Christoph Vandreier, chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, presented the expanded new edition of Leon Trotsky’s “Portrait of National Socialism”. As his presentation showed, these writings about Germany, written 90 years ago, are of the utmost relevance again, especially today.
May Day in Frankfurt, Germany: WISAG worker warns of tens of thousands of job cuts
This year, the DGB (German Trade Union Confederation) held its ritual May Day rally under the meaningless motto “Solidarity is the Future.” On the fringes of the official rally in front of Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, a group of workers spoke out. Speaking on behalf of the dismissed WISAG workers, Ertugrul Kurnaz said: “That sounds good, but it can only be true if solidarity is not just something for the future, and if you stop just talking about it.”
Kurnaz started by reporting about the struggle at the Rhine-Main airport against mass dismissals. Rally participants and passers-by stopped and listened with interest. Kurnaz said he could sum up what the WISAG company was doing to the workers at the airport “in four simple words: they were used, exploited, tricked and thrown out.” The only unusual thing, he said, was that they did not just quietly accept it. “We did not bow down. We started f