EVENING HERALD'S SOURCE: INDYMEDIA!

Tuesday March 04, 2003 12:18

by witness - University of Life

Did anyone see that article in Monday's Herald by their house US fascist Richard Delevan? Seems that the mainstream media is watching us here after all. In fairness the organic wholegrain missile bit was funny.(Article below)

WAR PROTESTORS SIT ON THE FENCE
Evening Herald

Resistance, as it turned out, was futile. GNAW (Grassroots Network Against War), a splinter antiwar group, last week used the internet to announce its plan to followup the Dublin mass demonstration of February 15.
They said they would tear down the fence at Shannon Airport last Saturday to protest the continued US presence there using so-called “direct action”, following the example of earlier protestors who succeeded in spraypainting or attacking US planes.
And so there they were, after rain had soaked much of the west that afternoon and the skies cleared just after three, standing at the muddy fenceline midway between the entrance and the terminal.
On one side, some 300 protestors who looked just as if they’d mistakenly walked off the set of an Avril Lavigne video (ask your kids) and dazedly stumbled into the real world, walking behind white and pink flags and armed with the odd drum or bit of 'Food not Bombs' bread.
On the other, a virtual Maginot Line of gardai.
Some in standard uniform including numbers, others in riot gear.
Some Alsatian-looking dogs strained at leads on the inside of the fence, others on the outside.
Other gardai on horses. Helicopters buzzing overhead. Beyond the freshly-dug trench and razor wire, out on the tarmac, more garda vans. Fire trucks with water cannon at the ready.
Both groups seemed to be milling around. Riot cops leaning on plastic shields, looking bored. Equally bored protestors from the rival anti-war march walking back to the terminal with their kids.
Even before it had really begun, the protest hadn’t gone to plan. Spooked by the possibility of violence, many of the antiwar groups (there are a lot of them) called on their supporters to stay away.
Labour, the Greens and Sinn Fein followed suit, settling for a ‘vigil’ in front of Iveagh House or just for the Green Party conference in Ennis.
At the appointed moment when it was reckoned no more protestors or cameras would show, the group tried to link arms and spread out down the fenceline, with some protestors throwing anarchist flags over the top.
The flags made it past the gardai. Which is more than could be said for the protestors.
Scuffles broke out as people neared the fence or blocked the roadway.
One young protestor seemed to get an inadvertent elbow to the face with bloody results, but you’d get rougher from Alex Ferguson’s flying boot in the dressing room.
Both sides were using playbooks rewritten after the Dame Street protest last May.
Shouts of “CK 291! CK291!” arose like an accusation from the crowd. I racked my brain wondering if this was some obscure name of a forgotten Italian anarcho-syndicalist group when it dawned on me.
It was a group holding up video and still cameras, shouting out the number from a Garda badge, which were notably present.
It was all over in less than 20 minutes. Ten people in all were arrested.
The rest bottled it and headed back toward the entrance in defeat, consoling themselves with the odd chant or energetic drumming to try and spook the horses.
Some protestors contented themselves with yelling, “you should be on strike!” at airport workers coming off their shifts.
The last act of resistance was the anonymous throw of a piece of bread amid a clutch of gardai, who collectively shot looks in the direction from which the organic wholegrain missile had come.
At the entrance roundabout, the remaining hundred or so gathered for a debrief. One more experienced English voice made it clear over a bullhorn that the protest hadn’t lived up to even the lowered expectations.
He admonished them like an underachieving junior cert class: "when people are arrested it shouldn’t be 3 or 4 or 5 people picked off, it should be 100 people put themselves FORWARD for arrest.
"Because that’s how were going to make an impact.
"We need 100 or 150 people at the next demonstration, prepared to be arrested, and how that’ll happen is by refusing to give way. Just to keep pushing and pushing and pushing at the fence, and let them arrest people."
Later, protestors gathered where they began, on the internet. Indymedia.ie hosted some virtual soul-searching among the antiwar movement. While a few proclaimed the day a success, most were clearly disappointed.
"GNAW - you've had your day out, your tactics were a disaster and you played into the media's hands like right patsies," read one message.
"The protest on Saturday proved nothing, did nothing and put a lot of people off," added another.
Splits, unrealistic expectations, cynical constituents. Well, if the protest thing doesn't work out they could always run for the Dail.