The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Category: Campaign of the week

Syrien Hilfe

Collecting help for the bombing victims in Syria


22/01/2021

Until 19 February 2021, Syrien Hilfe is taking part in a relief campaign for refugees in the region of Idlib in the North West of Syria. We are collecting donations in Berlin which, together with our trustworthy partners, we will send to Syria.

Perhaps you remember the news headlines. Countless people fled there to protect themselves from the bombing. In the absence of accommodation, they are living in tents in olive tree fields or even in the open air – and now it’s Winter.

How can you help? The products which your organisation may provide are urgently needed in the local camps. It would truly be a great help if you could would make part of your produce available as a donation. Among other things, we are collecting:

  • bicycles

  • wheelchairs

  • blankets, bedding, pillows and mattresses

  • sports equipment

  • school equipment, stationery, school supplies

  • medical aids

  • sanitary products such as nappies

100% of our help goes to the people in need – we have guaranteed this for years! If you need a receipt for your donation, of course we can send them.

We are collecting donations in the Haus der Statistik in Berlin Mitte (Otto-Braun-Straße 70-72) between 25th January 2021 and 19th February. You can also ring Project Manager Hiba Albassir at 0152 / 33608076.

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About our association: The association SyrienHilfe e.V. was formed in 2012 and is a recognized charity. We provide humanitarian and emergency help for Syrian refugees mainly inside Syria, but also in the neighbouring countries Lebanon in Turkey. We support or realise different self-help projects and training projects and take care of medical treatment of ill people and invalids as much as our resources allow.

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We would welcome your support. Families and children are living in rubble and we want to offer them a future.

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Send any financial donations to the following bank account

SyrienHilfe e.V.
Konto-Nr. 1212 2012
BLZ: 665 623 00
VR-Bank in Mittelbaden eG
IBAN: DE80 665 623 0000 1212 2012
BIC: GENODE61IFF

Wir haben es Satt

Demonstrating against Agribusiness


15/01/2021

Wir haben es Satt! is an alliance of over 60 organisations. It organizes a demonstration against Agribusiness every January in Berlin at the opening of the world’s largest argriculture fair, the “Grüne Woche”.

The demonstration has been organised by farmers, engaged youth and critical citizens since 2001. In super election year, Wir haben es Satt! is confronting the current government with the following demands:

  • Stop the perishing of farms – support farmers in conversion efforts towards sustainability!

  • No more animal factories – support of corresponding reconstruction of stables & reduction of numbers of animals

  • Fight climate crisis – reduce consumption of meat & protect healthy soil!

  • Finally exit pesticide use & no more genetic engineering – protect health and insects!

  • EU-Mercosur deal in the garbage can – for human rights, against free trade adreements!

Because of Covid-19, this year’s will take place largely online. Organisers ask you to do the following the support the demonstration:

Stay at home and participate in the direct action footprint, our protest from afar. On 16 January we will bring your footprints for the agricultural turnaround to the Federal Chancellery. That’s how we will stand up for a fundamental change of agricultural and nutrition policies. Let’s together kick off the agricultural turnaround!

It’s super easy to participate:

  1. Step on a slip of paper with your foot or shoe, dipped in colour

  2. Add your demands

  3. Share your picture in social media under #AgrarwendeLostreten

  4. Upload you picture here

In Berlin each of your steps will be part of a giant picture put together for a sustainable agriculture and for climate justice. We will present your footsteps in front of the Federal Chancellery, and we will show that lots and lots of people stand up for sustainable agriculture – in spite of the pandemic or rather because of it.

Conventional and ecologically active farmers fight in the Wir haben es satt! alliance shoulder to shoulder with civil society against the fatal consequences of intensive industrial agriculture. Collectively, the alliance demonstrates ways for a rural agriculture which, with more defence of the environment, animals and climate, has a wide consent from the public and offers farms economic perspectives

Women In Exile

Refugee women fighting for their rights


08/01/2021

Women in Exile is an initiative of refugee women founded in Brandenburg in 2002 by refugee women to fight for their rights. We decided to organize as a refugee women’s group because we have made the experience that refugee women are doubly discriminated against not only by the racist and discriminative general refugee laws but also as women.​

Refugees are obligated to live in “collective accommodations“ where they are entitled to a 6sqm² space, in these narrow spaces they share not only the rooms but facilities such as kitchen, toilets and bathrooms. This results in lots of conflicts inside the collective homes, including physical and sexual violence for women. Thus our campaign „No lager for women and children, Abolish all lagers“.

