Come out for the revolutionary internationalist First of May!
Those in power probably thought they were smart when they attempted to claim the word “solidarity” for themselves at the beginning of the pandemic. We are to keep a distance. To isolate. To think of the old and the sick, to avoid putting further strain on careworkers and nursing staff.
What they didn’t mention is the fact those in power are the ones who created these conditions of inhumanity in the first place! They are the ones placing profit interests over our basic needs!
And then they try to sell their lacking measures as “solidarity”. They preach individual responsibility because they know nothing other than representing the interests of large corporations. We are losing our jobs but are expected to keep paying rent; others should work overtime but give up their pay and health; we are told to wait for months for the little bit of money that we are due after working for seventy years in Almanya, and then be quiet and not complain.
Be it in manufacturing, in care work in hospitals or at home: the wealth and the health of Germany and Western Europe is built on our backs, on the backs of the workers and the exploited here and everywhere in the world. Without us, nothing would function!
The thanks we get? We are thrown out of our neighbourhoods because we can’t afford rent or because our children have the wrong names to get into kindergarten. At the same time, our stores, our spaces for coming together, are shut down – they don’t care whether it’s due to rents or covid measures.
This has been going on for a long time here in Neukölln: Affordable stores are shut down on Karl-Marx-Str. to make space for useless co-working spaces. The Karstadt at Hermannplatz is being torn down so that the right-wing real estate investor René Benko can put up yet another ugly luxury building. These are all examples for projects that mean more profits for companies, a better image for the city, and more displacement for us. Why are profit and capitalist interests deciding what is built in our neighbourhoods, why aren’t we?
On top of that we have racist raids of shisha bars and spätis – pushed by the SPD district mayor, Martin Hikel. And the long running series of right-wing attacks, affecting our shops and houses, another case where the deep connections between Neonazis and the police become visible.
We know what real solidarity means! We invite you to come out with us on the first of May, to continue the tradition of the international, revolutionary fights of those who came before us! We are not letting that which has always been ours be sold.
We are taking back what is ours! Our solidarity, or homes, our jobs, our streets!
How can they stop us once we recognise our situation, our position?
