THE REVOLUTION WILL BE TELEVISED

“Altogether we shot about 40 hours off footage between five or six cameras. We decided in advance that we'd contribute to the Independent Media Centre in Genoa. The IMC idea originally came from the protests against the World Trade Organisation in Seattle. People were worried that the anti-globalisation movement wouldn't get a fair hearing in the mainstream media in the States. They set up a working space with technology and a self-publishing system. People could publish their own reports, video clips, sound recordings, all using the web.

"In Genoa the Independent Media Centre was a base to work from, and we all felt a kinship with what they were doing. Since Seattle there's 40 or 50 of these independent media centres around the world. It's a completely voluntary, non-commercial thing.

"In Genoa there were a lot of people doing video journalism or video activism as it's called, to counter the biased view mass media always takes at these protests. Independent reporting became very significant because the police were let off the leash in Genoa and indiscriminately beat protesters on the streets.

"A lot of people got disturbing footage of this. It was the equivalent of the Rodney King case in LA, over and over and over.

"Another significant thing was that an Italian film director shot very compromising footage of the police with a big group of people dressed as masked rioters. In the footage they appear to be giving directions to the police and taking directions from them, and walking behind police lines. The implication was that there were police provocateurs working in Genoa, that there were lots and lots of police undercover going round dressed as rioters, or 'Black Block'.

"In a general way from all the footage that was shot you do see that the police weren't trying to target the anarchists, or really cracking down on them, they were just pushing them from one area to another. It was the peaceful protesters that they were really attacking, and gassing, and pepper-spraying. In case after case there were people sitting on the ground with their hands in the air getting beaten senseless.

"The significance of all this is that both the police and the people in the Independent Media Centre were aware that we had a lot of very important footage. A lot of police brutality and what looked like sabotage had been captured. So on the night of the 20th July, the second day of protests, there was a lot of fear and paranoia – which was justified as it turned out – that the police would come and try to take the material. A collective decision was taken to put all the tapes in a big box and ship them out somewhere safe.

"The next night the Independent Media Centre was in fact raided, as were the offices of the legal teams of the Genoa Social Forum. Here they confiscated and destroyed the hard drives of the lawyers' computers, where they had all the accounts and testimonies about police brutality. They only managed to take a small amount from the Independent Media Centre, because like I said, most of the stuff was already hidden.

"The Media Centre was in a school and directly across the street there was another school which was being used as a sleeping place by protesters and people working as medical volunteers – a very international bunch of people. The police raided this school and beat them all so badly that around 15 had to be taken out on stretchers, and I would estimate that 30 or 40 ended up in hospital beds that night.

"People said afterwards that only for the fact that there was an Italian MEP present in the media building the same thing would've happened there.

"Our bunch had literally walked out of the centre 20 minutes before this happened. We were in a pizza place around the corner. Because of the craziness of what was going on outside, ourselves and some mainstream journalists

pretty much stayed in the restaurant for the next five hours. There were police with tanks lined up on the street outside, so we feared for our safety.

"Two brave members of our group filmed what was happening outside the two schools. You can hear people being beaten, the screams, you can see the MEP remonstrating with the police, and the injured people being taken out.

"These tapes and all the tapes in general from the Independent Media Centre are being used in the Italian enquiries, and also the Amnesty International enquiry.

"The whole experience proves just how important the independent media are. A lot of the time mainstream journalists will shoot this stuff, but for whatever reason it won't come to any attention.

“When you're an independent journalist nobody owns the copyright to your tape in advance, so it becomes free information that can be distributed freely throughout the web. There's no filters on it like there is on stuff from the mainstream media." b

To acquire a video of the Genoa protests, write to [email protected]. Footage from Genoa – as well as alternative media reports from around the world – can be accessed through the independent media site www.indymedia.org. Once accessed, go to the Italy or UK video sites.