#Demo2011: audio from January 29 demo in london

Icon_article Published: January 29, 2011 20:17 by dissidents |

Tagged as: #dayx5 #demo2011 audio cuts protest social_struggles solidarity
Neighbourhoods: central_london
Published by group: Group

Cuts Reporting

A day out on a demonstration in London isn't complete without an audio recording device. Have a listen to some of the interviews and atmospheric recordings from today's quite epic journey through the streets of London...

So I went for a bit of an experimental approach and brought out some not-so-random pictures associated with the protests and asked people to take a look and talk about one that inspired them to share their thoughts with us listeners. Here are some of the snippets that I got back...

Interview with protestor who pulled the 'where does UK debt lie in comparison to other countries' card...

This protestor decided to talk about the graph that shows that UK debt isn't actually that big (relatively speaking of course) when compared to other industrialised and imperalist countries. [Listen]

Interview with two of the Queer pink and black bloc right before the start of the march

Once I spotted the flash of pink and black and ran over to get two of the folks to talk about the pics - one chose a pic from indymedia ireland featuring a student demostrator holding a sign saying "DOLE OFFICE here I come" - linking it to recent statistics stating that young college graduates are more likely to be unemployed than any other . The second queer bloc-er chose a pic featuring a cop about the beat a protestor at the Milbank demo, dayx1, discussing the irony of 'the right to peaceful protest' and how it's 'enforced' by the Met...via kettling and beating people. They also told me about the Queer bloc - part of Queer Resistance, who are concerned about the cuts and how they will be effecting everyone, and building solidarity as well as looking specifically at how the LGBT population. [Listen]

Interview with a protestor talking about the charles & camilla car paint-job incident

So this protestor pulled out the card featuring a picture of the aftermath of when charles and camilla's car drove past Regent St - and the protestor decided to shed light on how we, the public, ended up seeing the image of the charles & camilla's car splashed all over the main stream press front pages the day after the demos on 10 December 2010. [Listen]

Interview with one of uniriot

So this one isn't a picture interview - I got lucky and ran into one of the people behind unriot and went for a bit of a straight interview. He discussed his involvement in the anti-cuts uk movement, linking it to the student movement in Italy, Europe and beyond, urging us to consider organising on a trans-national level, indicating that the struggles of unemployed, underemployed, oppressed workers transcend borders. [Listen]

Interview with protestor walking down Whitehall

While walking down Whitehall (right in front of a mini-street cleaning car - hence the background noise), mindful of the kettle potential of the situation, I bumped into a chatty, friendly guy who had a lot to say in regards tax collection, which is why - after he chose -this- card - and insists that while its pretty hypocritical that we're cutting public spending and not holding the rich to account in terms of paying into the system, tax-collection should not be the focus of the anti-cut movement's energy. He mentions his involvement in the campaign to save his local library and activities in the anti-cuts carnival coming up in Lewisham on 19 February 2011.

Other atmospheric audio...

Hare Krishnas were out, playing music and serving nice hot food at the start of the march - some audio of them...[Listen]

A funny chant about privitisation and selling off public services... [Listen]

"No ifs, no buts..." chant at the start of the march in front of ULU...[Listen]

The sound system at the start of the march...[Listen]

Samba, samba, samba - provided courtesy of Rhythms of Resistance...[Listen]

"They say cutback, we say fightback!" (the person with the megaphone should give a workshop on how to make repetitive chanting interesting!)...[Listen]

All the audio is copyleft for nonprofit purposes so feel free to use, sample, edit at will!
Enjoy - and see you on the streets...

D*I
www.dissidentisland.org