Maccas protesters head to US

Protesters opposing a McDonald’s restaurant in Melbourne’s outer east will take their fight to the fast food chain’s head office in the United States. Resource-8

They are asking the 84,000 people who have signed a petition on the website change.org against McDonald’s building a restaurant in Tecoma to make a small donation to pay for one person to hand deliver the petition to the company’s Chicago office.

Group spokesman Garry Muratore says they have raised $16,000 in the first 24 hours.

“McDonald’s Australia might think that by sending in the bulldozers, they’ve won. They couldn’t be more wrong,” he said.

“The Tecoma community is not backing down and we will do what we can to tell the world that McDonald’s behaviour is simply not acceptable.”

Change.org campaigns director Karen Skinner said was believed to be the first time in Australia one of its petitions had been used to “crowdsource” donations for a campaign.

She said the 84,000-signature petition is the second largest it has hosted in Australia.

Weeks of protests blocking building on the site was broken up by police last week. Up to 50 officers used a cherry picker to remove women from the roof at the Tecoma site.

The Victorian Supreme Court last month ordered a temporary injunction blocking residents from disrupting the project and the case is due to return to court later this month.

AAP

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