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Wolt Claims to be Apolitical but its Actions Suggest Otherwise

Wolt is funnelling money to Israeli businesses and menacing anyone who disagrees.


06/07/2024

The Left Berlin interviewed an employee at Wolt about the company’s support of Israel. The employee wishes to remain anonymous.

What happened at Wolt that made you want to speak out?

Israel is one of the biggest markets for Wolt, I think it is the third biggest market. After the 7th of October and everything that happened in Gaza, so around I think November, I heard from colleagues that there were some problems on Slack, like our communication platform regarding this incident, regarding the 7th of October. And that the CEO was involved in that discussion. And the people who told me were pretty disappointed. They are for Palestine and they were disappointed by the reaction of the CEO. So I was really interested in what was happening. One of them sent me the the link of the conversation. So I went there and checked. Apparently in Israel, some colleagues there, some employees involved, they created a link to support the Israeli small businesses, merchants, restaurants and so on, where anyone around the world can go to that link and make a normal purchase. And instead of just sending donations, they will make a normal purchase. So the people there, they make this food and they will donate it.

So when I read everything, I was like yeah, okay. Whatever they can do whatever they want to support anyone. Although no one there needs any support – we will get to that point. So I read something like there was a deleted comment in the conversation. Under this deleted comment, there were a lot of emojis. We use a lot of emojis in Slack and Wolt is famous for using emojis, but all the emojis were very highly disrespectful. Like discussing everything using the middle finger, the shit, and the comments under that deleted comment we’re amazingly bad language. And then there’s the comment from the CEO himself commenting on that comment that work is not a place for discussing politics. And the deleted one was made by someone whose name is Mohammed.

The CEO said go back to work, targeting Mohammed directly. I don’t know where Mohammed works. I don’t know which country he’s in. So Mohammed commented on the CEO’s comment again saying okay, I’m sorry for the political comment. But can we please make the same initiative for the people in Gaza? Then the CEO commented again, repeating his words, I’m telling you, is not the place nor the time to discuss this subject. Go back to work. So first thing came to my mind was, why it is the time and place for Israelis to do such an initiative, but not for other people? So I started to tell everyone around me because there are a lot of pro-Palestinian people working there.

And just a couple of days after that, the management in Finland was bombarded with emails. Because they immediately tried to do something and it was disgusting what they did. They shut down any one who is pro-Palestinian and just let all the pro-Israelis talk in the public channels to everyone and post whatever they want. At the same time deleting anything else that is pro-Palestinian. At first of all, they sent an email apologizing for what happened. And all of the emails they sent, they never mentioned what Mohammed said. What was the deleted comment? I couldn’t find the deleted comment and they didn’t mention what it is. They just said it’s political. But what Mohamed said, no one knows.

They also don’t want to stop this initiative, and at the same time, they don’t want to create a new initiative for Palestine at the moment. And they said, we’re going to find a solution. Just wait. So it took them around a week or two. I don’t remember exactly, but they came up with the solution or what they thought was a solution. What is the solution? The solution was that they going to donate, with DoorDash, $1 million to both parties. To both sides. The Israeli and the Palestinian. But still not creating this initiative to donate for Gaza.

But they never said anything or explained how these donations are going to be sent, through which kind of organization. So the only way that they’re going to send donations is that they’re going to send it to Israel. So that will never reach Gaza whatsoever. And then after that, no one talked about this again. And whatever you say, whatever you send them, they answer we are sorry. We’re working to have better communications. The only thing they did is to delete the emojis. The hurtful emojis under Mohammed’s comment. This is everything they did. 

Does this fit with your experience at the company?

The management, they’re trying to to avoid any political discussion whatsoever. Like before the 7th of October. So nothing was political in any kind of communications inside the company. I will give it to them. Like in this case, they were really professional, until this happened. After this happened, they showed exactly that they are pro-Israeli. But at the same time, while trying their best to keep it apolitical. They keep sending apologies to everyone. We are sorry, we know we are not doing enough, please bear with us, it’s complicated, we don’t know what to do right now, we didn’t face these kind of situations before, etc. So they always have this type of communication. So they tried to not show that they are political in any way.

But supporting Israel was an exception to this?

Yeah. And they are sharing, and they are proud of it, how many millions they collected and so on. I went back to the same channel, to the same discussion. And I saw how much they are proud of, the millions they are collecting. Especially coming back to the subject where I told you that they don’t even need any donations in Israel. The market in Israel is still booming. It’s still going up. It’s like nothing is happening. This is what’s scary. The market in Israel is still doing great. That’s why it’s like, why all these donations? They don’t even need any donations! They are still working. People are still buying. Number are still going higher and higher every day. 

Why do you feel this Israel initiative wasn’t justified?

The point is: Why are we allowing such an initiative to happen and trying everything to prevent the same initiative to happen for Palestinians? Like why these double standards? Like you are not political, okay, I’ll give it to you, but why then are you fighting against any initiative to help the other side.

And how does the initiative in Israel work?

The ones who created the initiative were asking people to take the link and share it with their family and friends. This is how they share the link. It’s not something like when you go online, you can see that Wolt stands with Ukraine and these kind of things. So you give businesses in Israel the money and the businesses just take it as normal business. But they make purchases and they give it to people. So you’re donating to people through the businesses. 

They [Wolt] are open with it. They’re doing it in front of everyone. But as I said, the point is this reaction towards any request to do something for the other side. And the solution they came up with, which is actually disappointing and pathetic.

We’re talking months after the 7th of October, and they are doing really good. So why do they need donations? Why? They’re still doing good. They are showing on TV that it’s a disaster. But everything is still going normally. 

How do others feel about the situation?

When we talk, we are highly disappointed. No one likes the decision they came up with. Everyone criticizes them, but no one publicly could do anything. Like, even the ones who contacted the management, they never wrote anything publicly on Slack. Because every one of us is just afraid that we’re going to lose our jobs. And especially after merging with DoorDash. Then it became very easy for you to be laid off. Because the first layoff, the big one happened exactly after merging. And it came actually from DoorDash, that decision. And 1,500 employees only in Wolt, not DoorDash, were laid off. From all of Wolt worldwide, of course, not only in Germany, but still it’s a big number. In Berlin alone, 15 people were laid off. And the layoffs were not just for anyone. Just like three of the 15 were maybe in their probation, where you can say like, okay, it’s probation, maybe the company don’t need that, or they didn’t reach any agreement, but the rest, around 12 of them were from the best employees. People who helped the company to grow in Germany. They are highly competent. They have great experience. They did a lot. And all of them surprisingly.

Why are people worried for their jobs?

Until now, they have mentioned the layoffs only once. One general meeting someone wrote this anonymous question – I still don’t know if it’s anonymous, to be honest – but someone wrote something about why we don’t have a Betriebsrat (workers council). And they just went crazy and called in the general manager immediately. And then in the meeting she took like 15 minutes just to explain how amazing we are doing and we don’t need Betriebsrat. How safe the employees are, and then sending emails and like talking again in different meetings. They’re trying really hard to show people like, no, no, no, we don’t need it. You are really safe here, while at the same time this was happening, the whole discussion about the Betriebsrat we had no HR. There were zero HR employees. I think we at the time we had only three employees and all of them were on vacation at the same time. So there is no one to solve your problem. Anything you need it has to go to Finland. And from Finland they don’t see anything in front of them. For them, everything is just numbers. They’re just requests coming from strange people. They don’t know even the pictures.

 

Here is one of the websites through which people could donate food to Israelis. You can read more about Wolt’s initiative in Israel here. 

Bloque Latinoamericano Manifesto, Part 2

As part of an ongoing transformation, Bloque Latinoamericano are publicising their political manifesto.


15/06/2024

This manifesto is from the Bloque Latinoamericano, which has been translated by The Left Berlin team. We will be publishing it in three parts; this is part 2.

Political-Ideological Perspectives

In this chapter, we will try to condense how we understand ourselves in terms of being a migrant organization and how we understand our fundamental axes of intervention. These axes include migrant self-organization in Berlin, political and solidarity work with Latin America (Abya Yala), and how all these dimensions are crossed by a transfeminist vision of our political work. We also outline how we could think about a transformation of our society and how we understand ourselves as part of a broader movement in this territory.

