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Category: Campaign of the week

[zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival

Revealing the beauty of Palestinian culture


14/05/2021

The [zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival presents Palestinian culture less known to audiences in Germany and elsewhere. Its events reveal the beauty of Palestinian culture – a diverse and vibrant culture as it is alive in Palestine and its diasporic communities today; in everyday life as much as in high culture. The festival aims to contribute in a meaningful and positive way to the image of Palestine and Palestinians that exists in many places in an incomplete and biased way. Palestinian culture is shown from all kinds of angles, and in a way that makes audiences ‘feel’ Palestine.

The [zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival for Palestinian Arts & Culture presents an opportunity to meet to talk about films, exhibitions, literature, music and much more. We are presenting narratives less explored, like the vital role Palestinian literature plays in preserving diasporic as well as Palestinian identities. Like the importance of archives and memory for preserving a collective identity. The meaning of food for constituting and expressing one’s identity (although, due to Covid, the cooking workshops have had to be postponed to the next season). How performing parkour is an acrobatic, artistic and meaningful way to claim one’s right to freedom of movement.

In this season, which has been dominated so much by covid-related regulations, digital audiences in Berlin and elsewhere have the opportunity to expand their imaginations and thoughts on Palestine and Palestinians. We are showing the exhibition Eyes of Gaza عيون غزه from May 18 to May 22nd in Forum Factory Berlin, visiting the exhibition is possible by personal appointment and according to the covid regulations in place during that week. Different workshops and panels will also be screened live from Forum Factory, please check our website or our facebook page.

We were hoping to receive a film from Amjad Al Fayoumi, a photographer and our partner in Gaza, to show via online screening during the next week. This has now become practically impossible, especially since his office and studio have been hit by the bombs on Gaza in the last days. The building, which housed mainly offices of media and film productions, was destroyed; Amjad is alive, but all he could save was a camera and a lens.

  •  Support our [zait wa: zaʕtar] Festival for Palestinian Arts and Culture here.

  • Read an interview here with Cora Josting, curator of the festival, and Nahed Awwad, Nahed Awwad is the curator of the exhibition Eyes of Gaza عيون غزه  which is part of the festival and opens on 18th May.

Wrangelkiez United

Fighting exclusionary and racist police controls in Wrangelkiez


07/05/2021

We are residents of the Wrangelkiez and we are strongly opposed to the exclusionary and racist police controls in the neighborhood. We are a diverse group: Some of us have lived here all their lives, others moved here only recently. We are in different life situations, belong to different age groups and pursue diverse occupations. What unites us is the daily observation that the police in Görlitzer Park and Wrangelkiez use the unlawful practice of racial profiling and often violence, some of which we ourselves are affected by.

We know about the different opinions in the neighborhood. We see the existing conflicts linked to issues such as gentrification, homelessness, the asylum and drug policy, and the aggravation of social problems by Corona. We are also annoyed by some things in our neighborhood. But we know that police violence does not help against poverty, against work bans for asylum seekers or against high rents and displacement. Repression, criminalization and displacement by the new focal point unit of the police therefore cannot be the solution. We are against a reflexive call for more police, and for a reconceptualization of alternative ideas for solutions.

We want to live in a neighborhood of solidarity, which does not simply react to conflicts and contradictions with police and exclusion, but rather searches for solutions together. That’s why we have joined forces to add some perspectives and ideas to the discussion.

What you can do

Copy and distribute our flyer. Get creative! Make banners and signs and hang them from your windows or balconies. Don’t look away when you see racist police controls and say aloud what you think of them. If you feel alone and powerless, speak to people around you. Take videos / photos and send them to us with details of the date, time and place for documentation purposes.

Keep your distance, behave in a de-escalating way, and document that too. Although it is legal to observe and film/photograph police activities, police officers are reluctant to have their racist behaviour seen and documented and often use flimsy accusations (obstruction of police measures, coronavirus prevention, resisting arrest, etc. ) against observers.

We don’t want any racist controls and we don’t want a permanent police presence in our neighbourhood!

Wrangelkiez united! ★ Contre le Racisme!

Revolutionary 1 May

International demonstration for solidarity


30/04/2021

Come out for the revolutionary internationalist First of May!

Those in power probably thought they were smart when they attempted to claim the word “solidarity” for themselves at the beginning of the pandemic. We are to keep a distance. To isolate. To think of the old and the sick, to avoid putting further strain on careworkers and nursing staff.

What they didn’t mention is the fact those in power are the ones who created these conditions of inhumanity in the first place! They are the ones placing profit interests over our basic needs!

And then they try to sell their lacking measures as “solidarity”. They preach individual responsibility because they know nothing other than representing the interests of large corporations. We are losing our jobs but are expected to keep paying rent; others should work overtime but give up their pay and health; we are told to wait for months for the little bit of money that we are due after working for seventy years in Almanya, and then be quiet and not complain.

