a berlin blog
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a berlin blog |
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Wednesday, May 11, 2005 Nazis Raus! 2On Sunday Berlin had a "Day of Democracy" party with beer and wurst and outdoor concerts in front of the Brandenburger Tor, to celebrate -- or commemorate -- V-E Day. The party shoved aside a rally by neo-Nazis, who wanted to march past Berlin's new Holocaust memorial and show their faces at the Brandenburger Tor. Instead, they gathered at Alexanderplatz, behind the train station. Here you see them registering with Berlin cops, in a tent, as a prelude to marching down Unter den Linden:  The police blockaded the area around Alexanderplatz to keep other people from throwing things at the Nazis. I wound up at this blockade, at the top of Unter den Linden.  It turned out to be a flashpoint. Thousands of people gathered -- up to ten thousand, not all at this blockade -- to turn the Nazis back. People broke into the condemned Palast der Republik. People flew Israeli and American and anarcho-socialist flags.  In the end the police made a loose count of the people here, then compared it to the number of neo-Nazis (under 3000) and cancelled the march because of "riot danger." The Nazis wouldn't have gotten past this crowd; but they never even left Alexanderplatz. The police had to haul them away in vans.  The sign says, "Anyone who marches here has understood nothing." posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:31 PM
Comments:
oh, like the importance of free speech, freedom of assembly and that sort of thing? maybe that's just us. and most likely peaceable is the key word.
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