Create Your First Project
Start adding your projects to your portfolio. Click on "Manage Projects" to get started
Frozen Streets, Warm Hearts: A Day in Riesa
Date
11 January 2025
Location
Riesa, Saxony (Germany)
Most protesters, as it happens, are the same people you’d see at anti-racist rallies, far-right counter-demonstrations, or those late-night marches where conviction burns brighter than the streetlights. It’s like they form this unspoken community of resistance, showing up no matter where the fight is.
On January 11th, several hundred young people left their homes across the country to descend upon a quiet, sleepy town in Saxony called Riesa. It’s the kind of town you’d skip if you were flipping through travel brochures.
Civil society organizations had arranged about 400 buses because trains were expected to be packed, and, knowing how these things go, there was a chance the police might shut down the railway station (Hauptbahnhof) altogether. Some people even arrived in nearby cities the night before to avoid the logistics nightmare. A lot of them stayed with friends in Leipzig.
I met Philip on the train—he’d traveled all the way from Hannover, crashed at his parents’ place for the night, and left at 3 a.m. to catch the earliest train. Even with all that planning, he still found himself missing train after train because the station in Leipzig was drowning in people. A sea, he called it. Honestly, that’s the only way to put it.
The protest was aimed at the AfD’s (Alternative für Deutschland) federal party conference (Bundesparteitag) being held in this tiny town of about 29,000 people. It’s hard not to wonder why they picked such a remote place, so poorly connected by public transport. A friend joked, "They pick places like this to make it harder for protesters." And I couldn’t disagree.
The AfD knows full well that wherever they hold these conventions, people will show up to protest—thousands willing to cross cities, lose sleep, and freeze for the sake of standing against them. Riesa wasn’t an exception.
This time, the AfD was preparing to crown Alice Weidel as their candidate for Germany’s next chancellor. Just a few years ago, this would’ve been laughable, ludicrous, unimaginable even, like a bad joke at a party. Once seen as untouchable, the AfD is now confident and bold enough to announce their own candidate for the chancellery.
However, too much water has flowed in the Elbe and Donau since Angela Merkel opened Germany to refugees in 2015. The much-celebrated welcome culture has iced over. By the time we concluded 2024, just ten years after the AfD’s founding, they were polling second nationwide. They had swept Thuringia with Björn Höcke—a convicted history teacher unapologetically nostalgic about the SS (Schutzstaffel), the elite guard of the Nazi regime.
They now stand as the second-largest party in Saxony, with whispers of the CDU engaging them in coalition talks—a blunt departure from the once-universal agreement among mainstream German parties to form the so-called firewall and isolate the AfD politically.
This is how the mainstreaming of fascists begins.
To make it worse—because, of course, it gets worse—Elon Musk, with his billions and his arrogance, had thrown his weight behind the AfD. Musk declared, “Only the AfD can save Germany,” and insulted the sitting chancellor with his characteristic lack of tact. If that wasn’t enough, he hosted Alice Weidel on a live chat, where they spouted absurdities. They agreed that “Hitler was a communist” and that the Nazis were a communist movement. As if historical revisionism were just another casual tweet.
Walking from Riesa’s tiny, overwhelmed railway station was an adventure in itself. The cold felt like it could cut through bone—the weather app said it was -6 degrees, but it felt worse.
Yet, the atmosphere was surprisingly warm. Families sang protest songs, their kids beating drums to keep spirits up. One lady was passing around chocolate, which my friends and I took way too much of.
It was this mix of resistance and togetherness that made the freezing walk almost enjoyable.
The police presence was huge. Around 2,000 officers had been mobilized to manage 12,000 protesters. Some groups had been holding vigils since midnight, practicing civil disobedience and blocking highways to disrupt the convention.
The police, as expected, were violent. They used pepper spray, charged at demonstrators, and, in one horrifying incident, an officer threw a reluctant service dog—a German shepherd—at a protester blocking a highway railing.
The dog didn’t bite, thank God, but the image was seared into my mind: a moment that screamed impunity, cruelty, and the arrogance of power with which the police force often operates.
You’d think, given Germany’s history and the lessons it should have imparted about the dangers of militarized police insensitive to people’s rights to organize or exercise civil liberties, that the police would be less militarized.
But that’s wishful thinking. The reality of police brutality here can be shocking—something I’ve witnessed firsthand while covering protests across the country.
In Germany, much of the remembrance culture and education in schools focuses on Hitler and his "handful" of Nazi conspirators. But they often miss the critical point that Hitler was elected, supported by a militarized citizenry turned vigilante turned police, all of whom propped up and extended his cruelty.
The streets of Riesa carried an almost ghostly aura, an abandoned atmosphere. Everything was shut, the streets empty except for us. The harsh winter and frigid wind added this haunting, cinematic quality to the place.
But then, there was this moment that stood out. An elderly woman leaned out of her window, clapping, waving, and blowing kisses at the protesters. Everyone waved back, whistled, and sent her heart gestures. It was like she became the honorary host of the protest, the warmth in this otherwise cold and hostile town.
Just above her window, a Thor Steinar T-shirt hung in plain sight, draped casually in the attic’s staircase window. For context, this brand was founded in Germany and has long been tied to far-right ideologies and nationalist factions. One would easily assume its presence during a protest like this is anything but innocent.
It felt like a quiet provocation—while the grandmother below extended warmth, waving at protesters with hope for a Germany united by inclusion, someone above her had displayed a subtle emblem of division. The contradiction within that single building was profound: a message of solidarity downstairs and a whisper of resistance to it upstairs. It was unsettling but also a reminder of why we were there.
Later, as we gathered near the AfD’s convention center, I met Fernandes in the pizza queue. A FLINTA person from Berlin, she’s doing an apprenticeship in furniture-making and had stayed the night in Leipzig before coming to Riesa. We bonded over our shared admiration for French protests—their creativity, their fire—and lamented how Germany often feels sterile, restrained in comparison.
She asked me what had brought me to Riesa and Leipzig, and I laughed, confessing that I couldn’t bear the misery of finding a home in Berlin. We both agreed on how monstrous the housing situation is—finding an apartment there feels like winning the lottery, let alone turning it into a home.
She counted herself lucky to have found a place. “I live with three boys,” she said, “and I’m happy enough with that, but I really miss my FLINTA gang.” I nodded in agreement, even though we had just met, in a random place, with no prior connection between us.
For those few moments, although the queue for pizza was unbearably long, and I was starving, standing in the cold with the promise of pizza inching closer, we felt like old friends.
Right next to us, a band was playing protest songs. People circled around them, singing and dancing. This band travels across Germany, bringing music to protests. It’s amazing, really—these musicians leaving behind their regular lives to spread joy and hope in these moments of resistance. That’s the kind of spirit that keeps you going.
There were so many small, human moments. Friends lying on the ground, pulling each other up like kids. Groups taking selfies, couples posing for memories. Volunteers running support tents, handing out hot drinks and snacks, and everywhere you looked, there was someone creating a moment of warmth. It’s these little acts of care and solidarity that make protests feel like more than just resistance. They’re a celebration of humanity.
That’s what gives me hope.
When the protesters returned home, the city and its streets, fortified with roadblocks and police cars in the morning, were now empty. It’s funny how the same streets you couldn’t walk freely in the morning were now deserted.
The highways beneath the overpass were quiet, with cars speeding by. And then there was the sunset. It was the first I’d seen since last October, bright red and streaking across the sky like it was putting on a show just for us. It was a prettier end to the day than I could have asked for.



















































