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Month: October 2023

A Lesson in Liberation from Gaza

Statement by the Feminist Bloc | Palestine Speaks and others on Gaza


08/10/2023

If you saw footage this morning from occupied Palestine of resistance fighters storming Israeli settlements built on indigenous Palestinian lands and taking Israelis hostage, then you prayed for God to save the people of Gaza from Israel’s brutal retaliation, then you are not alone.
If you went on social media to post lengthy explanations to your Western friends to make them understand what led to Saturday’s events, sharing numerous posts about Israel’s decades-long colonialism and oppression of the Palestinian people, then you are also not alone.
Both responses are symptomatic of Palestinians and their allies. Whenever something happens in Gaza, where people live in the largest open air prison, we immediately fear for the lives of the people there who pay the price every time they raise their heads to defy the occupation. We also feel we’re constantly on the spot, having to justify and explain our right to fight for dignity and write our own history through resistance.

As feminists and activists for justice in Palestine and everywhere, we urge ourselves, and you as well, to overcome this mode of thinking, imposed on us by the colonial structures we are living in. If we do not fight, then neither our words, nor the truth of our narratives, will lead to any change in our condition. According to International Humanitarian Law, every people under military occupation or siege has the right to resist their occupiers. The latest Palestinian resistance has to be seen in this light. Our struggle for freedom, justice and liberation will be exemplary to other oppressed indigenous people around the world. Today, we unequivocally insist that we do not have to explain or justify the unprecedented – and as of yet, unpredictable – developments in Gaza to those who do not understand the current power dynamics in Palestine. We will not be dragged into a pointless analysis or illustration of the military gains or capabilities of the occupiers. We choose to uphold our people’s right to fight for their dignity and life in freedom.

We stand today in awe of all Palestinians who resist. We stand today in awe of all Palestinians who as colonized people rewrite their own history. We stand today in solidarity with every Palestinian who decides to overcome settler colonialism, military occupation and oppression. We condemn international powers who are not acknowledging the right to resist for Palestinians living under occupation and siege for decades.

This statement was issued by the following organisations:

  • Feminist Bloc | Palestine Speaks
  • Alliance of International Feminists
  • International women* space
  • India Justice Project
  • Palestine Speaks
  • Jewish Bund
  • DarSudan
  • DKB

It was first published on the Palestine Speaks Instagram page. Reproduced with permission.

The Red Flag Over Berlin

Interview with columnist Nathaniel Flakin


07/10/2023

For three years, Nathaniel Flakin has been publishing a weekly column on Berlin politics called “Red Flag.” It just moved to a new home at the newspaper ND. theleftberlin has just agreed with ND that we will also be publishing the column. In preparation for this, we interviewed Nathaniel.

Can you tell us about your column “Red Flag”?

Berlin’s English-speaking community is growing constantly. But a lot of the city’s left-wing politics, as well as its radical history, are still only available in German. Just like this website is doing, I’m trying to offer local communist content so that people can better understand campaigns and struggles.

I think when people hear about a red flag in Berlin, they will picture the Soviet flag waving over the Reichstag in 1945. And for sure, that was a spectacular moment in Berlin history. Spasiba! But I was actually thinking of a different red flag…

A bit more than a century ago, on November 9, 1918, there was a an insurrection in Berlin. That evening, friends of Rosa Luxemburg — who called themselves Spartacists — went to the biggest, most right-wing tabloid in the city. After occupying the building, they informed the journalists that this would now be a communist paper. “There has just been a successful revolution, gentlemen,” Hermann Duncker said, “and you will understand that it cannot tolerate a counterrevolutionary press.” Thus, Die Rote Fahne or The Red Flag was born.

The first issue was titled: “Berlin Under the Red Flag.” Rosa Luxemburg is usually credited as the founder. But she only arrived the next day to edit the second issue. She had been in prison and it wasn’t easy to get back to Berlin.

With the name “Red Flag,” I was trying to connect to this history of anti-capitalist journalism in Berlin.

What do you write about in your column?

In recent columns, I have discussed the second referendum to expropriate big landlords or about the orange paint on the Brandenburg Gate. In general, I write about racist police violence, car culture’s poisonous effects, and the ecocidal hypocrisy of the so-called Green Party. I also like reporting about strikes and workers’ struggles, even if those don’t get as many hits. I believe my most popular column was about the racist moral panic whipped up after the Silvester Riots.

I never believed that journalists should be neutral. In fact, on my very first day working as a journalist, at a left-wing paper, my boss told me: “Objectivity is a bourgeois myth!” Wise words. Every journalist has convictions — most of them support capitalism — so it’s a question of respect for our readers to be open about our views.

