BY TIM STEWART
BRISBANE — At times, the scenes outside the stock exchange on 123 Eagle St on May 1 resembled one huge street party, with chanting, cheering, speech-making, dancing, and chalking up slogans on the pavement, all taking place in front of a solid wall of police.
Throughout the day, 1500 people rallied to the cry of "human need not corporate greed, shut the exchange down!", "Third World debt, no way! Make the corporations pay!" and "Whose streets? Our streets!".
The police had themselves blockaded the stock exchange before the masses had even arrived, with carparks closed and all entrances to the corporate tower barricaded with water-filled road dividers chained to the building. Forced into a change of tactics from the planned human blockade to a boisterous rally, the M1 protest was nevertheless filled with many different expressions of anti-corporate anger.
Dotted throughout the crowd were individual placards: "McGreed", "Banks are Robbers!", "Multinationals don't pay tax. Which is why we have the GST", "End the Drug War".
Unemployed Persons Advocacy sent greetings to the demonstration which read "To those who claim that the economy is working, ask someone who isn't. Share the work, share the wealth, good one M1!"
The "Corpor-rats" — dressed in business suits and wearing felt rat heads — made their way through the crowd and then on through the city handing out monopoly money.
One group dressed in palm fronds had a banner simply stating "Learn". They made their debut to the sound of a Pacific Island conch shell and did a war dance, as hundreds gathered around them.
M1's momentum was maintained from the early hours. One M1 Alliance member told how the communicators meeting at 6.30am was interrupted by the sound of person crashing to the ground from a fig tree: an experienced forest protester had spent the night dozing on a tree trunk, waiting since 1am for the action to begin.
Hundreds of students organised by SCAM, Students Campaigning Against Multinationals, gathered outside Starbucks and then marched as a bloc into the protest under the slogan "S11, M1 ... here we come, corporate scum!"
Despite the official permit for a peaceful assembly blocking off downtown Eagle Street from 10am, the protest spilled onto the street from 7.30am with impromptu speeches, drumming and chanting.
By mid-morning there were contending opinions about which way the protest should go: either a speakers' platform outside the stock exchange or a street march through the city.
At this point, burly undercover police officers dressed as "businessmen" caused a provocation in one corner, providing a pretext for many arrests. A student from Lismore suffered a serious blow aimed underneath his ribcage — and was rushed to hospital with internal bleeding.
An office worker disturbed by the provocation shouted at the police, "Haven't you got anything better to do than trying to stop this protest?" She was promptly arrested for disturbing the peace, along with dozens of others during the day.
While police were not using batons for crowd control, many people caught on the front line complained of severe bruising in unusual places.
From the speakers' platform, Griffith University student Barb Rosendale gave a blistering speech on behalf of the indigenous Turrbul people, welcoming everyone at the protest to the land "but not the thieves hiding inside that [stock exchange] building".
The Democratic Socialist Party's Karen Fletcher meanwhile denounced Pauline Hanson, saying "We've got more in common with workers overseas waging a struggle for better conditions than we have with Australian companies that sack workers or expect big government handouts. We are the beginning of a tide that's turning against corporate globalisation and in the end, the people will win."
But many protesters believed the most inspiring speech came close to the end of the rally, from dairy farmer Shane Paulger, the state president of the Australian Milk Producers Association, who has twice led anti-deregulation rallies to Parliament House.
Paulger was cheered on when he said, "We believe that free trade and globalisation is the beginning of the end of dairy industry in Australia. And it's high time that we spoke out about it!"
The rally finished on a high note, with people vowing to make the official Labour Day parade an M1 victory march.
One hundred people later gathered outside the Brisbane watchhouse for several hours to support the 49 people who were being held after their arrests. One had been arrested for saying "Queensland police suck".