Saturday was a day of temptation for all sides. The Squat Tempelhof movement may have accomplished little in the way of preserving the airport grounds for the surrounding community, but revealed many aspects of the mentalities that shape Berlin.
It was both a success and failure, depending on your point of view. It was successful in that it drew several thousand people and required a great effort by the 1500 police, many of whom were brought in from Bavaria, to keep them out. It was a failure in that the fence was all but breached, the protestors were not organized enough to successfully confuse the police, and the majority of the crowd was simply there to see what was happening, seemingly without too much interest in the cause.
One demonstrator, who had come for the event from Leipzig, was not impressed with the organization. The intent, she said, had been to attack the fence from many, shifting positions, so the police would always be on the move. Instead, large crowds focused on only three hotspots, where police could easily keep them at bay with the presence of their massive force and water cannons.
It seemed that the demonstrators were much more interested in provoking the police than evading them, suggesting that most of the active participants were not community members, but anti-fascists. For hours, people carrying signs and shouting slogans marched back and forth in front of the police, clearly hoping they would be struck down for all the cameras to see. The armored soldiers, for their part, used much greater restraint than one would normally expect from a militarized force, determined not to give the crowd a reason to erupt, and the cameras, a reason to flash.
Organizers of the event want to do it again, on a smaller scale, and with better organization. One thing is for sure though, the massive turnout proved that there is a great interest in preserving the old Tempelhof Airport for the community, and a large disapproval of the city development philosophy of the Berlin Senate. Whether the event will prove to be enough to change anything, is yet to be determined.
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