Hello ...., A quick update on the anti-NATO campaign launched by the Germans and French. Many orgs. in several countries are signed up thus far for the campaign and demo in Strasbourg (first week of April).
Reiner Braun of the German organizing committee came last month to talk to the French collectif; they don't want only activist groups there - they want it to be a popular mass demonstration, like the Feb 2003 ones. Carrying national flags at the demo is discouraged, placards and banners with anti-NATO slogans and/or peace symbols being preferred. Strasbourg plans subject to change, but currently as follows: Thurs April 2nd to Sun 5th: Counter-summit. Peace Village. Friday April 3rd Day of direct action and civil disobedience Saturday April 4th: International demonstration against NATO and the spread of war Sunday April 5th: Final (main) day of counter-summit which will be addressed by Noam Chomsky, amongst others. Germany will have a large contingent there: Die Linke is heavily involved. Reiner mentioned that the situation in Germany is quite different compared to countries like France, in that the German Churches are highly active in the peace/antiwar movement. Even though the police will be out in force in Strasbourg, he said protestors should not be intimidated - the more we are, the less we need to worry about police presence. (If, as seems likely, Obama is there, one may envisage an extra 5,000 US security guards.....) Everyone stressed the importance of getting the word out about Strasbourg (only three months away); the organizers don't want 10,000 people there, they're aiming for a truly massive demonstration. They're relying on every group to inform all their contacts and they ask every individual to spread the word. Also raised was the fact that many people are ill-informed about what NATO is, not realizing that it's a highly aggressive military alliance. So for those with fuzzy notions, the idea is to keep pushing a negative message and seek to get it imprinted in people's minds; Denis of ACG said an eye-catching, easy-to-retain slogan should be chosen for use on all flyers, communications, website pages, concerning the campaign. He suggested NATO = WAR. The Mouvement de la paix people didn't comment on that idea. No surprise there, as they don't go in much for powerful slogans...... some of the other groups liked it, though. I'm keeping you up to date as I know you're interested - I believe I already sent you the appeal in English (attached again). Here is the list, to date, of the participating orgs. (the appeal is in German, the list is beneath it): http://notonato.wordpress.com/appell/ Please do mobilize your Serbian friends! and any others. biz, annie __________________________________________________________________ Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/newmail/overview2/ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
