Blockupy Frankfurt Day 2: 17 May — for the freedom of assembly

17 May 2012
By
23;32 CET: We close today’s blog with a link to the excel­lent photo slideshow of Ster­neck.
21:58 CET: One can­not doubt the import­ance of today’s protests and their suc­cess­ful­ness. What occurred in the Paulsplatz in par­tic­u­lar had been declared offi­cially and leg­ally inex­ist­ent by state and court. Yet, as the demon­strat­ors held their cop­ies of the Ger­man con­sti­tu­tion aloft, the police shrank from the square and the cit­izenry could pass onto the Roe­mer­berg. The reflex­iv­ity of demon­strat­ing for the right to demon­strate itself made a mock­ery of court decisions uphold­ing a mani­festly author­it­arian gen­eral ban on protest in Frank­furt. On a cool but sunny day in May, once again the Paul­skirche gazed down on an epochal struggle for the rule of the people.
20:08 CET: RTL2, the Ger­man cable chan­nel, seems to be chan­nel­ing Fox News. It is speak­ing of demon­strat­ors ready for viol­ence even as they show pic­tures of demo­crats hold­ing the con­sti­tu­tion high in Paulsplatz.
19:30 CET: Römer: Some police using painholds to carry away the last demon­strat­ors, some of the car­ried away are scream­ing of pain, reports BlockupyPresse.
19:26 CET: Good to see Frank­furt Uni’s Prof. Frank Nonnen­macher (social sci­ence and polit­ics) with his col­leagues at the protest, to defend the basic right of assembly against the gen­eral ban in Frankfurt.
19:19 CET: the Roe­mer has been largely cleared on the north side by the police. The jus­ti­fic­a­tion: protest is forbidden.
19:10 CET: the police stop again, and wait fur­ther orders.
19:05 CET: the clear­ance has begun in earn­est. Ger­man musi­cian Kon­stantin Wecker calls this the “funeral of demo­cratic rights”. Oth­ers “cap­ital versus humanity”.
19:02 CET: Clear­ance of Roe­mer looks immanent.
18:35 CET: situ­ation ser­i­ous now in Paulsplatz/​Roemer. Police mov­ing in in riot gear.
18:05 CET: A sit down protest is block­ing police entry to the Roe­mer. This was, after all, a Roman for­ti­fied camp once.
17:45 CET: Police call­ing for pro­test­ers to leave the Roe­mer by the south side or face clearance.


