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DemocracyNow! March 19 <http://www.democracynow.org/2015/3/19/blockupy_thousands_protest_in_frankfurt_calling> Blockupy: Thousands Protest in Frankfurt Calling on Eurozone to Dismantle "Laboratory for Austerity" Watch Naomi Klein Address Blockupy Protest <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRji3E0JKvs> We speak with German climate justice activist Tadzio Mueller, who took part in the Blockupy protest. . . . TADZIO MUELLER: Well, thank you very much for having me on the show. The first thing to say is that there were two things that happened yesterday. There were blockades of the opening of the new ECB tower block. . . . So that’s what happened in the morning, and that’s where you saw the major clashes, that also produced the images you probably saw on TV. And then, in the afternoon, there was a rally and a major march. And if there were maybe 5,000 or 6,000 at the blockades in the morning, the rally and the march gathered up to about 30,000 people. So those were kind of two sort of separate events. And the mood at the first event, the blockades, was definitely very confrontational. But the mood in the afternoon was very different. It was very colorful. It was sunny. Folks were there from all over the continent. There was a real sense of a Europeanization of the struggle from below against the austerity diktats from above. . . . TADZIO MUELLER: . . . When the Greeks voted for a different government, Syriza, anti-austerity government, a few months ago, it became very clear that European elites had a fight on their hand, whereas for many years it seemed that they were able to push these austerity projects from the top without much coordinated resistance or without resistance that managed to occupy certain levers of power. When, on the 25th of January, the Greek people voted for an anti-austerity government for the first time, which at this point enjoys 70 to 80 percent support in the Greek population, despite being in a very difficult situation—when this new government, this new hope, came to power in Greece, European elites realized now they had a real fight on their hands. And they’ve been trying to strangle this new hope in Greece ever since. And this is why the protests at the European Central Bank yesterday were so tense and also filled with rage, because, on the one hand, you had this supposedly grandiose opening of a new institution that says, "Hey, we’re, you know, the sort of pinnacle of European integration and of European capitalism," and at the same time, you’ve got this massive assault on social movements, on workers, in the entire European—in the entire eurozone, and especially the European periphery, and there, foremost Greece. And that’s essentially the connection that drove folks yesterday in large numbers to come and protest and blockade the ECB in Frankfurt. AMY GOODMAN: And so, in this last minute we have left, Tadzio, explain what happened, the people who were injured and also the cars that were set afire. TADZIO MUELLER: OK. Now, there were these blockades, and it is true that folks from the blockades were clearly out to engage the police. And I think we can say that this actually—it’s understandable why there is this rage. If you look at Greece, you’ve got youth unemployment of 50 percent, you’ve got increase in suicides. It’s a terrible situation. And folks in Europe were trying to express their rage at the evacuation of democracy on the continent. However, expressing rage is not the same as having a political strategy to change the things that are actually causing the suffering that is causing your rage. So, actually, there was a lot of rage in the street in the morning, but in the afternoon and evening, that had been transformed into a sense of hope, into a sense that we can lead a European struggle from below against these institutions and maybe win. So my hope would be, let’s not just focus on the burning cars, because in fact what we need to focus on is the ECB and their policies, because they’re burning the continent. . . . On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 6:52 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote: > > NY Times, Mar. 19 2015 > Germans Protest European Austerity Measures > By RHEA WESSEL and JACK EWING > > FRANKFURT — Protesters set cars on fire and clashed with police officers on > Wednesday as they marched toward the European Central Bank’s new > headquarters in a demonstration against austerity and capitalism that took > on a markedly more heated tone than past protests. > . . . _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
