"Repaint The Streets" - 300 people roam the streets of Dublin, clogging up traffic on Car Free Day

dublin | anti-capitalism | news report Tuesday September 23, 2003 13:14 by Indymedia Kevin - IMC Éire

A report from last night's RTS.

A brief report on RTS

Approximately 300 people showed up at the Spike on O'Connell Street for the "Repaint The Streets" action. The crowd was a 50/50 mix of cyclists and pedestrians.

Right from the beginning the large Garda presence was wandering through the assembling crowd, searching bags and belongings, confiscating cans of spray paint, house paint, stencils, road diversion signs, and other paraphenalia the RTS people had brought along. Several people had their names taken when their belongings were taken off them but there were no arrests.

Hip Hop duo "The Man and The Machine" got the crowd worked up before they moved off. The Man (recently out of Mountjoy Prison) does MC'ing to the human beatbox of the Machine (Belgian Oxford University-educated). They really do work amazingly well together and the crowd loved it.

At 5.30pm the crowd moved off down O'Connell Street. The first stop was on O'Connell Bridge. A "human sound system" where information was repeated to the crowd was set up, informing people that most of the paint had been taken, the Garda were threatening people with arrest and prosecustion for criminal damage if any of the street was painted, so the action turned into something of a walking Critical Mass.

The crowd walked down D'Olier Street and then back up Westmoreland Street, turning onto the quays in front of the USIT office. From arriving latecomers, reportedly traffic was backed up all around Amiens Street and well back up towards Christchurch. 3 Dublin Bus officers also walked with Gardai, relaying information about where the crowd was going.

At the corner of the quays and Eustace Street, the crowd slowed down. Nobody was sure exactly what was going on. A chant began: "Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!..." and the Garda started to panic. At the end of the countdown, the crowd suddenly turned right and raced up through the streets of Temple Bar, stopping the traffic at the junction of Dame Street and Georges Street. It took the Garda several minutes to arrive and direct traffic away. One car was caught up in the middle of the crowd and started beeping his horn, but soon backed down when surrounded by the crowd.

The crowd then moved up in front of the Central Bank, where the Man and the Machine did their thing again for a while. They stayed there for half an hour or so, and then moved off again down Dame Street, looping back around towards Grafton Street, and then back down Suffolk Street again in a circle.

They then stopped again on O'Connell Bridge, to chat and play music. After another 20 minutes they moved up O'Connell Street, still accompanied by massive amounts of Gardai. At this point the Garda were taking chalk away from people who were drawing on the ground, which seemed a little ludicrous.

Some of the crowd linked up with the anti bin tax march at the Garden of Remembrance but others wandered up to the RTS after party in Bodkins.

Sorry I dont have any photos today but the camera is acting the bollocks with me.