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Seven municipal parliamentary groups support the urgency application in Darmstadt. AfD city councilors abstain or vote against. Uffbasse faction leader Lau attacks AfD sharply.
In solidarity with the Texas twin city of San Antonio in the United States, a large majority of city councilors have approved an “Darmstadt Resolution Against Racism”. The factions of the Greens, CDU, SPD, Uffbasse, Linke, FDP and Uwiga had the jointly drafted resolution text put on the agenda of the most recent parliamentary meeting in the Darmstadt Congress Center as an urgent motion. The AfD city councilor Dieter Schneider and the former AfD parliamentary group member Olaf Sigmund voted against it; all other party group members present abstained.
On behalf of the seven factions, Green Group leader Yücel Akdeniz read the resolution text, in the opening reminder that the brutal killing of dark-skinned George Floyd during a police operation on May 25 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, “a wave of consternation” triggered. But racism is “not limited to the United States”. In Germany too, people would become victims of violence due to their skin color, origin or religion. In addition, there was “a shift to the right inside and outside the parliaments”, “racism and discrimination have become everyday life in many people’s lives”. Therefore, according to the seven groups, the current peaceful actions and demonstrations against racism and discrimination would be supported.
Premature departure
Uffbasse Group leader Kerstin Lau said that resolutions are “nice and well-intentioned”, but ultimately “only actions and the right decisions will help”. Lau explicitly accused the AfD of pushing ahead with the “brutalization of society”.
Their city councilor Siegfried Elbert, who like his parliamentary group colleague Schneider did not rise from his seat to raise George Floyd and the victims of racist violence, left the meeting after Lau’s speech in protest, because city council leader Birgit Pörtner (Greens) is on his noisy Intervention refused to measure Lau.
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