g20 pittsburgh

I walked through Pittsburgh, starting from my base camp, the small town of tents “on the hill”. Sniffed a lot of exhaust fumes, found broken houses and large bill boards. And finally some other places where already today protest preparations can be seen.

Curious people have to search long to find out about events ahead of the main action. The daily “Pittsburgh Post-Gazette” comments about the situation: "It is very hard to keep track of all of the protests planned around the G20. It would help if the anarchists were much better organized, and with a bigger marketing budget." So – maybe it will turn out to be a strong point of the protest that everything here is a bit confussed.

The police has some trouble coping with all. Yesterday the officers had to admit that they have not read the conditions for the two larger demonstrations (the “March for Jobs” and a demonstration with the motto “G 6 Billion Journey & Witness”) and were blocking the demonstrations longer than they were allowed.

Already at 7am the sun is shining. The city of tents has grown. Not the area, that remained quite small, but colourful tents are standing now where yesterday still was open space. There was short-lived excitement because of a “break-down” of the bus from Rhode Island. Then came the “all clear”. The group could continue their travel, in front of tent city the first bus from New York stops.

… slowly the camping ground is filling up.

There are workshops ahead of the “March for Jobs”

There intense discussions about “health insurance”, “workers’ rights” and “right of housing”