the traffic that wanted to go to DSEi. Everyone sat down in a chain across the street, locked arms, and we were entertained by some anti-capitalist cheerleaders: "Why don't you sell arms to the poor? Then you'll get your fucking war!" Then the comrades from REVO were able to show some real leadership for the movement. We remembered what we had learned at REVOCAMP about building running chains of protesters, and spread our message down the whole line of the blockade. The police came to tell us we had to disperse within five minutes – and everyone just yelled at the top of their lungs: "What?!? We can't hear you! Speak up!" Apparently, in Britain that prevents the police from dispersing a protest. Well it didn't matter because in four minutes all 200 people stood up and formed hard-core chains. We started marching along the highway towards DSEi chanting "a-anti-anticapitalista" and the cops just couldn't stop us. There were about 20 pigs in front of us but they weren't in chains so they were totally helpless. These chains, some of them nothing more than five 15-year-olds, were advancing, and you had the beautiful sight of cops trying to block them, shouting orders that they had to stop, but they were constantly being pushed backwards. We advanced about 200 meters against the police line!!! Fuck yeah!! But then they saw we were serious and reinforcements arrived – when the police vans blocked the road we saw there wasn't much to do, and we charged back to the roundabout and sat down blocking it again! I thought this was excellent, we saw how powerful the movement could be with a simple tactic like chains.

Now the cops were pissed off and they had mobilized all their reinforcements. There must have been 200 of them advancing towards our blockade, with a dozen pig vans, and even though a lot of the motorists supported us – one was even blasting his stereo with reggae music – we got pushed back. We were making a sort of organized retreat but then some police got in front of us and it turned into a rugby match; people were running through the police line while constables were trying to tackle them. One of the comrades from REVO got pushed up against a wall and we got to use another tactic we learned at REVOCAMP: de-arrest! We surrounded the two cops, started pushing them, and our comrade could run away when the pair had to retreat from the mass of people.

So now we ran back down the footpath, past the bridge and past the whole ExCel center, til we got to another roundabout leading to the center. We organised another sit down protest blocking all the traffic and there's a picture of this on IndyMedia UK.

"MURDERERS!"

There's one REVO comrade in the picture, the other comrades are off to the left. A big samba band came to help our blockade, which was fun, but it wasn't enough. We got pushed down the road and ended up running down the street parallel to the convention center where the demo had gone that morning. Of course we were in a hurry but we still had the chance to yell "Murderers!" at the arms dealers in the parking lot. We were handing out flyers to the cars, school children who were maybe 8 years old were joining us in our "stop the arms trade!" chant, and even though the police were following us in their van the REVO comrades stayed cool. One was trying to tell us to get on the sidewalk and we started hitting on him: "You know for a pig you're very attractive. Would you take a demonstrator to dinner?" Well we didn't get a date but it did buy us some time.

In the end we got way too split up and ended up in a group of about 20 way the hell away from the ExCel center. Some hippy women wanted to do more street blockades but there were too few people. We decided to go back to the other protesters – peacefully, of course, so the pigs couldn't hinder us. But by this time it was 4pm and DSEi was ending. So we had a brief meeting, got all the REVO comrades together again, and started to go home. This was an important lesson on forming affinity groups at every demo. We spent hours worrying about certain comrades who we thought had been arrested but we had no way of finding out what happened. In the end it was OK – only 16 arrests, none from REVO – but better safe than sorry.

On the train back to London we were next to all the fucking arm dealers. These old white fucks with suits and arms dealer IDs were obviously embarrassed because they avoided eye contact with the young people with red flags. We started yelling out offers: "Who needs cluster bombs? Cruise missiles for sale! Buy one get one free! The cheapest way to kill babies!" All of a sudden, from the other side of the train where the arms dealers were sitting, we heard these really horrible screams of pain. A young man had fallen on the ground, was grabbing his head and having uncontrollable spasms. I panicked, I don't know how to react when someone has a seizure, I got up to see if I could go over and help. Then he stopped screaming and stood up calmly. What was going on? He said "That is what it is like when a human being is attacked by nerve gas. You arms dealers are selling nerve gas and causing this, not as a theatre action on a train, but with real people who are dying." He gave them a whole lecture and we all applauded. What a fucking awesome action!!! We spent the rest of the train ride having really loud "private" conversations about how arms dealers need to be killed during the revolution.

