<nettime> [fwd: Davos WEF, (No-)Live Report, part 2]

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

(from the INURA list)

----- Forwarded message from "r.wolff" <r.wolff@INURA.ORG> -----

Date:         Tue, 28 Jan 2003 09:54:29 +0100
From: "r.wolff" <r.wolff@INURA.ORG>
Subject:      Davos WEF, (No-)Live Report, part 2


Friends, back in Zurich after a successful meeting with UNESCO (more
about this in Berlin, in July), I had to realise I hadn't missed
much. Most protesters never ever made it to Davos. They either got
stuck halfway in the train or were re-directed by (dis-)organizers to
other locations, like Landquart (on the way between Davos and Zurich)
or even Berne. Some people, perhaps one thousand, made it to Davos
and had a rather calm day up there. Others protested in Landquart,
and towards the evening many re-grouped in Berne, where there was a
demonstration on the main square in front of the Bundeshaus
(government and parliament building) plus some demolishing of
windows. In hindsight, the general feeling among protesters is
frustration. Either because they never made it to Davos (even though
it would have been possible) or because they were (rightly or
wrongly?) re-directed to Berne or ...

Most notable: The left is totally split, blaming each other for
mis-behaving, disorganizing, etc. The arguments are whether or not
one should have accepted the police controls, which degree of
controls was acceptable (like going through the checkpoints), if and
how one should have denounced any form of militancy, whether it was
right to re-direct protesters to Berne, and so on. Social democrats,
the Greens, trade unions and autonomous groups are infighting
(haven't we had that before?). The police are happy, the WEF is
probably happy too. Davos is happy. Nothing much happened, no one
took notice. It was interesting to look at the international press
when we were in Paris. Hardly any news in any of the big papers of
Germany, France, Italy, Britain. No headlines, no frontpages, perhaps
a sentence in an article about Lula on page 5 or so. Imagine press
coverage if there had been riots.

I suppose there is more to say about Porto Alegre. Over and out.

Richard W.

--
_______________________
Richard Wolff, Dr. sc. nat. ETH
INURA Zürich Institut
Hardturmstr. 261
CH-8005 Zürich
_______________________
++41 (0)1 563 86 91
r.wolff@inura.org
http://www.inura.org/izi.htm
International Network for Urban Research and Action

----- End forwarded message -----

#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net