Strasbourg: Rally against the speech of Macron
We received the following report from Strasbourg.
On the 17th of April there were rallies all over the country in front of the city-halls. The occasion was a speech by the president concerning the pension-reform. There were calls to boycott the speech and instead rally in front of the town-halls for a “crockery-concert”. In Strasbourg several hundreds of people gathered in this spirit in order to make a lot of noise to show their discontent. Among them were union-members, unorganized masses and different revolutionarist forces. There was also a contingent of proletarian revolutionaries present to join the struggle.
The assembled masses beat against pots and pans and shouted combative slogans such as “Retirement at 60 years – we fought to gain it, we’ll fight to defend it!” From the get-go there were also slogans against the police and the bourgeois State that were picked up by the masses with great enthusiasm.
After about one hour in front of the city-hall, a combative demonstration formed that was mainly composed of the younger participants of the rally. The demonstrators claimed the street for themselves and moved throughout the city in their own terms, resisting all attempts of intimidation by the police. Despite the many attempts by the “forces of order” to attack and block the demonstration as well as the repeated use of tear-gas they did not succeed in their goal and were again and again outmaneuvered by the demonstration that prevented them from moving by means of barricades.
Throughout the city resounded the slogans “Down with the State, the cops and the fascists!”, “The street belongs to whom? – It belongs to us!” and “Everybody hates the police!” During the demonstration, there were repeated shows of support by passer-bys who urged the participants to carry on the struggle. In the end the demonstration could be dissolved which left the police madly scouring the city for its participants. This however did not stop them from destroying the property of the city’s inhabitants by backing up one of their police cars into bikes that were parked along the road.
