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Month: September 2024

Exchange with South African Housing Activists

Week of activities and Events organised by Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen and the rosa luxemburg stiftung


20/09/2024

This is a notice sent to The Left Berlin by Right 2 The City, the international section of Deutsch Wohnen & Co. Enteignen.

Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen (DWE), with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, is happy to invite you to a series of exchange and activities with activists from the movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and from the NGO Ndifuna Ukwazi from South Africa.

On the third anniversary of the historic and successful referendum calling for the expropriation of large landlords, DWE is organizing an international exchange between housing movements. South African activists from the shack dwellers movement Abahlali baseMjondolo and from Ndifuna Ukwazi are visiting Berlin. We have put together a program of different activities with them!

1: Workshop – Building an international solidarity network

What connects housing struggles in Berlin and Capetown? What do neighborhood organizing and fighting for property reforms from below have to do with internationalism? What solidarity actions can be used to support each other across our local contexts? We invite you to take part in a workshop on these questions – and discussing the concrete possibility of establishing a solidarity network between housing movements from Berlin and South Africa.

In the morning part of the workshop, we will draw connections between the different local movements and share visions for the possibility of housing struggles to radically change our societies. In the afternoon session, we will focus on the concrete needs and potentials for long-term collaboration and practical solidarity between our movements.

Please register by sending an e-mail to ernacassara@zedat.fu-berlin.de, and let us know if you will come as an individual or if you represent an activist group.

The workshop will be held in English. If you need simultaneous translation into German, please let us know in your registration e-mail.
🗓️ Monday 23 September,  11.00-16.00  Lunch will be provided. Register for the address.

2: Kino Abend – Film Screening about Housing Struggles

On Monday evening we are showing movies about the housing struggles in South Africa and the inspiring fight of Abahlali baseMjondolo, as well as “Start wearing purple”, the heartwarming documentary about the Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen initiative and referendum.

🗓️ Monday 23 September, 8pm, Regenbogenfabrik (Lausitzer Straße 21a, 10999 Berlin). Free entry.

🎤 The movies will be in English. “Start wearing purple” will have German subtitles.

3: Panel Discussion – Property Reforms from Below: A Discussion between Housing Movements from South Africa and Berlin

Speakers: Katalin Gennburg, Joana Kusiak, activists from Abahlali baseMjondolo, Ndifuna Ukwazi, and DWE

On Wednesday we are organizing a panel discussion to learn about the main struggles surrounding access to housing and land justice in South Africa, as well as the history, strategies and successes of our movements. Why must housing struggles be from below? How relevant is the form of property and the involvement of the state? How do movements organize themselves? We want to discuss these questions and more with our guests, as well as you. Come and join us!

🗓️ Wednesday 25 September, 7pm, KIEZRAUM auf dem Dragonerareal Obentrautstraße 1-21, 10963 Berlin. Free entry.

Accessibility: room is on the ground floor.

🎤 The Event is in English: German translation available on demand.

Can Berlin get over its addiction to cars?

A Neukölln Kiez has reduced traffic. A right-wing tabloid declares this to be a “risk of death”. Will Berlin ever be for people, instead of for cars?


19/09/2024

Earlier this month, Berlin’s biggest tabloid, B.Z., splashed a warning across its title page: “RISK OF DEATH”. This mortal danger was right in my neighborhood! But what merited an all-caps warning?

If you walk around the southern part of North Neukölln, the danger is obvious: cars. Up to 4.000 cars were hurtling over the once-tranquil Richardplatz every day, past day cares and elementary schools. Cars aren’t just dangerous when they hit someone. Their tires produce even more deadly pollution than their exhausts do. Their noise in residential areas also significantly shortens life expectancy. Their carbon emissions cause floods, droughts, and other deadly catastrophes.

But it seems as B.Z. doesn’t want you worrying about any of that. No, their concern is about a handful of bollards installed by the Neukölln district council on August 21 and 27. This “Kiezblock” (neighborhood block) is designed to prevent cars taking shortcuts past our homes in Rixdorf. The tabloid claims these will block firetrucks in an emergency.

