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No to the Nakba Demo Bans, End Germany’s Criminalisation of Palestinian Existence

Statement by the European Legal Support Centre


20/05/2023

In another act of state repression, the Berlin police banned all events commemorating 75 years of ongoing Nakba. Following the demonstration ban from 2022, the police disrupted a Palestinian cultural event on 13 May in Neukölln, banning any political public speech, attempting to stop the distribution of books on Palestine on a discretionary basis, and preventing attendees from dancing the traditional Dabka, claiming that it was a form of “political expression”. One of the banned speeches was to be delivered by a member of the ELSC and a partner scholar, Anna Younes (PhD), with the purpose of informing people on their legal rights. Other events that were banned were scheduled for 13, 14 and 20 May 2023: these demonstrations wanted to demand justice for the Palestinian people by remembering the displacement and ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the course of the founding of the state of Israel. At least 11 demonstrations on the Nakba have been banned in Berlin since April 2022.

The justification for the bans is informed by a systematic pattern of anti-Palestinian racism criminalising solidarity with the Palestinian cause for freedom and return, as well as expressions of Palestinian identity. May 2022 already saw immense state repression against Palestinians and their supporters, when the Berlin police preventively banned five registered events commemorating 74 years of ongoing Nakba and honouring Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was murdered by Israeli Occupation Forces while reporting on their invasion of Jenin refugee camp. When individuals peacefully took to the streets to express their solidarity, the Berlin police unleashed a campaign of harassment arresting and beating activists for wearing the Palestinian scarf known as the Kuffiyeh or for being dressed in the colours of the Palestinian flag.

These anti-democratic measures are enacted as a form of collective punishment directed at anything visibly Palestinian, extending to any expression of collective memory and rights advocacy as seen through the recent bans of demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners in Berlin and beyond. Palestinians in exile commemorating their tragedy, and more generally Arab participants in the demonstrations are dehumanised and framed in the colonial tradition as ”highly emotionalised men” who would “glorify violence” and are “difficult to control”. Neukölln is placed under general suspicion and depicted as a harbour of violence, based on the racist criminalisation of its predominantly migrant, particularly Arab population. The allegations and language used in the prohibition orders, both in 2022 and in 2023, express blatant racism and, in particular, constitute Anti-Palestinian racism – a form of anti-Arab racism that aims to silence, exclude, erase, stereotype, or defame Palestinians and their narratives – towards the Palestinian community in Germany.

Attacks against the Palestine solidarity movement are ever-growing as Germany upholds its unconditional support for the Israeli occupation and continues to whitewash crimes of apartheid and settler violence. The Berlin government’s actions around Nakba Day reflect Germany’s complicity in the continuing oppression of the Palestinian people, and further constitute a wider assault on the fundamental rights of free speech and assembly. This must be read as a dangerous precedent for further arbitrary curtailments of basic democratic rights.

These bans are an attack on all of us. The ELSC stands in solidarity with all Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause. As further Palestine solidarity events are planned in the coming days in Berlin, we call on all stakeholders to join us in demanding the protection of the most fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly, and to support the campaign launched in defence of these rights for Palestinians and their supporters in Germany.

If you, your group, organisation or otherwise have been intimidated, slandered, repressed, censored or banned from speaking out or participating in Palestine advocacy, or if you have questions about your rights, please reach out to us and complete the incident form.

This statement first appeared on the ELSC website. Reproduced with permission

Note that although today’s Nakba Commempration Demo has been banned, the solidarity rally organised by the Jüdische Stimme is still going ahead. Please come to Oranienplatz at 3pm to show your solidarity against state bans

“I wanted to say to Germany that there is a shared history here, but you’re not seeing it”

Interview with Palestinian Artists Rasha Al Jundi and Michael Jabareen about their project “Cacti: A Visual Protest Against the Silencing of (pro) Palestinian Voices in Germany”


19/05/2023

Hi Rasha, could you start just by introducing yourself?

Rasha (R-AJ): My name is Rasha Al-Jundi. I am Palestinian, who was born in Jordan but grew up in the UAE. I’m a second generation exile. My mother is from 1948 Palestine, my father is from a village outside Hebron.

