The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Category: Campaign of the week

Unsere Stimme Zählt

Our Vote Counts – for Participation and Anti-Racism. The non-party and non-demoninational German-Arabic campaign for the 2021 elections.


29/07/2021

The initiative Unsere Stimme zählt – für Teilhabe und Antirassismus (Our vote counts – for participation and anti-racism) has set itself the goal of making and campaigning for non-party and non-demoninational German-Arabic election demands to the election of the Bundestag and the twelve local parliaments in Berlin on 26th September 2021.

We have come together to demand a life of dignity for future generations, a world without racism with fair chances for all and peace. We express pressure on politics with our social media campaign, election criteria and public meetings.

We campaign against every for of racism, especially anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and antisemitic discrimination on institutional and social level. We demand equal participation in social life and wealth for all people.

Our demands:

  • Support people with foreign roots in the public sector (e.g. through anonymous job applications)
  • Remove the neutrality law
  • Arabic lessons in public schools
  • Introduction of Arabic history and culture and anti-colonialism as school subjects
  • Independent anti-discrimination officers
  • Recognition of Muslim religious communities as public corporations
  • And end to stigmatisation of mosques
  • Defend and observe human rights and international law
  • Punish and pursue war crimes throughout the world through the International Court of Justice
  • Put an end to Palestinian misery. Germany must play a constructive role towards ending the occupation based on UN resolutions
  • No weapons in war zoners
  • Effective measures to defend the climate
  • Progressive immigration politics (eg reuniting families)
  • Voting rights for all people who have lived here for a long time, at the very least on a local level.

Trans Pride Berlin

Trans is beautiful! Trans is diverse!


09/07/2021

𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥! 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞!

We invite all of our trans and inter siblings from every corner of the spectrum (and those outside it) to join us for this amazing day of pride and protest! Allies are welcome to join us.

Freedom over our bodies is something wonderful and must be celebrated. Our politicians and society lag behind, but we shall lead the way!

Celebrate with us by being yourself, and help us show the world how beautiful and diverse our many communities are!

Diverse, proud and colorful.

Together we are unbeatable!

Together we can not be silenced!

Together we take to the streets at Trans Pride Berlin 2021!​

Trans Pride belongs to you. The streets are yours!

Our march will begin at 2 p.m. on Saturday, 10th July at the Gleisdreieck, where we start the festivities with a short opening speech, followed by a walk up to Victoria Park and then through the Bergmannkiez. The final rally will take place around 6 p.m. at Südstern.

We are 4 friends who organised this event based first and foremost on the desire to have a trans-specific event during the summer “pride season”. All four of us identify outside of our AGAB. We are not an organisation nor do we affiliate with or endorse any political party or corporation. Our expenses are paid-out-of-pocket.

We can’t wait to see everyone this Saturday! Please be aware of the current COVID regulations in Berlin.

Queers Against Racism and Colonialism (QuARC)

Palestine is also a Queer Issue


02/07/2021

QuARC (Berlin Queers Against Racism and Colonialism) is an umbrella group for queers* committed to anti-racist and anti-colonial politics. The group grew out of the “Queers for Palestine” bloc, which was a spontaneous reaction and protest of queer communities in Berlin in 2019,against a ban on any demonstration of Palestine solidarity at a so-called “Radical Queer March”. Ironically, the organisers of the march were so upset by our Palestine solidarity, that they ended up calling the police on our bloc. The situation was so absurd, it showed us all why there is such an urgent need to begin a different type of organising in Berlin.

QuARC formed and continues to organise out of a need for a more representative, internationalist politics among the queer left in Berlin. A politics that represents an understanding of how structures of racism, colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism intersect and why solidarity with anti-colonial struggle the world over, is in our view, a crucial foundation of any effective organising especially within our queer communities.

This year QuARC and friends are organising an Internationalist Queer Pride for Liberation, under the banner “none of us are free, until we are all free” which will bring together Berlin’s radical queer, anti-colonial and anti-racist communities. The march will take place on 24 July – the same day as the mainstream CSD pride parade in central Berlin – and will wind through Neukölln and Kreuzberg featuring stops with speeches at different points and marking historical moments, milestones and movements that speak to a wider queer experiences than the Pink-washed, corporate, mainstream CSD event. From racial profiling and gentrification to police brutality and white supremacy – these are examples of the struggles that for us represent the true spirit of pride.

