MERA25 is on the ballot in the Bremen state elections on May 14, 2023, which prompted ‘Wolf’, a former US Marine Data Analyst, to go to Bremen on April 15-16 to support the campaign and meet the candidates. This is his report:

I got to Bremen around midday on Saturday, and met up with the campaign team at their office. From there we proceeded through the city centre leafleting and hanging up posters and stickers along the way. On our way, we encountered Omas Gegen Rechts (Grandmas Against the Right), the leader of which is a friend of our candidate Jan Genin, and stopped to exchange some words of solidarity, and take some pictures.

We made it to the city centre, and proceeded with our first action, the ‘Activist Circle’. We split in half, one team holding laptops playing scenes of climate destruction, the other leafleting and engaging passersby who stop to look at the videos. I held a laptop for about an hour and a half across two locations. Plenty of people were drawn in out of curiosity due to the small screens and low brightness, which was a great chance for the leafleters to engage them.

After two hours, we ceased the Activist Circle, and split into groups hanging posters and leafleting for the next two hours. We then reconvened at our office, to debrief and prepare for our next action, the ‘Green Projection’. This action involved projecting a dire message of sea level rise on the Green Party Headquarters, using a high power projector. We gathered our gear, and set off for the Green Party HQ. Once the sun set, we got to work, and yielded great results. The picture shows a static line of text, however this was just for the photo op, the text normally scrolled with the message “This will be the waterline in 100 years without radical climate action” in German.

After an hour of projecting, we packed up our gear and made our way back to the office, hanging up posters and stickers along the way. I was impressed throughout my time in Bremen just how well the Bremen collective did in covering the key districts in promotion, our propaganda outnumbered that of some major parties, and was very hard to miss, with our distinct brand and colouring. It was also notable that as we walked, people recognised us, our party, and our candidate, and would often react positively and with interest to solicitation. Back at the office we debriefed, and finally really got a chance to sit down and talk to one another over some beers. I was enthused at the energy and commitment of the Bremen collective, and also the DiEMers who came all the way from the Netherlands and Belgium for the weekend to help out. The atmosphere was lively, positive, and welcoming, and we had a great time chatting and getting to know one another well into the evening. Shortly before midnight we dispersed to get some sleep before Day 2 – morale was high.

I began Day 2 by arriving to the office early, and meeting up with one of the candidates to spend an hour in the morning hanging up posters by the waterfront in preparation for our action.

From there we headed back to the office to regroup with the collective, and prepare our afternoon action. First, we headed to the parliament building in the city centre, where we promoted MERA25 with a message of climate urgency by holding up banners and leafleting.

From there we headed back to the office to have a bite to eat and plan our next move. Sunday, April 16 was the day of a soccer game between Bremen and Freiberg played at the Weserstadion, and Bremenites often walk to the stadium along the waterfront. Our plan was to head down to the waterfront with leaflets and banners, and be visible to locals on their way to the match. We grabbed our gear and headed out. We found a nice well-trafficked spot among the posters we’d hung up earlier, and got to work.

A number of us had to go at this point, with work the next day, so this marked the final action of our action weekend. Instead of immediately going our separate ways, we had a last beer together and recapped the weekend. The Bremen collective of DiEM25 is a great bunch of people, who are really hustling to make a difference this election. I felt welcomed, as I believe did the others who traveled some distance to support the campaign. I was overall really impressed with what I saw, and it’s not at all unreasonable for MERA25 to at least hit its conservative target. With less than a month before the election as of the writing of this post, if you can make it up to Bremen to support the campaign, it is absolutely worth doing so. If you are not a DiEMer and are interested in finding out more, take a look at the DiEM25 website, and if you’d like to find out when the next action weekend is or how you can contribute, ask your local DiEM collective administrator, or check out DiEM25 or MERA25 Bremen social media channels.