UP THE BIKE PUNKS! BIKE DEMO AGAINST MAXMARA'S AND ESCADA'S FUR TRADE IN BERLIN (GERMANY)

In context of the international action days against the fur trade of the luxury companies ESCADA and Max Mara Group the Berlin Animal Rights Action (BerTA) - calling for anti-fur-actions all over Berlin in September -organized a bike demonstration on September 12th 2009 in Berlin.
About 30 activists joined the protests moving from Berlin-Charlottenburg to Berlin-Mitte and demanding the immediate stop of fur trade of the named companies and liberation of animals from all kinds of human exploitation and oppression.

At 12 pm a group of about 30 persons started the bike demonstration at the metro station Adenauerplatz and moved down the Kurfürstendamm accompanied by a bunch of police cars and motorcycles. On its way the protest march
stopped at three locations: a Max Mara store, an ESCADA Sports shop and the store of the german fur trade company Pelz Lösche. Shouted slogans,
banners and different substantial talks given by megaphone and directed at the members of the demonstration and pedestrians carried the point of the protest into the public in a clear way, like "Fashion companies and fur stores will not stop trading fur by themselves.
In order to achieve this,the determined and strong-willed protest of animal rights activists is inevitable. Fur industry in Germany is at the brink of collapse due to succesfully completed anti-fur campaigns against Karstadt, Kaufhof, Peek & Cloppenburg, Miss Sixty, Zara and others. The market is decreasing more and more with every campaign won. It is crucial to emphasize the request for abolishing fur industry right now. To this end protests are concentrating against ESCADA company and Max Mara Group until they stop fur trade, too."

A fourth stationary demonstration was held at Wittenbergplatz next to the big KaDeWe store, where once again the the talks and banners caught the attention of passers-by. All the time the march was accompanied by shouted slogans, loud bells and whistles which attracted the attention of nearby persons who halted and were amazed, sometimes applausing sometimes railing.

Though the demonstration was mainly adressing the fur industry, it was made clear that violence against animals which are "used" for fur production is closely related to and only one characteristic of a system of institutionalised acts of violence against animals in general.
Therefore the liberation of animals from any kind of oppression by humans was damanded repeatedly.

The demonstration continued to Friedrichstraße, where there was another stop at a Max Mara store and the final demonstration with banners, slogans
and talks in front of the ESCADA flagship store. Activists of the Nandu-Network already waited next to the ESCADA store. Intending to demonstrate the absurdity of wearing fur and fur trade they pretended a PR action for "Second-Hand-Animal Fur", a fictional company, trying to convince passers-by to sell them their no-more-wanted pets for fur production purpose.

Summarizing, the bike demonstration was very succesfull, also due to the uncommon form of a bike demonstration. It ran peacefully and it caught the
attention of the people, caused many positive feedback and clearly transported the contents of the protest. Hopefully the action days continue this way.

On Saturday, September 19th, a stationary double-demonstration will take place in front of the ESCADA and Max Mara-stores in the Friedrichstraße.
In order to continue to enforce the request for the stop of fur trade of ESCADA and Max Mara, on Saturday, September 26th, there will be a demonstration moving down the Friedrichstraße. In both cases massive support is called and hoped for.