16:52 CET: the Hessischer-​Rundfunk chan­nel which has been ped­dling the “approach­ing bar­bar­ian hordes” line of Boris Rhein is soften­ing its line favour of the pro-​democracy protests. They run the above image call­ing it “a great pic­ture” of “peace­ful protest”.
16:45 CET: People stopped in transit to Frank­furt have allegedly been asked to sign bits of paper in which they renounce their right to protest. No com­ment required. Appar­ently 9 buses from Ber­lin have been hal­ted or turned back (hat-​tip Jan­ine Wissler)
16:30 CET: riot police have just exited from the front of Frankfurt’s his­toric town­hall, thus enter­ing the Roe­mer at the middle of the demo. They have formed a line in front of the Town Hall.
16:25 CET: Police have formed lines with a view to clear­ing Paulsplatz. About 2,000 people on the Roe­mer are chant­ing go away to a police line which is block­ing the nar­row exit of the Roe­mer onto the tram­lines that pass by Paulsplatz.
Protest in Frankfurt's Roemer
15:48 CET: (above) the Roe­mer is now packed as cit­izens take advant­age of the appar­ent relax­a­tion of police restric­tions. Pic­ture taken from the steps of the Town Hall.
15:38 CET: with the police in tem­por­ary with­drawal tents are going up on the Roe­mer­berg and in Paulsplatz. People are singing the White Rose of Athens and the atmo­sphere of a peoples fest­ival reigns in the May sun­shine. 500 people are cur­rently out­side the Town Hall. Oth­ers remain in Paulsplatz.
15:21 CET: first tent erec­ted on the Roe­mer­berg — the square next to Paulsplatz where the Town Hall is loc­ated and which con­sti­tutes Frankfurt’s civic centre.
15:13 CET: situ­ation eases at Paulsplatz as Polly takes the kettle off. Demo­crats in good voice. Some raise the aims as if in vic­tory as they move back into the centre of the square.
15:09 CET: an inner and outer kettle at the Paulsplatz now. People remain with linked arms.
14:56 CET: Police decide press con­fer­ence on steps of St. Paul’s Church at 15:00 is can­celled. Blockupy dis­agree. Another clause of the con­sti­tu­tion (press free­dom) hit by aus­ter­ity cuts?
14:46 CET: at the main rail­way sta­tion, where people are still dis­em­bark­ing all the time, ten­sions are increas­ing. Police are pulling on hel­mets. In Paulsplatz the pres­sure is also being increased; the police say­ing they have asked demon­strat­ors sev­eral times to leave the square.
14:13 CET: dur­ing the last attempt by the police to make arrests the demon­strat­ors clev­erly kettled them­selves by link­ing arms and mov­ing as one.
14:07 CET: it appears that the police that moved in became ringed bychant­ing demon­straters, and so have retreated. Applause in Paulsplatz.
14:02 CET: the police have moved in on the Paulsplatz demonstrators.
13:56 CET: the police kettle is itself sur­roun­ded by many more people who have come to Paulsplatz.
13:48 CET: fin­ance news: shares in Spain’s Bankia bank have fallen on news that EUR1bn has been with­drawn by wor­ried depositers.
13:33 CET: police have now kettled the Paulsplatz demo — no entry to the square.
13:30 CET: there are assem­blies as Basel­er­platz (rail sta­tion), Bock­en­heimer Warte (old uni bldgs), and “demo­cracy test” demon­stra­tion of about 300 people pro­ceed­ing from the uni­ver­sity under police supervision.
13:10 CET: people now call­ing for the resig­na­tion of hard­line interior min­is­ter and failed Frank­furt may­oral can­did­ate Boris Rhein. Hard not to think he is pun­ish­ing Frank­furt for his elect­oral defeat last month.
13:05 CET: up to a thou­sand people at Paulsplatz. A del­eg­ate from the mighty trades union IG-​Metall has been speak­ing. The police at the scene seem relaxed enough but 30 police vans have been seen speed­ing up the road along the Main river in this direction.
12:46 CET: over 400 people in Paulsplatz. Some are hold­ing up cop­ies of the Ger­man Constitution.
pic.twitter.com/pbgyhUfB
12:30 CET: Paulsplatz now.
12:16 CET: main rail­way sta­tion (Basel­er­platz) at the moment. There are about 200 people also at the Roemer/​Paulsplatz.
12:09 CET: police spokes­man “protest action today could endanger the cur­rent per­mis­sion gran­ted to Saturday’s demo”.
11:32 CET: the police have con­firmed they have stopped 5 buses now at the Bad Hom­burg inter­sec­tion north of Frank­furt. An act­iv­ist has told the Hess­isch Rund­funk news-​channel that the buses have been placed in a motor­way con­trol area and port­able toi­lets have been installed. It looks like they could be there a long time, reports the activist.
11:18 CET: The police are demand­ing access to the the prop­erty of the Ger­man Alli­ance of Trades Uni­ons (DGB), which sits near the lower Main river near the main rail sta­tion. They wish to pre­vent assem­blies organ­ising there.
11:05 CET: Fun­nily enough, as the Fed­eral Con­sti­tu­tional Court handed down its decision on Blockupy yes­ter­day, it was being vis­ited by a del­eg­a­tion from the UK Supreme Court, led by Lord Hope. Appar­ently dis­cus­sions covered “rela­tions between con­stituional courts and par­lia­ments” and “the role of con­sti­tu­tional courts in European integration”.
