June 9, 2007 at 19:45:39

Rocking the G8 Tour 2007

SAVE AS FAVORITE

VIEW FAVORITES

By by David Rovics, Posted by Larry Sakin (about the submitter) Page 2 of 8 page(s)

opednews.com Permalink

June 2nd was the main rally against the G8, but the actual G8 meetings are happening now, with smaller groups (many thousands) based at their various camps engaging in road blockades and many other different types of actions to try and prevent the meetings from happening, or at least to disrupt them.

Already the G8 meeting organizers have cut their meetings down from three days to 1-1/2 days. They presumably have their reasons why they're doing this, but everyone knows the real reason � fear of us, fear of humiliation, fear that the world will see them naked, humbled by a few thousand citizens determined to let them know that their elitist, corporate version of "democracy" is not ours.

My "G8 Warm-Up Tour" began with a flight to Copenhagen at the end of April. As soon as I dropped off my stuff in Norrebro I took a walk to the place that's now being called "Ground 69." 69 Jagtvej was the address of what was Copenhagen's oldest leftwing social center. Built by the union movement in 1897 and called Folkets Hus � the People's House � it eventually fell into disrepair and was squatted by leftwing youth in 1982 and called Ungdomshuset � the Youth House. Since then and until last March it was a thriving center that included a bar, an infoshop, several performance spaces including a ballroom with a stage and a great sound system, a kitchen where thousands of meals were cooked, practice rooms for local bands, and rooms for all kinds of other industrious and creative activities.

A whole generation of youth had grown up in and around Ungdomshuset. Many of them had kids who also grew up with the Youth House being a center of their daily lives, as their parents from the 1980's generation mostly moved on to other things. In March the anti-terror police landed with helicopters on the roof of Ungdomshuset, filled the building with tear gas, arrested its defenders, and destroyed the building within a week. They had to use masked construction workers imported from Poland to destroy the building, since none of the Danish unions would work under police protection, out of principle.

In the taxi on the way from the airport, and walking down the main street in Norrebro to 69 Jagtvej, the evidence of the battle for Ungdomshuset -- for the right of the youth to have their house, and more broadly, the rights of people other than yuppies to exist in the quickly-gentrifying Norrebro neighborhood � was everywhere. There were thousands of posters carpeting the city advertising upcoming demonstrations. Ubiquitous graffiti saying things like, "I still feel like rioting."

Official-looking signs saying "Jagtvej" had replaced many street signs that used to indicate that you were on another street. But now, evocative of the end of the film, Spartacus, we are all Jagtvej now. The two numbers that everyone in Denmark knows as synonymous with Ungomshuset, "69," had replaced many addresses. My taxi driver was complaining about how much harder it is now to find the addresses of his customers since last March.

He was also complaining about the riots. Like many Danes, he was sympathetic with the struggle of the Youth House up until the several nights of rioting that followed the police occupation of the building.

But many others were either involved with, supportive of, or at least not particularly bothered by the riots, which were seen by many as a sensible or at least understandable reaction to the events that led up to them. This was also evident as soon as I got into the city. Many varieties of Ungdomshuset t-shirts and hoodies were everywhere, worn by many really young kids who had probably never seen Ungdomshuset when it existed. Many youth had made home-made patches saying just "69" or "Ungdomshuset Blir" � Ungdomshuset Stays � also the title of a song that became a national hit last fall. The scenes on TV of the riots � and they were well-publicized on national television � had caught the imagination of many young people, who identified viscerally with the young men and women battling with the police.

For several days, several neighborhoods in Copenhagen were characterized by burning barricades made largely of bicycle tires -- as with anywhere, you burn what's available, and in Copenhagen you can't walk down the sidewalk without tripping over hundreds of old bicycles on each block. Broken glass, broken cobblestones, tear gas and sirens were the order of the day. To a very large extent, the youth of Denmark were on the side of those throwing the stones, not the ones firing the tear gas, whether or not they were entirely clear on the origins of the conflict.

It was a shock to see how narrow the new dirt lot was, where Ungdomshuset had stood. The building was a lot taller than it was wide, I realized upon visiting Ground 69. But what really brought back the memories of that place where I have played shows to so many great audiences was when we were outside the prison where fifteen of Ungdomshuset's defenders were being held, close to three months after the destruction of the building.

It was there that I came into contact once again with the microphone that had been used for all of my shows there, and for many other shows as well. The mike smelled like someone who had not brushed his teeth in years, it was the worst-smelling microphone I've ever encountered. I suddenly could see the clouds of smoke, behind which sat or stood a hundred black-clad youth, listening attentively, or singing or shouting along with me, facial piercings reflecting the lights.

Every Thursday since the beginning of March, different groups were taking turns organizing protests and marches with sound trucks through the city. Many people from the early days of Ungdomshuset have come out of the woodwork, along with many young kids who had never seen the place other than in a photograph.

I was in town for several rallies.

On my first real day of gigs, May Day, I sang in the morning in the nearby town of Roskilde for members of the red-green coalition, Enhedslisten, who have a number of people in the parliament and are the extraparliamentary left's biggest ally in parliament. In the afternoon I sang at the communist-sponsored May Day stage in a big park near Norrebro. In the evening I was hanging out by a park with anarchist youth and others there to party for May Day, who had put lots of burning rubbish in the street, something which has recently once again become a Copenhagen tradition, particularly since March. Police stayed a hundred feet away. This time nobody threw anything at them, and they didn't try to clear the street.

One rally and march was on the 69th day since the raid of Ungdomshuset. Many hundreds of us were marching behind a very loud sound truck, and for the first time I was able to appreciate techno. It reminded me at the time of hearing the call to prayer coming from the mosques inside Israel. A very different social milieu, to be sure, but in both cases there was a kind of loud statement of existence, this affirming cry of "we're here." People from Christiania had come and added to this, bringing with them dozens of little home-made instruments consisting of tin cans and latex formed in such a way that when you blew into them lightly they would screech with twice the volume of a good bugle.

The more conservative end of the establishment is often characterizing the growing Danish youth movement as a bunch of self-centered brats, and with that in mind, one scene on this particular march was notable. There was a police "escort," as always, on both ends of the march. At one point they were suddenly agitated. Not speaking Danish, I didn't know what they were yelling about, but it was suddenly clear as an ambulance was making its way down Norrebrogade. But as soon as the march saw the ambulance coming, with no need for any prompting, the street suddenly cleared of people and the ambulance sped through unimpeded.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8