Freedom of movement

Says Libby:
Today we attended a demonstration for freedom of movement, against the anti-immigration policies of the EU. We made some German friends quickly simply by asking where the demo was going to be when we got off the train station this morning - we'd decided to commute up for the day, but brought our sleeping bags in case something drew us to stay the night. We tagged along with our new friends through the streets of Rostock toward the meeting center for the demo. Every street was lined with police vans. Honestly there must have been hundreds. As the German Darth Vader storm troopers in full riot gear tromped behind us toward the same point, there was a little bit of an ominous feeling... until - what's this? Bells, whistles, and cacophony? We turned around to see a colorful clown brigade tooting their whistles, blowing bubbles, and marching behind the troops of polizei to the tune of "Left, right, left! Love and respect!" The 2 Storm Troopers at the end of the line marched backwards, half tripping in the awkwardness of facing the wrong way, but making sure the dangerous clowns didn't use their bubble guns on any of the cops. (Actually, later, I watched a sad clown get the water dumped out of her toy water gun).
[below, clowns hold off the (unnecessary) riot police]

Ironically, though we were demonstrating in support of freedom of movement, we weren't allowed to go anywhere for the first 2+ hours; the polizei surrounded the initial bulk of demonstrators and made folks choose whether to be in or out of the circle, which was comprised not only of the riot police, but also of the giant water gun tanks, pre-emptively pointed inward at the crowd (which was notedly made up more of the dread-locked flower children sorts than the autonome). Apparently this circling is also called "kettling" (sounds and feels a lot like "cattle-ing") - a common tactic of British cops, now adopted by this crew.
We remained at the periphery for those 2 hours, unsure if the situation would escalate and wanting to avoid being trapped in the center of the circle or having to have our documents checked. I guess the police were saying there were too many demonstrators or something... we heard many stories about why the procession wasn't going anywhere. Just imagine lots of waiting and standing around while the bright yellow vested folks of the Legal Team negotiated with the captains of the police forces. Finally, we were allowed to proceed, and we bumbled forward for a while, until again, the march was stopped. The news over the speakers was that the police were refusing to allow the march to proceed through the city center, and that a press conference was being held at the front of the line. Meanwhile, many took up dancing in the streets to the music being pumped from the trucks in the march, or playing games on the rail tracks beside the road. It had been grey and dark all day; finally, a little rain broke loose, and as Billy and I both needed a restroom and water, we decided to break away from the demo for a while to meet some of our needs.
Turns out we weren't the only ones. It seemed that the demo was dissolving from the tiredness of being repeatedly held up, and people were walking down the streets like us. We decided we'd go catch the local rail back to the train station to return to Berlin for the night. But alas, after some time waiting at the station, an announcement was made that no trains were running between the area of the demonstration and the main Hauptbahnof station, where we needed to catch the train to Berlin in about 15 minutes. Feeling a little defeated by the long walk that awaited us, we walked back to the street we'd come from, only to find the the march had somehow gone on. All the folks who'd intended to catch a train returned to the street with a little renewed vigor as the music blasted and the die-hards who'd stuck it out carried on. We joined in of curiousity, thinking perhaps we'd gain a little ground to get closer to the station, and the crowd picked up more and more energy and it became apparent that several sects of folks who'd broken off were reuniting as independent smaller marches back into one large one, coming in from other streets, to the cheers of all. Rave music pumped everyone up as we half marched, half danced our way back toward the harbor, with old folks and little kids looking out their windows. It seemed like perhaps there were even more demonstrators than when we first began the march! By the time we passed by the independent media center, Billy and I were exhausted and still hadn't found a toilet, so we dropped out of the brigade and came here, where we've had computer access and also some warm food from the völksküche - "Peoples' Kitchen".
And what of it all? All of this is so up and down, push and pull. It's hard in the face of the militarized forces to feel like we're even making a dent. When one police team gets tired, they get sent back to their vans to rest, eat, and have a smoke. If they're thirsty, water is brought to them. We have no place to go but stand, encircled, in the misty drizzle. And yet, there is an unmistakeable energy to all these folks coming together. One of the oft-spoken themes of the demonstration, "another world is possible", while totally cheesy, provides some of us with the reminder to imagine what we want and further, to take steps toward creating it. How to do so in the face of such a monstruous, seemingly unstoppable, well-oiled, well-funded, and well-armed machine? I don't know. At the School for Designing a Society we defined a system as " a collection of components such that any change of state in one of the components alters the state of the whole". It's useful in rhetoric to label the "system" as something I am not a part of, so that I can more wholly reject those aspects of it I find horriying, enraging, saddening, detach myself from any responsibility for the atrocities we propogate knowing-and-unknowingly. But it also seems useful to view myself as one of the components of the system, such that a change in my energy alters the momentum of the whole. Maybe that's overly optimistic and naive. I'll still decide to believe it as long as I can. Both Billy and I felt it important for people of European descent to be a loud presence in solidarity with those non-europeans who are denied equal rights under immigration laws, and though we are quite tired from the waiting around and walking all over the city, I don't think either of us regret coming. There is a certain welling up of ecstatic joy to be dancing erraticly in the streets in defiance of the devaluation of human life and happiness. And that glimpse of something beautiful is enough to keep me going, at least until tomorrow.