The Migrant Perspective

Migration is a reality that has existed since the beginning of humanity. Although the reasons for migration are many and varied, we know that in the majority of cases, people migrate to improve their living conditions (to escape precariousness, wars, dispossession, and so on). For this reason, we believe that there should be conditions to migrate freely and with dignity.

This reality is shaped by the global division of economic-military power, where there is a world center that, through the dispossession of the periphery, has accumulated enough wealth to guarantee its hegemonic position, and the dependence of other territories. This same global division of power is also sustained by the racist structuring of societies. For this reason, when we migrate, we often find ourselves in an economically precarious situation and are more acutely confronted with racism.

We believe that the experience of migration allows for a critique of the current world order, and requires us to think about different ways of relating to each other and to organize in order to achieve this. Although migration does not necessarily imply that people want to fight for a better world, it generates a common and collective experience of oppression that has the potential to be politicized. Migration is a global reality, therefore, resolving the injustices that surround it is a task of structural transformation for all those who fight for social transformation, not just for those who migrate.

The Latin American Perspective

The migratory experience and the experiences of struggle in Latin America-Abya Yala constitute the place of enunciation of the Bloque as a political organization. In other words, although not all of our members have migrated or participated actively in Latin American social movements, this is the perspective from which we analyze the reality we live in today and seek alternatives to build a new system. 

We understand ourselves as children of the resistance of a colonized territory. Ever since the ruling European classes established their dominion over our territory with a system based on slavery, we have experienced incessant political and military interventions in the development of our lives. Migratory processes are entirely intersected by the violence that US imperialism – in complicity with the European Union – which unceasingly installs in our bodies and in our territories. 

In this sense, Bloque Latinoamericano tries to make a political synthesis that will help us transform the reality of the here and now, with our feet on the ground we stand on, but without forgetting where we came from and how we can rethink and understand ourselves in a broader movement that is trying to transform this unjust reality.

How we understand solidarity with Latin America – Abya Yala

We see solidarity with Latin America-Abya Yala as a political driving force in our daily work. It is active and stems from the conviction that we all deserve to live a life without exploitation of our bodies/territories.

Unlike charity, solidarity arises from a horizontal consciousness that takes the form of support for the struggles of workers, of indigenous peoples,* of racialized people, of the defense of territory, of women and sexual dissidents.

* In different Latin American territories, “indigenous peoples” or “native peoples” are used to refer to the communities of origin in the American territory – survivors of the European colonizing genocide and white-nationalist extermination.

Our solidarity is politicized and comes from a commitment with the territorial struggles of Latin America, understanding its global complexity in the current framework of economical interactions between states, and their colonial and imperial heritage – the latter in order to understand the governing geopolitical logic that is at the root of the problems with which we stand in solidarity. 

As a migrant collective, we seek to develop our own vision of the issues we address, and to be a voice on the local German scene that not only amplifies Latin American voices, but also contributes to the intertwined struggles of both continents. This implies being active participants in the discussions taking place in Germany with a voice that comes from our collective experiences.

We also recognize the importance of developing political ties with organizations in Latin America-Abya Yala in order to materialize solidarity in actions that either improve visibility or help to foster the exchange of contacts, alliances, and resources. This way, we can approach social processes that have the potential to mobilize people, both migrants and non-migrants, maximizing our capacity for impact. However, it is essential for us to move away from the paternalistic logic of “North-South” aid, as well as from academic readings and interventions that treat struggle abstract, distancing it from its materiality by focusing only on the rhetorical dimension without corresponding action.

How we understand the struggle against the precarization of life

We believe that politicizing our precariousness means understanding it in the context of a broader system, namely the neoliberal capitalist system that drives many of us to migrate and turns us into cheap labor in Germany.

To speak of capitalism is also to think of its historical dimension: in the past, capitalism used to exploit us fundamentally by appropriating our hours of work, so it could be accumulated by a few who concentrated wealth. Today, capitalism not only takes over our work (waged or unwaged), but also exploits all levels of our lives in order to continue reproducing itself: our housing, our education, our health, our body, our thoughts, and our desires. This translates into a shift from the exploitation of workers mainly in their formal workplaces and reproductive labor to a capitalism that is rooted in all the social ties of our existence.

The precarization of life, meaning the advance of capital over life, is a global phenomenon that affects the working classes all over the world. However, this phenomenon affects those of us who migrate to the countries of the center in a particularly strong way. Numerous bureaucratic obstacles, legal limitations on residence permits, language difficulties, lack of family and support networks, discrimination, racialization, illegalization and criminalization aggravate our situation and expose us to greater precariousness. This translates into greater obstacles, difficulties and injustices when looking for work and housing, or in trying to access health and education. This is how we are pushed to live a life that we often didn’t choose, but which we end up accepting because we are no longer in our countries of origin.

Through the Bloque Latinoamericano, we want to reclaim our right to fight against the precariousness of our lives and our inalienable right to organize ourselves politically against this system. We see this as a struggle for a fairer world in which we can all choose the life we want to live. It is the struggle for a dignified life, free from exploitation, against inequalities and injustices in all dimensions of life, and against the production of wealth for a few at the expense of our basic rights. 

How we understand the anti-patriarchal, queer, feminist struggle

Adding the anti-patriarchal perspective to the migrant dimension allows us to see that the realities of women and sexual dissidents are even more aggravated, and that is why we are firmly committed to our fight for the abolition of the cishetero-patriarchal system. We analyze, think, and act politically by centralizing the power in the hands of the oppressed. We also understand that there are different levels of oppression. As well as recognizing the specific oppressions that migrants and racialized people face, we highlight the oppression of those who do not align with cishetero-centrist logic.

We can only enjoy a life free from oppression if in every daily political practice we focus our work on defending the rights and lives of women, of trans people, and of the entire LGBTQI+ community, who are not only fighting for more rights, but also for the defense of our own lives. Our diverse experiences, both in Latin America and in Germany, have shown us that there is no possibility of creating a “safe space” if we don’t first fight consistently to end daily femicides, if we don’t denounce the fact that globally, the average age of a trans person is 37 years old, if we don’t fight for equal marriage, for comprehensive sex education and legal, safe, and free abortion in every corner of the world. 

We are convinced that it is the feminism of the popular majorities that has the strength to overthrow the political regime of western cisheterosexuality, and introduce a world where our lives are worth more than the profits of the capitalist system, and where children are truly free. Every 8 of March, 25 of November, and at the Alternative Pride demonstrations, we take the streets to celebrate our identities and to fight against the systemic violation of human rights. We believe that it is only from the perspective of a popular, queer, migrant, ecologist, anti-racist and anti-colonial transfeminism, that we are able to fight, day after day, the battle to achieve the revolution we are aiming for.

On our perspective on social transformation

In order to dismantle the heterocispatriarchal system that makes life precarious in every way, we must join forces to achieve the social, economic and political transformations that we so urgently need. Based on the path we have wandered, we affirm that, in the midst of the neoliberal liquidity that sometimes blinds us, only constructing solid organizations with collective memory allows us to develop tools for the struggle that makes possible the society we dream of. To achieve that, we need to combine self-organization and mobilization, so that we achieve improvements in living conditions, while knowing that the only horizon is a radical transformation that will put an end to the capitalist system. We know that we cannot achieve these objectives alone, which is why we articulate and build together with different political organizations, made up of social sectors from different backgrounds, in order to nurture our network and enrich our paths towards liberation.

The collective construction of a world without exploitation is the horizon that drives us on our daily journey. However, we don’t believe that we should wait until the capitalist system has been overthrown to start new ways of being united. For this reason, we work to ensure that the way we relate with each other, and the way we inhabit our spaces of organization are aligned with the world we fight for, simultaneously accumulating forces for transformation. In other words, we try to ensure that the practices we develop in our assemblies, meetings, and projects are prefigurative of the system we want to build. By doing so, we aim to transform everyday life into moments of liberation and construction of an alternative power led by the subaltern sectors, in other words, the construction of popular power.

In our quest to build a different society, we do so in three levels: the objective conditions, the global world system and the subjectivities.

