Freedom Strolls in Germany (1 Viewer)

[Linda]

Once again, I'm asking for input from our European members for confirmation.

Apparently out and out protests are not allowed in Germany, but there are no rules against taking a walk or stroll. So, thousands of people across the country are joining together for evening strolls. Hey - no protest here - just out for a walk. (I love it when people figure out ways around "the system".)

In Cottbus, a university city south-east of Berlin, a familiar pattern played out. Moments after the protest started, police declared over megaphone that it was illegal – the participants did not wear masks or physically distance from each other. Groups then broke away and began the Spaziergänge, walks that snake in a variety of directions and are designed to overwhelm any police response.​

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Dressed in padded coats and woolly hats, the protesters were an inconspicuous crowd. “We are just having an evening stroll,” one woman smirked amiably from under a red woollen beret. “Exercising our right to stretch our legs.”​

I love to see the spirits of people coming together to say - enough is enough. Local police have become so militarized that direct opposition is quite dangerous an in some cases, deadly, to people. Rather than dropping to the level of the police and politicians, more and more people are taking a higher road and peacefully gathering in public places.

Asked why there was need for resistance, Maik, a landscape gardener who refused to wear a mask – calling them “chin nappies” – said: “When injustice becomes law, resistance is our duty.”​

‘Peace, freedom, no dictatorship!’: Germans protest against Covid restrictions

The university city of Cottbus held one of 2,000 rallies across Germany on Monday, stoked by the far right

www.theguardian.com

 

[Sinera]

It's Eastern Germany. They have more fire in them. They know what it's like still to live under a dictatorship, at least the older ones. So they don't take any shit from the system anymore. It is not that strong in the West (where I live).

It's in the spirit of the 1989 peaceful revolution and the "Monday Demonstrations" that in the end brought down the GDR and the Berlin wall. Leipzig (where it started), Cottbus, East Berlin, Erfurt and some more cities, all big ones. Their main war cry was similar to the familiar US slogan: "WE ARE THE PEOPLE" (Wir sind das Volk).