Tuesday February 3: A 5.30am start is an early one for even the most committed of activists. But as I arrived into St Pancras International to be greeted by a sea of “NoTTIP” badges, the excitement began.

The next round of negotiations for the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) will be taking place tomorrow and there are about 100 of us ready to make some noise about it.

As I looked around our delegation I was pleasantly surprised to see a real diversity in age — all of us gathered with a united purpose. Our aim? Get to Brussels and expose the injustices that TTIP threatens us with, all of which are shrouded in the secrecy of the negotiations.

As we boarded the train dubbed our “NoTTIP Express,” the excited chatter of networking between the activists began.

With corridor-chatting and seat-swapping between people, a sense of community within the group had begun — we were off to a promising start.

We arrived at Brussels by midday and headed to the Corporate European Observatory for our walking lobbying tour of the EU quarter. The quarter is just a few square miles that has a concentrated number of lobbying offices of mostly big business. If TTIP goes through, it will see the biggest transfer of power to corporations in the history of trade deals.

Our tour starts at Deutsche Bank’s lobbying office, which spends, on average, £2 million per year. Our guide tells us that, thanks to the bank’s lobbying budget, their wish list — along with those of other firms — was used as a basis for the TTIP negotiation talks.

As the tour went on, it became increasingly apparent how privileged and undemocratic industry lobbyist access to EU decision-makers is. As we visited the offices of groups such as the American Chamber of Commerce and Business Europe, our guide informed us that these groups regularly hold conferences and lunches around the time of the negotiations for EU and US officials.

The last stop of the tour was a fitting end. We landed outside the offices of Philip Morris, a multinational tobacco company which is one of the biggest users of the investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) clause.

The ISDS epitomises the unacceptable amount of power we would be giving to big business at the expense of the people’s interests.

As I head back to the hotel I am feeling much better-informed about the lobbying world of Brussels. It is only by understanding our challenges that we can begin to tackle them and inspire others to do so.

Money might be power in the lobbying world, but I believe that people power in the real world means more.

At 6pm was the European Civil Society meeting. The panel of European civil society groups included Green MEP Molly Scott Cato and representatives of several other groups.

It was great to be talking about solidarity across Europe in our fight against TTIP. It started to occur to me that this TTIP campaign has for the first time given me a sense of a united and strong European community, and that was something special.

One of the panellists fittingly described TTIP as a “corporate Bill of rights,” legalised protection of profits at the expense of the protection of the people.

With the most recent TTIP leaks confirming that harmonising regulations and standards between the EU and US is firmly on the agenda, it is clear we need to shout louder.

The panel left me with a real sense of empowerment. It was refreshing to be reminded that the MEPs we’re meeting tomorrow are accountable to us. And as one of the panellists put it bluntly, we must remind our MEPs that ignoring the people you are meant to represent will cost you.

What struck me most explicitly by the end of the day was how much TTIP has unified activists from a wide spectrum, from fracking to the NHS, data protection to food and chemical regulation and pharmaceutical patenting.

As I get my placard ready for tomorrow’s protest, it really starts to dawn on me, that this is not just a TTIP campaign — this is the start of a movement. A movement that is challenging the neoliberal agenda across Europe and challenging the idea that profit is sacred. And I am so excited to be part of it.

Sakina Sheikh volunteers at Global Justice Now and works for Keep Our NHS Public