Day Of Action On May 1st In Copenhagen

Arm the Spirit, 6 May 2000

As part of the global day of action against capitalism, 1,000 activists in Copenhagen demonstrated against the neo-liberal exploitation of the majority of the world's population. The original plan was to march past symbols of the social war being waged by the ruling powers, in order to expose them by means of various happenings and attacks. But this was not possible, due to the excessive deployment of police forces.

The demonstration was organized by various anti-capitalist groups (anarchists, anti-fascists, autonomists, feminists, libertarian communists, etc.) and took place on a spring-like May Day in central Copenhagen. This demo was the first time in many years—since the defeat of the autonomist movement in Denmark in the early 1990s̶that a joint demonstration was carried out by various groups and networks from the non-reformist left. Many individual comrades from years past also came and participated in the demo.

As a prolog to the march, a police car was overturned to protest against the massive deployment of riot police. The police concept was to prevent our march by means of massive pressure. Because we were not in a position to enter into a confrontation with the cops—among other things, because many children were participating, and there was a summer-like atmosphere among many of the demonstrators—we were forced to accept the cops' demo route. During the demo, the cops tried many times to use force to break up the march. Undercover cops also tried to infiltrate the demo, but they were exposed and beaten back. Speeches were held (among other things, about anarchists in Austria, about various workers initiatives, about women/lesbians against violence against women, etc.) and anarchists played punk and rap music from the loudspeaker car.

At the end of the demo, there was a short confrontation with the aggressive riot cops and 6 comrades were arrested. The demo ended with an anti-fascist open air concert in Faelledparken (a big park in eastern Copenhagen) which 10,000 people attended. The reformist left, various ML groups, and the neo-liberal social democrats all held their May Day activities in Faelledparken, but they did not have demonstration marches.