Has Berlin’s May Day lost its radical left edge?

May Day has become one of the largest parties in Berlin. The streets of the cool Kreuzberg neighbourhood are shut down as the concrete city blocks vibrate with the music from temporary stages. The sidewalks are filled with stalls selling food and booze to fuel a celebration that starts around mid-morning and lasts well past midnight. Görlitzer Park becomes densely packed with visitors who flock to the area from the rest of the city and abroad. But this scene is a far cry from how the holiday started in Berlin.

While 1 May has historic roots as a summer festival where people stick flowers in their hair and dance around a maypole, as well as a 19th century origin of Worker’s Day – Berlin’s incarnation of the holiday starts in the Eighties.

Before the wall came down, Kreuzberg celebrated May Day differently. It was a poor neighbourhood populated by squatters, students and immigrants  who staged full-fledged leftist protests that often resulted in burning buildings, and turned over cars, leaving the neighbourhood saturated with teargas. Clashes even temporarily forced police out of the area on certain May Days, like in 1987. But after years of conflict in 2005, the Berlin government decided to deal with the riots by throwing the party that has become known as MyFest (or May festival in English) directly in the middle of where the old protest routes were, along Oranienstrasse and Skalitzerstrasse. And it worked – the last May Day with serious clashes between protesters and police was in 2009.

While the party seems to have pacified Kreuzberg over the past decade, in which the neighbourhood has experienced rapid gentrification, the police may have outdone themselves. The festivities have gained a reputation for getting out of control, leaving the quarter overflowing with trash, empty bottles and all sorts of other remnants of partygoers who have overindulged. This has prompted officials to take measures to curb the party, like closing off Görlitzer Park, also known as an open-air weed market, during the festivities, as well as prohibit corner stores from selling alcohol during the holiday.

But as Kreuzberg drinks itself into a Dionysian stupor, the real protests have moved east. The Revolutionary May demonstration will be marching through the Friedrichshain neighbourhood. One of the main points for the expected 20,000 protesters will be the rapid inflation of housing prices in the city – an issue that has recently sparked a citywide debate about the feasibility of extreme measures, such as expropriation, as a solution to Berlin’s housing crisis. The new demonstration route passes by some of the city’s most upscale new housing developments, which have sprung up around tech companies like the campus of clothing e-commerce Zalando. While the police in Kreuzberg will have to deal with drunk and disorderly behaviour, up in Friederichshain, the police may be facing something similar to the old days of 1 May.

Still, with some 15 protests planned across the city, other groups are also using the day for political action. The Berlin chapter of the militant, anti-fascist Antifa movement will be holding counter-demonstrations to those of the right wing AfD party in the north of the city, while the Klassenkampf Block (or ‘Class Struggle Block’ in English) will be demonstrating in the Mitte neighbourhood against capitalism, racism and the patriarchy. 5,500 police officers have been mobilised.

As Kreuzberg gets ready for an out-of-control party and demonstrations find new homes, lets see what May Day will bring.