It might seem superfluous to point out that a publication from the Axel Springer Company is bending the truth. But briefly: Kiezblocks are safe. The fire department has keys to remove the bollards in a few seconds if necessary. They were consulted as the Kiezblock was being planned. What actually blocks emergency vehicles in Berlin? Not bollards, but illegally parked cars.

We also read that “there was no civic engagement”. Yet the Kiezblock was voted on more than three years ago! There have been numerous public meetings and demonstrations. In a column from almost two years ago, I made no secret of my impatience with the bureaucracy’s foot-dragging.

This was a tiny example of the right-wing moral panics Berlin goes through regularly. A Springer publication starts something that seems like a misinformation campaign – which then gets taken up by SPD politicians and supposedly serious publications as the supposed “voice of Berlin”.

The truth is that the Kiezblock has been immensely popular. A spokesperson of the Neukölln district council said that “the majority of residents welcomes” the measure. I can confirm this: I surveyed my neighbors and 91 percent rated the Kiezblock as “gut”.

Who has been angry? Drivers who were used to speeding past our home. But drivers are often angry – studies show that driving is far more stressful than taking the train. Drivers will often say they love their cars, even as their faces are twisted in rage.

I have been wondering: Are cars like an addiction? I used to smoke, and like the majority of people who kicked the habit, I wish I had never started. I needed to get away from cigarettes for a few months to recognize they are harmful and kinda disgusting.

At the moment, many Berliners believe they could never live without cars. But what would happen if they got to experience a city made for people? I imagine, before long, we would look back with shame and revulsion about a time when cars dominated our streets – just like when we imagine people smoking in hospitals and day cares.

Ljubljana made its inner-city car-free back in 2008. Despite some protests at first, the measures are now supported by 95 percent of residents. Once people start to experience a car-free city – where kids can play on the street and neighbors can hang out – it’s hard to go back.

Most people in Berlin can get around with bikes, trams, trains, and buses. All of these systems need massive investment – we need billions for public transit instead of new Autobahns. People with reduced mobility deserve to be transported at the city’s expense. But no one needs a two-ton metal box that is capable of going 300km/h to get around. Anyone who really needs a car can do just fine with a golf cart with a top speed of 20km/h. This would leave space for essential vehicles – ambulances, fire trucks, and last-mile deliveries – to get to their destinations easily.

If B.Z. were interested in reducing the risk of death in Berlin, they would be campaigning to get rid of cars.

This is a mirror of Nathaniel’s Red Flag column for Neues Deutschland

Fascists Organising at a School Near You

While politicians scaremonger about Islamists, neo-Nazi group ‘Der Dritte Weg’ is recruiting a new generation of fanatics at schools and parks in and around Berlin.


18/09/2024

In the last months, the far right has seen large advances in Germany, especially with the electoral successes in Saxony and Thuringia. In Berlin, the neo-Nazi group Der Dritte Weg (The Third Way) has been carrying out demonstrations and several high-profile attacks, usually alongside its youth organisation Nationalrevolutionäre Jugend (NRJ), as part of a growing emboldening of the far right. 

Der Dritte Weg is a recognised political party, and stands for election in some state-level German elections, where it usually receives between 0.5 and 4% of votes. In 2019 it received 12,756 votes in the European Election. It was founded in 2013 in part by members of other banned neo-Nazi groups, such as Klaus Armstroff who had been part of the National Democratic Party of Germany. 

Another member, “Susanne G.”, sent death threats to a Muslim community centre, local politicians and a local refugee aid association. She allegedly had been planning actual attacks against the community centre, politicians and a police station.  

Der Dritte Weg gained a new level of popularity during the pandemic when it advocated against the so-called “Corona Diktatur”. Despite its occasional electoral efforts, the party is suspected by the Verfassungsschutz (Germany’s federal domestic intelligence agency) to maintain its electoral wing only because its status as a political party makes it harder to ban than an association.

