Report (with video and photos) by the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 10 June 2020, www.thecommunists.net

More than 100,000 people have demonstrated in Germany and nearly 60,000 in Austria to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement.

17,000 rallied in Leipzig on Sunday, in Berlin there were 18,000 and in Munich even 19,000. Protest spread in over 26 German cities like Hesse, where ten thousand have demonstrated. In addition thousands took the street in Fulda, Wiesbaden, Marburg, Kassel and many more.

Before these major protests in Germany started to spread over the whole country, various rallies have already taken place in the capital Berlin. Likewise the biggest demonstration in Austria took place in the capital Vienna on the 4th June with more than 50,000 participants. Until the rest of the week another protest with nearly 10,000 took place in Vienna and likewise in other cities of Austria like Graz, Innsbruck and Salzburg.

In both countries, Germany and Austria solidarity was shown for the family and friends of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and some many other black brother and sisters all around the world who suffer from racism and brutal police force. Activists also draw the attention to the murder of the Palestinian Iyad Halaq, an autistic 32-year-old man who was murdered by the Israeli police as he walked to his special needs school. The fight for the freedom of the Palestinian people must indeed be linked to the fight of the liberation of black people and all oppressed worldwide!

The Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) and its militants in Germany and Austria participated in the rallies, distributed leaflets and newspapers of the RCIT and raised important slogans like the necessity to smash (instead to reform) the police, to build armed self defense units, to fight for a general strike in Solidarity with current movement and to resist any demobilisation of the movement.