Davos: a personal account Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2000 ________________________________________________ A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E http://www.ainfos.ca/ ________________________________________________ Dear all, as there has been little feedback from the Davos demonstration against the WEF (World Economic Forum), here's my personal detailed account of a pretty inspiring event. I came down to Davos with 3 other friends from Germany. We decided only at the last minute that we wanted to be there. I knew about the World Economic Forum and that Davos was somewhere up the Alpes mountains in the East of Switzerland. This years' demonstration was the 3rd demonstration organised against the WEF, the meeting of the 2000 self proclaimed world leaders in business and politics. In the previous years, only 200 people made it up the mountain, holding banners in the snow, surrounded by a large police presence that wouldn't allow them to move and get anywhere near to the Conference Centre. This year, the WEF had a special significance, since it was the one after Seattle and we know that TNCs and industrialised governments are still keen on opening more markets, do further trade liberalisation and finding new ways of capital accumulation as a (temporary) solution to the overproduction crisis. Even Bill Clinton made it to the WEF to try and convince the world business community of the necessity to go ahead with the Millennium Round, he'd never been in Davos before. The anti-WTO co-ordination in Switzerland cleverly used the media to announce their demonstration. As a matter of fact the demo was prohibited for Saturday 29th, which was the day Billy Boy was coming. The reaction of the anti-WTO co-ordination was clear: no compromise, we'll hold the demo on saturday 29th no matter what. The mobilisation was surprising. Many people crossed half Europe to make it to the Swiss Alps. We ended up being 1300 people, from France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy....probably more. Several busses loaded with people had arranged to meet beforehand and then make it in convoy to Davos, so in case the police stopped the busses, they'd be able to demonstrate together wherever they got stopped. Surprise: the police let all the busses come up to Davos. They were not expecting to see so many people. It seems to me that the strategy was the same as in Seattle, pretending to want a so called 'dialogue with civil society'. People gathered at the train station and as they outnumbered the police forces, they simply broke through the police barriers, marching towards the conference centre. The mood was good, kind of euphoric. The demo was fluid, not divided too much into blocks, it had a nice diversity of people and statements in French, English, Italian and German were totally natural for everybody. It had a clear internationalist character. People's banners and shouts were very diverse also including anti-fachist, free Mumia, against corporate rule, solidarity with the people in Ecuador, TNCs won't rule the world, anti-capitalists and the usual ones personifying social relations into evil capitalists and TNCs. Jose Bove, the French farmer from the Confederation Paysanne was in the front of the demo. The French press has turned him into a pop icon of the resistance against global trade liberalisation. His strategy seems to have been one of being both in the street, doing direct action and trashing mac donalds and at the same time being ready to dialogue with Mike Moore and accept a plane ticket to Seattle paid by the French ministry of agriculture. The Bovemania surprised us also, half the bus that had come from his region was filled with journalists. At the same time it was an ideal tactic to have so much press in the busses to make it to Davos. The anti-WTO co-ordination had a clear 'no dialogue with the WEF' position. Jose Bove respected that and announced previously that although he had an invitation to the WEF, he was going to request Claus Schwab (the organiser of the WEF) to come out and speak with him in the street with everyone else. The idea was Bove would go in, only if all his friends were allowed too. The 3rd police barrier was the one preventing the demo to come too close to the conference centre. The demo wasn't able to breakthrough here. Most of the people walked back. The small group which stayed there included Jose Bove. They did not succeed in getting Schwab out and were penalised with pepper spray and rubber bullets. This was of course filmed by all the press and it was one of the pictures that made it to most newspapers: Jose Bove in his Asterix look in front of the police line, as always dressed to kill. The interesting thing is that the following day, a press release was sent around signed by the Confederation Paysanne, Droits Devant and the representatives from ATTAC groups that made it to Davos, urging the NGO community to stop all dialogue with the WEF. A friend of mine said "nothing politicises more than a police truncheon". Although this was all probably strategy, it will be interesting to see if these groups will continue their NGO line of pretending to represent civil society and willing to call