Beltway Area Indymedia

The United States Social forum opened on Wed, June 27 with a march of thousands through downtown Atlanta-protesting issues very familiar to DC activists such as a proposal to PRIVATIZE Atlanta's only public hospital.
I heard it said that Atlanta is following DC own the path of structural adjustment-about 7 years behind.

A wide variety of people were represented at the kickoff march-and the first two speakers before the arch left were two members-one an 85 year old elder- of the Cherokee Nation, on whose land Atlanta sits.

Unfortunately, a dangerous mistake was made in calling marchers to line up in the street prior to the speeches, which totaled up to an hour or so for everyone. There was no cover from the sun at all, and thermometers in the city were showing aq very humid 100 degree plus reading.

That wait in the sun may well have put someone in Grady Hospital and certainly had the potential to. During the later march I saw two people down with heat exhaustion or worse, and had to bring one case that had not been notified by anyone else to the attention of the marshalls so a medic could be summoned. On the other hand, organizers had the good sense to secure an umbrella for that 85 year old Cherokee elder to speak from under too as to protect a particularly vulnerable person.

Every campaign his its blunders, and I doubt that when the program was set a heat wave of this magnitude(S wind from Gulf of Mexico feeding it) was expected.

Once everyone got moving, the march visited a MARTA(subway) station to protest the budget cuts MARTA is getting, Grady Hospital, and several other sites associated with domestic structural adjustment.

This is just the beginning, and the USSF gets underway in earnest tomorrow-along with a focussed protest starting at the McDonalds in front of Grady Hospital aimed at keeping Atlanta from repeating DC's mistake of abolishing their publicv hospital(in this case, by transforming it into a private, for-profit institution).

Just getting to Atlanta was an utter nightmare of bus transfers and over-and-hour layovers on Greyhound(I suspect I would never be allowed on a plane in the US). The initial bus left DC at 7:30PM, taking until after 9AM for the final bus to get to Atlanta. This was in spite of travelling through the middle of the night, where the only traffic jam was the final AM one in Atlanta.

There were some interesting observations on the way-especially huge billboards in (I think)S Carolina advertising a porn shop, which when seen from the road appeared to show signs of considerable fire damage to or around both doors.

I guess this is how right-wingers in this area show their dissaproval of the sex industry-with a Molotov cocktail. Of course, that fire could just be the work of someone incensed about the shop's sponsorship of those giant billboard ads, but nodoby else using these eyesores showed any signs of fire damage.

In Charlotte, NC, there was another issue: Greyhound passengers there were subjected to CNN'w Lou Dobbs ranting and raving about immigrants and immigration on a big screen TV. What a way to spend a 4Am to 5 AM buy layover-hearing that racist hurl offensive insults in a bus station full of African-American and Latino passengers! Help sew up Lou Dobb's big mouth-don't buy anything advertised on on any of his shows or on any station or network showing his filth.

About the heat-last time I was here(DNC and Stop-the-KKK 1988) a song I wrote in 1991 about it featured references to firewalking in summer streets.