Y
ou can choose between one of the seven ways in to enter by foot the open community of Christiania. Access it means to plunge yourself into a totally different atmosphere from the rest of the new modern cities of the west, including Copenhagen. Quiet, silence, oxygen are the first specific qualities that can be perceived. The total absence of vehicles and therefore of traffic and smog, declares the explicit will-power of the need to live in perfect alliance with the environment. You can go around by foot or with the local bicycles, since they have been invented and made on purpose for the daily needs of the lives of the citizens. Among the most appreciated there is the family version: a bicycle with a container in the front, able to accommodate children, animals and large shopping bags.
In conclusion a do-it-all bicycle, wide-spread in the city. You will be surprised to see the quantity of sturdy dogs and children riding ponies running about in the streets or being acrobats with skates and bicycles. Also the local fauna seems to have found the right refuge. Surrounded by water there is an island, kept by will of the citizens as a natural reserve for birds that live on it, and you can’t count how many species of plants and roses the citizens themselves have sowed and cultivated during the years. You can often come across groups of tourists of every age (more than a million a year), they come here to explore the whole area that from Pusher Street branches off into thousands of streets which skirt the river, or simply, they look for relax and entertainments.
Reggae, electronic, ethnic music and jazz are the kinds of music more appreciated. You can also eat at the great vegetarian restaurant and the initiatives that have been developed in thirty years are thousands, like the craftsman workshop run by 3 craftswomen, fair in agreement craftsman clothing shops, grocer’s shop, art gallery. The inhabitants of this community have tried to also give an answer to the tourist: who wants to know more just needs to ask at the information’s office.
The citizens of Christiania are a community of available people, communicative, socially engaged that try through a general assembly to reach a unanimous decision for each topic taken in consideration. A community not politically marked, based on three specific laws which are: non-violence, no possession of firearms and the non assumption therefore no selling of heavy drugs. A reality wanted and accomplished in thirtyfive years of occupation with physical and psychological strength by the residents themselves, which at the beginning of the 70’s settled here and transformed an abandoned military zone, independent, but first with the consent of the government, in some eclectic housing decorated by colored graffiti. There are also nursery-schools, spaces for free time for adults and young people, the postal office, steward’s office, the organization for environmental and architectural development (NYT FORUM), a center with ecological operators and a group of active gardeners.
A city in the city, in which like the flag confirms, they dot their i’s in yellow!
Since 2001 in accordance with the ideology and the politic of the new Center-Right government of the liberal Anders Fogh Rasmussen (allied with the extremists of the Right of the nationalist party), Christiania gets the final hit from the politic of “normalization”. But this was just the beginning: a very polite way to say “clear”, which today even becomes “zero tolerance towards Christiania”. It’s strange that in the street where the dealing is, Pusher Street, which has been in the hands of secret organizations for the past two years, you can’t see, especially at night, any police officer. It is very dangerous in fact to break the law of no pictures or no recording on this street, to the point that not even the citizens of Christiania can prevent the reactions that this person will face if caught in the middle of doing the act. And think that the lovely residents are even in agreement with the representative power of the queen, to which every year they send her a craftsman gift to wish her Merry Christmas!
From the local Beer Club to the sport one, from the support group for Tibet to the art gallery and the research center, everyone inside Christiania feels like a guest in a community based on respect and knowledge of one another. Without expectations they think that everyone is free to be without having anything to prove. The motto of Christiania in fact is “live slow, but fast” and it’s represented by a snail situated near one of the entrances of the city. It means that even if actions need time to become concrete, in the mind thoughts instead can develop faster.
Even with these impositions the community has always been managed in a pretty independent way. If the new special laws was accepted this reality would be annulled: independence and self-management would not exist, even the colored and particular buildings would be demolished; they would practice the denial of rights and of collective properties; they would be open to speculative building trade and to private property of homes; and independent systems created to organize would be dissolved. A compromise on the other side would be feasible if the government listened to the alternatives that the members of the general commission have tried to propose, with no results. The propositions brought forward were in regard of the legalization of job positions and economy through an alternative organization of society; the appraisal of architectural projects for new houses administered and financed by the community; the acceptance of a model legally valid such as an association, a foundation or co-operative society of residents, which safeguards the base structure of free democracy through the model of agreement of the world.
Many are the persons that in the years have lived here and have been accepted from the community because they have been recognized as a growing strength of the basis of these values. No one in fact can sell what doesn’t belong to them. Homes are passed from family to family according to the space necessity of the family group. The general assembly decides how to handle and redistribute the livable spaces. The same method is used to choose the neighbors. “Every time money is spent, think about it!”, sais a founder, also regarding what happened with the clearing and the fights with the police in the main square, for the demolition of the “house of youth”, Ungdomshuset.
TANJA GIANNOCCARO
Published on Dolce Vita International 3