for a citizens control of the WTO.....we'll see. The rest of the demo walked back towards on of the hotel where WEF participants were staying. On the way Mc Donalds windows were trashed in front of the cameras and the police who clearly had an order of not intervening. A beautiful moment was when a few people torn down one of these huge Mc Donalds ads saying ' think global - eat local '. It was just such a provocation that it was enthusiastically torn apart by the crowd and the tissue set on fire. The big smoke cloud resulting out of this fire went straight into the windows of the hotel. People joked "the ghost of Davos was exorcised" and things like that. The crowd remained in front of that hotel for quite a while. Several statements were made in different languages. An amazing thing was that a representative of Ya Basta Milan who had phone contact to Milan announced that the 20.000 people protesting against the Via Corelli (detention centre where people are inhumanly tortured before being sent back to their countries) had managed to penetrate. 'This is a victory thanks to the only struggle of the people' he said. A statement from the people in Ecuador was read out loud. Our resistance is more transnational than ever. As the police was not doing anything, some people that were keen on making property damage and hassling the police helped themselves. Flags were torn down from the hotel and burned (the US and the EU flag of course). Cars were damaged and snow balls massively thrown at the police line in front of the hotel. Violent and non-violent convictions coexisted pretty well next to each other at that particular stage. Someone said "we are playing their game if we do this". I think most people didn't mind property damage but felt uncomfortable with the fact that the violence was not used as a defence from the police. In fact a small group of people took in on two policemen. They got both injured. These people were hitting them while the policemen even when he was already lying unconscious on the ground. This incident was condemned by everyone I talked to. People from the demo even started defending the policeman as he was lying between two cars. It remained also unclear from where these people came and what their motivation was, their act was simply brutal and has nothing to do with fundamental social change. Result: the press coverage especially in the Swiss German boulevard press was mostly dominated by the pictures of Bill Clinton and the bleeding policeman. There was not one single picture of a banner. The articles reported only about the number of people, the temperature, the broken windows, the time, the street we walked and of course nothing about what kind of illegitimate bastards these self proclaimed world leaders are, nothing about people contesting further trade liberalisation and capitalism or about Ecuador or Mumia Abu Jamal.....ignored of course. One bus coming from France did not make it and got stopped by a police barrier about 10km before Davos. The people got off their bus, broke through the police line and walked up the road provoking a huge traffic jam. They arrived in Davos when the demo was finishing, but they felt like had they contributed their bit too. Several people that had come a long way to Davos stayed overnight at the Reithalle Bern, which is a huge squatted autonomous centre. [ To anyone passing Bern, I recommend you to have a look at it, it's huge and you'll find very nice and friendly people there.] The Reithalle was a good opportunity to have more in depth exchange with people. Something that became clear to me after talking to several people, is that Seattle marked the end of a period. The idea of Peoples Global Action was launched around the idea to focus on the WTO and "free trade". This chapter is over now. Most people by now are aware that this is simply not enough: The discourse is easily recuperated by the NGO reformist community which goes hand in hand with the governments that playing the trick of so called "dialogue with civil society". Almost everybody agreed that we need to extend our discourse and analysis if we don't want to end up contributing to the stabilisation and modernisation capitalism. The WTO and "free trade" are nothing but expressions of underlying social relations in which we are all involved and which need to be examined, understood and tackled. If we don't manage to formulate what we stand for, our protest will be easily recuperated and incorporated in the capitalist development. Quite a few people felt like using the opportunity of mayday2k to bring about more in depth discussion and exchange with many different social sectors. The spirit and mood was cool, we all felt exhausted but inspired. I came back from Switzerland with the feeling of having closed a chapter and curious about the next steps we will be taking. Love, rage and c h a o s Luciano Freiburg, Germany 2.2.2000 for more information on the World Economic Forum: For more information on WEF: www.weforum.org Anti-WTO-Koordination Schweiz c/o Reithalle Bern Postfach 5053 3001 Bern tel: 031 302 66 60; fax: 031 302 78 74 e-mail: anti-wto@reitschule.ch homepage: www.reitschule.ch/reitschule/anti-wto Peoples Global Action www.agp.org