linksunten Archiv

a merciless subjective report

In order to protest against the many chicaneries against the activists prior to the nato-summit, a demo was started at the camp, which made sense, of course. I joined the protest with friends, too. It was not a problem for me and others – dressed colourful and not masked- that big parts of the demo were walking masked and dressed mostly in black. Most of the others didn't complain either, because action-tactics of the black block are appropriate in many cases. The demonstration started strong with chants in many languages. In Germany, a march like this would have been surrounded by the police immediately – this did not happen here, however. So far, so good. Soon after the march came to a section with barbed wire fences... from place to place some police could be seen behind the fences - , the march passed what seemed to be some barracks, and the first stones were not long in coming.

Of course not everyone was taking part, but everyone was involved in the context and not against it, and soon parked cars, bus stops, in short everything in the way also got broken. In any case not all protesters were involved in these actions – some even tried to get in between. These actions weren't successful overall and further split and frustrated the demo who no longer wanted to be the backdrop for senseless destruction.

Until today the residents around the camp generally seemed to be sympathetic to us and our concerns – but everything has its limits. The mainstream media and politicians will take off with this – that they knew all along about the kind of “terrorists” that come together at such summits.

Now, I'm sitting frustrated in the camp, i've spilled out enough on the keyboard and hope, that we still have the opportunity for communication like in Heiligendamm. Had there been a clear action consensus at the beginning and had it also been taken care that this would be known, it would've been easier to handle these either civil cops or left hooligans.. at one of the blockades in heiligendamm the civil cops' efforts to escalate things were able to get cut off, but i'm afraid that today there were idiots in the demo, who did their work without getting paid for it.

Apart from the broken connection to the outside another thought springs to mind. Such an act breaks solidarity. Not far from the camp there quite a lot of people penned up. Usually I would've been there already, to put pressure on the cops and to bring practical solidarity to the people. But now, I am so frustrated – and now again – not entirely unfortunately – because the idiots from a while ago are getting a thrashing from the police... completely aside from the fact that one gives the cops a pretext to attack the camp (tear gas clouds and helicopters are now in sight...)

hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day!