Wednesday evening, Odeonsplatz. Below ground, where the air smells of concrete and the subway, a young woman is sitting on the ground. Next to her is a policeman shouting at her. She is trembling, gasping for breath, panic in her eyes. Her name is Sandra S., 24. She wanted to go to the IAA’s Open Spaces, but couldn’t even get to the escalator.
Around thirty young people are crowded together on the mezzanine floor that evening. The police have surrounded them. The official reason: suspected fare evasion. In times when SUV manufacturers preach sustainability, it is apparently enough for people not to look like Mercedes buyers to justify an excessive police operation.
Sandra later says that she was searched, shouted at and had her things confiscated. She couldn’t breathe, wanted to take her asthma inhaler, but wasn’t allowed to – “only under medical supervision”, she was told. Meanwhile, a dozen officers monitored that nobody broke out of the cauldron.
The IAA continues upstairs, shiny cars, clean backdrops, green promises. Downstairs, Sandra is sitting on the floor in handcuffs. Suspected of obtaining benefits by fraud. She is allowed home at one o’clock in the morning. Without being charged, but with a feeling that remains: that control and powerlessness are sometimes closer than one would like.
Incidentally, none of the people detained were asked for a driver’s license…