By objective conditions we mean the economic, political, and cultural factors that make up the context or environment in which we have to develop our life and militancy. These are the variables that, although created by humanity, do not depend on anyone’s concrete willpower to exist. We think about them at the regional, national and local levels, and the transformations we seek daily are applied to these levels.

When we talk about a world system, we are referring to the global aspect of capitalism and its global division of labor. We believe that we cannot think of social changes in any single country, without taking into consideration the geopolitical aspects, specifically how the world’s center and periphery relate to each other. The transformations we will achieve in the countries we inhabit must necessarily be thought of within the framework of reigning imperialism. The subjective component is key to developing ways of relating to each other and of inhabiting spaces that resemble the ones we want to live in the society of the future. Transformations at this level, through debate, training, criticism, and self-criticism, are key components in thinking about long-term transformations.

Our characterization and our role in the German left 

We consider ourselves part of the popular struggles and social social movements in Germany, even if we often have to fight for our voices to be heard. 

We particularly highlight the struggles for the right to housing and climate justice as two of the social movements that have been the most dynamic in recent years and which have also had a strong impact on our lives, both here and in Latin American territories. We also see ourselves as part of longer traditions of struggle, which link us, for example, to the the resistance of migrant workers in the 70s.

We are currently observing a discussion within the left that emerges as a result of the post-autonomist strategy experiences in recent years, focused mainly on interventions in the public discourse. Post-autonomism has made a fundamental contribution by generating mobilizations and by breaking the relative isolation of the autonomist left, which focused on creating and defending autonomous and prefigurative spaces, rejecting everything associated with normativity.

Currently, the post-autonomous left seems to be showing certain signs of exhaustion and an absence of tools to accumulate forces and process experiences of mobilization, which constitute qualitative leaps in the struggle. In this context, another strategy that increases the importance of grassroots work and appealing to popular sectors is gaining strength, with a strong criticism of the autonomist left for its isolation, and of post-autonomism for its lack of focus on class struggle. We believe that the dichotomy between these perspectives is false and should be resolved by combining different approaches, achieving a left that is anchored in the popular sectors, capable of self-managing spaces and at the same time capable of building broad alliances for mobilization and of achieving demands.

In this context, we consider that our contribution to the left in Germany focuses on three points. On one hand, we consider the importance of political organization, which is responsible for processing the experience, gathering forces and learning, and giving continuity to struggles over time. On the other hand, we support the anti-imperialist and internationalist position, which, in the context of an imperialist center like Germany, is sometimes neglected or simplified. Finally, we develop ways of integrating emotions into political work, as means of intertwining transfeminist and anti-racist struggles into our political work. By doing so, we want to achieve a political practice that emerges from collective desire.

Bloque Latinoamericano Manifesto, Part 1

As part of an ongoing transformation, Bloque Latinoamericano are publicising their political manifesto.


26/05/2024

This manifesto is from the Bloque Latinoamericano, which has been translated by theleftberlin team. We will be publishing it in three parts – this is part 1.

Introduction

Our organization has changed over time, based on the needs, wishes and experiences of its active members in relation to the social context in which we live. These needs arise from the double anchoring of the Bloque Latinoamericano as part of a bridge of historical and political connections between the territory from which most of us come or to which we are politically and/or emotionally connected, Latin America, and the territory in which we currently live, Berlin.

This process of collective construction has led us to to reflect and make decisions regarding our organizational structure and decisions, as well as in terms of how we can advance the political goals we have set ourselves. We accept these transformations as something necessary, because we as a collective are a living organism, in constant movement, and can change our structure if necessary.

This gave rise to the need to systematize our organizational experiences in a document that would convey the changes, assurances, commonalities, routes of struggle and analyses that move us. A document that helps to understand our current process, both retrospectively and with a view to the future.

The purpose of this document is to explain where we come from, what we do and what we, in the framework of our political goals, seek in order to achieve a profound and revolutionary transformation of society, the society in which we live and which lives within us. This document allows us to look at the traces of the journey we have traveled. It allows us to understand the process that we have have gone through in almost five years of collective life, thanks to the many comrades who have contributed their perspectives, their passion, their ideas and their work to our organization and continue to do so.

How we came to be the organisation we are

The Bloque Latinoamericano was born in November 2018 as an alliance space between collectives and individuals linked to the political processes of different territories of Latin America-Abya Yala. It emerged from the need to develop a policy of active solidarity with our territories and to organize the resistance of migrants in Germany in the face of the advance of the right on both sides of the ocean.

Over the course of time, we developed our own political goals and defined tasks to achieve these goals, which led to a change in dynamics, toward practices common to a collective. We therefore decided to focus our efforts on two fundamental axes: migrant self-organization and solidarity as well as political work with Latin America-Abya Yala, with trans-feminism and anti-racism as the overarching perspectives of all of our political work. The context of the pandemic was an opportunity to, more than ever, open up and politicize the discussion about collective care in political work, which became another central axis for the development of our collective.

Today we define ourselves as a political organization in which we, the members, share political goals and are joined together in tackling political practice in a way that’s common to all of us. As we recognize that many of our goals, especially the short-term ones, are shared by other organizations, we actively participate in networks and alliances and help to build them. In order to make our demands visible, we take part in campaigns, which we see as important tools for political struggles in various areas of society. Through our political practice, we have understood that these three levels complement each other and are necessary for social change. Without organization, the networks, alliances and campaigns that we can build have no body to give them continuity over time. It is political organization that provides us with the tools to build networks and alliances with those who think differently from us, and more importantly, to mutualize the tools for even more effective and more powerful campaigns.

Important concepts to understand this document

Although we make an effort to use language that is as simple as possible and to remind ourselves how we spoke and thought before we started moving in political spaces, we are aware that this text uses some political concepts that may not be understood by everyone in the same way. This is due to the fact that this text connects diverse social experiences from different Latin American countries with the language and political traditions of Germany, which also enrich us as a collective.

For this reason, in the following paragraphs we briefly clarify what we mean when we use some specific terms. Because we also believe that it is part of our political task as a political tradition. We believe that all of these terms can be transformed. Even if they serve us today as a magnifying glass with which we view our present, they can be transformed or discarded at any point in time, according to our needs.

In this document we talk about the construction of people’s power. This concept, which is widespread in the Latin American social movements, is hardly mentioned in the perspectives of the left in Germany. The building of people’s power means organizing from below, starting from the oppressed who, through their prevailing normal state can succeed in break through mobilization, that creates spaces of their own power that are autonomous and subversive to the dominant social order. Countervailing power consists of transforming the places of life (of work, study, recreation) into an alternative social power; into spaces that allow us a glimpse into other forms of the organization of society. This power can be local, communal or regional, until it manages to become a second territorially anchored power at the national level, which questions the legitimacy and monopoly of the state itself.

People’s power presupposes a political subject: the people (el pueblo). For us, el pueblo is the collective identity that makes so much sense in Latin America when it comes to talking about a of a political subject of transformation. The idea of el pueblo unites all the people who suffer at different levels under the violence of this imperialist system. We are all part of the people – all of us who experience this violence and who, through this identity, seek a response of solidarity based on love for others and the possibility of building an alternative society.

In the following pages, the concept of imperialism plays an important role. If one speaks of imperialism from the perspective of Latin American territories, it is not an academic discussion, as is the case for many people in Europe. We have experienced imperialist policies on our territories in Latin America during all the genocidal coups d’état of the 1970s, during which  the US government used Plan Condor to kill an entire generation of people who were fighting for the construction of socialism, and thus turned our continent into a neoliberal laboratory. The imperialist policy is also present in the economic economic and political blockade of Cuba that has existed for more than 60 years. And it was also evident in the attempted coups d’état in Venezuela in 2002 and in Bolivia in 2019, which were supported and promoted by organizations such as the Organization of American States (OAS). This imperialist system has centers, i.e. countries where the extractive wealth, generated by their sponsored policies, is accumulated, and peripheries, which have a strong economic dependence on these central countries. A clear example of this dependence is the foreign public debt, which is almost always illegitimate and in some cases even illegal.

