Blockupy Day 3: 18 May — German media: “Blockupy has already won”

18 May 2012
By
23.38 CET: Napo­leon once said: “you should never dis­turb the enemy when he is the middle of mak­ing a mis­take”. This seems to adequately describe today’s Blockupy activ­it­ies in which tar­geted and per­tin­ent Blockupy action simply offered a leit­motif for the furi­ous, absurd crack­down by the author­it­ies. Again and again observ­ers were treated to the spec­tacle of 5,000 police officers racing around Frank­furt to dis­burse small pock­ets of peace­ful protesters.
The polit­ical dam­age had already been done yes­ter­day in the Paulsplatz; today Blockupis­tas effect­ively adop­ted the stance of peace­ful bemuse­ment in the face of jack­booted pomposity.
As the day wore on the main­stream press, shocked into second thoughts by the noble images before the Paul­skirche, tipped in favour of the Blockupy Alli­ance, call­ing vic­tory for Blockupy in one case or at least dis­tan­cing them­selves from Boris Rhein’s macho-​politics in oth­ers. The failed may­oral can­did­ate Rhein looked pathetic as he deman­ded that tax­pay­ers thank him for “sav­ing” Frankfurt.
And now, to top off the day, the police have declared Frank­furt Uni­ver­sity a “danger zone”. They will be toast­ing that appela­tion at one of the spir­itual homes of crit­ical the­ory for years to come.
Gute Nacht! Bis Morgen.
23:17 CET: STOP PRESS Blockupy reports that the police have declared Frank­furt Uni­ver­sity a danger zone (Gefahren­zone) entitling them to search all on the prop­erty. An hon­our indeed. A law­yer is on the way to the scene although reli­able sources say­ing no escal­a­tion is cur­rently foreseeable.
20:08 CET: From our CLT Rep at the Hardt-​Graeber talk:
Grae­ber: in the inver­sion of the polit­ical sub­ject, aka horizontal/​direct demo­cratic form, we can find new subjectivities.
20:03 CET: police claim 400 people are in cus­tody. They omit to men­tion the grounds for detention.
19:55 CET: this is also some­thing, the Frank­furter Allge­meine Zei­tung, the tra­di­tional paper of Frankfurt’s bank­ing class, has writ­ten an art­icle express­ing its “unease” about the accept­ab­il­ity of the total protest ban. here in Ger­man. The art­icle is not­ably accom­pan­ied by an image of a pro­tester hold­ing the Ger­man con­sti­tu­tion as a defence against police repres­sion. For those try­ing to place the FAZ on the con­ser­vat­ive spec­trum, it only accep­ted to put pic­tures on its front page 4 or 5 years ago.
19:51 CET: our CLT rep at the Hardt lec­ture reports:
Hardt con­grat­u­lates us on clos­ing the banks. What is import­ant here is not its solid­ar­ity with other move­ments, but with the singularity/​specificity of this action. The crisis is about us here and now — in Marx’s sense. We share sub­ject­ive impov­er­ish­ment, not just financial.
19:49 CET: act­iv­ists have blockupied the Ger­man embassy in Rome in solid­ar­ity with Frank­furt demonstrators.
19:48 CET: Michael Hardt con­grat­u­lates act­iv­ists — “the banks and police have blocked themselves”.
19:43 CET: There seems to be a party in the pop­u­lar Gal­lus dis­trict of Frank­furt which lies SW the main sta­tion and out­side the protest-​ban zone.
18:51 CET: Germany’s well-​known Spiegel is run­ning an art­icle “Blockupy has already won” even as Boris Rhein demands that tax­pa­py­ers be thank­ful for his policy of overkill.
18:49 CET: spon­tan­eous demo is under­way in Offen­bach, the former leather industry town which sits upriver on the edge of Frank­furt (ESE from the centre).
18:45 CET: remem­ber, 19:00 local time, Grae­ber and Hardt speak at Bock­en­heimer Warte cam­pus. CLT rep will be there.
18:35 CET: cur­rent status in Frankfurt:
  • work­shops at Bock­en­heimer Warte cam­pus of the uni­ver­sity pro­ceeded peace­fully without police inter­ven­tion. About 1,000 people were in the cent­ral square of the com­plex, on rooftops, or listen­ing to talks on debt and Brit­ish trades uni­on­ism in the tent.
  • 15 or so police vans parked on the edge of the protest-​banzone near the campus.
  • There are rumours that demon­strat­ors are trav­el­ling to a protest out­side of Frankfurt.
  • Sev­eral act­iv­ists have acquired bikes and are cyl­cing between spon­tan­eous demos across Frankfurt.
  • Within the com­mer­cial zone around Haupt­wache there are clearly man­ner people linked to Blockupy milling about in 2s and 3s.
  • A spon­tan­eous musical demo is tak­ing place in the Zeil, with about 50 people act­ively par­ti­cip­at­ing, and one police vehicle in close attend­ance (plus sev­eral store guards).
  • David Grae­ber was able to give his lec­ture out­side of the protest-​ban zone at Bock­en­heimer Warte/​KOZ.
15:50 CET: — – liveb­log paused for workshop — —
Von Rüdiger Heescher via Facebook: &#8220;Wenn die Polizei schon mit Deutsche Bank Logo herumläuft, dann weiss man doch was Sache ist. Das ist doch ehrlich.&#8221;</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br data-recalc-dims= <p>Herzliche Grüße,</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
<p>Florian Raffel</p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
<p>Occupy Aktivist aus Berlin<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
und<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
Konsumkritiker" />
15:42 CET: people have not been able to help remark­ing that the riot police
are now run­ning around with the Deutsche Bank logo on their backs! [some tweeters are tak­ing this lit­er­ally — it is a joke /​ed.]
15:30 CET: the FT is now report­ing that Spain has instruc­ted Gold­man Sachs to advise on the recap­it­al­isa­tion of the troubled Bankia bank. Accord­ing to Goldman’s in-​house jar­gon, that pre­sum­ably makes the Span­ish gov­ern­ment “mup­pets”. Good grief.
15:22 CET: the Willy-​Brandt Platz livestream below has now become a Sch­weizer­platz livestream. It seems the HR cam­er­ateam have taken the lift to a higher floor of the ECB Tower and are now using zoom to film down Sch­weizer­strasse which leads to Schweizerplatz.
15:16 CET: the Bild news­pa­per [sic] which rep­lic­ates the UK’s Sun for sen­sa­tion­al­ism is run­ning a story about the first stones being thrown in Frank­furt. This rumour was being spread by one per­son on Twit­ter and was quickly spot­ted by other users as non­sense. There have been no reports by known sources, the local press, or for that mat­ter the police, of any such events.
pic.twitter.com/dcVcODhZ

