Danish Commune Combats Criminals.

COPENHAGEN -- For 50 years, Christiania, an anarchic, free-spirited commune in Denmark's capital, has gained global fame for its open-air cannabis market, attracting visitors from across the world, along with hardened criminals and regular police crackdowns.

Now a group of residents has risen up against the gangs that have taken control of the trade, in a risky, clandestine operation aimed at shutting down the famed Pusher Street.

In recent years, organized criminals have pushed out most of Christiania's residents from the lucrative cannabis trade, souring one of Northern Europe's biggest tourist attractions and a symbol of Danish tolerance.

After a spate of violent incidents, including several killings, many residents have had enough. Before dawn on Tuesday, about 50 Christianites -- as residents of the commune are called -- gathered to watch the cranes they ordered use shipping containers and concrete walls to block off entrances into Pusher Street, hours before drug dealers would arrive to begin the day's business.

"This action is taken in the hope of freeing Christiania from the tyranny of gangs and hard-core criminals," the activists said, adding that they did so at great risk to their own safety. "We are ordinary people who have to go to work and pack lunchboxes for our children. The gangs are ready to use violence and kill people in order to protect their income and territories."

The showdown between residents and drug dealers in Christiania is a consequence of a Danish, and European, drug market that is growing larger and more violent. It also marks a turning point for one of Europe's most radical and enduring social experiments, which has survived at odds with the law since its founding in 1971, when a band of hippies occupied an abandoned military barrack and established an anticapitalist haven.

"We need a moment of truth," a resident involved in Tuesday's operation said. "We have gone from being a role model of green energy, art, culture to spending all our community meetings discussing violent episodes in Pusher Street."

Christiania's early cannabis trade was driven by hippies transporting drugs from Asia to Copenhagen in beat-up Volkswagen vans. Today, about $150 million of cannabis flows each year through roughly 30 plywood stalls crammed into the 100-yard cobble-stoned pedestrian strip that is Pusher Street. It comprises about two-thirds of Denmark's total cannabis economy, said Kim Moller, associate professor of criminology at Malmo University in Sweden and expert on Christiania.

In the end, the predawn operation ensured that no drug dealers confronted the activists as they moved around Christiania, guiding the shipping containers into place in the dark. While younger participants trashed cannabis stalls, middle-aged residents spray-painted the containers: "Pusher Street is closed."" [1]

1. World News: Danish Commune Combats Criminals. Sune Engel Rasmussen. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 09 Aug 2023: A.18.