Federal Youth Minister Orders Every Protester to Attend a Ministry-Built Dialogue Hall the Size of Three Stadiums
Berlin responds to a nationwide youth protest by commissioning a permanent conversation chamber, staffed around the clock, through which every demonstrator must pass before returning home.
The Federal Ministry for Education and Youth has begun construction of a dialogue hall of unprecedented scale on the edge of Berlin, designed to accommodate every young person who intends to protest on Saturday before they are permitted to reach a street. Minister Karin Prien announced the project on Thursday, describing it as the logical extension of her standing invitation to talk.
"We are not asking young people to lower their voices," Prien said. "We are asking them to sit down in front of a table, one at a time, and tell us their concerns in full sentences, and we have built the table." The table, according to the ministry's plans, runs for nearly four kilometres and is divided into seating sections by the thirty cities where the demonstrations are planned.
Construction crews have been working in shifts since Monday. Municipal authorities in Leipzig and Hamburg have been instructed to bus participants to the site, where each arrival is logged, offered a seat and given ninety minutes of listening by a ministry official. Demonstrators who leave before their slot is called are required to return to the back of the queue, which now stretches beyond the city limits.
Burkhard Jung, president of the German Association of Cities, confirmed that his office has already requisitioned the municipal parks of forty towns to house overnight participants. "Democracy means being heard," he said, "and being heard, in this case, means having a cot." Klaus Hurrelmann has been appointed chief moderator and has begun interviewing the protesters' grandparents to determine whether the older generation shares the young people's anxieties about the future.
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