The group has been especially active in Berlin as of late. It stickered outside of Die Linke politician Ferat Koçak’s house back in April. Koçak, who is a member of the Berlin state parliament and his party’s speaker on antifascism, has been the target of repeated Nazi threats and attacks, including a firebombing of his family home seven years ago which finally went to court last week. They are also reported to be behind an attack in July against anti-fascists at Ostkreuz station where neo-Nazis used pepper spray and quartz-lined gloves, an attack where the lack of police preventative action led Koçak to ponder on Instagram “whether police forces really have an interest in protecting left-wing activists from the right.”

Yet fascist groups such as Der Dritte Weg haven’t been successful in every case. One group of 30 or so neo-Nazis, many of them minors and reportedly from outside of Berlin, attempted to attack the Christopher Street Day pride parade in July, but the police prevented them. They were released shortly afterwards. Likewise, in advance of their state election victories, the AfD attempted to organise a celebration in the predominantly migrant neighbourhood of Neukölln, a clear provocation which backfired in the face of an anti-fascist coalition which organised a counter demonstration. The counter-demonstrators not only succeeded in having the Neukölln party cancelled, but went to Pankow to protest outside the relocated AfD celebrations, highlighting the possibilities of grassroots mobilisations.

Behind these attacks and increasing bravado lies active recruitment, especially of youth. While some foreign commentators go on about a historic divide going back over a thousand years as the main explanation for why the far right is finding success, neo-Nazi groups are actively taking advantage of the economic disenfranchisement of the East; many neo-Nazis from the West have moved East where they see more opportunities for mobilisation. 

Claiming that the AfD will only be successful in the East, but stands no chance in the West, misses the fact that the East has until now been the focus of far right mobilisation efforts. While this is not new, several initiatives of neo-Nazi recruitment in Berlin have recently come to light.

The Tagesspiegel reported that on July 13th, 20-30 neo-Nazis gathered in a state park in Lichtenberg for martial arts training, which the police reported included knives, quartz-enforced gloves and pepper spray. According to the Tagesspiegel, at least some of the members were seen wearing Der Dritte Weg shirts, and some local antifascist groups claim that these trainings have been taking place in the park for years.

In Pankow similar trainings have reportedly taken place since at least October 2023, again members from Der Dritte Weg and NRJ are present. The participants meet twice a week in a gym located behind a local school. 

Concerningly, when Koçak asked through parliamentary inquiry what information the city had on how widespread these trainings were, Berlin’s State Secretary for the Interior Christian Hochgrebe answered that police were not collecting data which could answer the question. It is quite plausible, if not likely, that there are many more regular training sessions happening that simply have not been reported on.

While these trainings seem designed for some future violent confrontations, their locations – in public parks and gyms behind schools – also suggests that they act as recruitment tools for young potential fascists. 

The focus on schools as recruitment grounds came up in another parliamentary inquiry by Koçak, who asked the city’s government about the NRJ’s presence at schools. In Hochgrebe’s response, he stated that “the III. Weg through [the NRJ] have been regularly distributing information material in front of schools in Berlin and its surrounding areas as part of their schoolyard campaign [Schulhofkampagne] since 2023, and publishing posts about it on their homepage.” 

Hochgrebe’s response goes on to report that incidents of far right flyers, graffiti, and stickers has been increasing. 2023 saw 57 reported incidents (exactly how they’re reported is unclear) and the first half of 2024 saw 35 incidents ranging from incitement to hatred (Volksverhetzung) to propaganda of a banned right-wing organisation.

While the AfD increases its electoral victories, and shifts the mainstream political parties further towards its positions, Der Dritte Weg is building its cadre of trained, militant neo-Nazis. 

While the AfD’s goals are clear, looking at the preparatory steps Der Dritte Weg is taking – increased propaganda output, military-style sports trainings – the question that hangs over it all is clear: preparation for what?

