KinderGarten Anarchists Welcome Bush
While Over 20,000 people marched in Vienna yesterday in
opposition to George Bush's arrival, Austria's "KinderGarten
Anarchists" (KGA) used the opportunity to meet other young
anarchists and spread their ideas to the youth of their
nation. George Bush became the first US president to visit
Austria in over 27 years yesterday as he arrived for an
EU-US summit similar to the one held in Shannon (Ireland) in
2004. Police bomb squads blew up three suspicious packages
and closed down the airport-city motorway in preparation for
the visit while planned protests passed off peacefully with
only a handful of arrests despite huge police numbers.
An anarchist bloc of around 70 masked up youths joined the
march to voice opposition to all politicians not just bush,
the anarchists also had a small contingent on a demo earlier
that day as 3,000 students walked out of school in protest.
This school demo was organised by Trotskyite and socialist
youth groups who are longer established than the
Kindergarten Anarchists.
Bob, a 16 year old anarchist and member of KGA, explained
how he felt Austrian politics was dominated by socialists
and reformists and how there needed to be a real alternative
to Capitalism, "I'm part of an anarchist youth group in
Vienna, we decided that it is definitely necessary to
demonstrate as anarchists against bush because the whole
mobilisation was coming from Trotskyites and reformists, so
we organised a meeting to talk about what to do."
Organising for the protests against bush helped the group
build up contacts across the nation and the KGA hope to
build a network of young anarchists across Austria to
provide a real alternative for young people. "We talked a
lot with other young anarchists from different cities in
Austria and they told us that they are also trying to build
up anarchist youth groups. I was very happy about that and I
think if we are able to build up an Austrian wide network it
would be a very big step!"
“This network is just an idea so we will try to do that and
we heard from young anarchists in Salzburg that they also
would like to do that, I think its very important to make
connections and to know that we aren’t alone, we think that
we have the chance to do that, there are enough people in
Austria so we hope that we will be able to make our ideas real”
KGA are now preparing for the Anarchist Summer Camp which is
being held near Vienna in July, “The next big happening is
the anarchist summer camp where we hope to meet as much
young anarchists from Austria and all over the world as
possible”. They are also in discussion with Ireland’s
Anarchist Youth hoping to form a European anarchist youth
network to facilitate the current resurgence in anarchist
ideas amongst young people.
Related Links:
KinderGarten Anarchists
Anarchist Summer Camp
Anarchist Youth Ireland