We use the double term Latin America-Abya Yala. The term Abya Yala refers to the name that was used for the area we now call Latin America before its colonization. We believe that the reuse of this term is also an attempt to recognize ourselves in a history of resistance against the workings of colonization.

We see ourselves as a collective that combines different elements of organization from political, social and common interest groups. When we say that we are a political organization, we mean that we are a collective that sets itself long-term and short-term political goals in order to change reality. This means projecting ourselves into the future and building an organization that is able to integrate the experiences of different generations, struggles and movements. When we speak of common interest organizations, we mean, for example, trade unions or student centers. That means, organizations that fight against economic or institutional actors for the improvement of the conditions that affect their members in a particular area of life such as work, study or, in our case, migration. When we talk about social organization, we rely on the concept of the social movement, which is used in Latin America to refer to organizational processes that take place in resistance to neoliberalism, in struggles for access to education, housing, work or culture. The movements are often characterized by the fact that they identify with their expropriation (landlessness, unemployment, homelessness) or the threat to the logic of communal life (community movements, assemblies) and emerge in the geographical or social peripheries and penetrate the centers. The precise way in which these different elements are combined is an open question to which we will find answers through political praxis, i.e. through the combination of practice to transform reality in our context and of reflection on that very practice.

The first chapter of this document contains our political-ideological perspectives. This designation combines two elements that although different, work together in our daily practice. By political practice we mean a concrete debate that attempts to change reality. Ideology has to do with the paradigms that guide us. They are the lenses through which we read reality in order to work on the construction of a new system, a system based on new values and desires within the framework of a project of a world without oppressors and oppressed. Within the political ideological practice, we identify tactical elements that aim to achieve an immediate goal and strategic elements aimed at achieving long-term goals.

In this text, we will use the terms political activism and militancy as synonyms. While in some contexts the word militancy refers exclusively to the willingness to use violence in political struggle, in other contexts it is a generic term that encompasses political activism. In this text we use the term in this second sense.

We have decided to use non-binary language throughout the text. This means that we amend words that presuppose the gender identity of a person so that this is no longer the case. We do not believe neither that the construction of a male ‘we’ in this patriarchal society includes women and others, nor that a generalized feminine includes identities that feel outside the gender binary. For this reason, and because language also has the power to change reality, we believe it is important to neutralize gender in our linguistic practice.

About our internal operating principles

In this chapter, we describe the internal dynamics, or the organic life, of our collective. The following sections condense our understanding of the tools we have had to acquire in order to create an organization that provides space for diversity in ideological positions and perspectives but achieves unity in action and facilitates reflection on our own practice and the human relationships we build around them. These are imperfect tools that are constantly being revised.

Decision making

In the Bloque Latinoamericano there are various spaces in which decisions are made: The plenums for evaluation and projection, the monthly meetings and the meetings of the working groups.

The plenums take place once or twice a year and serve to evaluate the work performed and the (re)definition of the organization’s strategic objectives as well as the projection of specific goals and lines of work for the next period. The meetings take place once a month and discuss topics that affect the organization as a whole. These may arise from the political situation or from the work of the working groups. The meetings have a consultative character and decide on the the routes that the organization should take with regard to the the topics discussed. This space is reserved for reserved for political discussions. An attempt is made to keep organizational or operational debates to a minimum.

The working groups implement the political goals defined in the plenums and assemblies and have relative autonomy to make decisions about their specific work and address issues arising from their interventions in grassroots movements or in processes of processes of political struggle and mobilization.

During the debates in the three decision-making bodies we endeavor to reach a consensus, giving all participants the time they need to understand the discussions and participate. If a consensus is not possible, we make decisions by majority vote. We are of the opinion that this is the most democratic way to, on one hand, avoid giving individuals the power of veto and, on the other hand, to ensure that minority positions are aired and taken into account when evaluating the decisions made. Debates can be resumed in any of the instances if it is believed that more time is needed for the discussion.

Criticism and self-criticism as tools of reflection

We fundamentally assume that growth comes from criticism. This can apply to ourselves, to our projects, to our comrades, and to the organization of which we are a part. In order to be an instructive tool, we believe it is fundamental that critique is practiced in organic spaces of the collective and not in informal spaces. It is important to understand that a critique of an action of the Bloque, no matter from which comrade it came, is ultimately a critique of ourselves. In this way, criticism is depersonalized and becomes a political tool to improve our collective practice.

Sometimes it becomes necessary to practice critique of certain comrades. Explicit criticism is always better than rumors, intrigues, and comments made behind their backs. In this case, we try to keep in mind that the mistakes that comrades make in their political actions are made with the intention of working on improving our collective. It is likely that the more criticism we receive the the more we do. This can sometimes be a sign of personal and collective growth. But even taking on tasks cannot be a justification for not wanting to review our ways and behaviors, if they have caused our comrades to criticize us.

For criticism to be constructive, it must be accompanied by a suggestive proposition. This means that, as much as possible, an attempt should be made to formulate alternatives to improve what is being criticized. It is desirable that this proposal is  collectively formulated and a debate about how we can become better arises, and not simply that the criticized behavior is simply dismissed or completely devalued.

It is important to engage with criticism of the Bloque from people or groups outside of it, even if we do not agree with it. This means that we must take the time to reflect on it and identify the relevant elements contained in this criticism, address them and work to incorporate them into our effors for transformation. In this way, we transform any criticism from the outside, whether constructive or destructive, into an opportunity to develop further.

Collective care and conflict resolution

The creation of spaces in which we feel comfortable and in which there is affection is part of our transformational horizon for society. Even if it is not possible to create spaces that are completely safe in the sense that they are free from all violence, our obligation is to make all spaces in the Bloque as safe as possible and, above all, to equip ourselves with tools to eliminate all forms of violence that we reproduce step by step.

In this way, we want to build the society that we are fighting for in the here and now.

The Bloque Latinoamericano has a group and a guide for collective care and conflict resolution, in which the aim is to support comrades who need it in the search for a solution to a conflict that cannot be addressed or resolved between the people involved. The aim of the group is to mediate, intervene and create spaces to resolve conflicts that may arise between comrades.

In addition to the actions of the group, we collectively reflect on the ways in which emotions permeate our political practice, and we try, through political education and reflection on our practice to identify and eliminate the forms of violence that we reproduce. Every member of the Bloque Latinoamericano must have a deep commitment to the fight against transphobia, misogyny, racism and classism.

We do not envision a society without problems and conflicts, but we envision a society in which there are more and more tools that enable us to forge bonds of solidarity and understanding. That is the goal we are working towards.

The process for participating in the Bloque Latinoamericano

Our collective has an open structure, i.e., all those who agree with the with the political goals and working methods of the Bloque can join. The process for participating in takes place gradually, as we are a multi-level structure that one has to get to know and understand bit by bit. The first way in which everyone who is interested in our collective can participate is attending into our grassroot groups or the open meetings of the working groups. These take place regularly and everyone is welcome. Participation in internal group meetings and assemblies is intended for those who are involved in working on the political goals of the organization and are interested in contributing to maintaining its structure by taking on internal tasks. 

At regular intervals, we organize events where interested people have the opportunity to to get to know us, to learn how the Bloque Latinoamericano came about, what it does and how one can join. The character of these meetings can be different (it can be an informational event, painting banners together or a picnic), the important thing is that we create spaces to get to know each other and exchange ideas. Other than that, we also see it as the task of all those who have been in the collective for a while to accompany the newcomers. We know that entering into a new space can cause doubt and confusion, and we consider it fundamental to build up empathy and understanding.

“Knowledge is not something that people have, knowledge is something that you create”

Interview with Dario Farcy and Aquarela Padilla from the Bildungszentrum Lohana Berkins


03/11/2023

Thank you so much for being here and for your time! Could you start by introducing yourself and the Centro de Educación Popular (CEP) Lohana Berkins?

Darío Farcy: Thank you very much, Andrei and The Left for the interview! I am Darío Farcy from Buenos Aires, Argentina. There I worked with the self-managed movement and was a teacher for almost 10 years in the popular education movement (educación popular). I was a teacher in the Bachilleratos Populares. They were high schools for people who couldn’t finish state high school, and so they didn’t have the possibility to go to university or to have better-paid jobs. I was also part of different left political parties and studied political studies in the University of Buenos Aires.

