NEWS FROM BERLIN
Grunewald comes under the wheel
On the day before May Day, a hotel was temporarily occupied to turn it into housing for refugees, and in the evening, the queerfeminist Take-Back-The-Night-Demo militantly marched through Prenzlauer Berg and Mitte. On Sunday morning, May 1, there was a bicycle demo in Grünewald, which sees itself as a “discursive gateway drug into dealing with the class question”. There was a public festival with a programme ranging from anarchist yodelling music to expropriation beatbox. The blinds of the surrounding villas were mostly drawn. But individual residents waved in a friendly manner. In other parts of the city such as Friedrichshain’s Laskerkiez speeches occurred against income concentration, too. Source: taz.
NEWS FROM GERMANY
Income differences between men and women remain extreme
According to a study commissioned by the Bertelsmann Foundation, women can only earn slightly more than half as much gross income as men over their entire working lives. And this so-called gender lifetime earnings gap is much larger when children are involved. On average, married mothers and fathers in their mid-30s today have around 700,000 euros each in their prime working years – i.e. between 20 and 55 – after taxes and contributions plus transfers and family benefits. According to the study, women who are predominantly single mothers have only about 520,000 euros at their disposal. Source: Spiegel.
Social workers and educators strike for higher wages
The service sector union ver.di has again called on workers in social and educational professions to go on warning strikes across the country. Workers are set to walk off the job on several days, each day striking in a different area. On Monday, social work workers have started, followed on Wednesday by day-care centres and all-day schools, and on Thursday, a strike was planned by staff working in assistance for people with disabilities. The reason for the strikes is that collective bargaining for the approximately 330,000 workers in the sector failed to reach a result in the second round at the end of March. Source: Zeit.
Death by police violence
In Mannheim on last Monday, an apparently mentally ill man was seriously injured during an arrest by two police officers. The 47-year-old died a short time later. On a video that went viral, one of the officers can be seen hitting the man’s head. In the only 40 second-long video, it is possible there to hear the man shouting, “I want a judge.” After a cut in the video, he is seen lying lifeless on his back with a bleeding wound on his face. A second video shows how one of the officers previously used pepper spray and the two ran after the man. Source: jW.
One in five has been affected by racism
The new “National Racism Monitor” (rassismusmonitor.de) shows with a representative survey, where almost half of the people in Germany have already observed racist incidents. And 22 per cent – a fifth of the population, have even been affected themselves. The study will be continued in the coming years. The study by the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (Dezim) shows that young people report direct experiences of racism more often than older people, too. This could be related to a heightened awareness of the problem. The researchers also concluded criticism of racism is often warded off by assuming that those affected are hypersensitive. Source: rbb24.
Climate protection “with a sense of proportion”
The A14 motorway may continue to be built, and the state of Saxony-Anhalt does not have to make any improvements in terms of climate protection. This was announced by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig. Thus, the Naturefriends of Saxony-Anhalt lost their lawsuit against the State Administrative Office concerning the traffic section 2.2 of the expansion project between Osterburg and Seehausen. For the Friends of Nature, the reason for the lawsuit was considerable inadequacies in the planning. Among other things, the association questioned the need for the motorway and criticized the violation of climate, species and water protection laws. Source: nd.
