G-20 Summit: More Police Than Protestors on London Streets
Today's protests pale in comparison to the thousands on the streets yesterday.
LONDON, April 2, 2009 — -- British police have formed a ring of steel around London's Docklands as G-20 leaders gather there for a summit to tackle the global economic crisis.
A few hundred protesters at most were gathered around the security cordon, which police set up hundreds of yards from the Excel conference center.
"The police won't let us get us close to the Excel center. We are about half a mile away. We are quite annoyed about that, we object to it," Lindsey German of Stop the War Coalition told ABC News.
Today's protests are much smaller than the demonstrations that drew thousands into the streets Wednesday.
"It is a much more typical crowd today with small groups trying to bring attention to their causes. The barricades and security are enormous," ABC News' Miguel Marquez reports from the scene.
Dominic Casciani, blogging for BBC News, said he'd "seen more people turn out to oppose a Tesco supermarket's planning application. This multi-cause demonstration consists of a bloke dressed as a gorilla, various left-wing groups, a polite Ethiopian group and a smattering of NGOs."
Casciani doubted if these protesters' appeals will reach the ears of the G-20 leaders.
"Let's put it this way: if that famous smoker Barack Obama gets a ciggie break, and if it's up on the roof of Excel, and if he just happens to be looking through some binoculars possibly borrowed from his Secret Service detail, he might just might see a flag half a mile away (subject to the mist)."
Meanwhile across town in London's main financial district a smattering of mostly young protesters gathered to play a giant game of Monopoly. "The question is of course who has got the monopoly? It is fairly obvious the G-20 are the global financial elite," protester Clare Smith, 27 told the Press Association. "Meanwhile the poor are getting poorer."
The police presence was also strong here. Police arrested a couple of people for climbing on statues and potentially damaging public property.
In total 107 arrests have been made in the last two days, the vast majority of which were Wednesday, when some protests turned violent. The most troublesome scene occured when protesters stormed a Royal Bank of Scotland building, smashing in windows and attempting to occupy it. After the building was cleared, riot police on horseback arrived to make sure protesters didn't invade the bank a second time.
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