Last week-end a sort of national demo was called against Max Mara in
Bologna. This is called AIP in Tour and is a monthly meeting of different
local groups in one town for a bigger demo, a socializing/benefit event
and monthly meetings.

In Bologna the idea was to demo 2 shops at a same time. But the police a
couple days before gave some restrictions and gave permissions for just
one demo in a very central square of the city, but 500 mt from Max Mara
shops!

The answer was fast and great: the demo took place in that square, with a
total of 70-80 people, a normal information demo against fur ad max
Mara... but at some moment the demo moved in the middle of the road
blocking the traffic, in order to divert the police while someone was
going to do a lock-on at one of max mara shops where the demo was meant to
have place.

The chaos was great but the group of activists ruching from the square to
the shop to support the locked girls arrived too fast (with police on
their back) before the activists could lock themselves. The people stayed
here for an illegal demo anyway and the police lined in full riot gear in
front of the entrance. So, shop N.1 was almost closed an stayed like this
for more than 1 hour.

In the meantime 2 police vans moved from shop n.2 to shop n.1 and the two
locking-girls managed to go there, enter the shop and lock themselves near
the door ( at anti-shoplifitng stuff that i do not know how it is called).
Shop n.2 was closed. Police lined in full riot gear also there, blocked
the area front of the shop and it remained closed till closing time.

In this chaos the group in the square continued to stop the traffic once
in a while and another group went to Max Mara shop n. 3 for a demo, where
again the police lined and actually closed the shop for more than 1 hour.

In all occasions activists said the police they were just expressing their
right ti protest in front of the shops, and only because of the
restrictions this chaos erupted.

the two girls were taken to the police station for a few hours after they
delocked themselves when the shop was going to close fr the evening. They
have been charged with disrupting a business and criminal damage of two
dummies (that a policeman actually damaged while trying to delock them).

it seems also a lot of activists face fines for illegal demo.

This was a very very bad satyrday afternoon for Max Mara!

Some pictures will be online soon, not so good, but all this action was
planned at the last minute and everyone was doing chaos instead of taking
pictures:)

see link with report, a video and picture of this symbolic action.

http://maxmaracampaign.net/en/demo-repo ... rt-40.html

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On march 2nd Max Mara was presenting their new collection at Milano
Fashion Week.

On that day activists of AIP decided to be there and show the people and
press the reality of the fur trade that Max Mara is still financing.

The action was very visible and attracted a lot of people. The security of
the fashion show were irritated and tried to push the activists away, take
their banner and in the end they lined in front of them in order to hide
the action while a reporter was trying to film it (see here:
http://new.c6.tv/archivio?task=view&id=3213).

After 15 minutes the activists managed to go away without any trouble.

Unsatisfied with doing it just once they came back after an hour, in front
of another entrance where hundreds of people were coming out of another
show. The action this time was even more visible and attracted a lot of
attention.
Some people were already speaking about the previous action against Max
Mara, and here it is again!

we are sure everybody in the fashion system will have heard about this
campaign against Max Mara now, with hundreds of fashion experts, press and
companies managers seeing us and receiving a leaflet.

Not really a good publicity for Max Mara!

See a short video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpO2ibUfa8