McDonald's in military drag

McDonald's In Military Drag

By Mark Cantrell

IT was not a good day to be a McDonald's restaurant.

This one was draped in military camouflage netting, the kind used to
hide tanks from the prying eyes of enemy aircraft, but here used to
hide the establishment from the tender mercies of the more hands on
kind of anarcho-protestor.

We almost walked passed without noticing. With the nets, the building
blended perfectly into the shade of night. Strange that it works just
as well in an urban setting, but they hadn't done the job right. There
was a glaring gap by the doors and the light sucked the eyes towards
the McD sign. A few cops stared at us warily from inside. They'd had a
tough day. So had we.

Luckily for the police, we weren't that kind of protestor. Even if we
were, the day had left us too tired to tear down a hated symbol of
global capitalism.

TWO very different worlds had clashed in the course of the day. Both
had utterly incompatible visions and were totally opposed to that of
their enemy.

In the 'Blue Corner' was the 14,000 delegates from the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund (IMF). They believed the answer to the
world's problems lay in the unbridled pursuit of corporate profit. In
the 'Red Corner' were the 20,000 or so anti-capitalist demonstrators
who believed the only solution was a world built on the basis of human
need.

Between the two warring sides, 11,000 Czech riot police had been
deployed, backed by military helicopters, armoured personnel carriers
and water cannon. Their mission was simple -- to ensure the delegates
could discuss the world's fate in peace. They failed.

"THIS is an illegal march," the cop shouted through a megaphone in
English, Czech and German. "If you do not disperse you risk injury
through the response we will be forced to take."

Standing on top the armoured car in full riot gear, he formed an
inhuman silhouette. Beneath him, lines of riot police gazed impassively
at the protestors from behind their visors.

"After the third warning they charge," a voice said from the crowd.
That's the only notice any of the protestors took. All they did was
link arms, raise their banners and flags and chant with renewed vigour
to drown out the robotic voice.

"This is what democracy looks like!" they yelled again and again.

"The workers united can never be defeated!" The follow up chant.

Thousands of people were squashed up in this bottleneck at the bridge.
In the distance, the city's Soviet-era Conference Centre towered over
the heads of the riot police. That was the objective. The protestors --
about 6,000 in this group -- had been marching on it to reinforce those
who were laying siege to the building. Though we didn't know it at the
time, the delegates from the IMF and the World Bank were trapped
inside. Still more protestors had occupied their expensive
hotels.

Neither side was strong enough to brush the other out of the way
without things getting messy. Nor was either side prepared to back
down. Even on the fringes, bodies were packed tightly, as the press and
cameramen struggled to get a good view of events. If the police chose
to charge it would be a massacre.
But there was no charge. The police held the line. It was a stalemate,
but a costly one for the police. While this group of anti-capitalists
held firm, it weakened police forces elsewhere. So the protestors
remained defiant and waved their red flags and chanted their slogans of
revolt.

Still, the protestors made an effort. Arms linked, they marched
defiantly up to the police barricades. A face full of tear gas was the
only reward they received, and the ones in front would burst from the
crowd in search of water to sluice their eyes. The protestors backed
off, only to regroup and surge forward once more.

Behind the 'frontline', a carnival atmosphere ensued. Live music and
entertainment vied with the sound of groups of young people talking
about politics and world issues. They sat on the grass, like university
students after their exams, and soaked up the hot sun.

Themed carnival dolls, costumes, even a wandering man wearing nothing
but a banknote tied to his penis, made for a strange contrast to the
frontline with its tension and tear gas.

Back at the front, a fresh demand was being hurled at the riot police.
The air stank of vinegar. A crude defence against tear gas when applied
to a handkerchief held over the mouth and nose. One of the protestors
had started to quietly chant to herself, and suddenly the crowd took it
up: "What do we want? Fish and chips! When do we want them? Now!"

If the police were bemused at this fresh demand, they didn't show it.
Nor did they appear to have any concept of the irony in their position.
Many of the police had been on the streets in 1989, when ordinary
people rose up and tore down the edifice of Stalinist tyranny. When the
dust settled, and Prague became a liberal democracy, these police were
still there.

No longer defenders of socialism, now they stood in defence of the
institutions of world capitalism. The irony wasn't lost on the
protestors, who invoked the memory of the Velvet Revolution in 1989,
and also an earlier uprising -- one that had been crushed by Soviet
tanks in 1968.

No Soviet tanks today. The riot police had to deal with this revolt on
their own. Before them were flourished the very symbols of a system
they had once sworn to protect, and struggled to save in that Velvet
Revolution of long ago.
Red flags bearing the hammer and sickle fluttered alongside banners
proclaiming socialism and the workers revolution. Once those symbols
were icons in the hand of a bureaucratic ruling class. Dour faced men
celebrated the workers by turning them into heroic statues, while
exploiting the real thing hard enough to make any 'decadent Western
capitalist' green with envy.

In the hands of these young people, defying the armed might of the
Czech state, they represented hope and defiance and the dream of a
better world. And the police still stood in rigid lines, like a
battalion of robocops waiting to be switched on.

