GERMANY: Workers, Youth Battle Cops

BERLIN — Ten thousand workers and youths, including Kurdish youth, engaged in pitched battles with 6,000 cops ordered out to oppose the May Day march. They marched from Kreuzberg to Neuk, two working-class districts in the German capital. Their main slogan was For Social Revolution Worldwide. Sound trucks denounced racist police violence against immigrants here. The crowd chanted that “everyone in Berlin hates the cops.”

The marchers smashed the windows of several banks in a hail of stones. Then the police waded in with riot clubs, tear gas, pepper spray and water cannon, after which the marchers attacked police station #55 in Rollbergstrasse with stones and bottles. The attacking cops repeatedly halted and broke up the march, but the workers and youth countered with stones, bottles and firecrackers.

When the organizers called an early end to the protest, the cops apparently saw this as a sign of weakness, attacking both marchers and by-standers. Many people had to be treated for pepper spray.

According to a 1998 European Parliament report, the effects of pepper spray are far more severe [than tear gas], including temporary blindness which lasts from 15-30 minutes, a burning sensation of the skin which lasts from 45 to 60 minutes, upper body spasms which force a person to bend forward, and uncontrollable coughing making it difficult to breathe or speak for from three to 15 minutes.

Various groups called for the abolition of temporary work and for equal pay for equal work, attacked high rents and the use of housing as a commodity in capitalist society, as well as the nuclear power industry.

In Hamburg, over 2,000 workers marched in a revolutionary May Day demonstration, an alternative to the official May Day organized by the reformist trade union leaders. At least 14 cops were injured, and over 120 demonstrators were arrested. Already on April 30, 4,000 Hamburg protesters had clashed with 2,500 police. Ten cops were injured there