Video and Text Fwd: GERMANS PROTEST NUCLEAR POWER

Organizing Notes
Sunday, March 27, 2011
GERMANS PROTEST NUCLEAR POWER




Tens of thousands of Germans took to the streets Saturday to protest against nuclear power. Under the banner "Fukushima means: no more nuclear power stations," marches took place in Hamburg, Cologne, Munich and capital Berlin, ahead of the vote in wealthy Baden-Wuerttemberg Sunday, where the nuclear issue was set to play a key role. In Berlin alone, police said the "organisers' aim of getting 50,000 would be basically achieved."

On Sunday the Associated Press reported:

German chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives have suffered a historic defeat in a state ballot after almost six decades in power there, preliminary results showed Sunday, in an election that amounted to a referendum on the party's stance on nuclear power.

The opposition anti-nuclear Greens doubled their voter share in Baden-Wuerttemberg state and seemed poised to win their first-ever state governorship, according to preliminary results released by the state electoral commission.

"We have secured what amounts to a historic electoral victory," the Greens' leader Winfried Kretschmann told party members in Stuttgart.

The Greens secured 24.2 percent of the vote, with the center-left Social Democrats down 2 percentage points at 23.1 percent. That secures them a narrow lead to form a coalition government with a combined 71 seats in the state legislature, the results showed.

See more video from Germany here