15:05 CET: the dis­persal of small groups across Frank­furt has unsur­pris­ingly res­ul­ted in reports of mul­tiple kettles and other police action across Frank­furt (Basel­er­plz; Rathenauplz; Messe; DGB Haus…) and also its sis­ter town Sach­sen­hausen on the left­bank of the river Main. In the lat­ter case there is a group at Sch­weizer­platz, which is blessed with a Deutsche Bank branch and U-​bahn sta­tion (see above).

14:54 CET: The Blockupy Alli­ance have been in talks with teh author­it­ies to con­firm the route of tomorrow’s judi­cially approved march. The route:

At 12:00 demon­star­tors may assemble at Basler­platz before the main rail­way sta­tion, before set­ting of at 13:00. They will pro­ceed south to the river and then fol­low the right­bank upstream to Kurt-​Schumacherstr. which is on the farside of the city centre, before pro­ceed­ing to Kon­stabler­wache which is the east end of teh Zeil shop­ping street.

The demon­strat­ors will pro­ceed north­wards to just before the old city defences before swinging west along Bleich­strasse then Hoch­strasse, which leads to the Old Opera square, where the demon­stra­tion will terminate.

The logic of the route is clear enough — the fin­an­cial dis­trict (and ECB) will be avoided and pro­test­ers will pass through parts of the city used by ordin­ary Frankfurters.

14:38 CET: the Guard­ian has bothered to report on the Blockupy protests in its busi­ness liveb­log. Admit­tedly the Graun had pub­lished a com­ment by John Hol­lo­way but has not covered the con­sti­tu­tional aus­ter­ity being prac­tised in what it reg­u­larly regards as a model social eco­nomy. Strangely, the Guard­ian is tak­ing its cue from a Wall Street Journal Deutsch­land reporter. Had they looked more closely at local news sources, the lack of obvi­ous demon­stra­tions is not sur­pris­ing given that a total ban is being enforced by 5,000 police and road clos­ures. As we have noted, people are in Frankfurt’s centre but main­tain­ing a low pro­file in small groups.

14:19 CET: Hess­isch rund­funk is wor­ried that it is encoun­ter­ing small groups of demon­strat­ors across the city who are unable to loc­ate demos and are frustrated.

13:21 CET: David Grae­ber has been banned from giv­ing a pub­lic lec­ture at the “new” opera build­ing (aka the Schaus­piel­haus) oppos­ite the ECB.

13:08 CET: Former Ger­man envir­on­ment min­is­ter Toep­fer has been speak­ing in Mainz. He warns that “mar­kets should not be allowed to take con­trol — this will dam­age democracy.”

13:03 CET: Fran­fur­ter Rundschau is report­ing chaotic cat-​and-​mouse scenes out­side the rail­way sta­tion. About 300 demon­strat­ors there.

12:54 CET: Willy-​Brandt Platz cleared.

12:38 CET: the Guard­ian news­pa­per, which seems not to be ter­ribly inter­ested in Frank­furt, reports that Angela Merkel has formed Greece’s stand-​in Pres­id­ent to tell the coun­try that it needs a func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment. Nat­ur­ally the Ger­man gov­ern­ment is func­tion­ing per­fectly in Frank­furt this week /​sarcasm.

12:36 CET: a fur­ther livestream appar­ently filmed from Mario Draghi’s office.

12:10 CET: livestream from in front of the ECB. With admir­able Eng­lish trans­la­tion. Human mic declares solid­ar­ity with police and calls on them to use their minds and dis­obey their orders.

12:00 CET: Stock exchanges are down over 1% across Europe. The FT reports that JP Mor­gan, which recently lost USD2bn, is sit­ting on a fur­ther USD100bn of junk bonds. The FTSE 100 is enter­ing tech­nical “cor­rec­tion” territory.

11:57 CET: Blockupy report that Michael Hardt has man­aged to reach the front of the ECB.

11:54 CET: the demon­strat­ors being moved W have how­ever com­menced another sit­down protest.

11:48 CET: the Blockupy spokes­per­son tweets that the block­ing of the ECB has been suc­cess­fully con­cluded and calls on people to attend this afternoon’s work­shops (see beloz) and to pre­pare for tomorrow’s judi­cially approved demonstration.

11:41 CET: It seems a group of act­iv­ists has blockupied the Ger­man con­su­late in Venice.

11:40 CET: police clear­ing the ECB demon­strate out and push­ing pro­test­ers down towards the main station.

11:33 CET: sit­down protest has begun at Willy-​Brandt Platz. Police have asked for the 150 or so remain­ing demon­strat­ors to leave. Hess­isch Rund­funk report­ing that 190 pro­test­ers have already been taken into cus­tody, and that the auto­bahn A648 has been closed by the police.

11:07 CET: Michael Hardt, the­or­ist with Ant­o­nio Negri of the con­cepts of mul­ti­tude and empire, is also mak­ing his way to the ECB. Incid­ent­ally, the­or­et­ical and polit­ical pieces on debt and con­stitu­ent power can be read on this very blog.

