Address to the solidarity conference with the prisoners of the G20 Revolt in Hamburg
(Thessaloniki 16th December 2017)
Dear comrades,
We want to send you this address and tell you about some of the discussions some people had/have after the revolt against the G20 summit in the summer and give some information on the latest development.
To explain a bit the position we speak from, we can say, that we are an informal circle of anarchists which have been active in Hamburg over the last 10 years. We didn’t participate in any official organization or mobilization against the G20 but organized ourselves in our neighborhood before the summits and with our comrades we organized for fighting in the streets.
First of all its good to hear that there is an international awareness of the repression after the G20-Revolt. Often with big mobilization the interest ends in the moment. For us the G20 was another project of power in our city which we organized and intervened against, one step of many steps in the developement of a city of the ritch. But surely its dimensions were bigger than we’re used to. And we are happy that it actually turned in to a situation we think have the characteristics of a revolt. We explained more concretely some of the Hamburg context in which the whole G20 and OSZE summits and resistance against it should be seen (Texts published in the international anarchist correspondence Avalanche (https://avalanche.noblogs.org/post/2017/08/02/avalanche-11-english/). We think for now we want to share some thoughts on the repression and what it means for us.
Repression and Media
Regarding the repression there are different aspects of it. Just after the revolt and even in the days there was a huge wave of media hounding. Nothing to be surprised of but quite a new quality. It is and was again important to see how the media serves the power in producing pictures and fueling the fear of people with their rhetorics. In the case of the revolt against the G20 they talked of civil war and compared Hamburg with actual war scenes. This atmosphere was reproduced a lot in social media and we could experience the power of their manipulation on a high level.
For example it is the case that even people who do have an analysis of the situation reproduced the medias lies about certain events.
So in the end people believed the media instead of talking to other rebels who were actually part of the events on the streets. This fact also had a great impact on the debates or not-debates after the revolt. There was for example some persons from autonomous groups (who presented themselves as spokespersons) who openly distanced themselves from parts of the revolt in the media completely reproducing their lies as well as their analysis. Condemning the fights and looting as senseless and irresponsible violence and talking shit at the expenses of the arrested as it was quite clear that the media atmosphere will serve the judges to condemn the prisoners as hard as possible. It took some weeks until even in public people started questioning the stories of the cops and media. We think it was again a very clear proof of the fact that we need our own independent communication (assemblies. magazines, posters…) and that the media is a tool of power who will never be „on our side“ or „working for us“. In Germany its unfortunately still the fact, that parts of the anti-authoritarian milieu doesn’t have a clear stand against the media.
In the coming days we will experience once again the true face of media. After 2 waves of raids (the first against looters, the second against communists who were brutally arrested at the G20) the special Investigation group „Schwarzer Block“ (Black Block) announced they will publish pictures of rioters and start a public manhunt in December 2017.
Face to face with the Police state
In the half a year of preparation for the G20 summit the state tried to hold the line between installing a huge apparatus of control and on the other side trying to keep a liberal democratic image promising the people all kind of lies like they will not even notice the summit and will not have any serious impact in the city. It seems that quite a lot of people understand that this is a huge lie. Especially as there was direct actions already happening since autumn of 2016 and the potential conflict was notable. So after more and more interventions against the coming summit and the militarization of the neighborhoods and public debates of what is to expect, the police announced, they will „bring all they have and if they need it they will use it.“
The fact that a militarized city full of the whole police apparatus couldn’t prevent the loss of control and a revolt to happen should be a fact interesting for us.
One point in analyzing this could be their obligation to secure the official summit program and participants which made them giving up certain frontlines for quite a while (like it happened in Sternschanze). Also their loss of overview of all the diverse interventions, happening partly simultaneously, made them running from one to another. For us as local anarchists we can say that we trusted in our experiences and knowledge of the terrain and it worked out well to stick to this. Of cause there is all kind of thoughts on how it would have been possible to expand the situation but this is another big question which should be talked about in another moment.
Even today a special investigation group with hundreds of cops working full time on investigating the revolt seems quite desperate. It seems to be a problem for them to be tied by their bureaucracy and pseudo-democratic image as we also see in a lot of the court cases now. Quite few material is really useable against the accused as at some point it was just chaos in their structures . Also some court cases are obvious show cases to serve the medias and politicians desire of revenge but will not stand the next higher appeal.
But lets not forget that there is thousands of videos and photos from social media which will be used in the future for the manhunt. In the days of this summer the cops put up a platform for snitching citizens to upload their Photos and Videos directly to cops. This development of the culture of denunciation through technology should be considered in our discussions.
Prison and court cases
After the revolt a big assembly was initiated under the title „United we stand“. It is all kind of political groups in Hamburg. There is different groups in the assembly taking care of different aspects of supporting the prisoners. Also there is a mobilization to one of the prisons every first Sunday. Regarding this there is some good work done. Also of cause there is all kind of different interventions in solidarity which are independent from this assembly (Attacks, poster, discussions…).
But the debate on how to be in solidarity with whom, was not able to come to a point because of the diversity of the participating groups of the assembly.
This aspect is one of the most negative aspects to speak about. Unfortunately the blackmail of the state keeping the prisoners in custody worked really well in the context of the media hounding. The justice initiated an unofficial deal which spread between the prisoners. If prisoners would plead guilty and apologize they would be sentenced to bail and could leave the prison. With this strategy unfortunately quite a lot of prisoners distanced themselves from the revolt and agreed with this to the medias picture of drunken senseless rioters which didn’t even know why they were there. Even if there is the position of some people that its just a strategy to lie to the court to leave the prison as soon as possible, we think its sad that we were not able to convince accused rioters to refuse participation in the court cases and rely on the solidarity. There is also a more long text by a ex-prisoner on this question.(https://unitedwestand.blackblogs.org/en/a-short-contribution-to-the-transnational-meeting-at-rote-flora-by-a-former-g20-prisoner/)
For now the first level of court cases against the prisoners are coming to an end. But the court cases against all the people arrested but released are still to come. Also we will see how the public manhunt with pictures will develope.
One of the most important things after a big moment of struggle like this should be to use the experiences made for our coming struggles against power. Lets take all kind of moments as references on our coming paths. Being it experiences of fighting in the streets swell as experiences of prison and repression, and also of cause the relationships formed by the shared mistakes as victories.
Greetings in solidarity
some anarchists from Hamburg
December 2017