With the swift decision to evict the Occupy camp that has spent nine months at the foot of the European Cent­ral Bank’s Eur­o­tower, the peace­ful protest appears to be enter­ing another junc­ture of res­ist­ance against the city author­it­ies, who have once again shown them­selves to be noth­ing other than the banks’ mil­it­ant wing, led by the Frank­furt secur­ity depart­ment head, Markus Frank of the CDU.

One of the act­iv­ists, Jan Umsonst, has com­menced a hun­ger strike in protest against the evac­u­ation of the camp. “Our protest is still neces­sary,” says the 38-​year-​old who was among the first Occu­pis­tas who had set up their tents in front of the ECB.

Nev­er­the­less, the City, mir­ror­ing the wider debt enslave­ment of the young, has decided that for the camp there is no future. The end­ing is deemed a fore­gone con­clu­sion, by 31 July the camp will be gone from the green space. Frank repeated that the reas­ons were hygienic and social prob­lems as well as the secur­ity situ­ation. The act­iv­ists do not accept this.

The Occu­pis­tas’ anger is par­tic­u­larly dir­ec­ted against Markus Frank. They have nego­ti­ated with him four times in recent weeks and they now accuse him (via a broad­cast) of mean­ness, lying, break­ing his word, and defam­a­tion. Frank had prom­ised to deliver a reset­tle­ment solu­tion for the Roma who have also settled at the camp, but has done nothing.

Fur­ther, Frank had prom­ised to con­sult with the head of the envir­on­mental depart­ment regard­ing pro­pos­als for the use of the Gal­lusan­lage (the green space near the camp), but did not. Frank had alleged that the act­iv­ists would not have accep­ted the help offered. That is not true.

“Frank is hid­ing behind hygiene defi­cien­cies. Frank­furt is hid­ing behind Frank. The aim is a global city that is free of protest. Cleared of vic­tims ofan anti-​social, human and nat­ural resource-​intensive life­style,” says the act­iv­ists’ press release, which con­tin­ues “Frank car­ries on as befits the rep­res­ent­at­ive of an ema­ci­ated demo­cratic polit­ical class. He seeks to root out as-​yet-​untested altern­at­ive life­styles of a near future from a town over­come by Hipster-​gentrification.”

The City Coun­cil respon­ded force­fully to the alleg­a­tions on Monday. Frank had by no means prom­ised a plan for reset­tle­ment of the Roma, said his officer Andrea Brandl. Rather, he stated his will­ing­ness to organ­ise a meet­ing after the sum­mer hol­i­days with the asso­ci­ation for Sinti and Roma. One can­not grant the Roma bene­fits while oth­ers would have to wait, accord­ing to Brandl.

Again, the City Coun­cil had not prom­ised that the Envir­on­mental Depart­ment Head would turn up imme­di­ately, given that Rose­marie Hei­lig was newly in office. The talks had always been, “about get­ting a grip on prob­lems such as clean­li­ness, safety and social prob­lems”. Frank had neither put off the act­iv­ists nor lied. The 31 July date has been writ­ten in ink for a long time.

Tonight, 25 July, there will a pre­par­at­ory demo against the upcom­ing evic­tion (see above flyer), with the main demo planned for 28 July.