these meetings that are going on with chancellor merkel and the president, you know, is quite a distance from here. and these protesters are not following these meetings bit by bit and they re not necessarily protesting any certain policies, but in many cases, the overall idea of the g20, the overall idea of the policies of these collective countries. as we were driving through the streets, just a short time ago, after we landed from warsaw, poland, you see a lot of banners just anti-g20 banners. the motto here is, g20, welcome to hell. so a lot of globalization protests, things like that. but again, the leaders, as close as they will see these, brooke, is on their television screens. this is not something they are in the thick of at all here. the president has moved on to a dinner meeting with some other world leaders. the prime minister of japan and others here. but again, as i look out into the distance, the fireworks, another one just went off there. there s some ships along the wa
zones where no demonstrations are allowed. this was supposed to move along the road and make its way around the outer perimeter of what s called the messahaland and it literally was able to move about 200 yards down the road toward here. it was then going to circle around town a little bit, so didn t get very far. but we re still a ways away from where any of these meetings are taking place. it s where the demonstration had been taking place the entire day so i would say it s at least two miles from where the actual meetings are taking place. brooke baldwin who is here and will take over as we watch this developing situation on the streets of hamburg. john berman, thank you so much. i want to welcome our viewers here. you re watching live pictures here. this is hamburg, germany. this is the epicenter of the g20
things just sort of kicked off. and you can see that they re still using that war cannon truck back there to sort of clear the area on the side because the police were securing the perimeter to the left of where we are right now. sort of trying to get people to move away from there. yeah, and it looks as though this demonstration, by the way, john, this demonstration, it moved maybe 100 yards before it got stopped. so, we ll wait and see if things calm down and if they get moving again we right now, it sort of doesn t look like it. fred, can you give us a sense of how far this activity we re seeing, the pushing and shoving between the demonstrators and the police, the smoke, the water cannons, how far is it from the meetings themselves? reporter: well, it s actually pretty far. i would say it s about a mile and a half, maybe two miles from the actual center where the g20 is going to take place. and obviously where a lot of the meetings are going to take place, the sort of exclusion
s.w.a.t. team officials with white helmets who have lined up to essentially block what would be a running path or sort of a promenade along the river there and there was orange smoke coming from some of these protesters. this is usually the sign of tear gas or something like that. we hear intermittent shots. do not believe they re gunshots or anything like that. but perhaps just a cannon of tear gas or something. but brooke, i can tell you, from our vantage point here, there are a lot of people. and a lot of police. and as fred was just saying on the air, we are a couple miles or so from where a lot of these moe mo meetings are going on so this is not something that the president can see. in fact, most world leaders never see those protests unless they see them on our air, but this is something that is pretty typical for a summit of world leaders like this, brooke, but i can tell you the visuals are pretty strong here and the sun is still, you know, pretty hot at this moment. it will b