Friday 29th of March 2024

Nude Bicycle Protest

Willie Bach, a Brisbane activist and Green's candidate, sent me this. I'm pretty sure it was for publication and I like it.

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Alpha and I lent a hand today to a bicycle protest that has landed us in court - for 'wilfull exposure' - but now we get the chance to say a few more things we want to say:

Thirty peaceful protesters on bicycles today took to the streets of Brisbane to protest against the obscene waste of money that our City Coucil is squandering on a tunnel under the Brisbane River. They will be building a 5.5 km tunnel under the river just for cars (no trucks, no buses and no bicycles).

This road tunnel will cost A$12 billion (US$5 billion) to build and will make money for construction companies, engineers and banks. Public contributions to private profit are an essential part of Neo Liberal economics. We think this is obscene and it is inequitable.

We also find it obscene that the military have to be sent to Iraq to kill people so that we can put petrol in our cars. We also find it obscene that our politicians had to lie to get public acquiescence for their war of aggression against Iraq.

We find it obscene that our government locks innocent people in concentration camps so that they will be so distressed they lose their sanity. Refugees flee from the kinds of oppressive governments that our own government installed in power (The Taliban and Sadaam Hussein spring to mind as wel as others). That is obscene too.

We think it is obscene to spend billions on obsolete infrastucture and our privileged lifestyle when most of the world starves.

We were stopped by the police and will be charged with 'wilfull exposure' - though they could charge us with the lesser charge of 'public nuisance'. They were worried that the lesser charge wouldn't stick. Just be flexible, eh!

We were not actually arrested and taken to the police station, though two other guys were. I was interviewed on ABC TV about the police asking me to put some clothes on. They were happy with a pair of red jocks (we have high public standards here in Queensland).

So, we will have to appear in court in June and will have to go to the police station to be finger-printed as though we were criminals (although this is only a 'simple' offence). We have to remember this is the 'age of terror' and accept intrusions into our civil liberties. Do we? Don't worry, we're not very worried.

We will get an opportunity to say that four police cars, a paddy wagon and a motorcyle and two more senior officers attended the 'incident' in Alice Street at the gates of the Botanic Gardens for over half an hour at our expence. One officer photographed us without our consent. I suppose they could be checking their files for 'terrorists'.

We have plenty of digital video and photos taken by other participants. I will send you pictures or they will be on the web site of the group.

So, is nudity anything to do with sexuality or obscenity? I think not. So, what is the big deal about not wearing clothes as a protest against obscenity?

Stack of Smoke

The ultra modern looking tunnel stack at Darling Harbour was built last year without anyone raising an eyebrow. The few articles in the paper were not followed up because when the journalists had put pen to paper the stack was already half-way up.

Keep up with the naked-truth-on-bikes.