more from the herald sun
Out of control
March 18, 2007 12:00am
DRUG use and under-age drinking have been exposed at a wild "all-ages" benefit gig for rioters charged over Melbourne’s G20 protests.
Children as young as 10 slugged beer in front of their dazed parents, a mother smoked cannabis beside a pram containing her baby and youths openly snorted powder off a table at Friday night’s event.The Sunday Herald Sun also found traces of drugs including cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis in all of the toilet cubicles. The tests were conducted with Securetec DrugWipe kits, used by customs officers and police.
The $5-a-head event was run to raise funds for protesters arrested over the riots during the summit of the world’s financial leaders in November.
Police were bitten, vehicles smashed and barricades and other objects thrown at officers as demonstrations degenerated into chaos.
About 300 people attended the G20 Arrestee Legal Solidarity Benefit Gig, which raged until the early hours yesterday in a former lingerie factory in Brunswick.
But anti-capitalist chanting and police-baiting that characterised the G20 riot were absent — replaced by drunken and drug-fuelled debauchery.
The landlord of the Pitt St venue, rented by a collective, said he had not been told of the gig, which featured punk rockers Pisschrist.
The party was advertised through message boards on activists’ websites, with charged Monash student Akin Sari helping to promote it.
More than 30 protesters, including a private school boy, have been charged over the G20 violence.
Police are bracing for more violence on Tuesday, with protests planned outside Melbourne Magistrates Court where four alleged G20 rioters, who were arrested in Sydney dawn raids last Wednesday, are due to appear.
The Sunday Herald Sun revealed this month the Bracks Government had agreed to a secret $700,000 payout to protesters who clashed with police in the S11 riots outside the World Economic Forum in 2000.
The Herald Scum & the Police have been running joint smear campaigns against activists of all kinds for ever. This whole story is a beat up, I attended this benefit with my husband, we saw nothing that was described in the beat up.
Comment by Ana — March 19, 2007 @ 4:59 am
Good to see protest planned for tuesday. Hopefully there will be plenty of cameras around so Mr Salver can get a few more runs on the board in the following weeks/months.
Comment by troll — March 19, 2007 @ 11:21 am
its hilarious. gutter/pig journalism at its best/worst
Comment by nup — March 19, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
Could there be better promotional material for any future benefit? I hope that selected excerpts will be used in advertising any such event, maybe with statements not merely taken from this piece but with tantalising hints of planned excess and transgression: organisers have quietly put out a call for drug dealers to attend and naked dancers, of more than one gender each, will be decorating the venue while hardcore lesbians snort cocaine off private school babies… You get the idea. Let the Herald Sun report that along with the time and date. Offer free passes for them and a friend, drinks tickets for Andrew Bolt…
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — March 22, 2007 @ 8:21 am