11:00 CET: David Grae­ber is mak­ing his way to the ECB. His book, Debt shows how the debt concept has stood at the very heart of human soci­ety since the Sumerian city states, but argues that soci­et­ies have his­tor­ic­ally given us many examples of how to con­trol and mol­lify the worst excesses of a debt cul­ture. Well worth reading.
10:56 CET: as the ECB block­ade per­sists, former ECB chief Jean-​Claude Trichet has pro­posed a bank­ruptcy mech­an­ism for Euro­zone states whereby “the EU usurps the fiscal policy of the state”. Assum­ing he is not being ter­ribly ori­ginal, I can only inter­pret this as a plan modeled on insolv­ency admin­is­tra­tion. This is a way in which a court appoin­ted account­ant takes con­trol of the run­ning of a busi­ness and attempts to save it from col­lapse (or at least to wind it down safely). To some degree this is de facto the case already in Greece and Italy, and indir­ectly Ire­land, where there has been a scan­dal after the budget was run past Ber­lin offi­cials first.
10:39 CET: police have issued a second warn­ing to leave Willy-​Brandt Platz. About 300 people there, but there are more on the other side of the kettle in Muench­er­strasse. Police loud speaker — “you are car­ry­ing out a for­bid­den demon­stra­tion”. People told to leave but only on the south side, towards the river.
10:29 CET: people kettled on west side of Frankfurt’s new opera by ECB (corner Muenchnerstr.).
10:26 CET: Long long line of riot police jogs along to Willy-​Brandt Platz over Neuer Main­zer. ECB is blocked. People try­ing to moved.
09:57 CET: kettle appar­ently taken off at the Messe Turm though people being hauled away. Up to 200 people at WIlly-​Brandt Platz.
09:49 CET: 60 act­iv­ists on the bridge by the ECB kettled and removed. A tent camp on the banks of the main has been cleared away.
09:28 CET: block­ade spon­tan­eously forms in Willy-​Brandt Platz (home of the ECB).
09:22 CET: sev­eral police vans race past now, head­ing west.

09:20 CET: Fur­ther kettle of a 150 per­son splinter group near the Messe Tower, which incid­ent­ally is the home of Reu­ters and Gold­man Sachs. Reports of three kettles now in the area.

