In April 2020, filmmaker Anne Frisius accompanied a protest of residents in the camp Lindenstraße in Bremen Vegesack with her film camera. The demonstration on that day was frontlined by black women. By releasing her film online the demands of the activists were widely broadcasted.
Lindenstraße Camp (Bremen): Corona is here! (15min)
This film was stolen by the “Freunde für Deutschland” (= Friends for Germany, short: FfD), uploaded to their youtube channel and covered with racist hate comments. Obviously they couldn’t stand the power of the black women. In addition, a guy called Tim Kellner, also a right-wing hater on the net, used parts of the video for his disgusting hate comments.
Since attentive people saw this and passed the information on, Anne was able to organize her resistance against the haters. We want to share what she experienced.
First Anne tried to have the videos blocked on youtube. This is from youtube`s answer: “…all further information – including your full name and e-mail address – is included in the complete deactivation request, which may be sent to the uploader.” Her name would have appeared in the place of the deleted content. She did not want that.
But Anne didn’t give up and finally received the advise that it is possible to give a warning to the agitators because they violated copyright (Creative Commons License). From now on the lawyers Hoffman and Elberling from Kiel represented her. Soon after the hater Tim Kellner paid the warning of 150,- € and deleted the video. The FfD did not react to the warning and legal action had to be taken against them. In order to do this Anne had to raise 650 Euros court costs in advance.
Shortly afterwards Anne’s website was hacked. That could be repaired. Once the trial took place, the FfD did not appear. The judge agreed with Anne`s side and sentenced the FfD to a 300 Euro fine. They had to pay the costs of the trial and to delete the video. The FfD have deleted their whole youtube channel and finally after some more weeks they paid the fine and the costs of the trial.
Thanks to everyone who supported Anne during this time. Solidarity wins.