[OccupyComms] Fwd: [Radical-europe] Fwd: Blockupy article

[Mark Barrett]

By Occupy London's John Sinha and reposted at
http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2012/05/occupiers-report-from-frankfurt/

Frankfurt is the head quarters of the European Central Bank, part of
the  troika including the EU and the IMF imposing a so-called bail out
of the Greek Economy. The catastrophic consequences of this bale out
on Greek society and attendant fiscal austerity being imposed on that
country by the likes of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, Mario
Draghi of the ECB and Olli Renn of the EU Commission. These, and
similar bale out conditions for Spain and Ireland have been well
documented in the media.

The blockupy protest comes at time when the electorate in both Greece
and France have decisively rejected the politics of austerity at the
ballot box, and where the Dutch government has just collapsed over the
same issue. Rather than take stock of the democratic decision made by
electors in these countries,  Angela Merkel first responsed to
Francois Holland's victory was to state that the Fiscal Stability
Pact, the attempt by Europes elites to hardwire neoliberal austerity
into the EU, was not negotiable.

Blockupy Frankfurt follows an arc of protest spanning the globe this
Spring resisting the strangle hold that big finance and big business
have on our democracy.

Arriving at Frankfurt's central station on a drizzly evening, this
strangle hold was very much in evidence all over the city. On every
corner I saw squads of bored looking and tooled up riot police
stopping anybody and everybody that "looked" like a protestor. Such
was the hysterical response from the authorities that the joke amongst
activists was that the authorities did so much to build and publicise
the week of protests. First they imposed their very own blockupy,
effectively  shutting down the city´s financial district; they imposed
a police cordon around the financial district, again, preventing
anyone looking like a protester from entering; they physically evicted
the Occupy presence camped outside the European Central Bank since
15th October; they turned away coach loads of protesters at the border
from entering Germany; the University was shut down for four days -
perish the thought of activists mixing it with the local student
population. I spoke to Danielle a sabatical officer from the student
council who made available the student union building to accommodate
the protestors from all over Europe. She told me that the riot police
planned a Genoa style raid on the on the student union building and
place banning orders on all those present from entering the city.
Also, it was the presence of the media and MPs from the Left Party who
were acting as witnesses which deterred them from carrying this out
according to Danielle.

Something which stirred up just as much controversy was the city wide
ban on demonstrations applied for (at short notice) by the city
government comprising a "black green" coalition in the administrative
courts. Never mind that the protest organisers had appealed against
this to the Federal constitutional court (a time consuming process),
as such a ban violates the post-war constitution of the Federal
Republic on the right of its citizens to peaceful assembly. This
cynical tactic was used to gain an interim ban which was upheld by the
the lower courts pending the appeal. Evidence - if any was ever needed
- that we cannot rely on the courts to defend our democratic rights
anywhere on this continent.

The authorities also banned a public meeting that David Graeber was to
give in a theatre, this had to be rescheduled at the last minute to
the only building not controlled the the authorities, the student
union building at the Frankfurt University campus.

Whatever the authorities were attempting to achieve, the clamp down is
a political defeat for the government. Even the conservative press was
criticising the over the top response of the government. Despite the
clamp down, and over three hundred arrests, it did not deter over
25,000 demonstrating against austerity and the discredited neoliberal
ideology from which it emanates.

Blockupy is an umbrella organisation of groups comprising a
politically diverse array of organisations including anti-fascist and
anti-racist groups such as the Antifa and the No Borders network to
the Left Party. Most interesting for me was what is known here as the
Interventionist Left, this is a non-pary organisation of which there
is no equivalent in this country. They are well known for organising
large scale and well planned direct action protests involving
thousands of people, such as the anti-nuclear transport blockades,
which happen every year in November in Lower Saxony. With the
exception of the anti-nulcear movement, this kind of unity is rare in
Germany, but its the kind of unity that can bring over 25000 people
onto the street of Frankfurt. Not forgetting also was the large scale
mobilisation from Spain and Italy which put this protest on the
international map and forged the kind of unity which made this all
possible.

Speaking to activists who had been at the receiving end of all thi,
the mood was not one of dejection or dispair. They can see in the eyes
of the authorities the fear they have if this movement spreads to
wider sections of society. But for that to happen the movement still
has a lot more growing to do. A British trade unionist I spoke to
noticed the paucity of trade union banner reflecting a weak trade
union presence. This is probably because the German trade union
bureaucracy is not feeling the heat from the base they way they do in
the UK. According to  Alexis an organiser from Attac, the DGB, the
German equivalent of the TUC received over four hundred million euros
in contributions from its affiliate union this year. This is largest
figures ever and makes the DGB one of the richest unions in the world.

What we have also witnessed this week in Frankfurt is the same pattern
being repeated all over the northern hemisphere. That in order to
impose neoliberal austerity, the response of the authorities is to
further limit our democratic right to protest. These actions, and
those taken by unelected "technical" governments  imposing austerity
reveal a fundamental incompatibility between neoliberalism and even
the kind  of tepid democracy we have all lived under in the west.

At the end of the weekend my impression is that the tactics the
authorities in Frankfurt, and elsewhere, use against us are not
sustainable in the long term for every time the authorities carry out
such an assault on our democratic rights they de-legitimise themselves
a little bit more and give our movement more legitimacy. We don't need
to respond with the same kind of violence they meet out to us. But we
need to expose it and in so doing build a movement that will bring an
end to the system they defend.