At 10 AM on July 2, I met a small group of international activists at Haneda Airport for an 11 AM flight to Sapporo. It was a flight I was sure would get shot down, but none the less, we boarded anyway. A little more than an hour later, the cityscape below turned into beautiful green mountains with occasional snow caps, and we landed into Sapporo. Upon arrival, all 15 of us in the group were stopped by police, who demanded to see our passports, asked what the purpose of our visit was, and record our identifications. Part of our group was a small ad-hoc legal team, so they took pictures of the police officers. Luckily, no one was detained or interrogated further.

After 24 hours straight of travel from Sapporo to Tokyo to Atlanta to New York, I'm finally back and able to update our blog that has been neglected in the storm of some amazing activity in the last two weeks; meetings, forums, socializing, sightseeing, protests, meetings, concerts, jail support, planning, travel and smashing global capitalism. I'm actually amazed that I made it back in one piece, and without getting detained.

 There has been hectic and productive activity here in Japan, and we (the ISC delegates) are pleased to report that we have been making strong and meaningful relationships with our comrades from the All Freeters Union. Unfortunately, one of our comrades (in addition to three other folks) were arrested at a large demo in Sapporo on Saturday afternoon. Funds in general are low, and legal funds in particular are very low. The arrestees are facing a possible 2-3 years of jail time, and so any donations would be gladly appreciated. Please contact diane@indymedia.org if you can help. We greatly appreciate anything you can donate, and thank you in advance.

Solidarity,
FW Diane Krauthamer
ISC Delegate to Japan

 

 

Arrival in Tokyo: Anti-G8 activities, local labor struggles, and sightseeing
by Diane Krauthamer

The International Solidarity Commission of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) is sending a delegation of four workers to the anti-G8 mobilization in Japan from June 28th to July 10th. During that time, the delegates will participate in the anti-G8 activities. We plan to work closely with the All Freeters Union during the mobilization. We hope that this delegation will help us to develop a strong solidarity relationship with the All Freeters Union, while hopefully also meeting with other independent labor organizations. We are very excited to have this opportunity.

We are: Diane Krauthamer (U.S.A.), Abe Greenhouse (U.S.A.), Canopy Son (Australia), and Sabu Kohso (U.S.A./Japan).