09:02 CET: Kettle now on at Beethovenstrasse.
08:51 CET: 1,000 people now on West­end­strasse, tuirn­ing onto Beeth­oven­strasse which leads north towards the old Uni cam­pus at Bock­en­heimer Warte. Police are attempt­ing a kettle.
08:34 CET: the first spon­tan­eous and banned demo of 500 people sets off from Kais­er­strasse (the road that links the main rail­way sta­tion to Haupt­wache via the ECB) up Duesseldorferstrasse.
08:33 CET: import­ant doc­u­ment of the demon­stra­tion for the right to demon­strate and the res­ult­ing police bru­tal­ity yes­ter­day at http://​www​.real​frag​ment​.de/​b​l​o​g​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​/​2​0​1​2​/​0​5​/​1​8​/​b​l​o​c​k​u​p​y​-​f​f​m-1
08:28 CET: In amonst the con­ser­vat­ive rhet­oric of mind­less riot­ing which is being used to jus­tify the clamp­down, it can be easy to lose sight of the wide­spread calls for reform of the fin­an­cial sys­tem from all quar­ters. London’s Fin­an­cial Times ahs been ham­mer­ing on for four years now about how some­thing must be done, with the charge being led by Mar­tin Wolff, Nour­iel Roubini and Gil­lian Tett (who fam­ously called the crisis).
Their art­icles sit behind a pay wall, but, by way of example, the fol­low­ing FT video on Karl Marx is illus­trat­ive of the dis­cus­sions: http://​video​.ft​.com/​v​/​1​4​5​8​2​6​8​8​4​2​0​0​1​/​C​a​n​-​M​a​r​x​-​s​a​v​e​-​c​a​p​i​t​a​l​ism– Robin Black­burn, who fea­tures in the dis­cus­sion, has been writ­ing excel­lent sum­mar­ies of the crisis for the New Left Review.
Another example of what is going on behind the lines is the con­sidered opin­ion of a cer­tain Eng­lish bar­ris­ter, who argues cogently that it is now impossible to reg­u­late “Delta One” style mar­kets because the nano­second trad­ing simply is bey­ond the capa­city of humans to make a judg­ment (ref coming).
Mean­while in the Journal of Inter­na­tional Bank­ing Law we find an exam­in­a­tion of private mon­et­ary sys­tems in which small groups invent their own sys­tems of exchange as an altern­at­ive to using banks. Occupy Frank­furt were run­ning such a scheme before they were cleared.
David Grae­ber, who is speak­ing in Frank­furt today, has also done inter­est­ing work on the anthro­po­logy of debt and is call­ing for a debt jubilee. Steven Keane has argued for a lumpsum cash credit to be given to all cit­izens (rather than banks) which must be first applied against debt, the bal­ance to be spent or saved as the owner wishes.
The are also very many cri­tiques of the ineptitude of the bank bail­outs. As just one example, under the US Tarp scheme money was pumped into bank hold­ing com­pan­ies. Gold­man Sachs how­ever did not have such a hold­ing com­pany struc­ture — share­hold­ers inves­ted straight into the oper­at­ing com­pany, which is an emin­ently more respons­ible struc­ture. The U.S. Gov­ern­ment thus forced Gold­man Sachs to set up a hold­ing com­pany, had GS flip all the investors into that holdco, and then poured tax­payer funds in. Why?
MobilePhoto.jpg