I moved to Lebanon to study, and then worked in many different contexts as a humanitarian/development worker. But I recently decided to veer towards what I like to do, which is visual storytelling. I’m now appropriating multimedia stuff, including audio and archival images, in an attempt to find non-linear ways of telling stories.

I live in Nairobi, Kenya, but I shuttle between there and Germany because I have a German partner.

Today, we’re mainly talking about the multimedia project Cacti that combines photography with text and illustrations. What is the importance to you of the cactus?

R-AJ: Our relationship to the land goes far beyond the Israeli occupation which likes to greenwash and say that there were no trees and no people when Israel was formed – that it was a desert. The cacti and other trees in Palestine have always been there. We’ve traditionally used cacti to act as a natural fence around our houses.

Today they symbolize Palestine and its depopulated villages. If you google any current image of a depopulated village, you will find a lot of cacti growing there. They’re easy to grow, and they propagate very quickly. They can’t stop the tide.

And they’re the color of the Palestinian flag.

R-AJ: Of course, with their flowers. So the cactus is a very strong part of our culture. A lot of Palestinian artists also use cacti in their art, to symbolize Palestine or the forced expulsion.

There are a lot of walls in your photos, implying a comparison between the Berlin wall and the wall separating the West Bank from 1948 Palestine. What’s the significance of this?

R-AJ: The whole idea started when I met Michael. He told me that his family has been separated completely because of the wall. His father only found other family members when social media arrived. They didn’t know each other physically. Meeting someone in real life is also life-changing for me. Because I am a Palestinian but have never been there – I’m an exile.

Then we were talking about the Nakba ban last year, and reading about the silencing of Palestine, which is very systematic in Germany, especially over the last decade. It increased slowly and climaxed last year in Berlin.

I went away over Christmas and New Year last year, and contemplated what I’d read and heard, and decided to use the symbols that Berlin uses very well to commemorate its own history of separation, occupation, and colonialism on its own soil, to say that we are here.

I wanted to say to Germany that there is a shared history here, but you’re not seeing it. And I expect you to understand more than anybody else in Europe what is going on here, but you don’t. Instead, you use the Holocaust to explain your unlimited support to Israel. You don’t see that the wall represents occupation.

It is interesting that you’re talking about separation, because there is a very strong narrative in Germany that there was a terrible period of 40 years, where families were separated and people in the West and East were divided. This is rightly seen as something which was traumatic, and yet there is no comprehension that this has been going on for Palestinians for even longer.

R-AJ: Exactly. Let me tell a small anecdote. A friend’s parents visited her here in Berlin, and when they saw the wall they were laughing at its size. They said “this is a child of our wall”.

Michael told me how offended he felt when he went to one of the monuments just across from Checkpoint Charlie. There is a sign in three different languages saying “imagine a wall separating you”. But this is what Palestinians still experience every day. You don’t have to imagine it in history – it’s happening in Palestine. Yet Germany blindly supports Israel, not even recognizing the illegal settlements.

Berlin is a very interesting city. They do a very good job in commemorating historical events, whether it’s the wall, or the Holocaust, or other things that this city has witnessed and experienced. It was flattened in the Second World War. It’s very well documented, whether in museums or in outdoor spaces. I find that really good for visitors to understand where they are.

I just wanted to ask, when will we get the chance to commemorate our dead and our history?

Let’s talk about the Holocaust. There’s a photo in your exhibition of people going through the Holocaust Memorial wearing keffiyehs. When I saw the photo, I thought two things. Firstly, how moving it is. Secondly, that it will provoke a backlash.

R-AJ: It provoked a reaction – both positive and negative. The positive ones all came from people who oppose the instrumentalization of the Holocaust because they have family members who were killed in the Holocaust in different parts of Europe. They think that their history is being employed now to suppress Palestinian voices and to support oppression and colonization.

The negative comments were that it’s insensitive to use the Holocaust memorial site. A very basic and shallow argument. My intention was to provoke a debate. I view a lot of flat and boring artworks out there all the time. I didn’t want to be part of that.