When did you start publishing the column?

I started writing the column for the Exberliner website back in 2020. They were never big fans of socialism, but I think they loved the controversies and the clicks that “Red Flag” generated. More recently, they decided that my endless stream of communist propaganda didn’t fit their brand. And I get it: I also mostly want Exberliner to tell me about fun things going on in the city, not calling on the proletariat to take up arms. Exberliner still publishes my history column in the print edition, and I have been able to do some deep dives about Clara Zetkin’s former home or about Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. Exberliner is an institution that keeps a lot of Berlin’s English-speaking community together.

Where did you find a new home for the column?

ND! Have you heard of ND? It’s probably not very well known to English speakers. Back in 1946, Neues Deutschland was created as the central organ of the Socialist Unity Party (SED). The idea was that they wanted a “New Germany” free of Nazis, aristocrats, and militarists. It eventually became the main paper of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), selling a million copies a day. This was before my time, but Neues Deutschland had a reputation for the forced optimism typical of Stalinist regimes. Victor Grossman recalls a joke: If Australia were to sink into the Indian Ocean, the headline in ND would read that the plan for steel had been fulfilled, while the disappearance of a continent would get a short mention on page 5.

After reunification, Neues Deutschland was owned by the PDS and then DIE LINKE, while trying to maintain an independent socialist profile. Back in 2021, it was converted into a Genossenschaft, a cooperative, where many journalists and readers    now own shares, and decisions are made democratically. ND is the the only left-wing paper that manages to report in detail from inside Berlin’s parliament and district councils.

ND still works out of the Neues Deutschland building at Franz-Mehring-Platz, now an event space known as FMP1. They also have a spectacular archive — I consulted with them, for example, looking for unpublished photos of Angela Davis’s visits to East Berlin in the early 1970s.

What is the status of ND now?

Their first year as a cooperative was very difficult — they ended up €600,000 in the red. But a solidarity campaign has collected over €150,000 to keep this important left-wing institution running.

Today, ND is a broad left paper. I certainly don’t agree with everything they publish — and I know some of their journalists don’t agree with me either. There is plenty of debate. Some of ND journalists started working there back in the 1980s, while others are young lefties from different organizations.

I’m really happy they are taking a chance with this column — their first content in English. They’ve been translating all my columns to German as well, so now “Red Flag” is bilingual.

Another Referendum to Expropriate Berlin’s Biggest Landlords

Two years ago, 59.1% of Berliners voted to socialize real estate companies. But nothing has happened. Will a second referendum do the trick?


06/10/2023

theleftberlin has just agreed with Neues Deutschland (ND) that we will be publishing Nathaniel Flakin’s Red Flag column, which also appears in ND. This is the first of these columns published here.

In Germany, trust in democracy is eroding. A study this summer showed that only every second person had faith in the current system. Pundits are debating what has gone wrong.

I have a theory: Two years ago, a huge majority of Berliners voted to expropriate big landlords. 59.1 percent called for the »socialization« of gargantuan realty companies like Deutsche Wohnen and Vonovia. Yet Berlin’s next two governments, who had each gotten far less votes than the referendum, have done everything they could to sabotage the people’s choice. Both Franziska Giffey of the SPD and Kai Wegener of the CDU oppose expropriation on principle, so they’ve come up with one delaying tactic after another.

Does this feel like a democracy? Or some kind of third-rate autocracy, where votes are only respected if the people in power agree?

Now, yellow and purple posters have reappeared all over the city. On the second anniversary of the vote, on September 26, the campaign »Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen« (DWE) announced that they will be launching a second referendum. We will need to collect 20,000 and then 170,000 signatures once again. (It was fun!) Last time, we voted on a proposal that the government formulate a law for expropriation. Now, the campaign is going to write such a law themselves. Alles muss man selber machen! (You have to do everything yourself.)

Why didn’t they just write their own law to begin with? Because a few years ago, no one knew what expropriation according to Article 15 of Germany’s Basic Law would look like. Now, lawyers and activists have been studying the problem, and DWE is collecting 100,000 Euros to hire a law firm to draft the text.

Wegner’s government claims it is working on an Expropriation Framework Law, which would set the parameters for a future law on expropriation – the Constitutional Court could then check if this passed muster. The obvious problem, as a legal expert explained to ND, is that such a law would not actually do anything. No one would have standing to sue until a real estate company’s property is moved into public ownership. As a German idiom puts it: “No plaintiff, no judge.”

