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Post Titled: ruhige 1.Mai, 2008 in kreuzberg
In the early evening I went up the street to Kottbusser Tor to see what was happening in and around the surrounding streets, but is was all grilling adn drinking and music- hundreds of food stands set up out front of their respective resteraunts on Adelbert straße and everwhere between Marianneplatz and Oranienplatz, calm, nice, fun just sitting on the grass, having a beer, talking fotos, listening to all the bad music- not at all what I hat expected. There were metal bands full of old guys, crump dancers, an AC/DC cover band. Football and public urination and prett uch everyone had a beer in hand, like an über-block party.
When I left at 9pm and headed from Kottbusser Tor east on Skalitzer straße everything seemed normal until suddenly right in front of me chaos broke loose.
Headed my way was a sea of protesters and off to the right and left were armies of riot police. I am not sure how it started but there was sort of a herd rush and then the dozens and dozens of armored cops and police vans were clashing head-on with an entire protest march of anti-capitalists. I just stopped my bike and took out my camera and started shooting. It was like being in a bubble, all around me there were cops chasing down, tackling and beating punks, meanwhile beer bottles and firecrackers were flying through the air, and I just watched, shooting here and there perched on my bike in the middle of the street.
Overall, this was quite a peaceful May Day, probably because the problems were actually in Hamburg this year in clashes between 1,000 Neo-Nazis, 7,000 anti-neo-nazis and police.
In the early evening I went up the street to Kottbusser Tor to see what was happening in and around the surrounding streets, but is was all grilling adn drinking and music- hundreds of food stands set up out front of their respective resteraunts on Adelbert straße and everwhere between Marianneplatz and Oranienplatz, calm, nice, fun just sitting on the grass, having a beer, talking fotos, listening to all the bad music- not at all what I hat expected. There were metal bands full of old guys, crump dancers, an AC/DC cover band. Football and public urination and prett uch everyone had a beer in hand, like an über-block party.
When I left at 9pm and headed from Kottbusser Tor east on Skalitzer straße everything seemed normal until suddenly right in front of me chaos broke loose.
Headed my way was a sea of protesters and off to the right and left were armies of riot police. I am not sure how it started but there was sort of a herd rush and then the dozens and dozens of armored cops and police vans were clashing head-on with an entire protest march of anti-capitalists. I just stopped my bike and took out my camera and started shooting. It was like being in a bubble, all around me there were cops chasing down, tackling and beating punks, meanwhile beer bottles and firecrackers were flying through the air, and I just watched, shooting here and there perched on my bike in the middle of the street.
Overall, this was quite a peaceful May Day, probably because the problems were actually in Hamburg this year in clashes between 1,000 Neo-Nazis, 7,000 anti-neo-nazis and police.
posted by "Post-Google" by TAR ART RAT at 3:20 pm
1 Comments:
Shiiiit. 1. That's kind of disappointing for photo purposes. 2. The shit that went down in HH is nuts. There were protests like that (with water cannons and ridiculous destruction)for a large portion of the year I lived there - Mostly about the Wohnwagen situation (people living in trailers trying to squat all over the city) and about the start of the Iraq war. There was also one notable protest about Studiengebühren whree only about 50 people showed up to protest (it was a really pathetic, peaceful little parade), but someone threw something and they all got beaten up and every last one of them got arrested. What I find interesting about the shit in Hamburg yesterday is that it took place not in the normal locations of protest, but instead in Barbek, a REALLY yuppie neighborhood which out-of-towners sometimes perceive as having lots of Ausländer, but which really is very bourgeois these days. Strange. (Granted, they did say that there was protesting in the Schanze, which is less surprising, but it looked worse in Yuppie-land)
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