Occupy Germany Bid To Save German Democracy

According to police, more than 10,000 people took to the streets of two major German cities, protesting against the banks' dominance. In Berlin, demonstrators have formed a human chain surrounding parts of the government district to call for an end to excesses of financial speculation and urge the authorities to dismantle big banks, AP reports. Frankfurt police said some 9,000 people were peacefully protesting in the city center near the European Central Bank's office block.

“We want more democracy and more transparency, and that the big banks and other big companies [stop] abusing the power of their money,” one of the “Occupy Frankfurt” campaigners, Thomas Leuten, told RT. “Only a mass of people will change this.”

RT spoke to one of the organizers of the event and a spokesperson for the pro-equality movement “Attac Germany”, Max Bank. He believes that if democracy is to survive in Germany, now is the time to make a stand.

“We have a worldwide problem in the financial sector, which is absolutely deregulated, and we need further regulation in order to make the sector compatible with democratic societies,” he told RT. “Otherwise, we will always see such measures as the enlargement of the EFSF that we saw a couple of weeks ago, [when] the German parliament pushed through within days.”