Aquarela Padilla: My name is Aquarela Padilla, I come from Venezuela. I have lived in Germany for around six years. I am part of the coordination team of the the Centro de Educación Popular Lohana Berkins. I have experience in educación popular in Venezuela, especially in feminismo comunitario with Mujeres por la Vida, and political education with and for workers. I also have experience in alternative or transformative communication and media work.

I would also like to present our Centro de Educación Popular. We are an educational center that was founded a year ago, by and for migrants in Berlin. Our purpose is to create a space to collectively build tools as migrants and improve our reality of life. This also means understanding our reality here, and for this we need an educational process. We implement educación popular, or we are inspired by this political-pedagogical practice, which comes from Latin America but has spread throughout the whole world and is often part of massive movements. We have different educational formats. Our goal is not only to create tools and to better understand our reality, but also to strengthen our communities.

Can you tell me more about who Lohana Berkins was and why you chose to name the center after her?

DF: Lohana Berkins was an activist. She was what we call in Spanish “a militant.” In English that sounds a bit harsh, but that is how we describe the commitment of different activists, because we think there is a difference between being an activist and doing political things, and having a full commitment for politics. That is why we call ourselves and Lohana militants.

She was part of the of the Communist Party of Argentina. She was a trans woman and one of the first trans women to have the possibility to work in the state as a deputy’s assitant. Later, she was one of the key people in developing the gender identity law in Argentina. She died in 2016, but had the possibility to see the approval of this law. Lohana was also one of the leaders in forming a textile worker’s cooperative for trans people called Nadia Echazú, founded in 2008, and one of the few spaces where trans people could have a proper job and legal work. She was also one of the first visible trans activists and militants in society, and fought throughout her life for educación popular. She was also involved in the bachillerato popular, a popular education center in Argentina, and Mocha Cellis, a high school for transgender people.

So we wanted to give some kind of honor to her life and her fight, and highlight her experiences and ability to fight both the state and against a society where trans people were totally obscure. The idea was that we wanted to connect this with migration. Since migrants play a very important role in society, but at the same time, are not visible for most German people. That is the reason why we chose this name.

Lohana was also a migrant, she was born and grew up in the northern part of Argentina, a very racialized region. She went to work during her transition in Buenos Aires, and she also suffered from a lot of discrimination because she was both brown and trans. Her membership in the Communist Party was also very important to us, because we need to have strong structures and training, organization, political identity, all while representing different kinds of identity.

AP: It is important to talk about the original idea of educación popular, both how it works but also why we use it. We came up with the idea of creating the Centro de Educación Popular Lohana Berkins due to the needs of our community and migrants, based on our experience as activists in Bloque Latinoamericano. We were confronted with not being allowed to participate in German spaces due to language. We understood that it was normal for people to want to volunteer in their own language, but it created a huge barrier for us in order to be active. That is why we understood that language is one of the main things in order to defend our rights, which is why we started with language courses. The goal was also to understand our rights and the legal structures of Germany. If you cannot participate in a democratic space in German, if you don’t understand the laws, it’s impossible to defend your rights. So we wanted to create a space which was different from formal German languages course, like Volkschochschule, but a instead was somewhere where alternative learning could take place.

The methodology is different, but so are the debates and the political approaches we discuss. We want to talk about themes and things that are connected with the real life of migrants. We want to talk about migration, we want to talk about racism, we want to talk about political and police violence.

Let’s continue talking about the German language classes. What does a German class in the Center look like? What do you do?

DF: In a normal language course, you have the owners or bosses of the school, you have the teachers, and there’s no democratic process to define the content of the course.

AP: We have a coordination group of three people that get together with the teachers to think through the whole program. We talk about the methodology, the language, the grammatical structure, how to improve the skills of the students, and also the political insight and the political perspective of the course. So since the beginning, the process is a democratic one.

The content and the theme of the course is accumulative. We don’t tend to think like, “there is this new idea, this is a perfect idea.” This is not representative of the students’ experience of the courses. We base it on the needs and experiences of the students, and also our own experiences that we have accumulated from giving these classes.

DF: Educación popular is a political perspective of education that is based on the real life of those involved in the process. Not only students, but also teachers and coordinators, workers in the space. The idea of a popular location is holistic, it is connected with the idea of the whole.

AP: That is why the beginning of each course, we try to find the level of students’ German, how they can express themselves, their needs, problems, but also the interests of the students.

DF: So if someone is interested in gender perspectives in Germany, we prepare the program of the course based on this and their needs. Not only the structural needs, like fighting against racism, but also their individual and rational needs. Housing, the fight for the right to the city, the fight for fair rents. There’s a history in Berlin of organizing against exploitation, against this housing sector. At the beginning we established a preliminary program with some draft ideas regarding the content, but in the process we realized we needed to focus the contents around the topics the community was debating.

AP: In doing that, you have the possibility to create a connection between the individual needs of the students, the structural problems they face, and their skills in German.

Can you talk more about the role of the educator and coordination team, and what they do? As well as the exchanges between yourselves and the students, while avoiding the creation of a hierarchy of knowledge?

DF: From the perspective of popular education, knowledge is not a thing. But knowledge is not something people have. Knowledge is a collective process, it is created by individuals but it’s always a collective thing. That is why we talk about learning through doing. Of course, as the coordination team, we are learning every day. Not only due to the input of the teachers, but also from the students. From a symbolic perspective, the process of doing popular education in Germany creates a new way of understanding popular education. And that is the key point of this process of creating knowledge that is connected to language and political organization.

AP: So the educator is an activist, is a militant. From the beginning, popular education is a different way of doing politics. It’s very important that the whole group understands that the first goal is not knowledge, but political responsibility. And educators need to feel this responsibility, and create this political pedagogical process.

DF: There is also the need to act in solidarity regarding knowledge and tools, which is why we share skills and knowledge. It’s not like you as an individual have some kind of skills as a teacher, and you preserve that, and use these as something you want to sell. Because in the private sector or the market, the thing that teachers sell is their ability and skills to know better. We are trying to fight against this privatization. That is why we talk about this idea of the political responsibility of being a popular educator.

AP: I also want to talk about the connections and similarities between an educator and a student, which are more important for us than the differences.

Both students and teachers need to have these democratic and active commitments in order to reach the goals of the classroom. If some of the parts are not working, or missing that aim, the process is not going to work. Because if we say we learn through doing and everyone in this process is both learning and teaching, the student also has a role of teaching and giving their skills in solidarity.

DF: So it’s not only that the teacher has an active role while the students receive, but both are receiving and giving. Of course, it should be be clear who has the responsibility for which part. But this clear responsibility does not mean that one is active, and one is passive. The idea is that we can create a dialogue between the different levels of popular education.

AP: So the shared idea is the commitment in order to transform society and in doing so, the idea of transforming themselves. This idea is the commitment that we always need to pursue and understand as a goal.

DF: Of course, that puts language and political themes in a second level. But that is the structure that we need to develop. The main goal is to transform reality. And we understand the importance of transforming the people who are going to transform reality. We want to do it through popular education.

I imagine that there are also moments where this doesn’t happen, when people would rather be passive listeners than participating. How do you convince people to participate in educación popular?

DF: I think it works in different levels. For example, there’s people who are more comfortable with lectures, or with books. And so when you present some kind of new topic through a book, maybe 20-30% of the class is going, “okay, that’s great.” But 70%, maybe not, they want to find a way where they feel more comfortable. When we acknowledge that, we ask what tools we have at our disposal, in order to reach the other part of the class. Maybe theater and acting skills, so in the next class we say we will talk about the housing problem in Berlin through acting, one person is the landlord and one the tenant. And you reach 40% of the people that don’t feel comfortable learning through books.

We use different methodologies to reach students, especially when they are at different levels. Maybe one day you use a movie to talk about something, or a song.

With teachers it is more difficult. Because all the teachers, as well as ourselves, went through the formal process of learning how to teach. So with the teachers or the coordination team it’s more about formation and training. We give trainings in order to understand how popular education works. Sadly, you always have some people who don’t understand it. We need to accept that maybe popular education is not for everyone, but in most cases people understand that solidarity is a better way of teaching.