08:05 CET: Above is the scene from a layby NE of Frank­furt. As yes­ter­day the police are stop­ping vehicles car­ry­ing any­one who is sus­pec­ted of wich­ing to demonstrate.
pic.twitter.com/iYebrCSc

07:59 CET: above the police pres­ence at the main rail­way station.

07:42 CET: Blockupy are call­ing for people to move to the inner city slowly, and to await fur­ther instructions.

07:35 CET: Blockupy Alli­ance have announced their plans for today, which as ever are sub­ject to the gen­eral pro­hib­i­tion of the authorities:

6:00
Blockupy ECB
13:00
Land-​theft rally and siege of Deutsche Bank.
13:00
Taxes, cent­ral bank policy and pub­lic debt. Strategy-​Workshop of the European Attac Net­work & Joint Social Con­fer­ence (u.a. mit Franco Car­minati, Attac Bel­gien, und Karsten Peters, Attac Deutsch­land). DGB-​Haus, Raum 4
15:00
Dis­cus­sion about debt audit und on debt for­give­ness with Angela Klein (Sozi­al­istische Zei­tung), Sonia Mitralia (Kom­mis­sion für ein Schulde­naudit, Griechen­land), N.N. (lokales Schulden­ko­mitee, Frankreich), Stephan Lind­ner (attac Deutsch­land). Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim.
15:00
The struggle for social stand­ards and rights in Europe – uni­ons report. Dis­cus­sion with Sara Tom­lin­son, Yian­nis Bournous, Dumitru Fornea , Daniel Nieto Bravo, Jutta Krell­mann (MdB DIE LINKE). IL Tent, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim.
16:00
An altern­at­ive sum­mit of social move­ments – why and how? Joint Social Con­fer­ence. DGB-​Haus, Room 4
16:00
Dis­cus­sion with David Grae­ber (Occupy New York /​Gold­smiths Col­lege der Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don) and Chris­tian Fel­ber (Attac Öster­reich). Schaus­piel Frank­furt at Willi-​Brand-​Platz
17:15
Altern­at­ives against the rul­ing Crisis-​politics. Dis­cus­sion mit Michael Weißen­feld, Jochen Nagel (GEW), Jen­nifer Hop­ert, Jan­ine Wissler (MdL, DIE LINKE), Sabine Zim­mer­mann (MdB, DIE LINKE). Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim.
18:00
Cri­tique of Left-​reformism. TOP Ber­lin. UG Tent behind the Stud­i­er­end­en­haus Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim.
19:00
OccupyS­pring, an event by the Inter­ven­tion­ist Left with sup­port of RLS, with David Grae­ber (Occupy New York/​Gold­smiths Col­lege der Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don), Michael Hardt (Duke Uni­ver­sity) und Sandro Mezza­dra (Uni­versit? di Bologna). Fest­saal des Stud­i­er­end­en­hauses, Uni Cam­pus Bockenheim.
19:00
Europe against the dic­tat­or­ship of banks and busi­ness! After teh elec­tions in Greece and France. Forms of res­ist­ance and altern­at­ives for soical move­ments. An event organ­ised by the European Attac-​Network with Ver­veine Angeli (Attac Frankreich), Thanos Con­targyris (Attac Hel­las) und Zeitzeu­gen aus Attac Span­ien, Attac Öster­reich, Attac Por­tugal. Mod­er­a­tion: Hugo Braun (Attac Deutsch­land). With French and Eng­lish trans­la­tions. Gew­erkschaft­shaus, großer Saal.

