January 26, 2005: Whitsun Youth Festival Under Anticommunist Spell? The City Administration must not Succeed!

Once more, the city administration of Gelsenkirchen tries to prevent the Whitsun Youth Festival - certainly by vile motives. The Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) just learned from the Central Coordinating Committee that the confirmation for the site already provided orally - the former race-track in Horst - was withdrawn.

The CC of the MLPD resolutely protests against this!

Just at a time when the leading representatives of this republic, Federal Chancellor Schröder, and the Foreign Secretary, Fischer, in front of the international public, show antifascist concern on the Holocaust at the Concentration Camp of Auschwitz, when the bourgeois members of parliament and the media express their indignation about the outrageous incitement of the people by the members of parliament of the NPD in the state parliament of Saxony - just at this time the number of verdicts opening the streets to (neo-)fascist groups against the will of the people is piling up. All the soap-box oratories can be described as mere hypocrisy! By means of such decrees, the demonstrators are to be forced to give up the antifascist character of their Monday Demonstrations, for example, and to allow fascists to walk roaring at their side. Afterwards the media will pretend that the neofascists of the NPD and DVU are the most resolute opponents of the Hartz IV Laws.

In this situation, the city administration of Gelsenkirchen once again tries to prevent the Whitsun Youth Festival by banning the use of the site. Probably blatant anticommunism is the force behind this attempt. In fact, it was the MLPD that revived the idea and the tradition of the Whitsun Youth Festival in the 1980ies. This is already sufficient to place this meeting under an anticommunist spell, even though the Whitsun Youth Festival has meanwhile become a meeting of many progressive democratic organizations and initiatives. With the same argument, May 1st or the International Women’s Day on the 8th of March could be combated, because they, too, originally were days of struggle of the revolutionary working-class movement.

It is completely unfounded to imply that the mass meeting - which was always conducted in a very exemplary way in the past - could “develop an unforeseeable life of its own”. This seems to imply that acts of vandalism could be committed against the well-tended golf course and its users. Under flimsy pretexts, the sad tradition of the obstruction of now eight Whitsun Youth Meetings in Gelsenkirchen is being taken up, to all of which the site was refused. And this happens the very same week in which in Berlin, on the part of the government, an "anti-discrimination act" has been proposed, which is expressively supposed to prohibit discrimination related to world outlook. In this way those in power show that this act is not worth the paper it is written on. They do not intend to give up their chronic rampant anticommunism, which has only one goal: to thoroughly oppress, obstruct and discriminate against the workers', youth and people's movement and, of course, the revolutionary workers' party, MLPD. However, there is also another tradition, the tradition of the successful, ueberparteilich (not affiliated a party) unity, of the struggle for the site that always ended up with the fact that the organizers of the Whitsun Youth Meeting could get the place by means of their common struggle waged in solidarity! Like in the case of trying to prevent the MLPD from purchasing the building of the former savings bank in Gelsenkirchen Horst, now called "Horster Mitte", it will become evident that the majority of the population will reject the antidemocratic attacks and fully supports the defense of the democratic rights and liberties.

Before that, however, various obstructive and disruptive actions will be taken in order to undermine the scheduled preparation, which perhaps will take up valuable time and initiative at the expense of preparation and mobilization. It is an embarrassing situation for those in power: While they are not capable of guaranteeing occupational training, jobs, a perspective in this society for the masses of young people, they are taking action against this biggest youth event in Germany on Whitsun out of anticommunist motives, because they know, of course: "Who wins youth, wins future".