Blogs Dashboard

 Filed by Erik Kirschbaum

   You know you’re at a special kind of demonstration when the protesters clean up after themselves — and the police trying to contain them leave behind a mess.
     I’ve spent most of the last three days following the anti-G8 demonstrators who’ve come from around the world to try to disrupt the Heiligendamm G8 summit.   

    They brought a lot of plastic water bottles, paper plates, cups, beer bottles and all kinds of wrapped food with them on their long hikes through forests and wheat fields to get past police security to reach the fence surrounding the world leaders in Heiligendamm. They took control of the main roads leading into the Baltic Sea village for much of the last two days.
   Even though some demonstrators left their emptied bottles, used paper plates, empty cups and beer bottles lying on or near the blockaded roads, I’ve seen volunteer clean teams making regular sweeps up and down the 500 metre long stretches of “occupied territory” on the roads. They carefully sorted the rubbish into paper, plastics and returnable glass bottles.

 The left the rubbish in blue plastic bags neatly set up alongside the road every 50 metres or so.

By contrast, the riot police I’ve seen standing opposite guarding the fence have for the most part simply dropped their empty plastic water bottles and containers on the ground behind them, leaving rather large and unseemly piles of trash.
    The only time I saw protesters leave their empty bottles was when nine police water cannon blasted about 1,000 of their number at a blockade at the western access road to Heiligendamm. The water cannon and riot police pushed them 100 metres away from the road, leaving their refuse behind them.