May 9, 2008

Venezuela: with the Brigadistas


A Gringa Diary has a free form wrap up of the latest Brigade to Venezuela from Australia.
May Day… [photos: people in red] speaking of Jammo- he was on the moon and dancing around at the May Day protest. It was pretty awesome. From about 9 till about 12 or 1 people met at Las Banderas train station and marched down to the centre. There was like a continuous stream of red on the road. I got my wallet stolen on the train, and it was hot and humid and a long march, but that didn’t dampen anyone’s spirits.
At the stage end there were speeches and music and some dancing, a few drunks, a few friendly people. We were pretty popular-interviewed for a few TV channels along the march and Coral and John even got up and spoke. The footage was played through the next day- I think we were probably the only country specific contingent there.
People were touched by the solidarity I think- both the people we met and spoke with- and just random people we met. One woman on a train had a pamphlet of one of Fidel’s speeches, and she wrote ‘revolutionary greetings to Australia’ on it, and gave it to me, saying she’d seen us on TV. --
Taking back dignity