S21 – a challenge to the democratic community?

S21 – what’s that you say? Some new, hip vitamin-drink? Another rap-outfit, like the infamous 50 Cent? No, it isn’t. The abbreviation stands for “Stuttgart 21”, relating to the provincial capital of Baden-Wuerttemberg in Germany’s south. Swabia, the home of Mercedes-Benz and German savings-mentality at its best.

It also designates the plans for restructuring Stuttgart’s main station, in order to have THE underground train-station of the 21^st century installed there.

Yet now, the term has also become synonymous with the felt erosion of democracy in Germany. How come? To understand this, you must know two things.

a) The plans are over twenty years old, and it’s clear that already now, this whole megalomaniac project will cost 10-12 billions of Euros more than it would’ve cost anyway. And the majority of the people affected by it don’t want it.

b) The Thursday before yesterday, peaceful protesters were assaulted by a few hundred heavily armed special police in full riot gear. About 130 people were seriously injured, amongst them not only students, but also elderly citizen, pupils, children. No punks, no professional left-wing mischiev-makers. It was “the people” that were attacked. Ridden down by police horses. A senior-citizen, a retired engineer, lost his eye sight due to police violence (waterguns opening fire at point blank range, his doctors doubt whether he’ll ever see again and he now sued the Minister of the Interior of Baden Wuerttemberg, Heribert Rech). The protesters were blocking an area in the “Schlosspark” in order to protect 300 up to 200 year-old trees from being cut down during the start of this completely over the top main station project. Correspondents likened the scenes to those from Civil Wars. And serious German journalists are not known to be prone to exaggeration.

Stefan Mappus, prime minister of province Baden-Wuerttemberg, blames the protesters: They had thrown the first stone, he now claims. Until now, there is

no evidence that it happened this way. All evidence lays blame on the police. If a pupil throws an empty PET-bottle of water at you, do you spray him with a full dose of tear-gas from less than arm’s length distance? Or beat him up with your club?

The truth is: The people’s protest comes late in this case, yes, from a legal viewpoint probably too late since all the contracts are signed. But part of the truth is also: The people demand more democracy. Because by now it is evident, that “backhanders and salamanders” (again thank you, Jaz Coleman, for providing the apt formula) made their deals in the cabinet-backrooms – and the participation of the interested general public was quite a joke. Because people wouldn’t have voted for Mappus’s party in the first place, had they known the ecologic results of the process of S21 – and that for a fact, it would turn the green heart of their city into a giant termite mound-like construction site for the better part of ten years. Demolishing the old main station from the German Imperial times and cutting down all those trees of course won anyone interested in historical sites over for the protest, apart from the fact that the city’s green lung will be killed. Stuttgart is located in a valley. The city needs that park and those trees in order to survive hotter summers.

Anyways – back to Mappus. The provincial prime minister of course is spitting bile, claiming the protesters are people “spoiled by decades of wealth and acting selfishly, since this project will promote thousands of future-jobs”. I say: He’s wrong. It will create yet another investment-ruin and wreak ecological havoc, instigated by the illusion of eternal growth that, I guess we all can agree upon, is a hoax from the early post WWII-decades that everybody could see nullified in the breakdown of the global economy in 2008.

Furthermore, if you ask me, from all I’ve not read about “Stuttgart 21”, the way that the participatory process was constructed, you can’t say it’s been democratically legitimated. Not if the people were basically lied to, and vital information was being withheld, regarding both the costs and the consequences. The whole set-up was so bureaucratic and secretive, the people weren’t MEANT to get it. Now that this has transpired to a good many people, they ask questions – and protest. The people want participation. “If this is democracy, then why don’t I get a say?” That’s the issue it all boils down to. After monarchy, a short disastrous first republic, two dictatorships (the second of course being the GDR or “DDR” as it were), today’s Germans have been spoon-fed democracy for decades. We’re no longer the peasants and opportunists that made up most of the German populace in the years after WW II. We don’t want to get into fights with the police (especially not the Schwabian oldtimers in the Schloss Park). What Germany

now wants is the feeling: My vote counts. My voice is heard. It’s not all about profits. It’s about having a country worth living in, where we find consensus and decide together. The only people not getting that at the moment seem to be our political leaders. They shun referendums where they can. And in the Stuttgart-case, they cling to the idea, that the managers going from Ulm to Stuttgart would have a five minute shorter bullet-train ride from 2020 onwards, while close range traffic used by Mr Man in the Street is rotting on the tracks. Well done for a state that still considers itself a high tech-nation. And never even mind the billions of Euros missing in education and other infrastructure that are gonna disappear in the Black Hole that is S21.

So – is all of this a test for democracy in Germany? In a way it is. Because now is the time to allow for more

participation. The people want democracy. They are well informed, and they want a balance between future job chances and ecological risks caused thereby.

Results: Perhaps the next provincial president will already be Cem Oezdemir of the Greens. The Green party currently routs everyone else in the polls – also on a federal level, so the coalition of conservatives and liberals is really, really under pressure. They still don’t want a referendum, but basically the provincial elections in March are meant to decide the future of S21, they say. Either way, if you take my 2cents, both Mappus and this crazy Swabian Death Star-equivalent are history. Still there are those amongst the conservatives who don’t want to cancel the show – and everyone knows it’s because they promised their buddies too much money.

The current federal government now has a reputation for maybe being the corruptest bunch to rule our republic since its founding in 1949. Basically, the lobbyists call the shots in Berlin. The government’s desperate holding on to nuclear energy over renewable power sources like wind and solar-power is one piece of evidence, and I could name a lot more. Also, they’re cutting down on expenses for welfare and education while trying to get leverage on being able to actually use THE MILITARY inside Germany. I remember what my dad said, when he heard that: “Boy, they really must be afraid of us in Berlin…”

Is it time for civil disobedience in Germany? If the current federal government (and the provincial government in Baden-Wuerttemberg also consists of Christian conservatives and neo-liberals) continues to use force against demands for more democracy coming from the middle of our society, this will be an issue to be discussed in months to come.

In Stuttgart, demonstrations go on. The pressure has reached Berlin and the federal government, and now Mappus’s administration has stopped demolition and tree cutting. For now. But the people are watchful. Don’t they dare start again. Because someday, somewhere, someone might actually throw the first stone. And then God help us all.