So, what a beautiful day. Sorry the report was so long. But if I know me, there'll be another one this long tomorrow, because the protests will continue all week. You all better hope I get arrested! Does somebody want to post this on IndyMedia? That's certainly a better source of information than the Guardian, where the reporter solemnly tells us that the police presence costs 1.5 million euros a day (!) and the "exhibition organisers will not be contributing to the policing costs." I prefer the IndyMedia version: British Imperialism pays millions of our tax money so they can protect their meetings to spread death around the world!

See you on the barricades!

VLADEK (from REVO berlin, this week from REVO UK)

p.s. the best is still to come, comrades! today was the "non-violent" day – tomorrow is the "non-non-violent" day!

REVO does DSEi: day 2

The day started very well because we couldn't even get to the meeting point – a number of activists had locked themselves to a train and the whole line was out of service for an hour. Ugly old white men in suits, arms dealers every last one of them, were running around, desperately trying to get away from these scruffy-looking young people so they could
sell some weapons. there were special buses organized to the ExCeL center. i heard a rumour, and i'm not sure this is true, that one group of activists got a van and tricked a bunch of arms dealers into thinking it was a special bus to the center, and then drove them around London for hours and hours.

So we had quite a good contingent, about 40 people with banners and flags, and went off to block the highway that led to the ExCeL center, the same highway we blocked the day before. the cops had already closed down everything, though, so there wasn't much to do. we walked around, chanted, did a sit-down blockade against the cops, and got our pictures taken by a few dozen journalists:

the most beautiful REVO pic ever:

the same thing from the opposite side:

new REVO member, Death:

blocking the underpass to the ExCeL center:

more pictures of blocking the underpass

the fun part was where arms dealers, who for some reason were arriving late, tried to go down that very road to make it to the center. immediately dozens if not hundreds of people gathered around them shouting "SHAME!" or "MURDERERS! SCUM!", as if they were the lepers of modern British society. the pigs had to run around and bring them to safety.

HIS ONLY CRIME: STANDING NEXT TO A CLUMSY COP

so after a while we got bored and decided to look for another group of activists. we went up onto the bridge, but this was probably a mistake since we ended up in a fairly small group and there were a few cops waiting for us. we knocked down the first few, since they weren't expecting us, but further up the path they had formed a blockade. we were pushed right up against them, both sides forming chains for support, and the fucking moron cops just let go of each other, which meant that the cop on the end fell over into the bushes and dragged one of our comrades with him. he fell on top of the cop and we all saw him get hit a few times – now since being assaulted by a police officer is an arrestable offence in Britain he got nabbed and hauled off to the station.

and after our first casualty things kind of went downhill. we went off to another road and blocked it, but soon decided there wasn't any traffic to be blocked. then we met up with big group of anarchists with a samba band, at least 200 of them, and we were very happy, but then they started their typical anarchist tactics which involved tearing down the barriers and then running like hell. so the whole mass of people began a full scale rout and most of them got penned in by the cops. it took an hour before we could regroup.

so... uhhh...

well i'm kinda running out of time here. anyway, the best part of the day is when we ran down both sides of the highway, throwing traffic cones in front of cars, and even when the police tried to block us we pushed through their line and were able to continue. after that they got really pissed, brought in a dozen police vans, and rounded us all up for another hour. we went away, ended up at a Reclaim the Streets party going down the very same highway, were penned in right on the highway blocking traffic for at least an hour, and then got led into a park where we could excercise our democratic right to protest locked in a park, surrounded by cops, being filmed, insulted, and occasionally attacked, before we were allowed to go home four by four.

what a day.

more pictures of blocking the highway

plus, here's one fucking lovely action in which REVO, unfortunately, did not participate, but was cool nonetheless, where protestors filled the fountain in Trafalgar square with 'blood', i.e. dyed the water red, and thus turned it into Red Square:

http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/09/277297.html

The non-non-violent day (wed. 10 sept.) was very stressful – we must have run 10 km in the course of the day – and we're all a bit exhausted and turning in for a well deserved drink.

VLADEK

Links zu weiteren Fotos & Berichte

IndyMedia UK Urban 75 Chris Croome Disarm DSEI DSEi Homepage