N30 Schiphol, Amsterdam Airport, Netherlands: Let's Fly at the WTO!
Every one has the right to protest where she or he wants.
And because 3 Airlinecompanies, which are present on Schiphol, are
sponsoring the WTO-summit, we asked them to provide us a charter to Seatlle
to protest against the Milleniumround.
From a letter, send on forehand to Lufthansa, Northwest Airways and United
Airlines (translation from dutch): "The decisions made in Seatlle are of
influence on our lifes and even partly of direct influence. We would like
to use the opportunity you give us by sponsoring the summit. Give us the
democratic right to express our opinion about the policies of the WTO. At
an estimate 300 persons will go with the free charter to Seattle. We will
be on as a group on the 30th of november at 12.30 at your incheckcounters
to collect our tickets and which way everything will be without hinderance
for other passagers."
The action itself
We gathered at 12 o'clock with about 70 persons, which slowly became more
than 100. Besides protesters there was a crowd of police and press.
There was a lot of material produced for this action, partly to spread
before and partly to spread during the action.
Lots of flyers were distributed to explain the action to passagers and
their companions, there were planetickets for the free flight to Seattle,
luggagelabels and t-shirts with the text "Seatlle here we come" on the
front and on the backside the No-Money-Tour of ' 99, with the 2
freetraintravels a nice list of 3.
After a short introduction to WTO and the action the banners were unrolled
and we entered the departurehal. At Lufthansa we asked for free transport
to Seattle. They only had scheduled flights and not even directly to
Seatlle, first we had to go to Frankfurt.
So we walked to the ticketcorner of Northwest Airlines, one of the partners
of KLM (the dutch airlinecompany, famous at the moment for deporting
refugees), to inform about our charter.
Northwest apperently thought it was enough to sponsor the WTO-summit
without giving money to allow countersounds to be expressed. They didn't
provide us a charter and were not willing to give us chairs for everyone on
their scheduled flights to the USA.
United was so scared they didn't even want to talk with us, there was no
one at their counter. One of the activists jumped behind the counter and
started to write tickets for all the passagers to Seatlle. The vouchers we
could collect at Northwest.
To visit all three the airlinecompanies we had to cross all the
departurehalls.
While we waited for the cooperation of Northwest Airways we practised in
the departurehall American football,
(hmmm, chrismasdecoration....), the making of protestboards for
picketlines, walking in a picketline american style and sit-ins on which a
policeattack with pepperspray was practised.
Unfortunately the police used pepperspray later that day on protesters in
Seatlle.
At the end of the action a pamphlet was spread with all the sponsors of
this WTO-summit included some addresses of dutch seats of the companies.
There was a lot of presscoverage, it was on the 8 o'clock news (the major
dutch newsprogram) together with demonstrations in Seatlle
The atmosphere was very good, it was a successfull action and a lot of fun
to do.
And this was of course only the beginning, the whole week there will be
actions against the 'carnival of capitalism' , in Seatlle and all around
the world.
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Autonoom Politiek Infocentrum Wageningen
De Ekster en De Olifant, dokumentatiecentrum over Inheemse volken
Biotechnologie Archief NoGen
Steungroep Koerdistan Azadi
Vluchteling Onder Dak, stichting ter ondersteuning van illegalen
Burgtstraat 3
NL-6701 DA Wageningen
Nederland
0317-423588
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++++ more info: http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++
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