The pandemic teaches us that the “emergency situation” in which we live is the rule.In this city – and indeed far beyond it – everyday access to public spaces has become accompanied with a police presence reminiscent of a state of siege.Taking the opportunity of pandemic legislation the amount of checks and patrols has risen in numbers as well as in frequency. This increase, as so often, is put under the unspoken guise of ‘public security’ and has been ramped up during recent pandemic control measures.
If public places aren’t straight-out closed up (as the Neckarwiese), existing public space is made more oppressively hostile by the constant presence of state power. For large parts of the population this intensified occupation of the city streets leads by no means to a feeling of security, in many cases to the stark opposite.
When did you feel safe the last time a police car passed by?
Was it when a high-ranking Mannheim officer was publicly shown to be sympathetic to fraternities involved in antisemitic violence that came to the visibility only because of a few whistleblowers?
Was it when the police in their (re-)action decided to actively side with aggressive conspiracy theorists against counter-protestors?
Was it when they labled right-wing organised, decentralized attacks threatening and taking the lives of our fellow human beings as unsystematic “Lone-Wolf Attacks”?
This list can be vastly extended. But the aim is not a broad discussion about the German police aparatus itself. It is much rather about not allowing anyone to fall victim to the contuation of a threatening presence upheld by a repressive ‘security’ force. History speaks volumes on the potential for authoritarian danger that comes from emergency legislation and their resulting executive branches. Spaces for open public encounter not merely need to be defended and extended. The active creation of a liveable and habitable public sphere must not be left to the constraining presence of patrol cars.
¡No Pasaran!
No step further!
We live, love, feel, party, argue and reconcilliate with each other in these streets!
We get sick in this city, we recover here and often we have to mourn here too!
This city is our life,
Not their battleground!
Let us therefore meet on Saturday, 10.7. at 19:00 o’clock on the Friedrich-Ebert square and protest together!
