#no pegida

I went to the demonstration “Herz statt Hetze” in Dresden today. It was organised as counterdemonstration to PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident) since the 21st of October 2018 marks their 4th anniversary.

Participating in this demonstration was one of the best experiences I’ve made in a long while. I wish I could bottle up this special feeling the demonstration carried with it.

According to estimates 10.000 demonstrators took part. It made me so incredibly happy to see people across literally all age groups coming together to take a stand against racism, hate and xenophobia but for tolerance, respect and  humanity. 

All the bad news about Saxony like the recent incidents in Chemnitz or the fact that the AfD was the strongest party (they reached 27%) in Saxony in the Bundestag election 2017  are alarming and leave me speechless... maybe even hopeless. That’s why I needed today so badly. It gave me so much hope and showed me that I’m not fighting this battle alone; that there are so many others who share the same beliefs and moral values.

I know, of course, that this demonstration doesn’t solve the problem. Racists/Xenophobes/Nazis are still there. We saw them on our way home after the demonstration ended - many of them wrapped in German flags. The “Herz statt Hetze” demonstration may not solve the problem. But it was a strong signal by people who don’t accept a society in which racist or xenophobic hate speech has become normality. That’s what today was all about.

I didn’t manage to take a photo of my favourite protest sign - it read: “Das B in Rassismus steht für Bildung” (”The b in racism stands for education.”)

I took this picture a while ago (with the not so good camera of my not so new phone so...sorry for the poor quality haha) but I think it's still too beautiful to not be shared.

The strings of light in the windows are arranged to spell

NO PEGIDA

Like, how amazing is that? At least four neighbours in this apartment must have agreed upon doing this? And it's such an easy yet absolutely stunning idea? This apartment is next to a pretty busy street and this message could hardly be missed by anyone walking/driving by.