Monday, February 20, 2023
Hamburg Germany Squatters & Allies Fight To Save Decades Old Commune From Developers (2013)
Hamburg Germany Squatters & Allies Fight To Save Decades Old Commune From Developers
Cribbed from my 2013 Tumblr post
Embedded quote: June 2nd, 2010, Flora stays Red!
Two steps forward and three backwards
The failure of city privatisation as a model of conflict regulation
[---] The Independent UK
January 2014
Seeing Red In Hamburg: Violence Flares As Squatters & Allies Fight To Save Commune From Developer
The dilapidated and graffiti-smeared 19th -century theatre looks like an improbable relic from the early days of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. “Your Struggle is Our Struggle,” proclaims a slogan on its front facade. Bedraggled, bearded men in combat jackets and berets camp out in sleeping bags on the front steps, despite the January cold.
“Red Flora”, as Hamburg’s leftist community centre is named, sticks out like a sore thumb in the city’s hip, alternative yet increasingly upmarket Schanzenviertel district. Last week it prompted police to declare the centre of one of Europe’s richest port cities a “danger zone” and caused the US embassy to issue travel warnings to citizens contemplating a visit.
“If stopped without proper identification, persons may be detained by Hamburg police without further justification,” Berlin’s American embassy cautioned last Wednesday. The draconian measures would appear to have turned posh Hamburg and its famous if less smart Reeperbahn red light district into the Teutonic equivalent of Belfast during the Troubles.
The entrance to the Reeperbahn’s Davidwache police station was festooned with police barricades last week. Police helicopters circled above the city. Uniformed officers conducted stop-and-search operations. Last Wednesday, police were involved in skirmishes with left-wing protesters who pelted them with fireworks. “Many people who live here are fed up with the violence and destruction,” was how Hamburg’s police trade union president, Joachim Lenders, justified the new measures.
As Germany’s longest surviving squat, Red Flora has become a symbolic last stand against what many on the alternative left fear will be the total gentrification of what is already one of Europe’s richest cities.
Shortly before Christmas plans to evict the squatters were met with a mass counter-demonstration involving militant left-wing and anarchist groups from throughout Germany.
The city experienced some of its worst street violence since the Second World War.
Masked protesters torched cars and showered police with stones, bottles and fireworks. The police responded with water cannon, baton charges and tear gas. More than 120 police officers and an estimated 500 demonstrators were injured, many of them badly.
Just days later, another group of protesters assaulted police with stones and bottles as they were leaving the Davidwache station in what was apparently an unprovoked attack. One officer suffered a broken nose and jaw. [---]
More @ Independent UK
Good News!
SquatNet at "Crunch Time": Hamburg: Activists attacked by riot cops during the Rote Flora Squat demonstration
SquatNet After-action briefing December 23 2013. With an update on the protest and a backgrounder
Wikipedia, with a history, including pre-squat.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Subscribe To Heresy 😎
Posts
Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment
Hang Tight! Your comment will appear shortly.