This is just another cynical move against democracy. We have already been through the farce of Giffey’s “Expert Commission,” which took a year to report that yes, Article 15 of Germany’s Basic Law really does allow for property to “be transferred into public ownership” if it’s “for the public good.” I could have told them that with a quick Google search. Berlin expropriates buildings all the time – but so far, it’s only to build the Autobahns that the CDU and the SPD love so much. Why should expropriation be unthinkable to lower rents?

More than two years ago, I wrote about a long-abandoned building on my block that was finally getting renovated. The project is controlled by Henning Conle, a billionaire heir who takes his profits from reality speculation to make massive illegal contributions to the AfD. Construction work is ongoing, but tenants have started moving in. I have been living on this block for a decade, and my rent is about 8.50 Euros per square meter. These new apartments are going for almost 22 Euros – an increase of two-and-a-half times in ten years.

No wonder people are open for radical solutions. Berlin’s housing market is controlled by the vampire squids of financial speculators, and more than a few actual gangsters. Just look how the owners of Habersaathstraße 40-48 hired violent thugs to trash the apartments of renters they wanted out – despite a court order.

Expropriation would be a step towards real democracy – the vast majority of Berliners are renters, and we would gain some control over our housing. Ultimately, though, signatures will not be enough. We will need occupations of empty apartments as well as rent strikes to shift the balance of power. Direct action is what democracy looks like. It’s time to get active with DWE and their English-speaking group, Right to the City.

This article was first published by Neues Deutschland.

Letter from the Editors, 5th October 2023

The EU us failing, Guerilla Gardening and Deutsche Wohnen & Co are back


05/10/2023

Hello everyone,

This evening (Thursday), there’s a meeting in English on Agents of System Change. The moral force of the environmental movements in the Global North seems undeniable: they are right about the destruction of the planet and its disastrous consequences for the majority of the world’s population. But are these movements actually capable of becoming agents of fundamental change, namely the transition from capitalism to feminist eco-socialism? This opening public talk of the “Allied Grounds” conference on Thursday, October 5, will invite us to 1) re-evaluate the struggling global proletariat, especially informal and subsistence workers turned ‘fugitive laborers,’ as agents of systemic change and 2) discuss the allied grounds necessary for that change. It starts at 7pm, free admission, in the Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte (Greifswalder Straße 4).

Tomorrow, there are two memorial rallies. At 4.30pm, at Oranienplatz, we will be remembering Kupa Ilunga Medard Mutombo. On 14th September 2022, Kupa was in an assisted living home in Spandau for people who have been made mentally ill. He was to be transferred to a hospital. Three police officers, a doctor and an ambulance were called for the transfer. When Medard opened his door and saw the police, he panicked. The police officers used brutal force against the 64-year-old, throwing him on the floor, restraining him. One pushed a knee into his neck, while another lay on his back and prevented him from breathing. At least 13 other police officers entered the dormitory and did not let anyone into the room. According to one witness, Medard could no longer breathe. Kupa suffered injuries that caused him to die three weeks later, on 06.10.2022

The second memorial is at 6pm at Rudolf Reusch Straße 8 for Kurt Schneider. 24 years ago, Kurt was murdered by neo-Nazis in Urnenhain in Lichtenberg. We will also be there this year to commemorate him and, together with you, to talk to the neighbours. Feel free to bring candles and flowers. Social chauvinism kills! No-one is forgotten!

On Saturday and Sunday, there will be a workshop Harvesting Resilience; Foraging and Guerilla Gardening. This workshop series gives you the opportunity to rethink your relationship with nature, food and consumption. You will be able to connect with different people in an exchange of skill, knowledge and thoughts. Curated by Zeren Oruc, Harvesting Resilience workshops series are part of a long-term research project focusing on the food-land-culture relationship to examine the impact of our food production and consumption habits on the environment, land degradation, and forms of exploitation. They start on Saturday at 1pm in Treptower Park and on Sunday at 11am in the Oyoun garden. Harvesting Resilience is our Campaign of the Week.

On Saturday, journalist Özge İnan will be moderating a meeting with Yanis Varoufakis and Ece Temelkuran on The EU is failing. What should we do? The EU faces many challenges: economic disparities, skyrocketing living costs, political divisions and the threat of war. We’re in dire need of fresh thinking on possible solutions. The event promises a dynamic exchange of ideas and perspectives on the current state of the European Union and potential paths forward. And there will be lots of time for Q+A and networking after the panel debate. It starts at 7pm (doors open 6pm) at the Theater im Delphi.

There are many more activities this week in Berlin, which are listed on our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed list of events which we are directly involved in here.

In News from Berlin, the €29 monthly travel ticket is returning – but only for zones A and B, increased criticism of the Tesla factory in Grünheide, and lights turned off in Berlin public buildings to save money.

