People are gathering, regardless of what the usual organizers for the Friday protest have said (that they are not "organizing" this week's event because they have more important things to "organize" for Sunday).
Yasumi Iwakami tweeted this photo:
IWJ's Channel 1 is live, with Iwakami interviewing the participants:
Live broadcast by Ustream
IWJ's Channel 5 is also live:
Live video for mobile from Ustream
I see many middle-aged men and women, and older - the very generation that was ridiculed by some of the organizers of the past Friday protests (except today)
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9 comments:
Great to see it. There is no stopping this movement.
Good to see that the "organisers" have pissed off somewhere else and leaving it to the real people who care
The young protesters will end up being fickle Twitter zombies who simply follow the crowd to whatever's 'official', this time the Diet protest. Because of their lack of dedication and perseverance, the protests will fail...that is unless they can get serious and drive the wedge in on one issue until it tips.
all out violence is the way forward , protest are a laughing stock ... people need to get real , the enemy is within and its the staus quo and the government ... time to stop being nice.
@Anonymous at 11.19 am
There are a million ways between being nice and violence, which have not yet been tried or even thought about. Protesters are not a laughing stock. I doubt the government is laughing about the protests. Violence will give a welcome excuse to label protesters as terrorists and to "shoot back". I think that is what the government and the nuclear village want. All out violence from all sides will result in a civil war like status - for sure a way to delay, for a long time, any changes of japanese society for the better and for some big animals a route to escape criminal charges. I wonder why you are promoting violence.
But I agree that only being nice will achieve nothing and that success is urgently needed. Time is running out - quite literally for some.
@anon 11:19
What are you purposing as "all out violence" knocking down police barricades and fighting with the police? That would anger the general public a lot more than nuclear power. You did see the pictures of the protesters holding umbrellas over the police in the rain right? You aren't going to force an Arab Spring styled rebellion against nuclear power in Japan because a vast majority of the Japanese people aren't violently opposed to nuclear power.
All out violence won't work in Japan it would totally turn the public against the protesters in one swift motion. Change takes time, if in 20 years the haphazard "decontamination" turns up some undeniable adverse consequences more people may be willing to question nuclear power but I doubt it will ever escalate into violence. The people in charge would like nothing better than to have a public safety excuse to shutdown the protests and investigate all activists. The government isn't afraid of nutjobs they welcome the distraction, violent action would allow them to move the focus away from the dangers of nuclear power and put it squarely on the danger of "terroristic" protesters. Did the Oklahoma bombing help private militias thrive in the US? No, it gave the government the excuse to ignore portions of the Constitution and clamp down ten times harder on them and by extension the general public.
It doesn't help your cause that governments see nuclear facilities and their operators as national security assets and apply a different set of rules when defending them. Violent opposition is a sure way to a long prison sentence or possibly a morgue, good luck with that.
@ Anon 11:19:
There once was a group of young people in Germany who, like many others, disagreed with the direction their country was going in and who thought the same way you did: peaceful protests change nothing and action is needed. In short, violence - true to its nature - quickly escalated, isolating the group from even those who initially shared their political views and concerns.
They became known as the Red Army Fraction (RAF) and, after a lot of senseless bloodshed and at tremendous financial cost to the public, ended up imprisoned and dead - WITHOUT CHANGING A THING!
(Recommended reading: The Baader Meinhof Komplex by Stefan Aust - if you speak German.)
Change can only be achieved peacefully and over time and only with the backing of vast majorities of the population. This backing always goes out the window as soon as violence enters the scene! Counterproductive all the way around.
*mscharisma*
FYI: Sunday 29-JUL Tokyo demonstration details (Japanese only) at http://coalitionagainstnukes.jp/?page_id=648
Agreed: violence by a small group of people without the support of a large base has little chances of being successful, usually only helps those in command. See RAF in Germany but also Red Brigades in Italy or G8 demonstrations in Genua a few years ago.
Some idea to leverage the huge public support for an exit from nuclear energy is desperately needed as utilities eye more restarts and the government pushes for the so called "15%" energy policy proposal, which implies a restart of all npps.
One idea could be to advertise more widely over the internet some Fukushima horror stories like "decontaminated" parks turned into dumps (see comment from Chibaguy), people leaving cities or old folks dying while being evacuated. Should, god forbid, another accident occour I bet the story would be repeated.
NHK aired excellent material along these lines... mostly late in the evening :(
Beppe
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