Freedom Not Fear 2011/Brussels/day-of-protest

Saturday, 17.9.2011 - Day of protesting

Day of protest

European policy making is affecting our every day lives and civil liberties more and more. The EU is increasingly imposing unnecessary and disproportionate governmental surveillance measures on us. We will not take this any longer. Let's carry our protest into the capital of the EU!

We invite you to join us for a protest march "Freedom not Fear - Stop the surveillance mania!" in Brussels on Saturday, 17 September 2011.

When?

Saturday, 17.9.2011

• from 13h30: gathering together at place luxembourg
• from 14h00: starting manifestation at place luxembourg
• ca. 15h00: manifestation at place schumann
• ca. 16h30: going on at chapel madeleine (near grasmarkt)
• ca. 18h00: closing/ending the manifestation

Where?

The route of our demonstration has been discussed with police and finalized as you can see on the following map:

Important notes:

• we have three points of manifestation, where we will have some speeches, addresses, music and informations

• first point of manifestation is the place luxembourg in front of the european parliament building (we are not allowed to enter the esplanade right in front of the mep's house, the pavement of place luxembourg is allowed to use, please do not block any public bus crossing the place)
• second point of manifestation is near place schumann in front of european commission and council of ministers (we are using a place east of the traffic circle)
• third point of manifestation is in front of the madeleine chapel near the place grasmarkt in the centre of brussels

• the route from the first to the second point of manifestation will be accompanied by brussels police, they will close the streets on our route.
• at the next route from place schumann to the centre of brussels we may not disturb or block traffic but may walk and move as normal people do (please pay attention to traffic lights as normal brussels people do). but we are allowed to use our signs, banners and anything similar, we are allowed to give away our hand-out-flyers to people who are interested in what we are standing/walking for and of course we may sing, shout or remain silent as everybody is allowed in normal life.

Virtual walk of protest

At this videoclip you can have a preview of our walk of protest.

Important Information

Basics

Aims and advices

We intend to voice our concerns to politicians and the public. Therefore bring anything to show what our protest is about: signs, banners, flags, cctv-dummies, clothing, costumes or anything else.

Please do not use flags or signs of political parties that do not contain any (more or less substantial) message.

It's up to you if you like to shout, cry, sing, hug or remain in silence at all. Feel free to do anything like that, but please respect the people passing by. Affronting or flaming doesn't help at all and ist not solidary.

Slogans

Please note slogans that we can use during the protest:

• Democracy needs anonymity!
• Free Speech! Democracy! / Free Speech! Privacy!
• I'm not on Facebook, I'm not on Google+, if you want more surveillance, don't count on us!
• WE ARE HUMAN NOT DATA - Stop the Control madness
• Privacy is not a crime
• Freedom Not Fear- stop the controlmadness
• Vrijheid in plaats van Angst

Freedom of assembly

Find some basic informations about the Freedom of assembly in the European Union and in Belgium here.

Speeches

We have invited some interesting people to join our protest in order to give us some inside information and to find the right words for our concerns. People with connections to any political party will not allowed to speak.

Confirmed

• Patrick Breyer (de, AK Vorrat)
• Tony Bunyan (uk, Statewatch)
• J.M.T. (Miek) Wijnberg (nl, Vrijbit)
• Alexander Sander (de-at-be, noPNR.org)
• Twister alias Bettina Hammer (at, journalist)

Possibly to join us:

• Jeremie Zimmermann (fr, La quadrature du net)

Invited (unconfirmed)

• Caroline de Geest (be, Liga for Mensenrechten)
• Lars-Henrik Paarup Michelsen (no, Stopp Datalagringsdirektivet)
• Katitza Rodriguez (us/es, Electronic Frontier Foundation)
• Simon Davies (uk, Privacy International)
• Knut Albrecht (de, AEDH)
• Malcolm Hutty (eu, EuroISPA)
• Raf Jespers (nl, Progress Lawyers network)
• Christina Zaba (uk, journalist)
• Becky Hogge (uk, open rights group)
• Peter Hustinx (eu, data protection commissioner)
• Thomas Hammarberg (eu, human rights commissioner)
• Meryemn Marzouki (IRIS / EDRi)
• Caspar Bowden (FIPR)

Unable to join us

• TJ McIntyre (ie, Digital Rights Ireland)
• Anne Roth (de, annalist.noblogs.org)
• Axel Arnbak (nl, Bits of freedom)
• Rolf Gössner (de, Internationale Liga für Menschenrechte)
• Matthias Monroy (de, telepolis)
• Rena Tangens (de, FoeBuD)
• Heiner Busch (ch, Solidarité sans frontières)

Contact with local authorities

Michael and Kiki are taking care of that. Local authorities have been notified of our protest march on 4 July 2011. Some details (route of protest march) yet need to be discussed with the police.

Saturday evening

For the side events of saturday have a look here.

Travelling and acommodation

• travel by bus from Düsseldorf and Bielefeld (18.-20.9.2011) incl. hotel (****) via FoeBuD [1] 65 Euro