Posted 8 years ago on May 15, 2012, 1:47 a.m. EST by OccupyWallSt

Blockupy Frankfurt, a coalition of social movements including Occupy, trade unionists, and the ATTAC network organizing for the #GlobalSpring in solidarity with the 15-M movement, plans to occupy downtown Frankfurt and shut down the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB). Beginning tomorrow, people from across Germany and the rest of Europe will take the squares and parks across Frankfurt and create new spaces for discussion and organizing. On Friday, May 18th, they will nonviolently swarm entrances to banks and disrupt traffic. In the evening, events including music concerts, assemblies, vigils, rallies, workshops, readings, exhibitions, and a youth-organized ¨rave against the troika¨ are scheduled. The Days of Resistance conclude Saturday, May 19th with a mass demonstration.

Last week, the government banned Blockupy and all related events in Frankfurt (protesters pledged to demonstrate anyway). The incident caused an uproar among those who saw it as a blatant attack on social and political rights of people to gather and demonstrate peacefully. The Blockupy Alliance won a partial victory in court, which lifted the ban on the Blockupy demonstration on Saturday and some other (but not all) scheduled events. The court also upheld the city's decision to evict the Occupy camp during the Days of Resistance. In response, the Blockupy Alliance has called on all who are able to gather and defend their freedom of assembly.

Frankfurt is widely considered the financial capital of the European Union. It is the headquarters of the Troika -- the EU, the ECB, and the International Monetary Fund. Germany itself is a leading power behind the authoritarian ¨crisis management¨ of the EU and a key architect of the technocratic austerity regimes currently producing mass poverty and disfranchisement in countries such as Greece, Spain, Ireland, and Italy. Across Europe, people are rising up against the self-appointed technocrats to demand economic policies which place human needs before corporate profits. Even in countries like France and the Netherlands, which so far have escaped the worst effects of the banker-manufactured financial crisis, pro-austerity governments have fallen. And in Germany itself, the center-right party of Angela Merkel -- the German Chancellor notorious for pushing austerity and demanding unconditional subjection of the rest of Europe to the financial markets -- lost massively in local elections last Sunday. Austerity is dying -- time to drive a dagger through its heart! Blockupy Frankfurt!

More info: Blockupy-Frankfurt.org | @Blockupy