In 2011,Women in Exile and activists in solidarity without flight background, founded Women in Exile and Friends. Our fights are focused on the abolition of all laws discriminatory to asylum seekers and migrants and on the interconnections of racism and sexism. Together we develop strategies to achieve political change and take our protest against the inhuman living conditions of refugee women to the public

Our fundamental political goal is the utopia of a just society without exclusion and discrimination, with equal rights for all, irrespective of where they come from and where they go to. We perceive ourself as a bridge between the refugee and the feminist movement. Our experience is, that women can relate to each other, regardless of all differences like age, origin, religion, status, sexual orientation or other factors, and can make an impact together.

We meet monthly and make regular visits to refugee women in the “collective accommodation” in Brandenburg to exchange experiences . This way we find out about the living conditions in each specific Heim and the women`s immediate needs. Together through workshops and seminars, we educate ourselves to become peers for those who come after us and develop perspectives to improve our already difficult living situation.

Through our peer education, we have managed to encourage and help several refugee women not only to demand for their rights but to organise themselves in their different areas nationalwide to become loud and bring out the problems they are facing during the asly procedure to the public. We develop perspectives to fight for our rights in the asylum procedure and to defend ourselves against sexualised violence, discrimination, and exclusion.

Throughout the years we have built different local and national wide networks and together we plan campaigns and political actions, such as our raft tour in 2014 and several bus national wide bus tours. We demonstrate, give interviews to the media and speeches in meetings to let society know of the problems faced by refugee women and their demands.

Contact info[at]women-in-exile.net.

You can financially support Women In Exile here

Right2TheCity

Deutsche Wohnen &Co Enteignen … but in English


18/12/2020

Right2TheCity was launched on 16th December 2020 as an English-speaking working group of Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen (DWE). The idea for the working group emerged from within DWE and through discussions with other activist organisations including Brazilian tenants, Unidas Podemos and Berlin Migrant Workers.

The topics of the working group are open. Some ideas have been collected in the process already: translations, building a coalition with other migrant organizations and the collection of “political” signatures from the 25% of Berliners who do not have a German passport and are therefore ineligible to officially sign in support of the referendum.

People attending Wednesday’s launch meeting said that they were interested in the following topics: addressing housing precarity, tackling homelessness, socializing housing, fighting gentrification, removing housing from the market, working on strategy and coalescing with housing movements in Europe.

The group plans to be engaged in the following actions:

  • Mass canvassing of housing estates

  • Argumentation training (in English, already exists in German)

  • Supporting Kiez teams that don’t exist yet

  • Translations of argumentation texts and the website

  • Scandalizing the fact that because you need to have a German passport to vote in the referendum a quarter of people renting have been disenfranchised

  • Scandalizing the topic of “Anmeldungen”

  • Improving the internet and social media presence of DWE

  • Addressing intersections: racist society, capitalist housing market, covid-19 effects

  • Engaging with faith groups to get them to join the campaign

  • Collecting data in order to clarify how unequal access to housing is

Links are available to a Telegram group and an extra group for translators. Meetings will be every second Wednesday at 7pm, starting on 30th December. For more information, contact right2thecity@dwenteignen.de.

BAYAN Europe

Alliance of Filipino progressive organizations


11/12/2020

The broadest and most comprehensive alliance of Filipino progressive organizations has come to Europe! Defamation and malign are nothing but an abortive fling to defeat the national democratic mass movements. Those fake surrenderees, and impudent red-tagging against the individuals and organizations in an insistent that the ND movement is waning and irrelevant is as pretentious as the claim that the Philippines is no longer a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.

The launching of BAYAN-Europe on 12 December 2020 was the Filipino migrants’ answer to the call on intensifying the struggle against the US/China-Duterte administration!

BAYAN Europe is an alliance of Filipino organizations constituting of migrant workers, immigrants, students, youth, women, LGBTQ+, artists and church people.

As the regional information bureau of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN), BAYAN Europe aims to advance the unity amongst the Filipino-led organizations in the continent through education, organization and mobilization for the national-democratic aspirations of the Filipino people.