From: "Peter Jovanovic" <peterzoran-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Shared Lessons of Revolt - Canberra
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2003 22:21:15 +1100


hi all

On Sunday and today there were so-called national demos against the war at 
Parliament House. On Saturday we had our commie/anarcho forum, Zerowar 2. 
Sadly only about 10 of us cos lots of out of town comrades piked on short 
notice. We managed to have some OK discussions, make a banner saying "Mutiny 
- Turn The Guns Around" and 2000 leaflets calling for direct action at 
today's protest.

Yesterday's demo had maybe 15 000 people with a lot of out-of-towners. 
Prolly would have been a fair few more if the Sydney peace racket hadn't 
called an antiwar demo as well in a deliberate move to undercut the Canberra 
stuff. This was apparently cos the union/left of the Labor party dominated 
racket thought the DSP (odious Stalinoid Trots) had too much influence in 
the Canberra stuff. I've been going to the meetings of the local peace 
racket, ACTNOW, mainly cos I wanted to get a slot at their upcoming 
teach-in, which I did despite this Trot bureacrat saying I shouldn't be 
given a platform to talk about "the anarchist road to world revolution". 
Anyway it had been agreed that at an ACTNOW meeting that we would march 
around Parliament house. However (at the cops' request?) we insteadmarched 
away from parliament down one of the main roads. Some of my mates and a few 
others managed to get people to march on both sides of the road despite the 
cops wishes. Didn't last long as the march merely went over the bridge over 
the lake and back towards parliament over the neighbouring bridge. Cos we 
were already on the other side we basically ended up at the front of the 
march and several hacks demanded we get behind the ACTNOW banner which was 
meant to be upfront. Our chants get a good response. Some were "Bush's war 
is dirty, but not in the way we like it", "Don't work, don't fight, party on 
day and night" and "We'll support the troops when they shoot their officers"

After the demo there was a meeting at the university although I missed most 
of it to go to a birthday party. When I arrived I found out that a comrade 
had called for direct action in the meeting, been abused by a DSP hack and 
walked out taking about half the meeting with him outside to discuss direct 
action. Everyone at the breakaway meeting was really pissed off with the 
Trots' manipulations. A few of the younger DSP drones came out to try and 
tone down any plans for direct action. One method they suggested was putting 
any plans to a vote of the whole demo. We agreed to meet in the CBD with the 
high schoolers who would be walking out of school and try and occupy the 
nearby military recruitment centre. When we arrived there were about six 
cops in front and a dozen or so others nearby. We stayed there a while 
chanting and then set off on the half hour march to parliament. Maybe 3000 
people there listening to speeches that were mostly lame even compared to 
the usual crap. After a fair bit of speechifying people from the Aboriginal 
tent embassy led separate columns of men and women past the weak attempts of 
the cops to stop us up to the front doors of parliament. At parliament demos 
are kept on the grass behind the road in front of parliament. There is a big 
triangular forecourt leading up to the doors. Maybe 600 people went up to 
the doors and we stayed there for over an hour chanting loudly, which with 
the smoke from the ceremonial fire was quite overwhelming in the 
semi-enclosed space. There were maybe 20 cops in front of the doors. I heard 
on the news that one person was arrested but it must have been after I'd 
left. It's a pity it didn't happen yesterday when there were a lot more 
people and we might have forced our way in. It might not sound like much but 
it was quite a step forward from the totally non-confrontational nature of 
the previous demos.

A few questions and conclusions:
- numbers at the protests are down a fair bit from Feb 15/16. is this cos of 
support for the war or discouragement at the failure of the protests to stop 
the war?
- lots of people we met are pissed off at the utter uselessness of the 
mainstram antiwar movement.
- the schoolkids have much more fun at the demos than we jaded adults do.

cheers
peter

PS. Thiago, I agree that Australians have a pathetic political culture and 
have wondered if we have the most passive working class in the world here.



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