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Hundreds of customers expecting their usual morning coffee or haircut in Magdeburg on Wednesday were met with shuttered doors, as business owners with migration backgrounds in the eastern German city suspended operations for several hours in a coordinated demonstration against the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The far-right party currently tops opinion surveys less than two weeks before voters in Saxony-Anhalt head to the polls.
Around 150 establishments took part in the action, concentrated in the district surrounding Hasselbachplatz, one of the city's best-known central squares. Restaurants, kiosks and barbershops were among those that stayed dark between 10 am and 3 pm local time (0800 to 1300 GMT), according to one of the event's organizers. A demonstration in front of the state parliament in Magdeburg was scheduled for the same day.
Organizers stressed that participation extended beyond migrant entrepreneurs themselves. Several firms without any migration background announced plans to close in solidarity, underscoring what they described as broad local support for the protest.
Saeeid Saeeid, who works with the refugee council in Saxony-Anhalt, said the message of the day was that membership in German society should never hinge on productivity. In his view, no individual should be required to validate their place in the community through labor or economic achievement alone.
He described a remarkable atmosphere of unity among the participants ahead of the strike. Owners were encouraging each other, standing together, and voicing their opposition to racism and social exclusion through peaceful means, he said.
The central goal, according to a co-organizer, was to make visible everything that would vanish if migrant-operated businesses disappeared from the city's streets. The one-day shutdown was designed to give residents a glimpse of that absence.
The co-organizer pointed out that people with migration histories form the backbone of numerous essential services well beyond the storefronts that closed on Wednesday. They staff the care sector, keep parcel deliveries moving, and fill jobs in construction sites and industrial plants across the region.
At the same time, she said, participants rejected being valued purely for their economic contribution. People want to be recognized as full members of society, with all the needs and rights that entails, added the woman, who works as a social worker when she is not organizing campaigns. She characterized the strike as an attempt to jolt the broader public into attention and to encourage voters to scrutinize the AfD's political program closely before casting their ballots.
The protest comes at a sensitive moment. Saxony-Anhalt is scheduled to elect a new state parliament on September 6, and the AfD's branch there is campaigning for an outright majority — an outcome that would, for the first time, put the party in a position to lead a government at the state level in Germany.
The party's rise has been accompanied by official warnings: the state's domestic intelligence service classifies the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as a confirmed far-right extremist organization. For the shop owners and activists who emptied part of Magdeburg on Wednesday, the election represents a test of whether their neighbors see the diverse commercial life on display around Hasselbachplatz as indispensable — or as expendable.
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