BY ALEX BAINBRIDGE
HOBART — Months of hard work by organisers paid off on May 1 when hundreds of people participated in the largest anti-capitalist protest this city has ever seen.
Organisers admit that even on the morning of the blockade, they were not quite sure of anything: how many people would come, whether there would be enough to surround the building, what treatment would be meted out to them.
But at 6.20am, with not a police officer in sight, organisers arrived at the AMP building, which houses the stock exchange, and began setting up. The first thing they did, to cheers from the arriving crowd, was to raise two flags on the poles in front of the building: one a commercially-produced "sale" sign, the other a hand-painted banner saying "Our world is not for sale".
While police kept a low profile and stayed largely out of sight, the Hobart Mercury reported that 200 police were on duty that morning, including helicopters and riot police held in reserve. Undercover police had even infiltrated M1 Alliance meetings to assess the threat the group posed.
Organisers' plan was to concentrate on the main Elizabeth Street entrance to the building, and only move to blockade the rear entrance when numbers were sufficient to do so safely. Numbers quickly built up to 100 people or more, enough for the main entrance, but not for the rear one.
Nevertheless, few attempted to enter the building during the day. Many workers had been told not to come to work that day and at least one business set up in temporary offices nearby.
The symbolism of the protest was powerful. Street performers put on music, dance and theatre to keep spirits up, their performances including a big double bed with "big business" and "government" in bed together, an academic discovering that there were no social problems if only someone would pay him for the discovery and Hobart's own radical preacher who led the assembled congregation with "The People's Prayer".
The audacity of the idea also inspired many who wanted to challenge "globalised injustice".
The blockade bloomed by 11am when 300 people turned up for the scheduled rally and heard a range of speakers challenge the corporate rich and champion the different aspects of a platform for justice.
Trish Moran from the Greens, Jay McDonald from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Petula Broad from the Council of Single Mothers and their Children and Sarah Cleary from the Democratic Socialist Party took up different angles on globalisation but all pointed out that the rising global movement was making an enormous impact and was starting to win the political debate.
While individual trade unionists participated in the blockade and rally, Unions Tasmania did not provide an official speaker.
During the rally, organisers got their aim of completing the blockade of the AMP building, when people linked arms and surrounded the whole building, several rows deep at some points.
The march around town that followed was icing on the cake, visiting "corporate scumbags" like the banks, Sportsgirl (which has refused to sign the Homeworkers' Code of Practice) and Forestry Tasmania.