G20 demonstrations

This morning, I watched these videos - struggling to make sense of the tears of rage welling up in me...

https://london.indymedia.org.uk/videos/993

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/07/ian-tomlinson-g20-death-video

This afternoon, I read this, and felt so impotent in the face of the organised and publicly sanctioned police action...

I was held at the climate camp til midnight last night. When I arrived at 6pm to celebrate the creative sight of a camp in london's grey financial streets, the police allowed me to walk straight into the camp with my bike. As the reports have said, the atmosphere was very warm and positive; school children and old time protesters sharing a space full of colour and music.

Within an hour of arriving, those same police, who had stepped back and let me through, closed in around the camp and refused to let anyone in or out. I then watched the police push forward into the crowd with brutality that was not only shocking but utterly unecessary. All the protesters put their hands in the air and sat down collectively on the road. Yet as the crowd lowered I saw a young man stagger back with his head split open, another boy with a broken nose, a girl next to me had been kicked between the legs. People were badly hurt and the atsmophere spun into a frightened panic. A friend of mine from university who had come from Nottingham to join the camp just put
his head in his hands and cried. This was the scene, minutes after people had been allowed to wander into the camp without any warning of the planned police actions, or any chance to leave peacefully.

As they rolled in back up police and black armoured riot vans, and as the police kicked and crushed people's bikes, the protesters called out to them, and the onlooking bankers, up in their ivory towers, 'This is not a riot!'. As their battons came down, Legal
Observors called out to people to take the police numbers of those who had hurt protesters; on mass the line of police all covered up their badges. It was a chilling show of a police unaccountable to their own laws, and their own humanity. The police were indeed braced for violence, but most of that young crowd of protesters were not.

Despite our repeated requests to be searched and allowed to leave the space, we were held there for 6 hours with no access to water, food, toilets or medical care. Proudly, throughout all this, not one person in the crowd reacted with violence to any person or property. People shared the little they had and held public meetings about the aims of the G20 summit. There was little show of anger, but much unhappiness. When finally we were herded out one by one at midnight, I felt cold to the core, chilled by the unprovoked agression of those who I had been brought up to trust. I am deeply ashamed of my state, when reasonable and calm protesters are criminalised and provoked in such a manner.

Their use of section 14 on 800 campers was mindless, their violence was a tragedy and their very presence, with armoured cars and helicopters, a ridiculous waste of public money.

I am writing this today because I grew up in this city and treasure the right to use this city space to speak out to our elected leaders in a peaceful, creative way. There were no harmful intentions in that climate camp, but the harm done by the police last night goes far deeper that the physical wounds inflicted; it is in the chaos of unnecessary state violence that fear is born and trust is lost.

I want to do something, but I don't know what. I've read about this stuff for years, but it was always in Seattle, Geneva, Luxemburg - always in the news but never 'here'. It seems protest isn't enough, but seriously, what can I do[I][/I]?