Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Vive la revolution, or something 

I took a long walk today, in the heat of the midday sun. Down the middle of Parramatta Road. With a couple of thousand other people, many of whom were wearing Che t-shirts.

It started with a sausage. See, they were having a free BBQ on the front lawns to urge people to join the protest against voluntary student unionism and fee deregulation. Well, I'm not one to pass on free food, so I stayed and listened. It turned out the rally was actually a march. Ok, I think, I need the exercise, and in any case, I'd feel guilty if I just took the sausage and ran off. Thus I was swept along with the tide of the more colourful characters of the USyd student body (I stared for five minutes at a guy in a Ho Chi Minh t-shirt).

To tell you the truth, I generally veer away from anything militant. But hey, free education is a good cause and all. Never mind that my parents are paying my fees *cough*. And when else am I going to be able to stop traffic? The first half hour was quite relaxing, despite all that yelling and chanting. Lots of cars were honking at us, whether in sympathy or more in a "get off bloody the road" kind of way, I don't know. Most of the time, I couldn't understand what people were shouting: it took me a full minute to realise they weren't saying "courtesy", but rather "cut full fees"! My favourite chant was "bullshit, come off it, our education is not for profit". Another popular one was "they say cut back, we say fight back", though I would've thought that "we say fuck that" would have been a more obvious choice. Maybe it's just me.

I didn't even know where we were going, but just as I was getting sick of burning my scalp, we arrived at UTS. I thought there were just going to be more speeches and things. It turned out that they were going to storm the tower. Well, might as well, says I. Never mind that I don't know what & where the tower is, nor who is in there. The crowd ended up at the doors of the tower, which turned out to be the Vice-Chancellor's office. Barbarians at the gate. I tried to stay around the periphery because the mob was getting sweaty and claustrophobic and there were police around and I didn't feel like getting arrested. I couldn't see a thing, but there were occasional bursts of chants and booing. In the end, people seemed to be leaving so I went to the toilet.

It turns out that I may have missed the best bit (or worst, depending if you're into violent confrontation or not). Apparently there was some fighting between the police and the front line. I only found about it when I watched the nightly news. Capsicum spray and all, which would explain why there were ambos pouring water on people as I was leaving (I suck at connect-the-dots, ok).

The media coverage is interesting. Channel 9 was rather pro-police, calling the crowd an "angry mob" and going on about how the police were only defending themselves. From where I was standing, there wasn't much anger, just a lot of people milling around trying to see the action. The newspapers seem more sympathetic. Looky: SMH, Australian .

# posted at 11:46 pm

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