Do you remember this banner?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009



We made it our group’s banner 2 years ago, and took it to pretty much all the demonstrations and actions we attended.

We also took it to the Calais No Borders camp last June. This is where it got confiscated by the French CRS riot police during a leaflet distribution in the town centre. All people who took part in the (apparently illegal) flyering session got arrested, some quite brutally.



Manc No Borders people got away with it that time (though 3 of us were detained for no obvious reason a couple of weeks ago in Calais). But our banner couldn’t be rescued. There was a dramatic-looking photograph in the local paper the next morning, with two anarchists from Lille running away with the banner from a group of riot cops.

That landed them with the charge of ‘rebellion’ (as far as we understand it that’s similar to ‘resisting arrest’ over here). They were in court in Boulogne today, and we’re still waiting to hear if they got sentenced. What we did hear however was that our banner was used in court as evidence against them! And it’s never to be returned.

We’ve already made a replacement for it, which we took to London last week for a picket of Becket House reporting centre:



There’s a report and more pictures of the picket on indymedia. So look out for it on future demos and come join us.
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Posted byManchester No Borders at 2:11 PM  

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