07:18: Good morn­ing. It is over­cast, cold and rain­ing in Frank­furt am Main. This does not seem to have deterred Blockupy, how­ever, who are plan­ning a demon­stra­tion before the European Cent­ral Bank. The fin­an­cial dis­trict is once again the focus and sirens can already be heard above the noise of traffic after yesterday’s Ascen­sion Day hol­i­day. Spot­ters have noted Ber­lin Police vans on the Unter­main Bridge that links well-​to-​do Sach­sen­hausen to the heart of the fin­an­cial district.

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11 Responses

  1. […] by their employ­ees to take the day off or work from home to avoid hav­ing to come into the city on Fri­day, May 18 — the day when the block­ade to the fin­an­cial dis­trict was expec­ted to take place. How­ever, as […]

  2. […] de ban­cos sedea­dos no dis­trito fin­anceiro de Frank­furt que tir­assem folga na sexta feira, 18 de Maio, ou que tra­bal­hassem a partir de casa de forma a evitarem entrar na cid­ade, já que era o dia em […]

  3. […] by their employ­ees to take the day off or work from home to avoid hav­ing to come into the city on Fri­day, May 18 – the day when the block­ade to the fin­an­cial dis­trict was expec­ted to take place. How­ever, as […]

  4. […] by their employ­ees to take the day off or work from home to avoid hav­ing to come into the city on Fri­day, May 18 – the day when the block­ade to the fin­an­cial dis­trict was expec­ted to take place. How­ever, as […]

  5. […] by their employ­ees to take the day off or work from home to avoid hav­ing to come into the city on Fri­day, May 18 – the day when the block­ade to the fin­an­cial dis­trict was expec­ted to take place. How­ever, as […]

  6. […] Banken empfah­len ihren Mit­arbeit­ern, Freitag, den 18. Mai [en] frei zun­eh­men oder von zu Hause aus zu arbeiten, um eine Fahrt in die Stadt an diesem Tag zu […]

  7. […] ?? ????????? ?? ???????? ??? ?? ?????? ??? ????? ???? 18 ?????, ??? ????? ??? ?? Blockupy ?????????? ?? ????? ??? […]

  8. […] ?? ?? ?????? ? ????? ? ?????, 18-?? ???, ????????? ????????? ???? ?????????? ? ??????? ??? […]

  9. […] w piątek 18 maja [en] pra­cownicy banków nie musieli przyjeżdżać do miasta, kazano im wziąć urlop lub pracować […]

  10. […] من المنزل لتجنب الاضطرار لدخول قلب المدينة في يوم الجمعة 18 مايو/أيار — اليوم الذي كان من المتوقع أن يتم فيه حصار الحي المالي. […]

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