Jack & Jill Politics

Hey y’all. I’m at the Central Hall in Westminster in downtown London in the center of the action. London’s streets are eerily empty — there’s a great fear here of the protesters. Many downtown workers chose to work from home or take the day off. There is a heavy police presence. 

Protesters have dubbed today “Financial Fools Day” — I think you catch the meaning. @G20Meltdown, one of the protest organizers, just tweeted this:

We’re at the Bank of England. All roads closed. Now we await the Climate Camp swoop of swoops. 

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You can listen/watch the livefeed here from G20Voice bloggers meeting and planning for tomorrow’s G20 Summit here. If you’d like to organize your own G20 event, check our www.We20.org — people all over the world are organizing their own meetings to make their own recovery plans. What NGOs here want is a reform of global governance that addresses climate change, poverty and international development that’s sensible and sustainable. The status quo is clearly unacceptable and developing nations are being hit even harder than we are: 20 million people in China at least will lose jobs this year and too many lack severance or benefits.

There’s also quite a lot of buzz today about Barack Obama who’s just arrived here in London. As I said, the first African-American president here in the UK: it’s pretty majorly historic at a majorly historic time in world history. BBC News has video from Obama’s joint press conference with the UK’s Gordon Brown here and has published Obama’s schedule today (you can also see it in the side nav on our site):

0800 Obama-Brown breakfast

1015 Obama-Brown press conference

1145 Obama-Medvedev meeting

1330 Brown begins further bilateral meetings

1400 Obama-Hu Jintao meeting

1630 Sarkozy-Merkel press conference

1730 Obama meets Queen at Buckingham Palace

1900 G20 reception with Queen at Buckingham Palace

2030 State dinner at Downing Street – beginning of summit

Here’s a quote from Obama’s first press conference:

President Obama said that the world was facing the most severe economic crisis since World War II.

He said the G20 had to reject protectionism and support emerging markets, and called for countries to work together. 

“The United States is committed to working alongside the United Kingdom in doing whatever it takes to stimulate growth and demand and to ensure that a crisis like this never happens again,” the US President said.

It’s been fascinating to meet bloggers from around the world. One blog I recommend is VivirMexico.com which is one of the most popular in Mexico. Blogger @JessicaUribe is super-cool. I also recommend Socialblogger.de (@socialbloggerde) and Escolar.net. There’s also www.Blacklooks.com which is a popular London-based site focused on African politics, very cool (@blacklooks). There’s a real drive to blog for those who can’t blog and also to use our voices to represent communities around the world who want to see real people benefit from these G20 meetings.