Somewhere in this battlefield of ideals was the people I'd accompanied
from Bradford and the north of England. My companions were a varied
bunch; anarchists, socialists, trade unionists, environmental
campaigners and general idealists. Despite their differences, the
dreams they shared dovetailed neatly into a unity of purpose to take
them more than 1,000 miles to the Czech capital. Here they blended in
with thousands of like-minded people.

We all expected a tough journey, but it didn't put us off. We were all
determined to join the protest. Had we known just what we were letting
ourselves in for we might well have had second thoughts. That we made
it to Prague at all was a testament to miracle and grim determination.
The truth is, we almost never made it at all.

TWENTY miles from Nuremburg, the engine died. The coach was dead on the
autobahn and we were stuck on the edge of the Black Forest in the dark
and the drizzle. To make matters worse, the coach wasn't even equipped
with a hazard warning sign, it's lights appeared to be dimming and
there was the unnerving risk that some motorist might slam into the
vehicle's rear.

But my companions were anti-capitalist protestors, so they knew what to
blame. "It shows how sick capitalism is that it puts people's lives at
risk for the sake of a warning sign worth a few quid," said Mark
Harrison of Burnley.

To begin with, it was assumed that this was just another tiresome
hiccup, and that it wouldn't be long before we were back on the road.
Trapped there, we had plenty of time to crack jokes and still enough
energy to raise a smile. But as the hours crawled by, spirits started
to sink. It was beginning to dawn on us, that maybe this coach was
beyond resurrection.

Eventually, the coach was towed to a garage. We gathered in a video
arcade nearby, guzzling coffee to keep our already overtired minds
awake. The plastic d?cor did nothing for our mood and the conversation
was dominated by a cynical view of what was turning out to be a jinxed
trip.

Dave Ramsden, from Bradford, leaned despondently against a pool table
and looked into space. "You could write a comedy script out of this,"
he said. "You've got all the ingredients and you couldn't make it any
funnier -- but it's not funny really."

It certainly wasn't. News came back that the coach was fixed. The
mechanics had said they'd never seen such a piece of shit. The repairs
were ?1000 (including the towing fee). There were problems paying the
bill, and the mechanics refused to release the vehicle until the bill
was settled.

Already low spirits crashed through the floor.
On the journey, we had faced all the problems and the pain together. We
shared camaraderie and a solidarity that kept us going, but just then
it began to fray at the edges. Discussions became heated. Sometimes
frenzied, as we all talked at once, pondering what to do. Morale was
its lowest ebb.

Through the worrying and the fretting the committee in charge tried to
sort out the mess. The news they brought only added to the sense of
dismay. The drivers had no money to pay the garage. They had no credit
card. Only the company manager could be reached, who said that he
didn't have a credit card either and suggested we sort it ourselves.
The owner simply could not be contacted. Things weren't looking
good.
By now, it was sinking in that we wouldn't even make the Czech border,
let alone Prague. With this, morale virtually vanished. We still wanted
to get to Prague, but it no longer seemed viable and people began to
worry about how they would get home. Few of my companions had the
resources for it. They had counted on the coach and been subsided by
unions, campaign groups and well wishers to represent them at the
international demo.

Someone said above the babble of argument: "If we wait until the
morning then there is a chance that the owner is going to cough
up."

That still meant a cold night out in the open. Nor did it resolve the
issue of destination -- Prague or Rotterdam -- in a coach that even
repaired might not survive the journey. Then a more sober voice broke
in: "The clock is still ticking. That bus is going to get to the point
where it ain't worth paying!"

By now it was obvious that the company was quite prepared to abandon
the coach, its passengers and the drivers in Germany.
We had come too far to turn back now, but it looked as though we had no
choice. It was an ignominious end to a journey that had begun in such
high spirits, only to end in disillusioned defeat.

Suddenly Roger, from Leeds bellowed above the babble of argument:
"Comrades! The revolution awaits us -- so get on the bus."

Somebody had used their own card to stump up the money: more than
?1000. Maybe we'd be turned back at the border, maybe not, but it was
better to be defeated there, than here in this unknown district of
Nuremburg. As the coach rumbled back onto the autobahn, spirits quickly
revived, and we gave ourselves a roaring chorus of 'Always Look On the
Bright Side of Life'.

Hours later, our coach rumbled into the beautiful and ancient city. We
were weary after our journey, but our first sight of the mass demo
reinvigorated our fatigued bodies. Against all the odds, we had made it
to the party.

NOT since the Velvet Revolution had the streets of Prague seen such a
dramatic display of people power. Unlike those days, this was
international. The Czech demonstrators did not chant alone, they were
joined by the voices of Europe and the world.

Prague was seen as a particularly apt venue for this protest, because
of the city's proud history of revolt. Twice before this day, the
city's streets had rumbled to the voices of unrest and the demand for
change. On the first occasion, it was abandoned and lost. On the
second, they won -- they tore down Soviet totalitarianism and reached
out for the hope of freedom.

