G8 2007 - Germany

from email, 16 July 2007: report from G8 2007, Johannes Lauterbach and Carol Bergin.

"The tension has broken - even the police have taken off their helmets and are relaxing. In front of them, clowns are miming the story of a certain world leader who is choking on a Brezel, a group of drummers is filling the air with their rhythms, while thousands of people are enjoying this sunny Thursday afternoon in front of the barbedwire tipped fence..."  more

from email, 16 July 2007: "In the weekend of June 30st and July 1st, G8-activists in Amsterdam, Netherlands sat down to evaluate the actions and their effect.

"It is difficult to make deals with clowns" says a representant of the Dutch Clown Army with a serious face. Around him people nod their heads in understanding. It is the second day of a retrospective weekend organised by 'Broeinest' about the G8- protests..." more

from email, 17 July 2007: Interview with opponents of the G8 (taken from Swing, autonomous Rhein-Main-Info). To make clear positions and contradictions, here comes a facilitated interview with two fictional Swing-editors... more

from email, 17 July 2007: "We face a retro phase today - and this is good. The phase of sloppy bicycle pervaded stroll-along-demos, where people nod their heads to the loud funny music from the loudspeakers, seems to be over for the moment. The demos around the G8 summit were characterized by bigger organized blocks, people linking arms, side banners, loud slogans and a powerful spirit..." more

from email, Sunday, July 15 2007: The G8 summit is more than a month ago now, what remains is the joy and the satisfaction about the successful protests, about the work a lot of people were doing in the run-up to the summit, both within Attac and otherwise. Like many others our local Attac Working Group had actively worked for two years preparing these summit protests, which we understood as a point of crystallization of a multiple movement for a different world. more

from email, 14 July 2007: "... the facilities to build a collective action map depicting all of the actions that happened, are being put together. The map will have icons that indicate where what kind of action took place. The individual icons will be linked to texts, films or pictures about the actions. You will also be able to view a brief summary while scrolling with your mouse... more

from email, 11 July 2007: taken from SWING (autonomous info Rhein Main) : "Blockaders play cat and mouse with the police... by their so called five finger strategy the G8 critics successfully paralysed the security measures of the police (Ostseezeitung, 7th of June 2007)

"Who's the cat; who's the mouse?" asked the headline of the last Swing two weeks before the G8. Who would have expected such a clear answer of the Ostseezeitung? And indeed the scenes being enacted in the forests and fields around Heiligendamm at the 6th of June were incredible. more

from email, 9 July 2007: ‘We Are Winning’ - the slogan famously sprayed on a wall in Seattle as thousands shut down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) ministerial in 1999; last seen on the side of a burning police van on the streets of Genoa in 2001 – when the G8 leaders last dared to meet in a European city –; and the feeling that thousands of us felt as we flowed through fields, around police lines and onto the roads leading to Kempinski Hotel, the location of this year’s G8 Summit in Heiligendamm.  more

from email, 9 July 2007: According to the Financial Times on the opening day, the blockades had 'tipped the G8 summit into logistical chaos'. The mobilisation to Heiligendamm was the return of the alter-globalisation movement. Ben Trott analyses how the event turned out to be such a success? What are its implications? And what next? more

from email, 9 July 2007: "Not since Genoa a countersummit has generated so much hope for the renewal of the heretic left and rekindled anticapitalist energies in Europe and beyond..." more

from email: "The numerous blockades against Nazis and war, demonstrations against social robbery and the meeting of the Ministers of the Interior here in Nürnberg were experience by most people in a completely different way than the allegedly "independent" NN reported.

Put together with a picture from Berlin, they turned a camp fire into a burning barricade. Quite often then those distortions of facts were in turn used by the police to restrict basic freedoms - like the ban on the local anti-G8-demo to protest in front of the chemical company Novartis..." more

From email, 03 July 2007: Contrary to german media reports, the kitchens feeding the anti-G8 mobilisation in fact made some surplusses which will be dispersed to legal/prisoner support groups. "It is now apparent that it is actually possible even over a longer period of time to cook tasty organic vegan and partly vegetarian food for a large number of people on a self organised basis and distribute it just for donations." more

from email, 1 July - G8 2007 evaluations, from Antifascist Left Berlin
"The protests against the g8 summit lie behind us. They have been a step forwards for the extraparliamentary movement in the FRG: Because it has been more that a week of spectacular protests at the Baltic Sea. We mobilized and organized, we arranged alliances and intervened in practice. Now is the time to look back, to analyze, to summarize. To explore next steps, a yet unfinished debate is needed. So here is the first output from that debate within the Antifascist Left Berlin..." more

We condemn the active collaboration of parts of the Rostock Alliance and ATTAC with the police and their repressive offences. We also condemn their dissociation from grassroots, antifascist and left opponants of the summit. Rebellion is justified!  more

from email: "Both letters are more than precious critical assessments of radical's actions. I agree with the observation of Tadzio Mueller and Kriss Sol that radicals are sometimes a little too self-congratulatory, self-referential, and surprisingly 'un-radical'. What one could learn from antig8 in Rostock? ..." more