On Friday it was time for an FYEG action. As you all know the Catholic Church has been spreading the word that condoms are a cause of AIDS and help to spread it. Some cardinals even say that condoms are infected with AIDS! We as young greens wanted to make clear that spreading these lies is very dangerous. They will affect a lot of people, Catholics and others. To make our opinion clear we had an action planned near the Vatican, we were in Rome so why not at the headquarters of the Catholic Church! But it was a bit too risky and we didn’t want to put the Greens in a difficult and negative sight, elections are upcoming.
On a square in Rome we gave away the condoms made for the FYEG Europe campaign. On it was the name of the campaign website: www.commonfuture.org. Some of the FYEG people were wearing huge funny fake condoms around themselves to make the action a bit more explicit. Most of the people were enthusiastic about the action. Only some nuns were not amused but we managed to give some a condom, so maybe 😉
Media coverage was good, but a bit late. We were unfortunately out of condoms and pamphlets when two television crews arrived and made report of it. I think Euro news will show the whole European Green event from 27 February till 5 March? So check it out.
So all together it was a good media action although it was a pity that we didn’t have it at the Vatican itself. But there were little people who wanted to get arrested accept from some Belgians and German die-hards :-). FYEG should keep up this good tradition to have every event at least one media attention moment. A demo like this was a success!