Genoa

An eyewitness account

300,000 thousand people were in Genoa to protest at the G8 meeting in July - the biggest anti-capitalist demonstration we've seen in years.

But our peaceful demonstrations were all attacked by the police, who tear-gassed us, arrested us, beat us, chased us and finally murdered one of us. We didn't take it lying down and fought back and defended ourselves as best we could. If the police thought that they were going to weaken us, demoralise us and isolate us, they were wrong.

Revolution organised a coach load of people from Britain to go to Genoa - once there we hooked up with other Revo members from all over Europe. We were staying at a stadium called Stadio Carlini. A huge thunderstorm erupted as got to the stadium - but we didn't care. Nothing could dampen our spirits that night.

The stadium was abuzz. Thousands of people talking politics, playing music, drinking and generally just kicking back. We were staying with Ya Basta - the Italian white overall - who were organising the biggest and most lively demo and we were going to be right in the middle of it.

We were all up early the next morning. There were people everywhere, making body armour out of cardboard, foam, empty plastic water bottles and loads of tape.

Everything was so well organised. There were people who were going to protect the demo - they looked the business - shields, motorbike helmets, gas masks, body armour and big steel capped boots was the uniform of choice. There teams who were to deal with the tear gas, and others who had supermarket trolleys loaded with energy drinks and water, and lots of first-aid people. It made you feel great to see all this and we knew this was going to be a day to remember.

We got together in front of the big stand. Everyone kept wanting our Revolution flags - lots were saying "yeah, revolution, that's how we'll deal with the G8 bastards".

The demo set off about 1:00pm. There must have been about 20,000 people on it - mostly young people.

Other demos had already started. There was a big trade union demo the other side of the city, and a pink block demo which was out to have a party, the French group ATTAC & Globalise Resistance. There was also...

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