Hamburg's G20 protests can provide immense inspiration,
argues Marta Music
“A… Anti…
Anti-capitalista!”. “Staat, Nation, Kapital – Scheisse! [State, Nation, Capital
– Shit!]”.
Those chants shook the city of Hamburg from July 5-8, as
tens of thousands of people gathered to protest against the G20 Summit.
Protesters from a wide variety of groups came from all over the world to
disrupt, show presence and express their outrage against the neoliberal,
unaccountable and undemocratic international forum during which the leaders of
the 20 most powerful countries in the world set the global agenda behind closed
doors, with no legitimacy or political mandate.
Some of the biggest
events which took place that week include:
July 5-6th:
The two day Global
Solidarity Summit as a democratic, alternative platform to discuss world crises
through panels, discussions and workshops
The “Welcome to
Hell” autonomous, anti-capitalist demonstration is attacked by police, but
successfully marches through the city.
July 7th:
The Block G20
initiative begins on the first day of the summit, with several attempts to
enter the red (restricted) zone from different parts of the city
The “Shut Down the
Logistics of Capital” occupation of the harbor
The youth and
student strike marches through the centre of the city
Riots break out in
the Schanze and Altona districts
July 8th:
The largest,
general demonstration of the week “Solidarity Without Borders instead of G20”
takes place, with reports of between 75,000-200,000 people in attendance.
Police “clean”
streets in Shanze and Neuer Pfedermarkt at night with force in large-scale
operation.
July 9th: The
solidarity protest against the Gesa prison built specifically for the No G20
protests in support of the people arrested
This article does not deal in detail with these events or
the discussions of the G20 charade. If you are looking for more information,
both Crimethinc and Enough Is Enough had rolling coverage of protests, and
Unicorn Riot provides extensive footage. Instead, it will focus on two of the
most dangerous institutions of the capitalist state apparatus and their roles
throughout the No G20 protests – the mainstream media and the police – and
presents the results of last week’s protests.
A biased coverage of the G20 protest by the mainstream media
Those who took part in the No G20 could not agree more: the
discrepancies between what actually happened last week and how the mainstream
media depicts these events is shocking. The coverage of the G20 protests by the
media is systematically biased. It focused primarily on the looting of stores,
cars set on fire and images of protesters throwing projectiles. By presenting
looting as individual, independent acts committed by hooligans, it failed to
address the underlying crises leading to such acts in a systemic way. The use
of phrases such as “criminal violence”, “civil-war like situation in
Hamburg" or “brutality of the protesters” all contribute to the scaremongering
perpetrated by the media and the construction of an image of the “extremist
protester” which both legitimizes police action and criminalizes dissent and
peaceful protesting. While the number of police officers injured last week is
usually reported, there are no accounts of how many protesters were hurt, and
no reports of police attacks on members of the press and legal team or the
beating of protesters.
Naturally, the structural violence of capitalism and its
devastating economic, social and ecological consequences worldwide went
completely unmentioned. The specific framing of the events of last week by the
media and the failure to emphasise the manifestation of shared grievances
against a global exploitative system demonstrates once more that the mainstream
media is but another tool of the capitalist state apparatus, contributing to
its resilience.
Police violence during the G20
The structural violence of the state and the police are not
comparable to that of burning cars and looting shops. For members of the
radical left, this realisation is widely accepted. In that sense, Hamburg
offers nothing new, but from a strategic perspective, there are still lessons
to be learnt. The G20 protests were a struggle for emancipation, in two main
ways. Firstly, they were about protecting an established autonomous space
marked by anti-capitalistic social relations in the city and secondly, it was
about tens of thousands of people coming together collectively to fight against
a repressive system. It is with these two broad strategies in mind that we must
consider last week’s events, and evaluate the struggle between the state, the
police, and the protestors.
