April 2: Street activity in Budapest on Good Friday
02/04/2010 Greenpeace GE campaigner for Hungary, Balazs Tomori (R) speaks to the press about the campaign for a GE Free Future.
On Good Friday the GE-Free Future bus was the centre of a street activity in Budapest. By 11:00 am all political parties were invited to come to sign the 5 points to act against Amflora and ban it immediately, go to European Court of Justice against the Barroso led European Commission since they did not respect precautionary principle and the opinion of memberstates and asked to fight for a moratorium on all GE authorizations till it is not reformed, because none of the memberstates of EU are satisfied with it by now. We also asked them to support organic agriculture and save our important state owned seed-banks as they were threatened by financial problems.
The new green party, Lehet Más a Politika (LMP) sent its’ delegate, Tordai Bence, who promised all we wanted in front of significant media attendance. The other 5 parties said that they did not do political campaign at Easter (Good Friday) and left work for the Hungarian team to chase them to sign the promises.
02/04/2010 Bence Tordai of the Lehet Mas a Politika (LMP) party, a member of the European greens, signs the Greenpeace GE Free Future bus.
While Tordai Bence made his statements to President of the Commission in the bus, the enthusiastic Hungarian activists collected lots of signatures to the petition. You can also sign online here. In 3 hours more than half thousand people joined our efforts to stop the Barroso led commission to authorize any new GMOs and guarantee a GE-Free Future to us.
02/04/2010 Greenpeace volunteer Kauacs Balint (R) and Marezi Sara (L), prepare their papers to collect signatures from the people of Budapest, as part of a petition for a GE free Europe.
Fredrik had to buy a new microphone to one of the cameras inside and Emma got a terrible headache right before we finished the activity at Blaha Lujza squarre in Budapest. When went back to our accommodation where JJ and Jens prepared the bus for a really long journey, the Budapest-Rome long distance drive.
Actually, that was my last day with the crew and the bus and felt really sad to leave this enthousiastic, motivated good team and the not-so-slow and not-so-uncomfortable bus! Jonas, the campaigner of Greenpeace Belgium will take my seat and will help local campaigners to achieve their goal.
Surely, we had a memorable trip so far : having visited by ministers, majors, trade union leaders, NGO allies, organic farmers and carrying a big bunch of interesting comments and messages to Barroso and Spanish president along the its’ road from The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, France.
Good luck to our Amigos in Spain, there is more to come!
Bob Tomori Balazs
PS: Many-many thanks to the fantastic crew of the bus:
- Emma - the photographer,
- JJ - the captain, logistic coordinator and 2nd driver of the bus
- Jens - the reliable driver and precise mechanic
- Fredrik - the local food lover, motivated and interested Swedish volunteer
It was really a pleasure to work with all of you!
Picture credit: © Emma Stoner / Greenpeace