Protester Rachel Hodgins is one of our G8 guest bloggers
Yesterday morning we had a planning meeting at the Niddrie campsite to think about our options over the next few days. Today we're going to the protests against the detention centre for asylum seekers at Dungavel, but we're undecided about what to do tomorrow. Some people we know have gone to Stirling to see how many people are there and what the Dissent network are planning, but we hadn't heard anything very concrete from them, and most people seemed to think we should go with the G8 Alternatives group to Gleneagles and see what happens when we get there, and try to have as lively and militant a protest as possible.
Although we can't know what will happen, we are trying to be as prepared as we can. Some of us are veterans of summit protests (Revolution was formed as the anti-capitalist movement took off in the late 90s), but some of the people who have travelled here with us hadn't been to a demonstration before Saturday. We've decided to work in teams of four so that we can make sure no one gets separated from the group, and yesterday at our teach-in we had a session on demo tactics and self defence and our political reasons for making the decisions we do about our tactics. Our aim is to shut down the G8 alongside the other groups who will be there, but we don't agree with small adventurist actions that might make a symbolic point about our anger with the G8 but are more likely to get us surrounded and immobilised than to achieve anything productive.
The rest of the day of workshops was about women's oppression and
resistance, and we had some good speakers on the history of women's
social oppression and of women's liberation movements and their part in other struggles.
Afterwards, in the pub, we watched news footage of the police scuffles with the Carnival for Full Enjoyment people on Princes St. The police presence up here has been very noticeable, and the footage is a reminder that we need to be prepared for similar heavy-handed police tactics on Wednesday.
