While bussing to my second picket of the day I thought I'd start a thread for personal reports and updates...
Hackney: very small picket at town hall but very few people coming in, taking the bus down lots of presence from unison pickets at various sites. Guy on the bike reckons its not looking too bad. Keep an eye out for roving well-intentioned crusties, complete with smash the state banners...
locked as main thread here: http://libcom.org/news/n30-strike-live-updates-30112011
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Birmingham: went to a few
Birmingham: went to a few pickets at local schools and also chatted to some Unison admin staff striking outside Bournville Police Station haha.
Off to a feeder march and seeing what happens rest of the day.
Should have been on picket
Should have been on picket duty from 7.30am. Unfortunately, I overslept and didn't get in till 8.30am :oops: From 11.30, there was a big march in Leicester city centre. It was rammed and there was a good few thousand on it - I've never seen anything this big in Leicester, ever.
I helped to give out about 1000 AF flyers and about the same number of rank and file flyers. Interestingly, at the mere mention of 'get your anarchist stuff here' and people were clamouring for AF fliers :eek:
There was also a mega rally that packed out the Athena Centre with speeches and bands. Stayed for a bit then wandered off with other anarchists for some proper nosh - falafel and humous, yum yum.
Now my middle aged feetsies are killing me so time for a lie down.
Serge Forward
Serge Forward
Wow, really? That's amazing! Do you think they were anarchists/political already, or is there just a large groundswell of interest in anarchist ideas?
One or two said they're
One or two said they're anarchists and will be in touch, but mostly, I think they just wanted to hear what anarchists have to say about it all. The main thing is, people are open to what we've got to say. Anyway, I'm hoping tomorrow night's rank and file meeting gets a decent turn out, as there were a fair few positive comments about it and people on the march were taking bundles of flyers and passing them around their mates. Maybe I'm getting carried away but I reckon the time is ripe for anarchist ideas and ways of doing things to begin to take centre stage. We'll see.
We had a similar thing in
We had a similar thing in Brighton, a lot of people had heard of SolFed, and lots of demand for our strike bulletin (all 500 disappeared quickly, we could have distro'd 3 times that). My take is people ain't stupid, they recognise the anarchist symbols like the red and black, know there must be more to it than the media caricature and are curious enough to ask. I mean it makes sense, the traditional left (unions, trots) are hardly inspiring, so it makes sense if people are 'shopping around' for ideas.