10:45 CET: fin­ance news — the rat­ing agency Fitch have con­cluded that banks are short USD566m in meet­ing the incom­ing Basel III cap­ital requir­ments for fin­an­cial insti­tu­tions. The express point of Basel III is to cre­ate banks which will be able to meet any crisis without hav­ing to be bailed out. The point, how­ever, is not simply that banks have failed to meet Basel III, but that Basel III is aston­ish­ingly weak in its demands. One of the his­tor­ical examples on which Basel III attempts top ground itself is that of Cana­dian banks in the 1930s, which fol­low­ing a build-​up of cap­ital reserves in the fat years, weathered the Great Depres­sion. Recent aca­demic research has shown that the cap­ital reserves of these Cana­dian banks was (with due his­tor­ical adjust­ment) 22% higher than the require­ments set by Basel III today. Con­clu­sion: Basel III is not fit for purpose.(ref Wag­ster, (2012) J. Bank. Reg. 89).
10:30 CET: there are reports that at least one Auto­bahn junc­tion around Frank­furt (the Bad Hom­burger Kreuz) is sub­ject to police check­points for sus­pi­cious vehicles.
pic.twitter.com/3YjJWTea
10:10 CET: hat tip to Blockupy for the above pic of police board­ing one of the Ber­lin buses headed for Frankfurt.
10:00 CET: Incid­ent­ally, yes­ter­day the spon­sor of the com­plete ban on protest in Frank­furt, coun­cilor Markus Frank, stated that the fed­er­ally affirmed Kas­sel Court decision for a ban of all protest until Sat­urday was “for­ward look­ing”. It seems that extraordin­ary meas­ures may be in place, but that the future is likely to be per­man­ently extraordinary.
09:45 CET: Police have con­firmed they have stopped three buses attempt­ing to reach Frank­furt am Main from Ber­lin. Has an entire city been kettled?
09:10 CET: Reports that three buses car­ry­ing people to Blockupy Frank­furt from Ber­lin have been stopped by police and escor­ted back.
09:03 CET: there are sug­ges­tions that people are being pre­ven­ted from trav­el­ing from Ber­lin to Frank­furt am Main. The last time the Ber­lin author­it­ies did that people had to cross into the west via Hun­gary and Austria.
08:55 CET: The Blockupy Alli­ance have announced a revised “cul­tural pro­gramme” for today, in spite of the ban:
10:00
Die Linke and Europe. Dis­cus­sion with Alex Demirovi? (TU Ber­lin), Florian Becker (RLS) und Alexis Pas­sada­kis (Attac). Mod­er­a­tion Thomas Sablowski (RLS). DGB-​Haus, Room 4.
12:00
Meet­ing point at the main rail­way sta­tion Haupt­bahnhof: Take the square!
12:00 – 20:00
Mani­fest­a­tion for an unres­tric­ted free­dom of assembly, Paulsplatz
13:00
Rights instead of com­pas­sion! Con­cern­ing food price spec­u­la­tion with ref­er­ence to E. Africa /​Anne Jung (medico inter­na­tional), Jan­nika Römer (attac). Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
14:30
ABC of Altern­at­ives. Book read­ing Ben­jamin Opratko (Zeits­chrift Per­spekt­iven, Wien), Sabine Lei­dig (MdB, DIE LINKE). Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
15:00
The reduc­tion of life expect­ancy in Greece — how the crisis is effect­ing social con­di­tions /​Med­ibüro Ham­burg und medico inter­na­tional. UG Zelt hinter dem Stud­i­er­end­en­haus, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
15:00
Met­ro­pol­itan strike and/​or Class war? Tac­tics and forms of action in the crisis. Dis­cus­sion with Thomas Seibert (IL) and Wolfgang Schaum­berg (Occupy Bochum). IL Zelt vor dem Stud­i­er­end­en­haus, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
17:00
Flash­mob for the inter­na­tional Day against Homo­pho­bia, Hauptwache
17:00
Demo­cracy instead of Fiscal pact. Dis­cus­sion with Céline Menese (Partie de Gauche, France), Mar­gar­ita Tsoumo (Demo­cra­cia Real, Gr+BRD), Hil­ary Wain­wright (Red Pep­per, GB), Dieter Dehm (MdB DIE LINKE), Mod­er­a­tion: Mario Can­deias (RLS). Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
18:00
Eductaion in the Crisis. How can educ­tion be defen­ded as a ublic good in Europe? Organ­ised by GEW with O. Cor­delier (SNES, France), T. Kot­si­fa­kis (OLME, Greece), R. Cope­land (UCU, UK), S. Adam (fzs), J. Nagel (GEW Hesse) in the Ökohaus, Kasseler Straße 1a
18:00
35 year mara­thon of res­ist­ance in a coun­try of change. Dis­cus­sion with M. Donat (BI Lüchow/​Dannen­berg). IL Zelt vor dem Stud­i­er­end­en­haus, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
19:00
Adopt a Revolu­tion — sup­port the Syr­ian upris­ing! Elias Perabo, Adopt a Revolu­tion /​Mod­er­a­tion: medico inter­na­tional. Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim
19:30
Transna­tional Assembly at the Gewerkschaftshaus
20:00
Crisis the­ory and crisis ana­lysis. Book launch with Ernst Lohoff and Antifa Frank­furt. UG Tent behind the Stud­i­er­end­en­haus, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim

08:45 CET: A quo­ta­tion to get us going anyway:

He who seeks to reg­u­late everything by law, is more likely to arouse vices than to reform them. It is best to grant what can­not be abol­ished, even though it be in itself harm­ful. How many evils spring from lux­ury, greed…and the like, yet these are tol­er­ated — vices as they are — because they can­not be pre­ven­ted by legal enact­ments. How much more then should free thought be gran­ted, see­ing that it is in itself a vir­tue and that it can­not be crushed! (Spinoza, Theological-​political Tract­ate Ch.20/41)


08:34 CET: The pic­ture above is of cent­ral Frank­furt in the 1848 revolu­tion: demo­crats storm a line of Hes­sian artillery.

08:30 CET: Morn­ing. Reports are that all was quiet overnight (Your crit saw and heard noth­ing, cer­tainly). What is inter­est­ing is that to a degree the days of protest have a tra­ject­ory which mir­rors that of the gen­eral crisis — an exist­ing move­ment against out-​of-​control bank­ing has been evicted — fur­ther move­ments have erup­ted against aus­ter­ity meas­ures, and now the repres­sion of both move­ments has refo­cused atten­tion on what law­yers would call civil and polit­ical rights.

One could argue that the author­it­ies have been suc­cess­ful in thus turn­ing ire away from Frankfurt’s bank­ing dis­trict and onto the Paulsplatz, where a sup­posedly illegal demon­stra­tion will take place in defence of freedoms of assembly and thought.

How­ever, those who have been pay­ing atten­tion to the global trends since the ‘End of His­tory’ will be fully aware that the con­veni­ent nexus between demo­cracy and cap­it­al­ism has been aban­doned in favour of the lat­ter (so-​called author­it­arian cap­it­al­ism). The doc­trine had its first examples in SE Asia, such as in Singa­pore and Malay­sia, but spread in naugh­ties to Italy and then wider. We need not repeat the recent European events which con­firm and expand this wave; Frank­furt tells us enough about where we are. The point is that only our cur­rent lead­er­ship could per­ceive that the eco­nomic and polit­ical as wholly sep­ar­ate, for it is this same lead­er­ship which has been well-​schooled in our dom­in­ant theology.

In call­ing for the end to the failed aus­ter­ity polit­ics yes­ter­day, Blockupy and Occupy were as much defend­ing and express­ing their polit­ical rights; by call­ing for the respect of polit­ical rights today, they are, with their pop­u­lar pres­ence, hold­ing up a mir­ror to gov­ernance by unelec­ted tech­no­crat and bond market.

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