Again, for those of you with short attention spans, well start with the jingle. Excerpts from the two calls and links to the complete texts are below.
The ALI call:
Never Forgive, Never Forget
Neither Heros, Nor Martyrs
Conny in Göttingen, Silvio in Berlin, Carlo in Genoa, Dax in Milano, Thomas in Dortmund, Carlos in Madrid, Rick L. In Magdeburg, Jan Kucera in the Czech Rep., Feodor in St. Petersburg, Alexis in Athens, and the list could go on and on and on. We single them out because the names are likely to inspire thoughts, memories, and emotions in your minds. But these are neither heros, nor martyrs. They were simply militants, activists, young revolutionaries who had the misfortune of being killed because of their ideas, either by Fascists or by the Police, the State`s private army. They were not singled out, nor were they involved in activities beyond the realm of what most activists/militants of the extra-parliamentary left expose themselves to.
Conny was no different. On the 17th of November she and others were alerted to the presence of Nazi skins in Göttingen. For this reason, a group of antifascists gathered to chase the Nazis out of the city. They were observed by plainclothes police, who gave chase to the antifascists and called for re-enforcements. Once they had gathered enough officers, the murderers went on the offensive. After commenting on police radio “Jetzt machen wir sie platt” they attacked the group of antifascists with batons and pepper spray. All this happened on the Weender Landstrasse. During this confrontation, Conny was chased into oncoming traffic on the busy avenue and struck by a car. She was killed immediately. People who rushed to her aide were greeted with threats such as „you can lie down next to her“ by the cops.
Any militant antifascist or revolutionary activist could have found his or herself at that time in that place. In those dark moments of the social war where the State, either by choice, by accident, or because of increased resistance, briefly takes off the mask of “modern, peaceful, and democratic” and briefly reveals the true nature of its existance, and its weapons for survival when the mirage of social consent falls apart. Namely none other than overwhelming force, violence, and a brutal defense of its monopoly of it.
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*The „group of individuals“ calling for the demo call:
No Peace with the police-state and repression.
Twenty years ago, the police chased Conny Wessmann into the traffic, where she was caught by a car hitting her fatally. At the end of the 1980s a wide network of neo-fascist structures established itself in southern Niedersachsen. This gave militant Neo-Nazis the possibility to act more freely. The increasing amount of fascist violence led to an extension of antifascist self-defense in the region. Since then a high amount of information about Neo-Nazis and fascist violence was published to encounter the rising presence. The cops however didn‘t do much to stop the fascists. Instead, they publicly denied the problems by referring to the violence as clashes between rival youth groups.
In the evening of the 17th of November 1989, again there was a fight between autonomous antifascists and Nazi-Skins in front of a café in the center of Göttingen. Another group of Antifas heard of the fight and went to the spot to support their comrades. The group, of which Conny Wessmann was part soon had to retreat though. On their way, they already had been massively threatened by uniformed police-officers and the „Zivile Streifenkommando“ (ZSK – a special civil police-unit in Göttingen). The order, that the group should be „crushed“ was spread through the police-radio. Without closing-off the road „Weender Landstraße“, the police attacked the group and hunted Conny into the traffic. She got caught by a car and died immediately.
One week after the murder, about 18.000 people joined a nation-wide demonstration in Göttingen. During the following months – until 1992 – remembrances at the place where she got killed were held on a regular base. Demonstrations in the years after Connys death also remembered Alex who was knifed by two known Nazi-Skins in Rosdorf during new-years eve 1990/1991. But Conny and Alex weren‘t the only victims dying by the hands of fascist terror and brutal repression in these years.
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