exciting first of May spent on the streets of Kreuzberg. Day started around 2pm, meeting up another bunch of students with whom I'm organising an autonomous seminar, and we gave flyers around the square before the start of the EuroMay Day Parade. Kept bumping into known faces and having pleasant little chats, which was more enjoyable than giving flyers out anonymously. The rebel clowns were there too, having fun and being absurd. There was music, concerts, street theater, and people could make their own thought-bubble to carry around - some wanted the "reintroduction of the 35-second working week!", others focused on hierarchy, the state, cops, and even, yes, sarkozy.
Eventually the demo started and I gathered with A from the seminar preparation group, and three of her friends, C., L. and D., behind the samba band. We walked and danced and chatted and gave flyers out on the streets of working-class neukölln, stopped for a speech on precarity in front of a lidl, and ended on Hermanplatz, from where we moved on back to Kreuzberg where all sorts of concerts were taking place. It was already around 6pm.
The streets were packed, beer bottles and litter covered the ground, everything was fun and peaceful, restaurant toilets had long queues of communicative people with bladders full of beer. Groups kept getting broken and finding one another again as drinks, food, toilets, other friends were sought. There was more bumping into people last seen months ago, more splitting up of groups as the chatting left one lagging behind, and more group reformation following unknown physical laws. I kept trying to get in touch with Kath. who was roaming around, but the network wouldn't work. It was amazing that I could bump into all sorts of people but systematically miss Kath. We eventually lost A and I stayed with C and L. We ended up at a concert of an old German rock band from the 70s that recently got back together, Ton Steine Scherbe. Weird to be surrounded by a mass of people singing along songs I'd never heard before.
More walking, more trying to contact other people to get groups together. We ate on the street, J. eventually found me and joined our group with his Palestinian clown friend. Night was setting in, the crowds were still strong, music still filling the whole of Oranienstr, no signs of violence even though so much alcohol had been flowing around since the early afternoon. We walked on, J. suggested we picked up beer at his place, the rainbow factory, which we did. The Palestinian clown decided to go back home as he wasn't too relaxed walking around in crowds surrounded by cops. As we walked back towards the music, we saw masses of police cars parading up the street in line, and on another street another line of green lorries. We suddenly interrupted our chat when we realised that we were faced with masses of whistling excited young men - behind us, lines of green men with protection gear and non-smily faces. Unpleasant to realise we were sandwiched right between the fronts. We weren't quite sure where to go, moved on the side, hid behind a bus stop. Photographers and cameramen were everywhere to try get good pictures of the "autonomous", as they are refered to, throwing beer bottles and stones at the lines of green men. T, whom I was supposed to meet with M and Co a little while later, called me just as I was trying to figure out where in hell we could go and what we should do. I could imagine the lines of green men spraying pepper sprays behind us and was rushing around incoherently speaking on the phone and making sure I wasn't losing my group. But nothing much seemed to happen aside from the cops and young men facing one another and glaring, and we managed to move away, but were stopped by another line of green men who directed us straight in the middle of a road with traffic and towards another group of autonomous throwing beer bottles - this time in our direction, as the cops were behind us. Thank you cops. We ducked and found a passage back to the concert crowds and to the meeting point where T, M and the rest were supposed to wait. J. had left us to go to another party. It was about 10.30pm.
More concert, dancing, more staring at lines of cops absurdly parading in one direction or another. I read there were about 5000 of them around in the city yesterday. Around 1.30am, we moved on to the party where J was in a tiny courtyard filled to the brink with people dancing. Left a few hours later, just as more cops arrived to close the party down. All in all, an enjoyable random first of may.