During the early morning of the summit on Saturday, we torched a diplomatic vehicle (license plate beginning with ‘0’) parked in the Dohrnweg in Hamburg-Sternschanze. The minibus used for transportation of government members was completely destroyed, a friendly welcome to the political riots that took place in the neighborhood.
We would like to document this action as one of many that took place during the insurgent days in Hamburg that cannot be condemned as either ‘senseless’ or ‘randomly targeted.’ We stand in complete solidarity with the looting and the rioting of the summit nights that some are currently condemning as ‘counterproductive’. Criticism of individual actions should always take place – sometimes even publicly. We regret for example the small cars that were destroyed during the summit revolts. But we consider the flat-out dissociation from the events that took place at night in the Schanze district to be bourgeois, politically incorrect and fatal. This also applies to the reduction of criticism to a level of ‘Please not in our neighborhood’.
We who propagate the loss of control as a revolutionary opportunity; We, who welcome and encourage expropriation campaigns with the slogan ‘All for All’, should not discredit the ‘spontaneity’ of a remarkable night of struggle. We do not find anything disturbing about the free shopping that took place at Rewe and Budni (two supermarket chains that were looted). That many in this district find this threatening is regrettable, but not suprising. Is the plundering and torching of the Bolle supermarket on the first of May 1987 a positive point of reference for us because such a distant historical event can no longer cause any more distress?
Targeted attacks against police convoys and targeted destruction of summit infrastructure as simple, premeditated, militant action would not be possible without the ‘riots’ of a temporary rebellion (which took place incidentally at several locations in Hamburg!). We understand the reasons for the current concerns some people have. We understand that many people now fear a repressive law and order crackdown during the upcoming election campaign. We understand that some people might feel inclined to avoid political damage to their own structures. However the categorizing and downgrading of acts of resistance to supposedly senseless ‘riots’ will not help. A united solidarity with all the different types of protesters (which worked remarkably well during the summit) WITHOUT condemning allegedly apolitical, supposedly foreign ‘riot-kids’ seems to us a better strategy.
