Morning Comrades! I was going to write about the Saturday’s May Day here in Hamburg yesterday, but truthfully, I was and still am exhausted from those 48hr. As I usually keep local news and events off the public radar I will make an exception today but keep it brief.
In preparation for Saturday’s May Day, a very large coalition of essentially all left-wing groups had gotten together in Hamburg to organize talks and walks in line with all government issued health restrictions. Not the way any of us wanted to get out and be counted but considering the ongoing, raging pandemic it was agreed that health and safety concepts were a priority. By Friday evening our state government had turned down all applications, turned down all legal appeals and made it extremely clear that no one from the center to left spectrum was allowed to organize anything on May 1st. This is irrespective of the fact that for the last 5 months our city had to endure regular demonstrations from the far right, covid-denying, hippie meets fascist hooligan that our government not only allowed, but instructed our police force to handle with silk gloves. To make matters worse, a protest by said narcissists was allowed on May 1st. Rest assured, tempers were beyond boiling point come Saturday morning.
Now, locally, there has been a lot of talk over the last 24hrs about the failure of said broad left wing spectrum, despite the insanely heavy, and heavy-handed police presence ( several thousand riot cops, water cannons, tanks, helicopters, mounted horse units etc ), to organize everyone at one central point. A lot of this talk is coming from the more vanguard orientated factions within our wonderful little alternative world here. I get that. Whilst cities like Berlin and Frankfurt were allowed to meet in mass, we weren’t. Considering our history and the most recent obscene oppression during the G20 protests here, it was overdue. Add 15 months of a pandemic, several months of lockdowns and most recently a curfew and despite our officially Social Democratic and Green Party government keeping all offices, factories and public transport open, well, I understand the disappointment. However, putting aside that conversation, and my issues run deeply with that faction here, what inadvertently happened is that throughout the day, spontaneous, smaller, more mobile, “protests” occurred throughout the city. Anything from 50-1000 people spontaneously got together and it overwhelmed the police to the point where any meeting was greeted by extreme violence. Now, effectively, that didn’t achieve all that much, other than keeping a highly aggressive and overly militarized police force on their toes, but what it did do, is, hopefully, create awareness that mass mobilization within our world as a tactic is a losing game. Looking at it historically, the smaller, more agile agitator will always win against the mass force of the state. Whilst too many people got injured, felt deflated and ineffective against a modern police force I am taking that underlying reality with me. Times have changed and we have been fighting a conservative, defensive battle for too many decades. Yes, I am tired and exhausted from this past weekend and the last 25 years, but if anything, let that be a lesson. Authority can easily defeat one massive 10`000 people march, but it cannot deal with 10, 1`000 people marches, let alone 100, 100 people marches.
Massive respect and thanks go out to all the Red Line Paramedics, the journalists and most importantly to everyone that went out on May 1st to be counted, for a better tomorrow. For an international, intersectional, anti-capitalistic worker owned based tomorrow.
Fuck me, it’s another week gone and another new playlist for you wonderful people. It was kind of hard to not listen to last weeks playlist all of the time, only because it was accidentally awesome and yet here we are. Admittedly, this one is a fucking odd ball. It’s half super happy, jamming, deep cuts from my club culture days in London, to new tracks from the likes of Red Fang to classic headbanger jams, to classic FML hippie vibes, some classic jazz and new rap. I have no idea what was going on last week but rest assured it’s going to get you off, on, and out.
Before I get into today’s fuckening, a special heads up about what’s going on in Colombia lately. Like so many of our comrades in Central and South America that have been struggling under “our” liberating neo-liberal fascist dickhead puppet governments that we have been propping up, the gig is up. I am linking the below image to an IG video I would like for you all to watch and then dig deep outside of your mainstream news channels.