We condemn the racist behaviour against culture and social workers in solidarity with Palestine by the organizers and police at the Unkürzbar protest on February 22nd in Berlin.
The protest “Berlin ist unkürzbar – Umverteilung jetzt!” (Berlin is Uncuttable – Redistribution now!) was organized by the union ver.di Berlin against the Berlin Senate’s massive budget cuts in social work, culture, universities, mobility and environmental protection.
At the protest, many demonstrators drew a clear connection between the right-wing agenda of budget cuts, censorship around the genocide in Palestine, and police violence in Berlin. Neoliberal austerity politics go hand in hand with increased law enforcement spending, the securitization of civil society, and the disenfranchisement of the cultural sector—all methods of social control. It is no coincidence that Berlin claims to have no money for homeless shelters or queer art projects while simultaneously pouring tens of millions of Euros more into the police budget, which it then uses to harass those very demographics.
Solidarity with Palestine, mostly from racialized people, was present from the beginning of the demonstration with signs such as “Anti-racists against budget cuts” and “Defund police, fund people.” They were both systematically and individually targeted by the march organizers and police.
Louna Sbou, director of Oyoun, the first initiative to be defunded under CDU rule in Berlin—based on false antisemitism allegations—was scheduled to hold a speech. At the protest, she was asked about the contents of her speech. The organizers forbade her from using any Arabic words, thus perpetuating and normalizing racist police language bans, then banned her from using the German word “Widerstand”, meaning resistance, and finally abruptly banned her from speaking altogether, claiming they “couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t use the word ‘Widerstand’.” Ironically, Sbou’s contribution is something that the organisers considered ‘cuttable’, raising wider questions for the movement against these cuts: is it only White art and White culture, spoken in German or English, which we cannot bear to lose? Are those forms of cultural expression which challenge the norms and assumptions of dominant mechanisms of power unwelcome in this movement? Do we imagine culture to be something inherently political, or do we only resort to politics as a means to preserve apolitical culture?
From the beginning of the demonstration and even in negotiations beforehand, Palestinian solidarity activists tried to compromise with the ver.di leadership’s conditions for inclusion. These good-faith attempts were however met with persistent badgering by stewards imposing ever new, increasingly nonsensical and unjust demands. About midway through the march route, a large group of Palestine solidarity protesters, “Internationalist Antiracists Against Cuts,” was targeted by ver.di stewards, organizers, and police alike. A representative of Bündnis Unkürzbar claimed the Palestine “bloc” was “lacking in solidarity,” being “divisive,” and “infiltrating the protest.” Protest stewards, under the direction of ver.di leadership, physically kettled the pro-Palestine group, stopping them from continuing. This kettle was then directly handed over to police, who completely surrounded and isolated the Palestine solidarity protesters. Demonstrators were also called “terrorists” by individual demo participants, shown the middle finger by one steward and subjected to slurs by another, while the group in its entirety was repeatedly called a “black bloc” by an apparently colorblind organizer. The organizers claimed that all participants connecting budget cuts to any issue associated with Palestine (censorship, genocide, police violence) were violating the “consensus of the protest”—a document that was forced through by a small group of demo organisers, despite co-organisers repeatedly voicing concerns about targeted marginalisation against Palestinian protesters and their allies. This “consensus” document devotes almost of third of its entire length to policing expressions around Palestine/Israel.
Additional targeted infringements on speech, such as banning the word ‘Widerstand’, as it could be used interchangeably with ‘Intifada’, were made unilaterally during the protest by organizers. We strongly oppose both the suppression of Arabic and of the language of political resistance from this protest against attacks on culture. The repression of a language, the very medium through which much of living culture expresses itself, is a core feature of genocide. We therefore utterly reject the insinuation that speaking directly about genocide is irrelevant to a protest against attacks on culture from the state, especially when the very purpose of these repressive measures in Germany is to support the continuation of genocide in Palestine.
At the end, a group of around 100 pro-Palestine demonstrators was completely cordoned off by police and forbidden to join the final rally, with police claiming there was “no space” for them, despite this being an obvious lie. The police made up new restrictions specifically for these protesters, violently tried to confiscate a banner, and punched several people without warning directly in the face.
Two PoC were arrested while walking away at the end of the demonstration. One is an filmmaker visiting from Australia who received a prize at the Berlinale the night before, whom police falsely accused of a robbery that took place in December. The second person was arrested for allegedly chanting a chant that wasn’t even officially banned. He describes a traumatizing ordeal in the hands of the police: being denied medical care for hours, not being told where he was being taken, being told he would spend 48 hours in jail, and being locked in a bathroom at the detention center. He was furthermore refused information in English despite not speaking German, denied food for hours and the right to call a lawyer despite repeated requests, and treated disrespectfully and aggressively by medical staff in the detention center. Family members were wrongly told by the police that he had been brought to a hospital.
It seems many groups joining the protest recognized only THAT their funding is being cut, not WHY their funding is being cut. Drawing the explicit connections between the funding cuts and the draconian levels of censorship and repression amid increased police and weapons funding in Germany is not divisive, it is accurate. ver.di and Unkürzbar organizers enacted repressive politics against racialized people within their midst throughout the organizing process and finally handed the genocide-critical group over to the police, all while claiming themselves to be the victim. It was not those artists, cultural and social workers kettled by the police who were lacking solidarity, it was ver.di, Unkürzbar and all who stood by and watched as it happened!
We stand in solidarity with our colleagues and comrades who were mistreated and disrespected by ver.di, Bündnis Unkürzbar and the Berlin police. We thank those individuals, organisations, and rank-and-file members of ver.di who have stood in solidarity with us not just on Saturday but also beforehand. We call upon the main organisers of Unkürzbar and ver.di leadership to reflect on their stance and behaviour towards Palestinian solidarity groups within their ranks, to take accountability for these failings, and to engage in more constructive dialogue and practices moving forward. We remain resolute that we will not be silenced, cut, or excluded from this fight against the state’s attack on culture and social services in Berlin and beyond.
