Alison Dellit
In the largest protest in Scotland's history, more than 200,000 people, most wearing white, joined the July 2 Make Poverty History march through Edinburgh, ahead of the July 6-9 G8 summit. "Life doesn't have to be this way", 19-year-old Beth Beech from Derbyshire told the Catholic Agency For Overseas Development (CAFOD). "You have to make a stand against what you think is wrong. There enough money and enough resources to spread around the world. We don't need that money as much as those poor countries do, so let's cancel all the debt."
The protesters were calling for debt cancellation, fair trade rules and increased aid to Third World countries. Within the Make Poverty History coalition, however, there are a variety of views on how to achieve this, and whether the G8's proposed debt relief plan will help. Marchers came from a diverse range of communities and organisations, from religious groups and charities, to socialists, to the Clown Army and school groups.
Former foreign secretary Robin Cook was spotted in the march. Cardinal Keith O'Brien read a message of support from the Pope supporting the "debt-relief" plan promoted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
South African Bishop Neville Gabriel had a different message, however, which was greeted with thunderous applause. "Trade injustice in our world has a very human face", he said. "On the one side there are the faces of Tony Blair, [former British trade minister] Patricia Hewitt, [EU commissioner] Peter Mandelson and others. On the other side there is the face of a 40-year-old textile worker in Cape Town who today is out of work and without any means of supporting her children."
Neville explained how the worker was now unemployed because her products were priced out of the market by subsidised products from the US and EU. "Leaders say debt relief will get us out of poverty ... but they offer this with one hand and with the other hand take it away with unfair trade rules.
"It's the height of hypocrisy, it's a scandal and it's plain wrong."
Focus on the Global South's Waldon Bello repeatedly condemned the war on Iraq to cheers from the crowd, and activist Bianca Jagger argued that, to end poverty, "the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO must be abolished". Jagger then warned celebrites against becoming "political tools, co-opted and used by the governments of the world's richest countries". She finished with a chant of "trade justice, not trade liberalisation".
At 3pm, the hundreds of thousands fell silent for a minute, while they released balloons to remember those "who dare to hope that their child will not join the 30,000 who die every day".
"I think it will make a big difference us being here", 15-year-old Alex Bush, who had travelled for 12 hours to protest, told CAFOD. "We will really show them they have to change the way they are ruling at the moment".
Meanwhile, people packed into nine Live 8 concerts across the world to hear such top-line performers as Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Madonna and Bjork, in what actor Will Smith described as the "biggest event on the planet". Smith hosted the Philadelphia concert, which nearly 1 million people packed the streets to attend.
Former South African president Nelson Mandela spoke at the Johannesburg concert, which was added to the lineup at the last minute after criticism of the First World focus of the event. According to the July 3 Melbourne Age, most of the 10,000 attendees had never heard of concert organiser Bob Geldof.
An "Africa Calling" concert in Cornwall was also hastily organised by Peter Gabriel, and chaired by actor Angelina Jolie, after criticism that most of the concerts excluded African artists.
The concerts, interspersed with frequent ads bought at record prices, was watched by an estimated 2 billion people on television.
"There's a tremendous number of people here and clearly a lot of excitement about the concert. But this is a political event", AIDS campaigner Simon Wright told the London concert. "This has got to be seen as a massive message to the G8 and not just another pop concert."
From Green Left Weekly, July 6, 2005.
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