It goes without saying that the march will have no corporate sponsorship—that’s why we are asking people to join us on Saturday 3 July at Marielle-Franco-Platz — to eat, drink, dance and raise money for our march. Beyond this, if you would like more info or want to get involved, please write to quarc-berlin@riseup.net

We look forward to seeing you there!

CSD Berlin Pride

Demonstrating for LGBTQIA+ rights and diversity


25/06/2021

CSD Berlin Pride is organising its first hybrid demonstration through Berlin on 26th June. CSD-Berlin pride sees itself as a political demonstration which gives visibility and space to the different, diverse and varied LGBTQIA+ community which has lived in Berlin for decades.

There will be three demos – East PRIDE which starts in Prenzlauer Berg, QTIBIPoC United: Reclaiming Pride in Kreuzberg and Queerschutz Now! In Neukölln. With diverse focal points and routes, we want to offer all members of the Community to sow their diversity and bid farewell to the ideas that one institution has the monopoly over the orientation of a CSD-Pride demonstration.

EAST Pride begins at 11 o’clock at the Gethsemane church in Prenzlauer Berg an evangelical service of worship and will concentrate on the lesbian and gay movement in the DDR. From 1pm, the route will pass through Danziger Straße, where the second clerical working group in East Berlin – the „Gesprächskreis Homosexualität“- was based.

The organisers of the Neukölln route Queerschutz Now want to make the desolate situation of LGBTQIA+ infrastructure visible. There will also be a focus on the situation of the T* community. This will be addressed by contributions from the club scene, culture and gastronomy.

The demo QTIBIPoC United: Reclaiming Pride is organised by actors in the QTBIPoC community. It will also start at 1pm in Kreuzberg and will focus on anti-racism and queerfeminism.

The marches will arrive at different times and places between Strausberger Platz and Alexanderplatz until 6pm. The demo is only possible under strict adherence to hygiene and distancing rules. You can find detailed information about the routes, programme and hygiene measures on the CSD Berlinpride homepage,

Lauratibor – Protest opera

Collective opera protesting the sell out of cities


18/06/2021

The collective opera “Wem gehört Lauratibor?” (Who owns Lauratibor) presents a novel form of activism – an opera created to protest the ongoing evictions of residents and artisans in the Reichenberger neighborhood of Berlin-Kreuzberg. Written in Italian opera style, Who owns Lauratibor? follows Laura and Tibor and their companions through the province of Lauratibor as they surmount numerous obstacles on their search for a magic potion to help them resist.

Along the way, they encounter ruthless speculators as well as allies in similarly precarious situations. The lovers are separated and reunited, flounder, and are again shown the way by the Master of Love… before their final showdown with the arch-villain, Maximilius Profitikuss.

Who owns Lauratibor? is the fruit of a collaboration between several long-running protest movements in Reichenbergerkiez. Disturbed by the number of evictions in the neighbourhood that were rising despite the pandemic, residents joined forces with other Berliners. More than 100 professionals and amateurs make up the core ensemble of two choruses, an orchestra and around 20 soloists, while others created the scenery, costumes, libretto and score.

Most participants live and work in Reichenbergerkiez. They want to preserve their lively and heterogeneous neighbourhood, with apartments and ateliers coexisting under fairly regulated – rather than inflated market – rents. The three-hour-long musical saga takes the form of a demonstration to depict the urgent and existential threat to ever more Berliners.

The music for orchestra, chorus and soloists was composed to be performed in the street. It includes echoes of Italian opera and Carl Orff, as well as Kurt Weill agit-prop and Tom Waits. The collective has worked intensively with the various places and people whose stories are told in the protest opera, with each initiative having its own sound at its actual location: The Meuterei collective bar speaks a different (musical) language to the Yayla martial arts school. The collaborative creative process allowed all participants to contribute their unique experiences, skills and ideas.