WTO, black block on the 10th

On September 10 in Cancun we had the most militant action against the WTO. It was the day claimed by the Campesinos (small farmers and rural laborors) and organized by Via Campesino, a world wide campesino organization. About 10,000 of us gathered at the Casa de la Cultura where the campesinos stayed and had held two days of forums. The march was primarily campesinos from southern Mexico but campesinos and farmers from many places in the world were present as well as students, anarchists, artists, maoists, local people and all sorts of foriegners. We marched to the fence (8 foot chainlink with barricades behind) that the police had set up to stop us from getting to the WTO summit 5 miles away. Lee Kyung Hae, former head of the Korean farmers association climbed the fence then commited suicide. This was a shock to everyone, even the Koreans that work as organizations and not by individual acts. Although there have been quite a few farmers in Korea who have committed suicide versus the destruction of thier way of life. The Koreans continued the protest by burning a big offering. The campesinos then broke through the fence but had to retreat since they were being hit by rocks from protestors or provacaturs. The Black Block (Mexicans and foriegners) was having a meeting to decide what to do as parts of the fence was turned over. We were told that the campesinos wanted help with the fence. We joined in and turned a big section of fence over and battled cops. Police tried to stop us and the crowd threw rocks at them and they threw them back. Then there was a big battle at the hole in the fence. There were many heavily armored police but some protestors had shields and long poles. We got 3 police shields and a few batons. Niether the police nor us could or would advance so we just fought along the fence. The campesinos stayed and had speakers and a rally the whole time and were only mad about the rocks. Many protestors were hit by rocks thrown by police but only a few were really injured. I was hit in the chest while waving a flag on the fence in the begining and in the knee while neer the battle front. I also blocked a rock with my flag pole and cought one. Throwing rocks at armored cops with shields all next to eachother is pretty useless. The Black Block decided to move back and the battle slowly ended as the campesinos asked it to. We fealt that since this was the campesino day we should respect thier requests but we did discuss it a lot amoungst ourselves. Many other groups had fought the police as well. The campesinos drove thier truck into the battle zone and asked those left to stop the fight and later a juggler and others calmed the situation that was at a clear stale mate. Later I went to take a photo of the Koreans at the front and suddenly they all charged the police shields so I had to too. I found myself in the 3rd row from the front, just up neer the police shields so I grabbed a baton and with an Italian helping yanked it out of the cops hand. Bravo, Bravo shouted the Italian. The campesinos had rituals and distributed corn/maize seeds and spelled out NO OMC (NO WTO) with them as well. Campesinos denounced the world wide violence and destruction of the WTO. The infernal Noise Brigade from Seattle played and a Mexican band showed up and played as well. It was a good day and only a few people were injured and not many people were traumatized, no one was arrested. More importantly we were able to express our anger and creative energies (mostly agaist the steel fence) and gain a sense of unity and cooperation.
I fealt that the Black Block was very organized and respectfull and also got to express itself through militant action. The Black Block and the campesinos gained mutual respect for eachother and continued to coordinate with each other. All groups worked together (exept those who threw rocks in the begining and hit the campesinos) and militant and non militant actions were hapening in the same place with mutual support. Everyone had a place to do the actions that they thought were most apropriate. Clearly the media characterized us as violent but they couldnt ignore us as usual, given the choice between irrelevant or destructive I choose the latter.
We had a strong action that sent out our message to the WTO on the first day of the Summit.