Sadie Plant on Sat, 23 Mar 2002 17:24:01 +0100 (CET)


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[Nettime-bold] last week in Bern



16th March: two thousand young antifascist demonstrators march through the streets of Bern. They are serious - a fascist skinhead gang had attacked a couple of Turks only the night before - but also cheerful and calm in their condemnations of fascism, local and global too. Those with balaclavas, masks, and aerosols move through the city like soldier ants, covering the walls with graffiti gegen alles as the crowd walks down the hill accompanied by a truck with a small PA relaying a few speeches and music. At the bottom of the Altstadt the demonstrators meet two rows of police, blocking the roads to the left and the right. Nothing is stopping them going straight ahead across the bridge, but that would take them out of the city, so instead they sit it out. There are a few hundred police, dressed in riot gear and armed with rubber bullets and tear gas. In the street on the right, which would lead them back into the city, there is also a water cannon. It’s here that they decide to rush the lines. Volleys of shots ring out; people - many of whom are sitting in the street – run back in a moment of panic. Stay together, stay calm… Neither the demonstrators nor the police seem to know which way to play the situation now. The demonstrators drag a metal advertising hoarding into position in anticipation of the water cannon, but it doesn’t come. The police are nervous and well armed, but they just stand their ground. After maybe 40 minutes of stalemate, during which the kids sit down or wander round drinking, smoking, greeting friends, the police tighten their cordon at the back of the demonstration, 200 hundred metres back up the hill, and start refusing to let people leave without giving names and addresses confirmed by ID. On the other side of the line, a man in plain clothes is on his mobile, saying: “we won’t be able to hold them back – we have to get more people here.” Moments later, the demonstrators declare their intention to link arms and push their way through the cordon, and suddenly they do just that, bursting through police lines which seem to melt away, leaving the marchers free to walk back into the city in exuberant triumph, chanting Internationale Solidarité. A tractor appears as though from nowhere, decked out with people and a black and red flag, rolling through the reclaimed streets of the Altstadt.

It wasn’t such a ball for everyone: as far as I know, one demonstrator was hit by a rubber bullet and others were injured by the water cannon vehicle; there were several arrests, and a few hundred people stayed behind to do further battle with the riot police. But most of the demonstrators left the scene free, unhurt, delighted with their victory, and chanting: “Let’s go for a couple of beers and come back to do it again next week!”