The Street as Argument

Berlin, September 2017, the Gendarmenmarkt in front of the Konzerthaus—thousands of people showing up to say, publicly and in person, that treating citizens as a data resource was not something they’d agreed to. The demonstration went under the name "Rettet die Grundrechte"—Save the Fundamental Rights—part of the ongoing Freiheit statt Angst (Freedom Instead of Fear) campaign that had been making this argument in German streets for years.

The specific grievance was legislation authorizing state hacking of private devices—phones, computers—pushed through with the procedural speed that tends to accompany bad laws. The organizers weren’t interested in the security justifications. Their position was simpler: a government that backdoors your devices and a market that monetizes everything you do online have, between them, produced a situation that doesn’t resemble freedom by any honest definition. The people marching seemed to agree.

What I keep thinking about, years on, is how reasonable the whole argument was and how little it changed. The laws passed. The surveillance expanded. The demonstrations continued and continued to be ignored. There’s something clarifying about that arc—not a reason to stop, but a reason to stop expecting the protest itself to be the solution. The street is where you put your conviction on record. What happens next has always been a different problem.