Hamburg Mayday Parade (eng.)

With the motto "A Sunday for global rights" 3-4000 people celebrated the first Euromayday Parade in Hamburg. In the bright sunshine the parade passed places of precarious work and living conditions, for example a Lidl supermarket and a refugee camp/ship. Sambabands, theatre groups, trucks focusing on different aspects of precarity, U-Site and Silly Walks sound systems, Microphone Mafia, etc., made the parade a colourful party.

"This is the most creative demonstration on which I've ever been", said a participant during the Hamburg Mayday Parade. 3-4times more people than expected gathered from 12 o'clock in bright sunshine and summer temperatures on the "Michelwiese" in the city centre. A theatre play by the refugee council and a "bolt cutter ballet" took place there, and after short speeches about the recent cuts in social benefits and about the Euromayday, the parade moved to the "Landungsbrücken" (harbour and tourist area), then to St.Pauli and the Reeperbahn (red light district), passed the fish market and the refugee ship, and finally arrived at "Platz der Republik" in Altona.

The parade was a mixture of a party and political demonstration about precarity. On the one hand, it was a colourful and loud music-parade, with fat sounds, Samba, costumes, theatre. On the other hand, it visited a large number of precarious spaces. There were speeches on 1-Euro-Jobs, student protests and study fees, appropriation, sex work, working conditions at Lidl and in Accor hotels, as well as several contributions about the living conditions of refugees. In several places along the route banners were dropped from buildings and bridges, for example from the roof of a Lidl supermarket.

The parade was led by refugee groups, who protested loudly against asylum seeker camps and "lager" and against illegalization. They were followed by a "wedding truck", which advocated passport-marriages, a dub reggae truck, a car by the trailer parcs of Hamburg (which are under threat of eviction), and a theatre car of the students. From the countryside commune, which brought two donkeys, up to the techno party, which formed the end of the parade, a very broad range of participants was attracted by this parade.

The police mostly stayed at a distance and did not obstruct the parade. In a city where heavy police presence as well as police attacks on demonstrations have become part of everyday reality, this day thus represented a pleasant exception. Only at the end of the parade the police seemed willing to re-confirm their operational readiness by cunningly blocking with their own cars the reserved parking areas for the parade trucks and by setting up confused police lines.

However the parade participants ignored the police as best as they could and celebrated a final party (some) - or an evening chill-out (others) - in the park where the parade ended. A gig by the hip hop group Microphone Mafia concluded a successful Mayday.