On Saturday, July 24, over 1000 antifascists gathered in Freiburg for a large demonstration under the slogan "No attack without response". The reason for the demonstration were two reactionary attacks on antifascists in the past month, one of them with police involvement. A broad alliance had called for the demonstration. The entire demonstration was characterized by harassment by the police, repeated stopping of the demo, filming of the participants, police parade etc. The demonstrators were not intimidated by this, however, and the expression of the demo was accordingly decidedly militant.

At 2pm, the participants gathered in front of the town hall in Stühlinger for a kick-off rally. There, a speech was given by the alliance denouncing increasing expansion of repressive organs and general reactionarization in the face of the current crisis. The role of the police and their active protection for reactionaries, as seen most recently in the two cases mentioned above, were also clearly rejected.

A little later, the demonstration started to move and passed through the neighborhoods of Stühlinger, Haslach and Unterwiehre until it was dispersed at its final rally in front of the concert hall. In its course, the demonstration was stopped several times by the police, who made every effort to criminalize and prevent it.

Shortly after it began, the demonstration was stopped for no apparent reason and the cops said they would not tolerate a demo. After they finally cleared the street, they stopped the demo again a little later because the antifascists refused to follow the route given by the police. The detention of the demonstrators was then justified with the burning of pyrotechnics and coercive measures against the demo were announced.

The next time the planned route of the demonstration deviated from the ideas of the police, the officers tried to stop them by using batons. This attack was answered decisively by the antifascists, with several police officers going down. The bourgeois press speaks of 11 injured police officers. Meanwhile, the head of operations, who was making announcements to the demo via a loudspeaker truck, sounded increasingly desperate, repeatedly threatening to break up the demo and demanding that the demonstrators distance themselves from the "criminals." Of course, no one complied with this brazen demand and eventually the reaction gave in and allowed the procession to continue.

The procession then moved on to the Southern Police Station, where another speech was given by two of the antifascists affected by Hagerman's attack. They made clear how the Freiburg police tries to cover up attacks by reactionaries. The attack, which involved at least two of their colleagues, was kept secret until public pressure became too great and they had to take a stand.

In the case of Hagerman's knife attack, they issued a press release that gave a 1:1 account of the perpetrator's view, even though there were already several witness statements that refuted that view. The demo then moved on until a final rally was held in front of the concert hall, where a speech was given by the campaign "Antifascism remains necessary" in solidarity with antifascists affected by repression.

After the demonstrators withdrew, there were at least four indiscriminate arrests of assembly participants accused of using a fire extinguisher against the police. That the only evidence the police appear to have is a pair of gloves shows how desperate they are to cover the demonstration with repression.