Bitter Waters: The Struggle of the Sahrawis

Film reviews of films focused on the Western Sahara and shown recently in Berlin


Last Saturday 7th of September, the screening “Bitter Waters: The Struggle of the Sahrawis” took place at Sinema Transtopia. This was followed by a discussion with Javier Toscano, Minetu Hamdi, Nadjet Hamdi and Sale Mohamed Sayed al Bashir: curators, activists and filmmakers involved in the shown projects. Each of these titles brought a different emphasis, from historical reiterations to visual storytelling, focusing on the themes of life under occupation and resistance against dispossession, colonialism and military powers. 

I write this review with the aim to make an (inter)generational and (inter)national connection regarding the struggles against Spanish colonialism and all forms of past and current fascism. Which means, each fight for national liberation and self-determination of colonised lands is a common battle field for all. From understanding Catalan and Basque identities during the Spanish Civil war and life under the postwar Franco regime,  the current legacy of colonialism in Ceuta and Melilla, and the thousands of people trapped between inhumane Spanish border policies. The lack of recognition for the people of The Riff, as well as the Saharawi struggle for freedom and justice on the sands of native land are fights to which we are all connected. 

In the 1885 Berlin Conference, Spain claimed to have taken the Sahara region from South to North, leading to a series of administrative and legislative imperialist strategies to keep the country under Spanish control up until 1965, when the UN General Assembly asked colonising EU powers to start a decolonisation process on foreign occupied lands. In order to undermine this request, the Franco government created the Sahara General Assembly, which systematically silenced native Sahrawi voices such as the Chiuj (heads of Sahrawi tribes and factions) and left the native population living under a discriminatory and oppressive regime. In 1975, right before the transition period, the Franco government handed over the Sahara to Morocco and Mauritania. This was the start of the military invasion in which the Morrocan forces used napalm and white phosphorus over the Saharawi people. 

El viaje de Jadiyetu (Mexico, 2020) is a short movie by Javier Toscano that drives us through the Saharawi fields towards the Berm. We travel together with Jadiyetu Alaÿat, who narrates her experience crossing the wall from occupied Sahara to the refugee camps in Algeria in 1999. Her story resembles fiction, but it’s not. The journey makes us face the reality of Saharawi women who challenge every existing oppressive structure in the name of liberation. Jadiyetu risked everything to escape the Moroccan invasion, leaving behind her friends and family, in order to reach an unknown fate that was worth the run. She reads a poem she wrote for the Martyrs that resisted the occupation – the poem travelled through the people and its powerful message reached the colonisers who threatened her with death. Her journey situates the spectator in a broader sphere, making us understand what national liberation struggles mean in the eyes of the people who refuse to accept occupation. She materialises the revolt against an oppressive regime, even at the risk of death, by reaching the camps on her own, as a woman. Jadiyetu’s story is not just a personal one, but a fight for the collective liberation of her people, the refugee camp becomes a glimpse of what freedom would mean for Western Sahara. 

Mutha & the Death of Hamma-Fuku (Spain, 2021) by Dani Suberviola is an amazing production framed in an initial speculative visual language that unfolds a very true story about a young woman called Mutha Hama-Fuku. Hama-Fuku works with a team of people deactivating Moroccan military explosives in the Western Sahara freed territory. Anti-personnel mines and unexploded bombs are tools of oppression, engineered to kill civilian populations, especially children finding their way back from the ruins of imperialist violence. Deactivating them is not merely a political gesture, it’s an act of defiance – a radical reclaiming of the land from the brutal machinery of Moroccan state-sponsored murder. This is more than reversing the effects of war; it is dismantling the weapons of power designed to keep the Saharawi people in perpetual fear. The movie forecasts a constant presence of potential death that creates a sense of tension with every detonation. 

By disarming these instruments, Mutha seizes back control from military occupation, slowly transforming the scorched earth into a hidden future space of freedom to resist and rebuild. During the whole film, Mutha talks about her dad who, by the end of the story, is revealed to have been killed by an anti-personnel mine set up as a trap while trying to defuse a mine close to the Berm. This explains the generational toll of war and the persistence of conflict in the lives of those who are forced to live on its front lines. The decision to follow in her father’s footsteps is a political act of carrying forward the fight against the mechanisms of war, violence, and land dispossession. It reflects a legacy of sacrifice, turning her personal tragedy into a political commitment. 

