24-7 Germany: De-Escalating Escalation at the G8Freddi Gralle - 22 Jun 2007
...And so some of us from the Ramsdorf community went off to live in one of the G8 protest camps for 9 days. Half an hour by train from Rostok, we found 5,000 fellow critics of today's globalised politics. Our camp in Reddelich was an ocean of impressions and opinions. At the first plenary session we held, the camp leadership resigned and the whole thing continued on the the sole basis of solidarity and enthusiasm. The food from the alternative soup kitchens was delicious, vegan and cost whatever you could afford. At the bar no alcohol was sold on Wednesday and Thursday, the peak of the blockade. Funnily enough, the one thing we all had in common was the phone number of the legal support team, written in permanent marker on every other forearm.
I was there with the Christian network SPEAK to help out in their chill-out tent. The idea was to offer some space for protesters to relax, have a cup of tea or coffee and share after their successful or unsuccessful actions. And that's exactly how it worked out. Amongst the comrades that passed through the SPEAK tent were resolute demonstrators, counsellors, members of the press and, get this – angels. During the demonstrations, several of us dressed up as "peace messengers", handed out candy and little peace quotes and prayed. In the so-called "black bloc" movement, one certainly does stand out dressed all in white!
Life at Reddelich was anything but straightforward. It felt like we were somewhere between utopia and a massive conspiracy theory . Even the extreme surplus of information and news coverage didn't manage to create a clear state of affairs. The alternative subculture was there to fight for its rights and the executive state showed up in the form of police dressed in riot gear to resist the subversives. Meanwhile, there were rumours that there was actually a G8 summit taking place nearby.
Helicopters above us, police cars at the entrance, at the train station, literally everywhere outside the camp. I was forced to ask myself where the aggression starts and the provocation ends. Personal conversations with policemen at the demonstrations shocked me at times. There was definitely an inclination towards violence. Maintaining "order" was on all of their minds. Didn't their foremost concern used to be security of the populace? One person from our group, unsuspectingly standing on the fringes of a demo, was brutally pushed to the ground, taken into custody and spent the rest of the day in degrading conditions in a cramped cell. None of these policemen were forced to work at the G8. They all got more hours of work and more pay.
It was all too easy to forget that the protests weren't actually directed at the police. At the same time, the police need to be aware of what they stand for. The demonstrators weren't there to questioning the validity of the federal state or bring about some sort of violent revoltion. We were there because we are dissatisfied with the morality of some politicians, want to see an end to sweatshops, the monopolization of the media and hypocritical immigration control. What's the worth of a democratic nation if it is content when its citizens have forgotten that justice is not just a natural resource, but something that must be constantly renewed and reclaimed? Cyprian once said (in reference to the rich): "Their possessions enchain them and have tied down their courage, choked their belief, blurred their power of judgement and throttled their souls.“ I was deeply impressed to see that there are a few courageous people who don't shy away from confrontation to effect a radical and sustainable political change. And it's awful to see that peaceful confrontation has apparently become so ineffective that some are prepared to take the path of violent resistance.
In the wake of Reddelich, I find myself somewhat embarrassed that we as Christians (and I very intentionally include myself here) purport to do nothing but propagate freedom often just apply it to the "spiritual“ areas of our lives. If the power of Jesus can bring humanity emotional and spiritual freedom, why not also temporal freedom to the oppressed? Why do so few of us manage to free ourselves from what could be seen as an inhumane capitalist system to, instead, live according to our own, glorious, loving standards? We claim that we have that power. Then why don't we use it? Shouldn't we have beaten NGOs the world over to their tasks a long time ago? We have a God whose heart has always belonged to the poor and the oppressed. What about our hearts? Who do they belong to?