AP: In the beginning, popular education feels strange for many people who are used to silently being given knowledge. When you talk about different methodologies, people will try it feeling like it’s a game. They begin to understand that they can feel good about learning German, they can make mistakes.

You start to connect learning, political insight, inputs, and the creation of community. This is something most people say at the end of their course, that they’ve learned German without it being a painful experience. Most of the things that we do create this idea of solidarity, this idea of sharing skills and collectively creating knowledge and making it accessible for most people.

DF: Again, knowledge is not something that people have, knowledge is something that you create. This is the crucial point to understand that creation is a process which includes making mistakes. And creation is a process of making things. But these products don’t belong to one person, rather they are collective. Property does not disappear, but we get mixed property between the individual and the collective. For me, this is very important to break this privatization of knowledge.

AP: This process, of course, is a challenge for everyone. It’s important to have this commitment in order to accept the challenge, and to admit that we don’t have every answer and that this too opens up possibilities. There is also the possibility that the process doesn’t work. It is an open process, not a closed one, and like every open process there is a potential of failure.

How do you adapt this to everyone? Migrants to Germany have different experiences, different histories of migration, and different ways of being and working in Germany. How do you bring this together and include all of these different experiences in the process of education?

DF: Of course, we try to adapt the experience to the needs of the students and teachers. But this is not an individualized process of education. We try to create a common experience, a common understanding of education, taking into account the needs not as individuals, but as the experience of a collective process. Let me give an example. Say a student asks for an individual teacher. It’s not going to happen, because do not give individual classes. But if there are 15 students and 10 are saying they need a more individualized experience, than we try to create solutions for that. But it should be debated and discussed, with collective answer rather than an individual one.

I explain that because, when we talk about experiences of migration, it’s very important that we can identify the things in common, but also the differences. Our process has three phases. The first phase is before we meet the students. First, we create an ideal subject (based on our experiences as migrants and militants) of what migrants are and need, knowing that at the end this is not real. It is only a way of framing the program and the course.

After that comes the phase of having the course and working with real students. Because we base our program on this ideal migrant, we know we need to make changes throughout the classes. For example once we thought that one of the most important things for migrants is how to deal with visas. During the classes, no one wanted to talk about that. Most of the students wanted to talk about housing, identity and climate justice.

And at the end of the course, we make an evaluation of these processes. Of course, that is a process that has its own risks. We want to work with migrants that come from the periphery or the semi-periphery. But in this course, we now have a lot of people from the United States and other countries of the North. We see that as a challenge that we need to address. Because our idea was working with people that were racialized, or in precarious work.

I think that migration has the potential to be this common ground, as well as the need to talk about politics. Also it’s very important to create this common ground, this idea of being open to sharing and of being open to learn in a different way, this political and pedagogical empathy. I think that is the common ground more than migration.

AP: Migration could be the way to be more organized, or it could be the first step to achieve assimilation. We fight against that. That is something important, because not all migrants are leftists and want to transform reality. A lot of migrants want to be assimilated, they want to be German. That is why we think that migration could be a tool to organize people, but also we need different aspects, we need to bring these aspects into the mix in order to have a leftist course, with students who want to transform reality. It’s not that all the people are going to be active in politics now, they’re not all are going to be deputies of the Left Party, but we aim to create a common ground and ideological ideas to share different perspectives. Through this, and through collective teaching and thinking, we can transform reality. That is the common ground at the end, not just migration.

The center has been active for a year, and now you have a fundraiser until November 7th. So what are your plans for the future? Where do you see the center going?

AP: Yes, we have a crowdfunding campaign at the moment, and this comes from the difficulties we have to self-finance. Projects like these, built both by and for the migrant community, are very difficult to finance. It is also very difficult to explain what we are doing precisely. That is why we need financial resources to strengthen our structures, to pay our teachers, and to rent our space. We are a self-administered project, and that is naturally a challenge. This crowdfunding runs until the second week in November.

The projects for the future are varied. But the first and most important is that we need a better structure. We need more people in our coordination group, but also in our pedagogical team and for communication. We cannot work precariously ourselves. We also want to expand our educational spaces for the community, as well as expanding our cooperations.

And we have begun a beautiful and important project to systematize our experience. Educación popular also has the goal of reflecting, at some point, on what we have done and how we can do better. This is also to identify possibilities: what they are, how our goals have changed, and why. We must reflect on the whole process, and for this we need a systematization. This takes a lot of hours from people. This is important not only for us and to improve our own work, but also for other initiatives. We would like other people in this country to have the chance to create similar centers, and for our experiences to serve as an inspiration for other projects.

DF: Popular education is a process that is alive. And I think that throughout this connection and these new experiences, new processes, this idea of popular education could be enrichened and strengthened not just here but in the Americas, too. That is why we wanted to do this text about methodology and political perspective based on our experience, to spread and expand the tradition of educación popular.

And next week we are going to present an investigation about extractivism, crisis, and debt and how these processes in Latin America affect migration or create new ways of understanding migration. This was a collaboration with an NGO called Movement Hub. We are very proud of creating more academic or theoretical knowledge. We are not afraid of doing that because we approach this from our experiences as activists and militants.

Support the fundraiser for the Bildungszentrum Lohana Berkins here.

Bildungszentrum Lohana Berkins is organising a series of meetings in Spanish in the first half of November.

WE TOLD YOU SO!

A commission of experts proves Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen right


15/07/2023

Unfortunately, that alone won’t be able to wrest 243,000 apartments from for-profit companies.

On 28 June 2023, when the experts’ report was made public, I heard no champagne corks popping in my neighborhood, despite the large number of activists who live there. Since 2019, 3,000 individuals citywide have campaigned against housing corporations that neglect their properties but pay investors good dividends. The Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen (DWE) initiative developed from many failed attempts to get a grip on Berlin’s skyrocketing rents. I’ve written about this in earlier articles.

In the last two years, it felt as if little was happening given the pandemic restrictions and election rerun needed after incredibly poor planning in 2021 had resulted in insufficient ballots, late poll openings, and voters being turned away. In late April this year the new conservative mayor, Kai Wegner (CDU) took office. Since then, Berlin politics seem to have taken a sharp right-wing turn, especially regarding transport and climate policies despite our laws—and common sense. Last week was the planet’s hottest. Ever.

Negative trends in housing have not slacked during this period: Although prices for apartments have slumped, construction, including affordable housing, has been slowed due to supply chain problems, building costs, and higher interest rates. Rents have continued to rise and tenants are threatened by the acceleration of several disadvantageous practices. I touch on these concerns in this article but concentrate on three initiatives related to Reichenberger Kiez in Kreuzberg, where I’ve lived for nearly 19 years: DWE, “Initiative Hermannplatz,” and “No Hype No Hide.”

For starters, the terms used by Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen. DWE used the German word for “expropriate” to great effect: politicians violently reacted to the mere thought and a lot of ink was spilled. Just saying the word was enough to cause an otherwise calm dinner partner to jump up and shriek their rejection. (That happened to me.) But once the initiative had gained momentum and the name was established, discussion turned to the “socializing” (Vergesellschaftung) foreseen in Art. 15 of Germany’s Basic Law. Sebastian Engelbrecht of Deutschland Radio explained the distinction: socialization applies to whole branches of industry, as per DWE, whereas expropriation refers to confiscation for specific projects, such as a farmer’s field for a highway (which must be reimbursed at market prices, a nonstarter for DWE).

To recap

On the evening of 26 September 2021, learning that one million Berliners had voted for the referendum—59.1 percent of eligible voters [1 ]—DWE activists did open lots of champagne bottles! With the DWE cheerleaders, we partied well into the night.

But true to her party’s ongoing support for the construction industry (which over decades has involved real sleaze), the new Social Democratic Party (SPD) Mayor Franziska Giffey rejected DWE’s approach. To buy time, the new SPD-Green-Left Party governing coalition proposed a 13-member “commission of experts” to study the referendum’s legality and feasibility.

In fact, a referendum represents the peoples’ will, which is to be followed. But acknowledging DWE’s novel approach and the years needed for a referendum to reach the ballot, the campaign had decided to not present a law. Instead, the DWE referendum called on the government to write one.