In News from Germany, Minister of State for Eastern Germany speaks about 33 years reunification, prison sentences for Last Generation activists, and 0.1% fall in unemployment.

Read all about it in this week’s News from Berlin and Germany.

New this week on theleftberlin, Palestinian photographer Rasha Al-Jundi was recently allowed to visit her homeland for the first time. We publish her visual diary. Deutsche Wohnen & Co activist and theleftberlin editorial board member Maria Cofalka tells us that Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen are back, and lets you know what you can do to support the campaign. Meanwhile. Phil Butland explains how you can learn about Berlin’s radical history by looking at who’s buried in its cemeteries.

If you want to help the Deutsche Wohnen & Co campaign and want to learn more about what’s happening, come along to the fundraising evening – Eine Küche für Alle – next Saturday in Bilgisaray. More information in next week’s Newsletter.

You can follow us on the following social media:

If you would like to contribute any articles or have any questions or criticisms about our work, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. And please do encourage your friends to subscribe to this Newsletter.

Keep on fighting,

The Left Berlin Editorial Board

News from Berlin and Germany, 4th October 2023

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


04/10/2023

NEWS FROM BERLIN

The 29-euro ticket to return in 2024

The 29-euro ticket is coming back to Berlin. In 2024 passengers in the capital will once again be able to use buses, trains and trams as often as they want for just under 30 euros a month, as the supervisory board of the Berlin-Brandenburg Transport Association (VBB) announced last Thursday. As before, however, the ticket is only valid for the AB fare zone. The Berlin Senate has not succeeded in reaching a more far-reaching agreement with neighbouring Brandenburg. The Supervisory Board also extended the social ticket: Berliners who receive social benefits will continue to pay nine euros per month for this subscription. Source: berlin.de

Environmental concerns at the Brandenburg Tesla factory

When Tesla built its Giga factory in Grünheide, Brandenburg, more than a year ago, opinions were mixed. Was this a daring move towards an environmentally friendly future of green vehicle manufacturing, or an ill-thought-out project from an entrepreneur with a poor record of adhering to safety regulations? The latest news suggests the latter, with Tesla reporting 26 environmental accidents at the German plant since work began. According the Tagespiegel, separate events have seen the leak of 15,000 litres of paint and 13 tons of aluminium being spilled, among others. Source: Exberliner

Lights in public buildings in Berlin to remain off

Since summer 2022, many public buildings in Berlin have remained in the dark due to energy-saving measures. In fact, up to 40,000 euros could be saved in a single year. The measure is to continue for at least another year. The Senate already decided this last March and it has now reaffirmed, the continuation until September 2024. The buildings that will continue to be illuminated are those with protocol obligations, such as the City Hall, or objects with a hazard classification (for instance, the Jewish Museum and the New Synagogue). Source: rbb

 

NEWS FROM GERMANY

German reunification: “completed, but not perfect”

The 3rd of October saw the 33rd aniversary of the reunification of East and West Germany. The Minister of State for East Germany, Carsten Schneider, praised the economic upturn in the former East in a DW interview. Schneider also highlighted pension levels were adjusted to be equal across Germany in 2023. On the other hand, challenges such as the downward trend of the number of people of working age in East Germany in decades to come, together with the feeling many eastern Germans have of being deceived in the reunification process, show that there are still things to do. “Reunification is completed, even if it is not perfect,” concluded Schneider, considering the 33-year-old reunification needs to be fully realised in people’s minds. Source: dw

Harshest sentences for “Last Generation”: activists sent to prison

The Heilbronn District Court sentenced two men and one woman to prison terms of five, four and three months without probation. According to the public prosecutor’s office and activists, the sentence is the harshest so far imposed on members of the “Last Generation” in Germany. The sentence is not yet legally binding. The activists stated in the trial that they had wanted to draw attention to what they saw as inadequate measures to combat climate change with the protest action. Meanwhile, an activist from the “Last Generation” in Berlin was able to successfully defend herself, winning an appeal in the administrative court. Source: merkur

Latest employment figures: “autumn revival” weaker

The number of unemployed in Germany fell slightly in September compared to August. The rate fell by 0.1 percentage points to 5.7 per cent, as the Federal Employment Agency (BA) announced last Friday. Compared to the previous year, BA counted 141,000 more unemployed. “The incipient autumn revival turns out to be comparatively small this year,” BA board member Daniel Terzenbach said when presenting the figures. “Unemployment and underemployment are decreasing, but less than usual in a September.” In the past three years, the number of unemployed had fallen by an average of about 95,000 in September. Basically, however, the German labour market remains stable, Terzenbach said. Source: ndr