I exist (2013) is a Saharawi production by Mohammed Mhamdi that focuses on children as political subjects of military aggression. The film presents a powerful, multi-layered message through the simple but poignant act of children playing football in a war zone. War-torn landscapes strip away childhood, but here, football becomes a universal language of children resisting occupation. The film shows a child with an amputated leg joining the game among others who decide to tie one leg behind their backs and continue playing as equals as a radical act of solidarity. Playing with one leg reflects the collective refusal to let the destruction of war rob them of their humanity. Rather than allowing the child’s injury to reinforce their own trauma or fear, they adapt, choosing to identify with their friend in a way that celebrates their connection and dignity in the eyes of their colonisers. The steadfastness of the kids is something we witness in all military occupation contexts. Bringing dignity through telling the stories of people, especially children, losing limbs, is imperative in order to redefine what it means to reclaim their own identities through loss and, and at the same time, power and pride of their own existence. The act of tying their legs together is also a rejection of isolation, proving that true healing in such a brutal world only comes through collective strength and shared experience.

Lost land (2011) by Pierre-Yves Vandeweerd is a Belgian archive footage documentary that narrates stories of Saharawi people as direct witnesses to Moroccan colonialism and dispossession. There’s an interesting element that persists throughout the film: the image of the camels, the animals, the wind, the sand and the land. These are the central elements through which the stories are told. There’s a clear will to explain the co-constitutive relationship between the Saharawi people and their environment, and how that connection with nature empowers them to not only continue the struggle, but also to consolidate their own existence with their land, creating a geo-anthropomorphic formation capable of tearing down the military occupation through native intergenerational knowledge. The archived visual language of the film portrays the Saharawi identity in a very touching and dignifying way, communicating their vision of the world and the meaning of freedom to the audience. 

It is imperative to point out how these films show a cohesive connection not just to each other but also to other anti-colonial struggles across the globe. Where native populations resist the destruction of their ecosystems by the imperial war machines of the west and their allies we see similar narratives, experiences and trauma. But we also see hope, solidarity and potential. We hold Spanish colonialism and the current Spanish government accountable. Children want answers about their ancestors, from great grandparents who were shot by Francoist soldiers and thrown into mass graves who until today remain unidentified, to Saharawi kids being currently tortured, imprisoned, denied of their rights by Moroccan occupation forces led and supported by the anti-migration policies of the Spanish state. From them we learn how justice can be fought for, and how international and class solidarity can give us the key to the dismantling of all systems of oppression. 

You can find more information about the screening here.

Summer Camp 2024

21st – 22nd September, Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf


Every year, theleftberlin invite you to our Summer Camp – a week-end of discussion, culture and networking in the Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf on the edge of Berlin. Participation is free, as is accommodation.

Highlights of this year’s Summer Camp include Ferat Koçak and Asma Rharmaoui-Claquin (NPF candidate in the last French Elections) on the Far Right in Europe, and a panel on Palestine Solidarity in Europe with Palestinian laywer and activist Nadija Samour and representatives of the Irish Bloc and the Bloque Latinoamericano.

In other workshops, campaigns like Right2TheCity (Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen), Sudan Uprising, and the Bloque Latinoamericano introduce themselves. We look at India under Modi, Palestine and the surrounding Arab States, Gender and Disability, Where the German Left is going, and the Ecology of War. And a panel of artists will look at Art and Resistance.

There is also a culture programme, including a live performance by As Per Casper.

Summer Camp is free, but we do ask for a donation to cover food costs.

You can see the full programme here.

Getting there

The Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf is in Berlin Zone B, a short bus ride away from U- and S-Bahn Wittenau (get the 220 bus to Almutstraße), On Saturday, we will be travelling together from Berlin. Meet at Alexanderplatz at 11.50 on the U8 platform at the front of the train to Wittenau.