You are the crisis. Claim for the incendiary attack on a government vehicle in the St. Pauli neighborhood (Hamburg, Germany, October 8, 2022)
The crises of this world are evidently coming to a climax.
It is certainly no illusion that hard times are coming. Even if we consider the situation of the past decades a catastrophe, the new developments seem much more threatening. This may be because the Corona, climate change and the war in Ukraine are forcing us to look beyond Central Europe. The problems are getting closer and we are now more clearly feeling the effects here as well.
However, the effects of Corona, poverty and war in a city like Hamburg do not affect everyone equally.
As all over the world, marginalized and poor people are affected and forced to flee, starve and homelessness differently than rich people. This situation will only get worse in the coming period. If the rich get scared, they will be even more ruthless in defending “their” property and use even more violence to protect their privileges.
In cities like Hamburg, where the percentage of millionaires is the highest in the country, the social imbalances are much more pronounced.
Just over one in a thousand earns more than a million euros a year. At the same time, one in five children live in poverty. In the wealthy suburbs of the Elbe [Hamburg’s bourgeois district], not even one child in a hundred lives in a “Hartz 4 family” [a family receiving welfare for particularly low incomes], in the poorest neighborhoods almost one in two.
Nothing new, the world is unfair.
Still, it remains important to observe the small and large gears of the capitalist machine and expose its moves.
Let us use data from the Hamburg parliament, published following questions initiated by the “die Linke” party (the only thing they manage to do).
According to current estimates, about 19,000 people in Hamburg live on the streets.
In 2021, 29 homeless people would have died in Hamburg instead of the 13 mentioned in the press.
Another question revealed that in the first six months of the year, Hamburg district authorities had the police clear out 63 homeless shacks, i.e., beds on the streets. In 2021, 107 evictions were conducted, and in 2020, 100 evictions were conducted.
At the same time, Hamburg is indulging in a housing project on the Elbe bridges, intended to accommodate wealthy clientele and investors entering the city. The cost of the “Elbtower” project is estimated at 950 million euros. A sum that exceeds even the construction of the Elbphilharmonie [the Hamburg Philharmonic, opened in 2017]. It should be clear that the money for construction will not be paid by the big guys who will then live and work there.
Whether it is the Warburg scandal, the billion-dollar deals with shipping companies, the port of Hamburg, star of arms exports, safe haven for the environment-destroying cruise industry, or simply a city so filthy rich and misanthropic.
Fucking Hamburg, evil Hamburg.
The “Autonomous Groups” have already worked on this issue on March 8, 2021, and they have said a lot.
We refer to their action and accept the proposal to attack Hamburg’s decision makers and managers. “But we still hope that the idea will spread to specifically attack Hamburg authorities or representatives. From the office for whatever reason, to the vehicle for cleaning the city.” [The reference is to the arson attack on the Altona district municipality in Hamburg carried out and claimed by “Autonomous Groups”].
It is time to find our place in the coming struggles through combined discussions and analysis. It is time to start doing what is being said.
In order to attack someone directly responsible for the administration of poverty and discrimination, we carried out an incendiary attack on a car belonging to the “higher management level” (license plate number HH:110) [federal government car] of the city-state of Hamburg in the St. Pauli district. These “higher state authorities” include state ministries, for example, the Department of Urban Development and Housing, the Finance Authority, the Department of Justice and Consumer Protection, the Department of Economy and Innovation. And of course the Department of Interior and Sports under the Supreme Chief of Police, Pimmel Andy Grote. Together with the presiding ministers, they form the state government. In Hamburg, the Senate. This governs the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg together with the mayor. They are therefore legitimate targets of our anger.
You are the wars, you are the crises, you are the killers.
You pay the bill.