Like many things in life, they found the dream was a sore illusion.
Capitalism brought only pain and misery for the many, wealth for the
few. As they faced privatisation, unemployment, poverty, the old dream
of resistance sparked into life once more.

"We hoped the end of Stalinism would mean not only the end of the Cold
War, but the end of all wars, the end of poverty and exploitation,"
Johana Ruzickova said in the weeks leading up to the demo. "Everyone
spoke about the victory of capitalism across the whole world and how
this would make our lives better. Czech politicians told us that if
tightened our belts for ten years then everybody's standard of living
would be as high as in Austria. But the situation is totally different.
The standard of living is worse than before. Unemployment is rising.
Thousands of people have to wait months before they are paid their
wages.

"People often say they were in the streets in 1989. They say they
wanted the old regime to end, but they did not imagine things would end
like this. Eastern Europe today is not what we fought for. But there is
anger, there is resistance, there is hope. The more people there are in
Prague, the stronger the anti-capitalist movement will be
everywhere."

Johana is a member of INPEG (the Initiative Against Economic
Globalisation), a Czech organisation that is part of the growing
movement of dissent against the capitalism system generally and the
policies of the World Bank, IMF and WTO specifically. On the day, this
organisation was co-ordinating the actions taking place in
Prague.

In the eyes of the protestors, the World Bank and the IMF were in the
city to plot absolute conquest of the world on behalf of a few
multi-national corporations. These delegates were little more than the
apparatchiks of a new totalitarian system -- a rigged free market where
the richest could dictate their terms and plunder the world for their
own profit.

INPEG summed up its opposition in a statement it released to the
variety of groups that gathered to wreck this plan for world
domination. "Within the framework of their structural adjustment
programme, the IMF and the World Bank provide loans to developing
countries with strict conditions that include deregulation,
privatisation and liberalisation.

"These measures strengthen the position of trans-national capital, but
worsen the situation of the majority of the population in the
developing world. It results in removing social and environmental
regulations. Cuts in public spending to make public healthcare and
education inaccessible. The impact on agriculture and the environment
is especially devastating. This summit is a challenge to those who are
concerned about the destiny of the world. Let us face the globalisation
of capital with the globalisation of solidarity."

The organisation's call struck a nerve worldwide. Thousands of people
began to make the preparations for the long trip, following in the
footsteps of those protestors who shut down the WTO meeting in Seattle
last year. During that event, the word anti-capitalist exploded into
the mainstream. Here in Prague, the determination to destroy capitalist
totalitarianism was expressed with renewed vigour.

Many of those shouting at the cops had never before been on a major
demonstration, if any at all. A new generation of dissidents and
revolutionaries was being born before my very eyes.

ON the frontline, things were happening. Tactics were changing,
objectives redefined as the protestors moved to break the deadlock.
With a last rousing chant at the police, the protestors turned and
marched away. They didn't see it as a defeat, though. They may not have
got to the Conference Centre, but they had made their voices heard and
tied up police units that might otherwise have been deployed elsewhere.
Now they were heading off to blockade the State Opera House.

At this time it wasn't known that the IMF and World Bank delegates were
trapped inside the Conference Centre. It was known that some were
planning to visit the opera, and that police would try and escort them
on the city's Metro system. Hence the blockade. Further blockades of
the city's Metro stations eventually shut the system down. By around
6.30pm, news had filtered through that the delegates were going
nowhere.

A further international protest was hastily arranged for the following
day, but for us it was time to think about the long road home.

My companions had come and made their point. In their eyes, they had
stood up and been counted. It was an experience they felt had been well
worth the arduous coach journey.

"I've been on a lot of demonstrations and protests, but not like this,"
said Kevin Stannard of Hebden Bridge. "I've never been in an action
where I've had to push myself into confrontation with the police. They
built a fortress to protect the IMF and the World Bank, with police and
armoured cars and barricades. We had the rest of Prague. It says that
ordinary people can do something to make a difference."

Mark Harrison put it more succinctly: "We owned Prague for the
day!"

AS for the McDonald's, it made for a fitting symbol for everything
these protestors opposed, with its melding of fast food retailing and
military drapery. No protestor made this comparison, but a US
journalist, Thomas Friedman.

"The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden
fist," he said. "McDonald's cannot flourish without [weapons and
aircraft manufacturer] McDonnell Douglas."

Inside the building, the not so hidden fist of the Czech state were
munching on their burgers. Elated and magnanimous in victory, we left
them to it, and headed off to begin our journey home.

BACK in Bradford, with the voices of Prague still echoing in my head, I
sat in a cafe and pondered how to weave the words that would tell the
story. My mobile rang. Still gazing at the screen, searching for the
words, I answered.

"Hello?"

"Do you know the difference between the Czech police and ours?" the
anonymous caller asked.

"No."

"We'll shoot you, you bastard. We're gonna get you. We're coming. We're
coming..."

Prague's final echo. The close of the story. It's nice to know that at
least someone was rattled. As for this mysterious 'we' -- I am still
waiting.

Mark Cantrell,
Bradford, October 2000

Copyright (C) October 2000.