UPDATE: on 31 July 2012 Frankfurt’s Lord Mayor (Ober­buer­ger­meister) Peter Feld­mann (SPD) gran­ted cau­tious sup­port to the aims of the Occupy Camp inso­far as these were about ini­ti­at­ing a dia­logue about the fin­an­cial sys­tem. This effect­ively amounts to grant­ing a stay of exe­cu­tion on any evic­tion, pending the out­come of legal appeals against the decision of Pub­lic Order Coun­cil­lor Frank to refuse renewal of the exist­ing protest “license”. The Occu­pis­tas have sens­ibly announced a vigil for the Camp tonight, in case the secur­ity forces nev­er­the­less attempt clearance.

The local media chan­nel — Hess­is­cher Rund­funk 1 — has help­fully pro­duced this 360° por­trait of the camp, for those who wish to visit it virtually.

_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​_​

Yes­ter­day, 28 July, up to 600 people col­lec­ted in cent­ral Frank­furt to demon­strate against the immin­ent evic­tion of the Occupy camp sited at the foot of the European Cent­ral Bank’s Eur­o­tower. Des­pite stormy showers, they declared the oppos­i­tion to the “European Union’s policy of impov­er­ish­ment,” against the excesses of large inter­na­tional banks, and against spec­u­la­tion with food. But above all they stood up for the free­dom of their own protest.

Speak­ers such as the left­ist mem­ber of par­lia­ment Ulrich Wilken, Alexis Pas­sada­kis of Attac and Gregory Böck­er­mann of the Ordensleu­ten für den Frieden, cri­ti­cised the decision of Coun­cil­lor for Pub­lic Order, Markus Frank (CDU), that it was no longer accept­able to renew the camp’s regis­tra­tion as a “legal” protest. Böck­er­mann accused Frank of pur­su­ing “racist agit­a­tion” when he described the pres­ence of Roma fam­il­ies and other non-​activists at the camp as a social prob­lem. The camp was an import­ant sym­bol of protest against “inhu­man cap­it­al­ism.” It is not for a city coun­cil, any more than any­one else, to determ­ine who has and who has not the right to protest.

Coun­cil­lor Frank said a week ago that the camp had to be scaled down by 31 July, oth­er­wise it will be cleared by the police. As jus­ti­fic­a­tion, the City Coun­cil poin­ted to “san­it­ary and social prob­lems” in the camp, where they claimed there had increas­ingly gathered alco­hol­ics and drug addicts as well as Roma and the home­less. There were “barely polit­ical act­iv­ists” to be found. The pro­test­ers dis­agreed with this pos­i­tion and announced on Sat­urday, if neces­sary, to protest fur­ther without tents. How­ever, the camp was a sym­bol of great significance.

For those who do not know Frank­furt, it is evid­ent that Frank is firstly con­found­ing two issues in order to bur­eau­crat­ic­ally delete the protest camp. The site of the camp on the Gal­lusan­lage green space by Willy-​Brandt Platz all but divides Frankfurt’s fin­an­cial dis­trict from the Station-​quarter, infam­ous as the prin­cipal red light dis­trict and a place where drug use is tol­er­ated. The prox­im­ity, as we have noted before, is not acci­dental. Dur­ing the late 80’s Frank­furt was known through­out Ger­many as suf­fer­ing from a New York style pub­lic drug prob­lem, with the green spaces of the fin­an­cial dis­trict being a not­able loc­ale for open heroin use. And, like New York, a zero tol­er­ance policy was intro­duced which amoun­ted to cor­ralling drug users in the sta­tion quarter. Yet already with the 2008 Crunch, increas­ing eco­nomic suf­fer­ing was swell­ing the streets around the sta­tion, and users, as well as bank­rup­ted bankers and the home­less, returned to these green spaces. This had noth­ing to do with the protest camp estab­lished 9 months ago. If any­thing, the pro­test­ers offered social sup­port, legal advice, and pur­pose to those who wished to join the cause. But more than this, how can Frank argue that cer­tain classes of people — and here the Roma seem to be singled out in the news media — are a pri­ori incap­able of par­ti­cip­at­ing in a protest? Frank’s second thesis of no little unori­gin­al­ity seems to be that only white uni­ver­sity stu­dents can qual­ify as proper pro­test­ers, and that if he can’t see per­son of a cer­tain pro­file in the protest camp, it fol­lows that there are “barely any polit­ical activists.”

Wilken, like other speak­ers addressed the new Frank­furt mayor dir­ectly. It was unac­cept­able that Peter Feld­mann (SPD) should remain per­sist­ently silent, Wilken said. “With the planned evic­tion the City Coun­cil once again is uncon­sti­tu­tional as with its pro­hib­i­tion of protest dur­ing the Blockupy-​days of action. I asked the Mayor to reas­sert the Con­sti­tu­tion in Frank­furt,” said Wilken. Feld­mann had to use his author­ity to extract these mat­ters from Frank’s con­trol and take these mat­ters into his own hands. To the extent Feld­mann has spoken, he has stated that if Occupy can­not be, it must take the oppor­tun­ity to refound itself anew.