Hello everyone,
Today is the first day of the Stop Deportation! Protest Camp. At the Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, the government plans to build a massive deportation prison. Already now, mass deportations via charter flights silently take place there every month. To help break the silence, the “Stop Deportation! Protest Camp” is being organised in Schönefeld from June 1-6 2023. You can find a full programme of Events here. The Stop Deportations Protest Camp is our Campaign of the Week.
On Saturday, theleftberlin supporter Rohit will be organising 2 Events – a Decolonising Yoga session at 9am, and a BIPOC only Rest as resistance workshop at 2pm. Readers of theleftberlin have also set up a Telegram channel so that they can visit the Camp together. You can join the channel here.
Tomorrow (Friday), at 6:30pm, there will be a free screening of the film Dictionary of Waste. This year marks the 30-year anniversary of the garbage explosion in Ümraniye (Istanbul) that left 39 people dead. Rather than focusing on the political leaders and their play that is unfolding in Turkey the director shed light on the lives of those that are most affected by the politics of the ruling class. After the screening, there will be an open microphone for exchange and discussion with the audience. Alper Şen, the filmmaker, is also planning to join us via Zoom. The Event is organised by the POC ART Collective and will take place at Bona Peiser, Oranienstraße 72.
Also tomorrow night, from 8pm there will be a No Justice No Pizza Concert and DJ Set for Palestine. This year the repression against solidarity with Palestine in Berlin reached a new level: a month before and a week after the 75th anniversary of the Nakba on 15 May, the right of assembly was suspended, demonstrations were banned, arrests were made. This is the second year that the bans hit the Palestinian community in the city and those who support it. Once again, police and many media have worked hand in hand and created a campaign of criminalisation and delegitimisation of a movement in which Palestinians, Jews and internationalists fight side by side. This benefit concert will take place at the Rote Insel, Mansteinstr. 10, near S-and U-Bahn Yorckstraße.
On Monday, there will be a demonstration- Abolish Deportations. As part of the Stop Deportation! Protest Camp, we will march together upon the infrastructure of deportation that is spread around Berlin airport. The demo will start at the Protest Camp at “Kiekebusch See” at 1.30 pm, and there will be shuttle transport arriving at City Hall Schönefeld for 2pm. The demo will then visit the Planned Site of the Deportation Center.
On Tuesday, at 6.30pm, there will be a screening of All Eyes on You, a film based on and exploring the topic of the use of artificial intelligence in CCTV surveillance. Mannheim is the first German city that experiments with this technique and more than 60 new cameras all over the city center, installed to detect ‘suspicious movements’. What is a suspicious movement, how do Mannheimers feel about this new technology and does being watched all the time really help? The film will be shown at the TU Halle 4, Institut für Architektur, Straße des 17. Juni 152. It will be followed by a discussion with director Michaela Kobsa-Mark.
Also on Tuesday evening, the LINKE Berlin Internationals and the India Justice Project are organising a reception for Azad Essa, senior reporter at the Middle East Eye. Azad Essa is be in Berlin to promote his new book Hostile Homelands: The New Alliance Between India and Israel, and will be speaking at a Book Presentation next Friday (more information in next week’s Newsletter). Tuesday’s reception is at Café Karanfil, Weisestraße 3, and will start at 8pm.
Remember that the Berlin LINKE Internationals Summer Camp starts in 9 days’ time. If you are going to Summer Camp, please fill in this form. even if you think you have registered. If you don’t fill in the form, there may not be enough food available – you can also use the form to register for free accommodation. You can see a full programme for Summer Camp here. There will be much more information in next week’s Newsletter.
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, more Turks in Berlin voted Erdogan than in other European capitals, and the source of the data leak at Tesla is still unclear.
In News from Germany, police throughout Germany raid Last Generation activists, 3.5 million people in Germany have at least 2 jobs, strikes cause a rise in union membership, politicians commemorate the fatal arson attack at Solingen, and affordable changes to make heating environmentally friendly need new practises in industry.
Read all about this week’s News from Berlin and Germany here.
New on theleftberlin this week, we interview Udi Raz from the Jüdische Stimme about press representation of their Nakba protest. Hossam El-Hamalawy writes the first of several articles on the Egyptian Left – this time from the 1919 Revolution to Nasser, Ivan Fradejas de la Vega writes about racism in Spanish football, Mimi Magill asks who profits from deportations from Berlin’s new detention centre, and Partho Sarothi Ray looks at worrying results from recent elections in India.
Today’s Video of the Week is the English language version of the recent Jewish Bund video about attacks on commemoration of the Nakba.
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Keep on fighting
The Left Berlin Editorial Board
