Barracks for Obama Action Takes Place Despite Police State

Yesterday half of downtown Warsaw was blocked off from vehicle and pedestrian traffic and the city looked like a police state because of the meeting of Central European presidents and the visit of Barrack Obama, The media had been speculating for days what would happen to a couple of demonstrations planned - two demonstrations planned in the framework of Days of Rage and the annual marihuana march. ZSP declared that we would not be illegalized and would turn up at the Presidential Palace as planned. Nota bene, the Presidential Palace was in the zero zone.

We did not manage to get right in front of the Palace for one reason: very few people were able to come at all. But about 50 people managed and we got within 50 meters of our goal, to the side of the Palace, on the main street - so we were able to great the motorcades and Obama.  (Some photos below.)

During the demo there were speeches about the anti-social policies of the government and against spending public money on creating a security state or militarism. The heavy presence of the police and closing half the city to its residents was also condemned.On a interesting note, the public showed good interest in the protest. Most of the very few people who managed to be nearby stopped and listened to the speeches, some even staying a couple of hours. This led one of the mainstream papers to make their ideological comment in an article on the demo. They printed the comments of people listening to the demo who commented that what we were saying made a lot of sense but then had to add the line "but what would happen if there was no government".