Rally in Hamburg on December 21rst 2002

national | miscellaneous | news report Monday December 09, 2002 13:16 by Marco - Urban collective Red Winterhude info at roteswinterhude dot de

Against Right-wing Populism

Against Right-wing Populism, Exclusion and Expulsion! Resistance in the City! Down with the City Government! Rally on December 21rst, 2002 in Hamburg. In Hamburg it has reached the point where the Senate wishes to ban all demonstrations in the city centre. We do not accept this authoritarian moulding of society and associated politics.

Against Right-wing Populism, Exclusion and Expulsion! Resistance in the City! Down with the City Government! Rally on December 21rst, 2002 in Hamburg

Against Right-wing Populism, Exclusion and Expulsion! Resistance in the City! Down with the City Government! Since the 4 November 2002 there have been repeated demonstrations in the northern German city of Hamburg against the forced eviction of the alternative caravan settlement called the ‘Bambule’. Under the heavy-handed and authoritarian direction of Hamburg’s interior minister, right-wing populist Ronald Schill, the Hamburg Senate (or Hamburg City Council) has reacted with a growing deployment of police, which has been viewed with concern across Germany. This police presence has now reached a critical and unbearable level in the inner city and in some other districts. While the Hamburg Senate (City Council) is part of the rightist trend evident German state governments, manifested in campaigns against alternative housing settlements, social services and the drugs scene, the participation of Schill and his party in Hamburg’s government makes the city the tip of the rightist iceberg. This lays at the basis of out campaign: Schill must go! The 2001 Senate elections in Hamburg resulted in the formation of the first state government to include a rightwing populist party in Germany. The rightwing hotchpotch coalition of FDP (Liberals), CDU (Christian Democrats) and the Schill Party calls itself the ‘Citizens’ Block’, and since its formation has ruled in the style of landed gentry against all those who do not fit into their authoritarian normative perceptions of law and order. This trend towards the linking of populism and rightwing politics has not just found resonance with voters in Germany. In other EU countries too – such as Italy and Austria –massive shifts have taken place in the political realm. Hamburg is presenting itself as a German model for these new rightwing majorities and for some time now Schill’s followers have been organising in other German states. The Schill Party appeals to the racist and reactionary voices in society, stirs these up, and builds support on the basis of its commitment to pursue politics with an iron fist. This model, however, is not Schill’s invention, but has been rather the general trend in the established parties up to this. The campaign organised by the Christian-Democratic Party (CDU) in the state of Hessen against dual citizenship clearly demonstrated how the mob and the middle ground could be mobilised by rightwing populism and racism to win elections. Marginalisation and exclusion are now coldly calculated. Refugees, the unemployed and social welfare recipients have nothing to be happy about any more in Germany. They are being held to blame for the present poor economic crisis, and are the targets of an array of ‘restructuring talks’, committees, forced employment and draft legislation. The Hartz proposals for the jobs market and the Riester plans for a new pensions system are symptomatic for the new authoritarian perceptions of society in which many small ‘Ich-AGs’ (Hartz calls for unemployed to form one-person ‘PLCs’, which would operate as mobile labour to fill positions on a temporary basis as they crop up) will be subordinated to the interests of the state. The motto is: swim or drown! ‚Zero tolerance’ and ‚inner security’ are the new catchwords under which the campaigns are led to combat any resulting resistance and paper over any contradictions in society. Both internally and externally the police are being equipped. The police and the BGS (Federal Border Protection units) have turned the EU’s external borders and indeed the interior into a deadly hunting ground targeting migrants. Fatalities on the border, during deportation or as the result of forced application of emetics are now taken more for granted, and indeed supported by parts of the media and the population. Through the term "new centre", the wish of the population to be protected against supposed fringe groups is staged managed. Membership of this club of the new centre is defined by wealth among other things. The rich/poor divide is growing ever deeper. Social welfare and benefits are being cut back, the remnants of the social security are being cut back, privatised or simply abolished. ‘If you can’t help yourself, well then no one will’ is the resurrected old motto. Economic interests are now being equated with public interest und the inner cities declared as under emergency laws. Money is being stuffed into the construction of new graffiti-proof high-polish facades, or in the arming of the police. Whoever dares disrupt this sanitised public sphere is expelled by being placed under a local exclusion order banning him or her from certain districts. Youth milieus, the homeless, beggars and members of the drug scene were the first to notice this policy. In Hamburg it has reached the point where the Senate wishes to ban all demonstrations in the city centre. We do not accept this authoritarian moulding of society and associated politics. Rather, we wish to resist. We want alternative caravan settlements, social institutions and self-organised projects to remain a part of Hamburg and other cities. We do not want a society in which those of us without German passports do not enjoy freedom of movement; one in which living styles cannot be self-defined, or one in which comfortable Christmas shopping is valued more than the right to demonstration. We will no longer stand by in the face of prohibitions on activities and association in the city centre. We demand an end to policies which are based on repression and police force. An end to policies which wishes to lock away young people away in closed institutions, cuts off funding to social projects and which basks in the glaze of large-scale projects such as trade fair expansion, the Hafencity financial centre, and in Olympic city applications. We demand an end to Schill, this Senate and its policies. But this struggle is more than just toppling this Senate. Together we are mobilising against the neo-liberal transformation of society, which is being legitimised by national interests and being marketed under the label of internal security. The numerous demonstrations of the past few weeks against cutbacks in social services, against university fees, job cuts, racist application of emetics, and the clearance and eviction of the caravan site ‘Bambule’ show that there is more involved than defending the caravan site. Protests such as the present protest in Santa Fu jail in Hamburg, where fifty prisoners are refusing to do work and resisting the Schill Senate in their own way, strengthen our resolve and give us courage. While this is a struggle against the so-called ‘Citizens’ Block’, it is not an expression of desire for a return of the Social Democratic/Green coalition. Rather it is an expression of resistance against the establishment. With a federal-wide demonstration on 21 December 2002 we want to unite the different strands and forms of protest and to show our extent of the broad movement against the rightwing populist Senate. We call on all to venture further out onto the streets, and to participate in this demonstration with their own ideas and issues. Solidarity with the caravan project ‚Bambule’! For self-defined projects and the retention of the caravans! Against social cutbacks, authoritarian restructuring and repression! Come united and sober to the demo! National (Federal) Demonstration Saturday, 21 December 2002 12 noon, Tube station Sternschanze Bambule Solidarity Alliance (Solidaritätsbündnis mit der Bambule)
www.roteswinterhude.de/english.htm