Be it in manufacturing, in care work in hospitals or at home: the wealth and the health of Germany and Western Europe is built on our backs, on the backs of the workers and the exploited here and everywhere in the world. Without us, nothing would function!

The thanks we get? We are thrown out of our neighbourhoods because we can’t afford rent or because our children have the wrong names to get into kindergarten. At the same time, our stores, our spaces for coming together, are shut down – they don’t care whether it’s due to rents or covid measures.

This has been going on for a long time here in Neukölln: Affordable stores are shut down on Karl-Marx-Str. to make space for useless co-working spaces. The Karstadt at Hermannplatz is being torn down so that the right-wing real estate investor René Benko can put up yet another ugly luxury building. These are all examples for projects that mean more profits for companies, a better image for the city, and more displacement for us. Why are profit and capitalist interests deciding what is built in our neighbourhoods, why aren’t we?

On top of that we have racist raids of shisha bars and spätis – pushed by the SPD district mayor, Martin Hikel. And the long running series of right-wing attacks, affecting our shops and houses, another case where the deep connections between Neonazis and the police become visible.

We know what real solidarity means! We invite you to come out with us on the first of May, to continue the tradition of the international, revolutionary fights of those who came before us! We are not letting that which has always been ours be sold.

We are taking back what is ours! Our solidarity, or homes, our jobs, our streets!

How can they stop us once we recognise our situation, our position?

Legalisierung Jetzt

For the permanent and unconditional legalisation of all migrants


23/04/2021

The current situation calls on us as a network of migrant and anti-racist groups and organizations in Berlin to demand the permanent and unconditional legalization of all migrants without residence documents in this country.

It is estimated that between 60,000 and 100,000 undocumented migrants live in Berlin. There are many reasons why they are in this situation.

The situation of this social group is marked by precariousness and social invisibility. They suffer from lack of access to health, housing, education, decent work and exercise of a free life, which shows that human rights are not for everyone.

In the German context we have two particular problems as follows – On one hand the policies of criminalization, persecution and control of migration, on the other, the silencing of this reality in the German society. Both contribute to rendering the undocumented population invisible. One example of this politically produced invisibility the lack of qualitative and quantitative data, which prevents us from knowing how many they are, where they are and which urgencies are pressing them.

Today, facing a global pandemic, it is time to break the taboo and proceed towards full citizenship rights for all undocumented migrants. That is why we demand the following from the corresponding authorities

1. The extraordinary, universal, urgent and permanent legalization of all migrants in an irregular situation in Berlin.

2. That the procedure to be implemented towards this put migrants at the center as subjects with rights and guarantee the concrete access to and the promotion of these rights.

3. Legalization by means of existing legal instruments such as § 23(1) of the Residence Act (AufenthG), which could be used to grant residence to persons in an irregular migration status on humanitarian grounds.

4. Abolition of paragraph 87 of the Residence Act, which requires that employees of public bodies, (with the exception of educational bodies), transfer to the immigration authority (Ausländerbehörde) the personal data of anyone in an illegal situation.

LEGALISATION NOW! Join us to demand legalization; the current crisis shows more clearly that no one should be excluded from fundamental social rights!

Samidoun

Building solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners


16/04/2021

Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network is an international network of organizers and activists working to build solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom. Samidoun developed out of the September-October 2011 hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, seeing a need for a dedicated network to support Palestinian prisoners. We work to raise awareness and provide resources about Palestinian political prisoners, their conditions, their demands, and their work for freedom for themselves, their fellow prisoners, and their homeland. We also work to organize campaigns to make political change and advocate for Palestinian prisoners’ rights and freedoms.

Samidoun wishes all those who celebrate, especially Palestinian prisoners inside the occupation prisons and imperialist and reactionary jails, a happy Ramadan, toward a future of a liberated Palestine.

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners are marking Ramadan inside Israeli prisons, deprived of their families and loved ones, while their communities and loved ones are kept from these strugglers for freedom by iron bars and prison walls of the occupation. Millions more Palestinians mark the holiday facing home demolitions, land confiscation, systematic racism and apartheid, a killer siege, extrajudicial executions, military occupation, and settler colonialism. For 73 years, Palestinian refugees have been denied their right to return to their homes, lands and properties by the Zionist occupation.

At the same time, Israeli occupation companies are marketing the products of Palestinian land around the world – medjoul dates. 75% of Medjoul dates around the world are marketed as “products of Israel,” grown on stolen Palestinian land. Of those, the large majority are themselves grown on illegal Israeli settlements inside the West Bank. Up to 80% of all of these illegally settlement-produced dates are exported around the world. Israel is the world’s third-largest date exporter, with exports worth $181 million in 2017.

This Ramadan, be sure to not break your fast with apartheid: Boycott Israeli dates! Stand with the Palestinian people.

Donate to Samidoun here