Series: Frankfurt Blockupy May 16–19 2012

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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 ...
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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. ...
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21:45 CET: as we enter an unseason­ably cold night, thoughts turn to tomorrow’s act­iv­ism. We’re going to sign off the blog for today. Thanks for reading. (above) Water can­non stand ready between Eschen­heimer Tor and Hauptwache. 20:55 CET: there are now about 100 act­iv­ists in Haupt­wache as people drift away. There is a call for a plen­ary meet­ing at the old uni­ver­sity cam­pus at Bock­en­heimer Warte about 3km NW of Hauptwache. 20:33 CET: Above the view of the demo on Frankfurt’s Haupt­wache. Towers from L to R: ECB — Com­merzbank tower — former Dresdner Bank HQ — Deutsche Bank offices — a second old Dresdner tower, now used by Deutsche Bahn. In the fore­ground the squat baroque build­ing was once a gaol. 20.08 CET: Just pos­ted by Jerome Roos over at Roarmag​.org: ...
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The unsus­tain­able uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the total shut­down of Blockupy is begin­ning to mani­fest itself. This even­ing (15 May) the Police HQ in Frank­furt declared that all person-​specific exclu­sion orders relat­ing to the Blockupy protests on 16 – 19 May, which banned named indi­vidu­als from enter­ing inner Frank­furt, were imme­di­ately res­cin­ded. The announce­ment appears to have fol­lowed pre­par­at­ory dis­cus­sions with the Admin­is­trat­ive Court in Frank­furt. The orders were issued to per­sons whose name had been taken dur­ing a protest on 31 March 2012, and the court seems to have indic­ated that this reason was simply insuf­fi­cient to jus­tify such a restrict­ive type of order against per­sons wish­ing to exer­cise con­sti­tu­tional rights. The dra­conian gen­er­al­ity of the author­it­ies’ attempts to pre­vent even the occur­rence of a single ...
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The Blockupy Alli­ance have indic­ated their inten­tion to appeal the decision of the Frank­furt Admin­is­trat­ive Court yes­ter­day in which but for two excep­tions the total ban on protest declared by the Frank­furt author­it­ies for 16 – 19 May was upheld. “If you read the court’s decisions, you will notice that the court only relies on the asser­tions and danger fore­casts of the city and the police. The sig­ni­fic­ance of the fun­da­mental right to free assembly is not val­ued – in con­trast to the fun­da­mental rights of the free­dom of pro­fes­sion and prop­erty”, says Mar­tin Behrs­ing from Blockupy. Frankfurt’s well-​known news­pa­per the Frank­furter Rundschau even went so far as to express dis­be­lief that the right to a pleas­ant shop­ping exper­i­ence and a quiet cof­fee were being ...
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The Admin­is­trat­ive Court in Frank­furt has today (14 May) con­firmed the gen­eral Blockupy-​ban issued by Frankfurt’s pub­lic order coun­cil­lor Markus Frank. Like­wise, the Occupy camp in Willy-​Brandt Platz may also be ‘tem­por­ar­ily’ cleared away. The court did provide for the pos­sib­il­ity of per­mit­ting an anti-​capitalism demon­stra­tion this Sat­urday sub­ject to cer­tain con­di­tions set by the author­it­ies. Given the city gov­ernors com­plete intransigence in nego­ti­ations, these con­di­tions are likely to echo the old Eng­lish bal­lad Scar­bor­ough Fair (be impossible). As the judg­ment was released, around 700 demon­strat­ors filed before the Town Hall on the Roe­mer Berg in protest against the aston­ish­ing attempt to ban all protest in Frank­furt am Main dur­ing 16 – 19 May, and the par­al­lel ban­ning of almost 500 named ...
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“All Ger­mans shall have the right to res­ist any per­son seek­ing to abol­ish this con­sti­tu­tional order, should no other rem­edy be pos­sible.” Basic Law Art.20(4). After a five-​hour admin­is­trat­ive court hear­ing today (Sat. 12 May 2012) Frank­furt am Main’s Pub­lic Order Depart­ment has reit­er­ated its total oppos­i­tion to any protest what­so­ever against Europe’s aus­ter­ity politics. “We have fought hard to ensure that the event is pro­hib­ited,” said Coun­cil­lor for Pub­lic Order Mark Frank (CDU). There was a police assess­ment of the situ­ation, mak­ing it reas­on­able to sus­pect that it should come dur­ing the days of protest block­ades and viol­ence, “so it is not pos­sible to waive the ban.” The city, act­ing through the CDU half of the CDU-​Green gov­ern­ing coali­tion, has ...
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