After lots of discussion, DWE agreed to “accompany” the commission, and used its right to name three people who were not part of its campaign to the commission: a human geographer and urban researcher, and two constitutional experts.

The commission worked for over a year. But the minutes were not always published, and Berlin’s lack of a land registry (Kataster) meant that the experts had no hard data on the quantity, value, or ownership of city real estate. In late June, the commission’s 156-page report was presented to Berlin’s current mayor, who begrudgingly accepted it, repeating his skepticism for the umpteenth time.

What’s in the report???

According to DWE’s summary for journalists, the report refutes virtually all the reservations about DWE. With respect to one of its most basic questions, the experts unanimously agreed that Berlin has the competency “to legally regulate a socialization of real estate holdings of large housing companies located in Berlin.” That is, DWE is in line with Art. 15 of the Basic Law. This issue was especially critical after Germany’s constitutional court ruled in April 2021 that Berlin lacked the authority to institute a rent cap­—a decision that immediately swelled the ranks of DWE supporters and contributed to the referendum’s success.

It’s worth looking at specific points.

The majority of the commission holds socialization à la DWE to be “proportional.”

The report says that socialization is a suitable approach to reduce those rents and to at least stabilize other rents throughout the city. In addition, Berlin would benefit from fewer people needing financial assistance to pay the rent.

Flatly rejecting the mantra “Bauen! Bauen! Bauen! (Build! Build! Build!)” and protests that socialization “does not create a single new apartment,” the commission wrote that “ramping up new construction is not an alternative for securing the permanent supply of affordable housing.” There’s no way around it: socialization is necessary.

As for the price tag, “Assessment can be based on the income from the non-profit management [2] envisaged by the project.” Exactly what DWE has been saying all along! Its “fair rent model” bases compensation on moderate rents—way below the €36 billion bandied about by naysayers.

Furthermore, considering the level of compensation, the commission decided that in ensuring affordable housing, tenant interests outweigh the profit-making interests of housing corporations. Socialization can be financed through promissory bills repaid by rental income. Berlin can decide what’s affordable and need not go into debt compensating the current owners. Four members opined that compensation should not be significantly below market value. But it need not be at the same level.

The commission agreed that the 3,000-apartment threshold per company is legally permissible “in view of the efficiency of such an approach in developing the required total portfolio.” That does not represent “unequal treatment,” and excluding coops, city-owned and non-profit housing enterprises is justified because they benefit the public.

Finally, most commission members are of the opinion that socialization can be practiced for all holdings of housing companies listed on the stock exchange, including private equity funds. Even more companies than DWE had envisioned. The initiative is jubilant: “This will allow us to capture more companies than expected, including private equity funds. We can tackle the root of the problem: housing speculation!”

New DWE posters proclaim its success: “Expropriation is doable. No more excuses!”

Now what?

It’s time to write the law!

Unfortunately, the CDU is instead planning a “framework law” which would not come into force for two years—because the conservatives want time to legally challenge their own law. However, in late May, the SPD base criticized the CDU’s maneuver. Perhaps that’s what led to the SPD senator for urban development, housing, and construction, Christian Gaebler, announcing on local TV that a socialization law would be developed in parallel with the framework law. (But the very next day, he said the opposite to Berlin’s parliament.)

This points to a fundamental problem: the expert commission was staffed by the government that was voted out in February! The CDU had no say in it: unsurprisingly, the dissenting minority voices are conservatives.

So what should we do? Lobby our elected representatives? DWE is concerned that they could draft a law—which would take a few years to be written and debated—that is designed to be rejected by the constitutional court.

The safer approach would be to stage a second referendum, this time with a specific law. (Put on your walking boots!)

DWE is discussing the next steps. It’s July and hot as hell, and schools, families, and the city government are on vacation. Over the summer, we’ve got to explain to Berliners what the report means. DWE should also draw attention to the danger that, as a pacification measure, the city could buy back more apartments for the city housing companies—at today’s astronomical prices. That would only further burden the city and reward speculation. We’ve been there and done that.

While waiting for the commission’s report, DWE produced podcasts, organized events, and published background information, while Kiezteams continued to meet and also addressed local concerns, including the end of the period in which private developers have to offer apartments at affordable rents: for up to 30 years. After that, they can charge market rents. Berlin entered this millennium with 430,000 subsidized apartments; in 2021, it had just 142,343 left. By 2025, subsidies will end for more than 50,000 additional apartments, and with prospective tenants no longer having to prove they need assistance, landlords will be incentivized to get rid of the old ones. Urban sociologist Andrej Holm calls this “publicly financed gentrification.”

But Hamburg recently passed a law forcing new social housing to offer affordable rents for 100 years. Anything Hamburg can do, Berlin can, too!

Another problem confronting many tenants whose apartments have been sold are claims of “Eigenbedarf” (personal need). Fortunately, Berlin’s law preventing a new owner from claiming to need their property for a period of 10 years was extended last month. However, according to Sebastian Bartels of the Berliner Mieterverein (BMV), the huge increase in such claims indicates the need for extra protection, including a total prohibition on Eigenbedarf in areas requiring special efforts to protect the current population mix (Milieuschutz), along with restrictions related to the length of a tenant’s lease and age.

In the past, the city has saved entire buildings in protected areas by pre-emptively purchasing those whose sales would likely cause tenants to be driven out. But in November 2021, Berlin’s Vorkaufsrecht, the tenant movement’s most powerful tool, was declared unlawful. The Liberals (FDP)—the same party that refuses to consider introducing a speed limit on highways to lower CO2 emissions—are stalling new legislation.

According to Katrin Schmidberger (Green Party speaker on Berlin’s housing, rents and budget policy), in an interview of 4 July in ND, the current CDU-SPD government rejects building more affordable housing within the S-Bahn ring. It’s also preventing districts from freely disposing of housing subsidies to protect tenants. In addition, districts that contest specific construction projects promoted by the CDU-SPD will lose authority over them—the same way jurisdiction for Karstadt on Hermannplatz [3] was transferred from Kreuzberg’s BVV (district parliament) to Berlin’s Senat (city government).

What IS happening with the plan to raze the department store on Hermannplatz and replace it with a version of the mammoth building from 1929?

There’s very little information available! It’s possible that the Signa Group—a holding with three separate companies, one of which owns Galeria—of Austrian billionaire René Benko (who has been convicted of corruption and accused of bribery, tax evasion, and illegal donations) is in financial trouble. Last October, Signa wanted another €234 million in state aid for Galeria (after getting €680 million in the last three years), before announcing—barely six months later—that almost half its stores would be closed within the year. With visions of deserted city centers (where Benko’s stores occupy prime locations) and 17,000 new jobless employees, the government caved in to his demands. Oddly enough, his creditors renounced around €2 billion, department store workers bit the bullet—and Signa paid out €450 million in dividends. [4]  This month, the European Central Bank is investigating all the banks doing business with Signa.

Some commentators consider that the Signa Group is too big to fail (it’s definitely much too convoluted to explain here!), while insiders assume that financial woes explain why Signa recently sold its unfinished 134m-high building and adjacent department store on Alexanderplatz. That was one of the three prestige projects—on Hermannplatz, Alexanderplatz, and Kurfürstendamm—that Signa was given the right to build in exchange for ensuring jobs in four Berlin department stores in a Letter of Intent (LoI) of August 2020. Not that the two are related. Incredibly, calls for the government to halt all collaboration with Signa because the corporation broke its word by closing local stores fall on deaf ears. Hunh?

Meanwhile, on Hermannplatz

Back to my neighborhood and the campaign regarding the future of the department store that Benko owns on Hermannplatz. This spring, citizens were invited to comment on the building plans—in an online, non-binding, “participation” farce. The energetic efforts of Initiative Hermannplatz to collect 7,000 signatures protesting Signa’s plans, along with rallies, demonstrations, and even a “presence” on Hermannplatz in the form of a small kiosk, have merely succeeded… in stalling the project.

