I woke up at 7am this morning an joined some of my hockey pals to try and deploy a wide banner on Paris' Concorde bridge. Waking up was tough, I fell asleep again and missed the first deadline. I eventually joined 3 people near the Condorde bridge, where we finalized our banners. Our aim was to protest against the demolition of our fieldhockey pitch, scheduled to take place in June. If we can't stop it, our pitch will be replaced by a brand new rugby stadium, at a cost of around 150 million euros. The vote to decide whether or not to go ahead is taking place tomorrow at Paris' city hall. The plan was for people to deploy banners on most of Paris' bridges, from the Alexander 3 bridge to the Pont-Neuf and plenty of others. The Alexander 3 banner was deployed first and led policemen to quickly go and have it removed. We deployed ours about 10 minutes later, but policemen were there almost as soon as we put the banner in place. They were very nice, politely asking us to remove it - though they didn't allow me to go and take a picture of it from below first. Anyway, a least I asked! Then a security guard from the city arrived. He was much less nice and asked for our names, birthdate and addresses. I'm not quite sure what they will do with it but apparently freedom of speech or not I might still land in front of a judge... Time will tell :-) Most important lessons from the day: * Paris in the early morning is very nice, the light of the morning sun made my day (it's raining now)
* When you try being a protester, planning is key. For instance we didn't have someone dedicated to taking pictures, which was a bit stupid
* When at a landmark, the police gets on stage fast. Like, real fast.
* Coordination matters a lot. The first banner got deployed and shut down before ours was ready. This gave the police more time to get organized and react. Below are a couple pictures of the banner after it was removed, and another of people displaying it at their window in a flat close to the stadium.
* When you try being a protester, planning is key. For instance we didn't have someone dedicated to taking pictures, which was a bit stupid
* When at a landmark, the police gets on stage fast. Like, real fast.
* Coordination matters a lot. The first banner got deployed and shut down before ours was ready. This gave the police more time to get organized and react. Below are a couple pictures of the banner after it was removed, and another of people displaying it at their window in a flat close to the stadium.
