December 16, 2009 View all news WEDNESDAY 16TH - The MachineToday I am not part of FoE but just representing myself. I am taking part in the bike bloc part of the Reclaim Power action. I look fairly silly. At 8.30am I'm wearing two of everything, waterproofs and cycling with streaming eyes towards the Bella Centre in what feels like a blizzard. Regular Danish cyclists zip past hatless and gloveless on their way to work. Our affinity group works well. After we hear that many others have been arrested the bike bloc regroups. We manages to hold a stretch of road beside the Bella centre clear of police vans for the people's assembly to take place. There is a period of confrontation when they see what we have done. I can't stop trying to look them in the eye as they push us violently and throw us and our bicycles into hedges and ditches trying to reduce the space we are guarding. Each time I expect them to suddenly see me and stop. They seem non-human. We begin chanting - 'We are peaceful - what are you'. It seems to help. We hold the line for a few hours as the people's assembly happens, and eventually the police leave us alone. We hear that 200 delegates have been blocked from join the people's assembly by the police. In the morning by text I hear that FoEI have been completely shut out of the convention centre, along with Via Campesina and another group. It's unbelievable. Without critical voices inside the Bella Centre is becoming even more undemocratic and opaque to all of us - the perfect cauldron to cook up a bad agreement that will lock us into centuries of climate injustice.One of the journalists asks us - 'what happened to The Machine? Where is it? I've been waiting to see it for months' to giggles all round. Perhaps he should try looking inside the Bella Centre. Something is grinding away in there sluggishly- consuming corporate lobbying platforms, spitting out civil society, to make an agreement 'for all'.