Hamburg represents a new stage in the militarization of
policing protests. The size of the operation was unprecedented, with 20,000
officers mobilized, equipped with water cannons, pepper spray, tear gas, batons
and live weapons, while SWAT teams were called in, and the military waited in
reserve outside the city. Tactically, the police used what we might call an
‘aggressively defensive’ strategy. As well as totally blocking the “red zone”
of the meetings, an enormous “blue zone” was set-up covering the majority of
central Hamburg, in which ‘assemblies’ (gatherings of three people or more)
were forbidden. Any infringement of this was met with as much force as
necessary. Anyone hoping to truly disrupt meetings with these sort of policing
operations will need sophisticated communication strategies, and a clear way of
nullifying some of the security apparatus.
On top of this, the
Polizei also used arbitrary provocation tactics to force escalation. Police
officers raided the Welcome to Hell demonstration even after protesters had
uncovered their faces as demanded by the authorities. In the evening of July
8th at the Rote Flora, a former theater in the Sternschanze quarter central to
the squatting community, the police proceeded to arrest around 200 people in what
many called “acts of revenge” and “retaliation” with the sole objective of
filling the 400 places in the Gesa Prison set up specifically for the No G20 at
a cost of 2 million euros. The lack of accountability for the police’s actions
is another serious matter which the radical left must tackle in coming
struggles. Indeed, while it is illegal for protesters to be masked, the police
wore no identification numbers on their uniforms and covered up their faces
entirely. The police decided how to demarcate the spaces in the city into
accessible and inaccessible zones and did not hesitate to prevent peaceful
protesters from exiting certain neighborhoods for hours by guarding each
street. The actions of the police and the control they exercise over bodies and
spaces are legitimized precisely because they are part of the state apparatus.
The inherent violence of capital’s armed wing, and the fact that authorities do
not protect people but the interests of capital is already an established fact.
However, the G20 protests can be useful point of reflection for future
struggles, where we must prepare to fight for what we already have, and further
develop offensive strategies and tactics for disrupting the oppressive
machinery of capitalism.
A step towards moving beyond capitalism
A few victories of the No G20 should nevertheless be
mentioned such as the retreating of the police from the Welcome to Hell
demonstration which was supposed to be blocked, the delaying of summit on the
first day by a group of protesters which succeeded in entering the red zone,
the occupation of Hamburg’s harbor by a thousand people under the fervent
cheering of the workers and the gathering of more than 100,000 people for
Saturday’s general demonstration “Solidarity without Borders instead of G20”.
More importantly, last week’s events can be seen as one
immense showing of solidarity from a diverse movement The G20 organising
platform successfully brought together a wide range of different groups under
one banner; united but autonomous. Where it may have been all too easy for the
platform to disown or condemn more militant factions like Welcome to Hell, they
stood strong. The Black Bloc too was never an isolated component of the
protests, and was always interspersed with, and supported by, nearby
protesters. Another major source of inspiration is the sheer size and depth of
the movement. No G20 was not only about showing visibility and disrupting the
G20. It was about tens of thousands of people coming together to fight against
a repressive system and protect these autonomous spaces that are built
collectively. The protests thrived on Hamburg’s extensive anti-capitalist
infrastructure and community, with squats and social centers operating as major
focal points. The 20,000 seater St Pauli stadium too hosted an alternative
media forum, accommodation for protesters, and a pay what you can anti-fascist
kitchen.
The G20 protests give us proof of the strength of a vital
social movement, and glimpses of the challenges ahead. This social movement is
not a reformist one; it is anti-statist, anti-nationalist and anti-capitalist.
Fighting for the right to protest and the right to assemble is not enough. What
needs to be questioned are the laws put into place by the state. Accepting the
state’s diktat on how, when and where to protest defies the very notion of
protesting. The No G20 protests in Hamburg were a refusal of the legitimacy of
the state to decide on people’s future, bodies and spaces. As the systemic
crises inherent to capitalism multiply and intensify, people should look to
‘moments’ such as the G20 protests for inspiration and as a way to evaluate the
current strength of the movement. All the while, however, we must keep
constructing alternatives discourses and practices whilst working within,
against and beyond the state.
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