To counteract widespread rejection of the plans by its low-income neighbors with mostly immigrant backgrounds, Signa mounted an extravagant social media campaign and nostalgic exhibit about the original building, and opened “Dialog Hermannplatz” with a café and bike route through the block. A banner appeared on Galeria’s façade: Nicht ohne Euch (“Not without You” in informal German) while nearby tenants were forced to remove their critical banners under threat of immediate expulsion. In response to the numerous objections, from sketches showing only white people enjoying themselves to the environmental damage caused by demolitions and the excessive use of concrete, Signa has repeatedly announced modifications and published pretty new plans. But it has never explained its real intentions.

In a recent event about the class struggle on Hermannplatz presented by the Berliner MieterGemeinschaft, Niloufar Tajeri, architect and prime mover of the Hermannplatz initiative, said that the Ver.di union representing Galeria workers continues to cling to the LoI, hoping against hope that it really will protect their jobs. But she pointed out that employees in other German cities have self-organized to save their stores and is confident that when push comes to shove, employees at Hermannplatz will also become active. She explained how the project threatens her neighborhood, describing it as not just about building and environmental concerns, but a plan with negative social ramifications as well.

Tajeri also cited two practical issues. The first is that the project conflicts with historical preservation regulations (pertaining to just a small part of the current building). But preservation is open to interpretation, and with jurisdiction over such matters recently transferred to the city administration in what Left Party speaker for urban development Katalin Gennburg calls “deregulation for investors,” such objections are unlikely to affect the plans.

However, a second matter has been gaining attention since a high-rise project on Alexanderplatz caused part of the subway’s subterranean structure to collapse last October. The significant damage will continue to prevent the U2 line serving Prenzlauer Berg and Pankow for many months to come, aboveground construction has been halted, and other subway lines at the station, including the U5, may also be affected.

With respect to Hermannplatz, according to Tajeri, not only do two subway lines cross there, but also the tunnel for transporting broken cars to the BVG workshop.

Hype & Hide in Reichenberger Kiez

Closer to home, luxury housing projects in Reichenberger Kiez backyards have reached new magnitudes. Arguably, the neighborhood’s gentrification began in 2010 with CarLoft, an apartment building with an elevator that allows tenants to park their cars at the door. (I’ve already railed about how gentrification serves to suburbanize cities… Does it get any crasser?) Vigorous protest, including paint bombs and even stones, did not stop the project, although the owner later admitted that he’d had to lower his selling price. Recently, however, a 263 m2, four-room apartment at Reichenberger Str. 80 was advertised for €2.9 million. OMG.

More recently, Kiez residents were incited to act by the audacity of the latest luxury project, “Hype & Hide.” Buyers are promised it’ll be like living “in a private park, embedded in an inspiring neighborhood marked by authentic charm.” In fact, with most of the trees chopped down for the builders, between €690,000 and €2.5 million buys you a view of the rear of a modest 1970s apartment block, with a parking area lined by spindly and browning arborvitae shrubs, likely planted to offset the noble trees that were felled.

My attention was drawn to a poster showing the addresses of nine luxury projects in the neighborhood. I knew it was incomplete because once construction is finished, new housing is hidden from sight and protected by locked and surveilled doors. I can no longer locate the two built near me just a few years ago.

When the first permit to build behind the apartment houses at Reichenberg Straße 140–42 and Lausitzer Straße 11–15 was granted in March 2017, the tenants appealed to Kreuzberg’s parliament (BVV). Building councilor Florian Schmidt promised to contact the developer and arrange a meeting for all involved. The project was never realized. But gradually the metal workers’ collective was forced to move and their buildings were razed. For years, the space was strewn with rubble and refuse. In 2022, when a new building permit was given, the neighbors confronted the BVV about the lack of citizen involvement promised two years earlier. They wondered how “Hype & Hide” fulfills the district’s stated aim of unsealing the ground and making the district greener, and how it addresses Kreuzberg’s housing crisis. The answer: The plans meet building code requirements; no citizen participation is foreseen. The only possible action is to spoil the developer’s marketing efforts. (That’s in the official response!)

With that in mind, “No Hype & No Hide” organized a first neighborhood walking tour that kicked off with an activist in the guise of a sparrow mourning her degraded environment after the garden was bulldozed and numerous trees felled for a different luxury project. (In fact, the new 5-story luxury building—“in the middle of Kreuzberg, yet shielded from all the hubbub”—will deprive the activist’s apartment of any direct sunlight.) The 40 or so participants then moved on to CarLoft, a few blocks away, leafletting passersby and dancing to DWE protest songs. We ended the walk by hanging our banner and a funeral wreath with handwritten condolences on the Hype & Hide site fence, while the Lauratibor chorus [5] sang the Kiez anthem [my English adaptation]: “What elixir is more potent than money? What unites us? Let’s go into the streets and find the potion of resistance!”

Berlin lacks 47,000 affordable apartments. Urban densification measures, which is widely regarded, though not accepted, as inevitable, are paving over gardens and chopping down trees. But destroying our environment for luxury buildings does nothing to alleviate Berlin’s housing shortage.

Things will just heat up further. “Buy luxury, buy trouble!”

Last month, the new rent index (Mietspiegel) was published: since 2021, rents in Berlin have gone up by 5.4 percent. Unfortunately, the index is based on the rise in consumer prices and doesn’t take into account the loss in real wages. But without it, landlords would compare apartments and make assessments, which would probably be less favorable for tenants.

Don’t be surprised when your landlord sends you a letter soon. Do check the proposed increase carefully and contest whatever is illegal: rent hikes of more than 15 percent in three years are not allowed. According to a BMV survey, private owners overcharge the most. Your greatest contribution to Berlin could well be helping to control rents by not accepting illegal increases.

Im the midst of these depressing developments, I find some relief in learning that the inimitable Museum der Dinge (Museum of Things), which lost its lease when the complex at Oranienstraße 25 (also home to the neighborhood institutions of the nGbK, “one of Germany’s most important and largest art societies,” and the Kisch & Co. bookstore), has found temporary new digs at Leipzigerstraße 54. The museum is scheduled to close in early November and reopen in its new premises in April 2024. Eventually the museum will find a permanent home in a building that hasn’t yet gone up. Visit now!

Unlike my earlier articles, I wrote this feeling depressed and overwhelmed. Two years ago, everything was still in flux. Now it seems that everything but rents are stagnating. The only approach that I see capable of helping ensure Berlin’s future as a livable city is education. But don’t just learn and get involved in the issues that directly affect you (possible rent increases and the owner’s claim to need your apartment, Eigenbedarf [6]) and your neighborhood (which could be luxury-housing projects or social service providers being chased away by excessive rents), but also Berlin as a whole (DWE)!

One of the most encouraging developments of recent years is that environmental issues are being linked to housing. According to figures presented by Daniel Dieckmann of the very long and ongoing fight for Habersaathstraße 40–48 (in Mitte), Germany’s building and construction sector alone consumes 90 percent of raw materials, produces 40 percent of CO2 emissions and 55 percent of the waste. Students at the University of Kassel have written an open letter to the Federal Minister for Housing, Urban Development, and Building, demanding a moratorium on demolitions and new construction so that Germany can meet its climate targets, and have even greater ambitions. DWE, Initiative Hermannplatz, and No Hype No Hide all emphasize climate concerns. Think about your part.

Well-informed Berliners will make a difference—or die trying. Take the potion of resistance into the streets.

We told you so! (By the way, my dinner partner came around to supporting DWE—even before we won.😉)

© Nancy du Plessis 2023

Footnotes

1 Had non-German residents been able to vote, the figure would have been much higher. Voting restrictions were addressed in the English-language “Right to the City” campaign.

2 DWE’s booklet (“Gemeingut Wohnen”) discussing the public service company (Anstalt öffentlichen Rechts, AöR) to manage the socialized apartments is available for free download (in German)

3 Karstadt was merged with Kaufhaus to become Galeria, the last big chain of German department stores.

4 Btw, in 2019, Benko bought Manhattan’s Chrysler Building: he likes Art Deco.

5 Reichenberger Kiez’s fantastic protest opera

6 For more information about Eigenbedarf, a pamphlet in German from the Mieter:innengewerkschaft Berlin (Berlin Tenants’ Union) is now online.