At 5am on Saturday, I jogged across a field with hundreds of strangers to block a highway near Erfurt, Germany.
We were one of several groups setting up roadblocks to stop delegates from reaching the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party conference.
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We faced a row of police in riot gear, helmets on and batons ready, filming us with cameras on monopods.
A few years ago, I would have covered such an action as a reporter from behind police lines.
In journalism school, I learned to be objective. But I cannot pretend impartiality when it comes to the AfD.
I chose to join the demonstrators, most decades younger than me, chanting: “Siamo tutti antifascisti (We are all antifascists)!”
As a foreigner who has called Germany home for nearly 30 years, and as a father of two daughters growing up here, I have skin in the game.
The AfD terrifies me.
The party backs what it calls “remigration” — a policy critics warn could extend beyond deporting undocumented migrants and asylum seekers to a broader vision of who belongs in Germany.
Some leading AfD figures have discussed removing German citizens with migrant backgrounds they argue are not truly German.
The Bavarian AfD parliamentary group has called for a German deportation police force modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
So, along with several thousand others from across Germany, I came to Erfurt to resist. I did not expect to stop the conference.
