The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Category: Campaign of the week

Aufstehen gegen Rassismus

Stand up Against Racism. Stop the AfD


31/07/2020

Aufstehen gegen Rassismus (AgR) Berlin participates in central anti-racist campaigns. The next one will be a decentralized action to commemorate victims of the racist murders in Hanau on 18 August followed by a national demonstration on 22 August in Hanau.

In particular, we focus on the role of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as the arsonist and parliamentary arm of right-wing terror. The AfD is well networked with Islamophobes, Nazi thugs and hooligans. Their agitation against Muslims and fugitives, their assertion of an alleged “Great Exchange” encouraged the assassins of Hanau, andthe murderer of Walter Lübcke to their cruel deeds.

For the super election year 2021 we are preparing for militant anti-racist and anti-fascist election campaigns. The Bundestag will be newly elected, following the 2017 elections when the AfD – a fascist party in the making – became the third strongest faction and the official opposition in the Bundestag.

In additional to the national election, elections to the House of Representatives and the district parliaments (BVV) will take place in Berlin. The AfD will also stand, and will try to use the election campaigns as a platform for their inhumane theses and to pull themselves out of their current slump. We want to prevent this from happening.

For this reason, we invite all interested parties to participate in our campaign “If you vote for AfD, you’re voting for Nazis!” No event, no information stand, no action of the AfD should remain unchallenged! Because fascism and racism are not opinions, but crimes. Our alternative is solidarity!

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Berlin

Building the US Left post-Bernie2020


24/07/2020

Germany for Bernie has decided to form Berlin chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).

Despite Bernie Sanders’s disappointing loss in the Democratic Presidential Primary, there is still a strong future for the leftist ideals to grow and gain influence in the US and throughout the world. Progressive victories in recent primaries—including elections for national, state, and local level offices—have shown that left-wing politics still has real purchase in the US.

Throughout this summer’s primary calendar, Germany for Bernie has continued to fight for the candidates that support our ideals, including phonebanking and texting for Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar.

In order to keep up our work as effectively as we can, we have decided to transition into a new organizational form as a group. After much deliberation and consultation with our closest supporters, Germany for Bernie made the decision to pursue forming one of the first international chapters of Democratic Socialists of America.

This will allow us to keep up the work we do best—volunteering for candidates who share our values and discussing progressive ideas—as well as partnering with a growing organization back in the US, fostering ties with similar groups in Berlin and around the world, and fighting for local progressive issues.

As we begin our journey as a DSA chapter, we want to build as large a base of support as possible. Please register your interest at this link, or email Ted Knudsen (knudsenedward@gmail.com) with any questions.

Hopscotch Reading Room

Alternative Reading in Berlin


17/07/2020

Hopscotch Reading Room is a new-ish space in Berlin whose aim is to expand and deepen the experience of the non-western world in the realms of discourse and literature. We do this with an extensive and constantly growing selection of books, papers and other material from the various publishing centers that flourish outside the Western orbit.

We complement this with an extensive programme of events—readings, discussions, screenings and workshops and reading groups—that draws upon the vibrancy, political agency and the cosmopolitan texture of this unique city. We are guided by a vision of a world rich in fugitive visions and mongrel tongues; resplendent, unbidden.

Hopscotch Reading Room is currently hosting six Tuesday evening readings of Alex Vitale’s ‘The End of Policing’ organised by NMMMM.

Published by Verso and extremely relevant to our current climate, ‘The End of Policing’ “attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice—even public safety.”

You do not have to have read the book to attend—we read & talk together in the ‘interrupted’ style of NMMMM. Because this book is fairly dense we will read one chapter together in the group, and then the next at home. Even if you skip your homework, come along and join the discussion!

Jüdische Stimme

The Jewish Voice for a just peace in the Middle East


10/07/2020

We, Jews in Germany, have come together to make it known that we recognise the historical experiences of our ancestors and the debasement and hurt which are inflicted on people when they are systematically ostracized and disenfranchized. No person or people can behave like this towards another person or people.

Our group under the names Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost / Jewish Voice for a just peace in the Middle East / European Jews for a Just Peace Deutschland e. V. (Jüdische Stimme) was formed in 2003 in Berlin and became a recognised association in 2007.

The most important audience for our work is the German public and government. We expect the German government to use its economic and political weight to ensure justice and peace in the Middle East, for the good of all the people who live there.

In the context of the clearly increasing racism in Germany and its neighbours, including Islamophobia, Antisemitism and other forms of structural social and political discrimination and exclusion, the members and friends of the Jüdische Stimme are united: determined in resistance against all expressions of degradation and disdain.

Links*kanax

Organising socialists with “migration background”


03/07/2020

LINKS*KANAX is a national network of LINKE members with a refugee or migration history, and their friends, with the aim of making the migrant-progressive voice more visible and audible inside and outside the party DIE LINKE.

The network is open to all those with a refugee or migration background or are affected by racism, and understand themselves as part of the emancipatory left, wanting to fight capitalism, racism and post-colonial power relations and for the fundamental social alternative of democratic socialism and global freedom of movement.

We are a strong part of movements of solidarity and want to become stronger, with the aim of making the party a real part of the movement. This includes being an active part of the anti-racist, climate, tenants’ and workers’ movements, and helping to shape these movements. In times of a massive shift to the right, the social split and sealing off of Europe, DIE LINKE must be a decisive force which, together with mobilisations by civil society, provides hope from the left.

We want to intervene in political and social discourse, which is influenced by a dangerous shift to the right. We also want to intervene in discourse within the party, which has unfoftunately recently been influenced by ideas voiced by some comrades who are critical of migration and question long-standing positions like “open borders for all people”. But migration is neither an object nor a plaything of individual countries. Migration is us!