The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Category: Campaign of the week

The School for Unlearning Zionism

Rethinking the Zionist narrative


02/10/2020

The School for Unlearning Zionism is a space in which knowledge that does not belong to a hegemonic discourse is shared. We hereby invite you to participate in our October program.

The School for Unlearning Zionism originated in Berlin (as a place between Tel Aviv and Ramallah), from a group of Jewish Israelis seeking to be part of a movement for equality in Palestine/Israel and to deconstruct systems built on inequality, oppression, and exploitation.

The October Program

Throughout October our school doors will be open and we invite you to join in the practice of unlearning Zionism. Together we will listen to lectures, reflect and exchange thoughts, watch movies, and participate in various workshops in Hebrew and in English.

The October Program is dedicated to (re)negotiation work in the face of the Zionist narrative (with its many meanings and political consequences). Unlearning Zionism begins, for us, with the recognition that knowledge is created within systems of power and continues with working towards forming spaces based on visions of equality – between the river and the sea – and beyond.

Berlin gegen Nazis

Uniting the anti-fascist fight in Berlin


We are many

Since 2014, BERLIN GEGEN NAZIS has been keeping people in Berlin up to date on creative ways of getting involved in the protest against right-wing extremism, racism, and anti-Semitism.

BERLIN GEGEN NAZIS is a platform mobilizing and informing a continuously growing network of more than sixty partners from the full spectrum of contemporary arts, culture, economics, sports, children’s and youth services, unions, non-profits, and charities, self-organized migrant’s initiatives and their protagonists and alliances.

BERLIN GEGEN NAZIS provides hands-on support with developing creative campaigns for successful protest events and helps with suggestions on how to make taking a stance against extremism, racism, and anti-Semitism an everyday reality.

Employing the full variety of common social media channels as well as their own custom-made smartphone app with integrated mapping technology, BERLIN GEGEN NAZIS informs about current events, news, and developments of registered right-wing extremist demonstrations or planned counter protest events, with thoroughly researched and fact-checked reports in several languages. Live reporting and documentation of successful protest events by BERLIN GEGEN NAZIS help to foster the visibility of the city’s democratic civic culture.

BERLIN GEGEN NAZIS supports those who wish to live in a city courageous to show its solidarity with humans and human rights once public space is threatened by the contempt of neo-Nazis, racists, or anti-Semites.

Tech Workers Coalition

Organising workers in the IT industry


25/09/2020

Dziewuchy Berlin

Fighting for sexual freedom in Poland


18/09/2020

Dziewuchy Berlin is a Polish feminist collective. It was founded in 2016 and its first action was the organisation of the Black Protest (Czarny Protest) on 3 October 2016, the first official women’s strike that was called to oppose the proposed total ban on abortion; this marked the beginning of the collective’s ongoing fight against the right-wing PiS government and other ultracatholic, anti-choice and fascist forces in our spheres.

In recent years, the PiS government and its allies have launched a campaign against the LGBT community in Poland. We see ourselves as a queer-feminist collective, and we stand with the Polish queer community against our common enemies.

In the four years since its founding, the collective has organised countless demonstrations, actions, performances, artistic events, and has appeared on many panels, protest stages and in the media.

There are more branches of Dziewuchy across Poland and in other places in Europe, but in Berlin our role is to raise awareness of the situation of women in Poland on the German stage, and to stand in solidarity with women in Germany who are fighting for self-determination and the right to choose – particularly in the fights against the paragraphs 218 and 219a.

We stand in solidarity with other Polish organisations and support the networks that help Polish women access abortions in Germany. We also stand in solidarity with other migrant groups in Berlin, and see the fight for women’s and LGBT rights as a fight across borders and languages.

Bündnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung

Fighting for a woman’s right to choose in Berlin and Germany


11/09/2020

On September 19, despite ongoing Corona restrictions, Christian fundamentalists will be travelling from all over to join the “March for Life” in Berlin – an anti-abortion protest was attended by several thousand participants in recent years. This year, as usual, loud and colourful counter-protests will be taking place in close proximity to the silent march.

The Bündnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung (Alliance for Sexual Self-Determination) is hosting a rally from 12-2pm at the Brandenburg Gate, near Pariser Platz, with a range of cultural acts and speakers on LGBTI and abortion rights in both English and German. The radical left group What the Fuck is also organising disruptive activities throughout the day.

Given that next year is not just an election year, 2021 also marks 150 years of organised resistance against the criminialisation of abortion in Germany, it’s an important moment for the burgeoning pro-choice movement, which has grown rapidly since the high-profile court case involving Kristina Hänel, a doctor who was charged 6,000 euros for providing basic information about abortion on her website. People are increasingly aware of the problems caused by the restrictive laws and are taking a stand against attempts by religious fundamentalists and far-right bigots to further restrict access to abortion and undermine LGBTI and women’s rights.