Given the level of industrial genocide involved in the Holocaust, do you think it’s legitimate to compare what’s happened to the Palestinians to the Holocaust?

R-AJ: I don’t know if I was comparing as much as I was drawing joint histories of forced dehumanization. Germans fail to link their history of colonization of Africa to the Holocaust. This dehumanization of people didn’t stop or start with the Holocaust, which is what they fail to see.

We Palestinians are being dehumanized by a colonial power, supported by other colonial powers. I  show the shared history rather than compare what is happening on the ground. On the other hand, Ilan Pappé recently said that Palestinians are facing an incremental genocide.

Fortunately, the world did not agree with the Holocaust. But unfortunately, they’re not seeing that the Palestinians are facing this on a daily basis. Just last night, we lost 13 people in Gaza. Every day there are two guys here, five people here in the West Bank. I feel like the world either needs a big bomb or a big concentration camp to draw its attention or it doesn’t see anything.

There is a call for action here. You cannot just say we don’t accept the Holocaust, because it was so industrial and huge – which it was – but we accept what’s still going on with the Palestinians.

As someone who has spent most of your time outside Germany, how visible have the German Nakba and demonstration bans been from the outside?

R-AJ: It’s very visible. Even before coming to Berlin last November, I already read about it. It was all over the international news and mainstream media. In one of the images in the project, we actually have two tourists posing with us. They’re from Greece, they live in the UK, and they wanted to join. They had read about the ban, and said they think it is very unjust.

My brother who lives in the UK, another brother and sister in Canada, they all heard about it. And they were all asking me what’s going on. People in Jordan asked me if I would be put in jail for wearing the keffiyeh.

Is the discussion of Palestine different in Germany?

R-AJ: Many Germans choose to keep their heads in the sand. We’re talking about educated urban people, not some village in Bavaria. A majority of people who I speak to, who say “it’s really not my fight”, or “I’m so sorry, this is happening”, as if I tripped and fell on my leg.

I don’t find a lot of people who are keen on learning and reading and asking “what can I do about this?” We do have a German photographer ally, who’s helping us print the images at a discounted rate, and there are a lot of German activists who are supporters of our struggle. But the majority just wants to put their heads in the sand and say: “look, it’s too complicated”. 

Even if you explain everything very slowly and give context, they still lack understanding (or choose not to understand perhaps). It’s the Holocaust education and the guilt. They see the Holocaust as an isolated case, and just a German thing. The guilt is either bottled up or comes out in completely different and really weird ways.

Have you sensed any change in the 12 years you’ve been in contact with Germany?

R-AJ: I estimate that it’s pretty much the same. From my side, the change has been in me because I’ve got more involved with Germany rather than just working as an activist in the Middle East within my comfort zone.

This apolitical thing about Germans really irks me. They choose issues like climate change or Ukraine which are “neutral”. They choose feminist issues around Iran – forcing women to wear the headscarf but not India where women face oppression and aggression every day because they’re Muslim. They’re picking and choosing the things which agree with their Western mindset.

Michael has just joined us. Could you say who you are?

Michael Jabareen (MJ): I am just a Palestinian. Someone who lived in Palestine for 27 years before coming to Germany. I’ve been involved in the field of art and design, starting with art activism in Palestine. I’ve become involved with intersectional struggles.

Our side is having some small victories. I’ve come to this interview from the court case of a Palestinian artist who was arrested on Nakba Day last year, but the judge ruled that she does not have to pay her fine. Resistance is having an effect.

MJ: From what I saw from the court cases, it was very clear from police testimonies that the police officers themselves had no clear idea of what exactly is banned. Whenever the judge or the lawyer asks the police witness about the exact order that they got, they simply say that we just had an order to check if there is any Palestinian gathering, and to stop it.

When they were asked about how they would identify people who are gathered for a Palestinian assembly, they say that just wearing a scarf or anything related to the Nakba is enough. And of course, there were a lot of people who got arrested without having these symbols. It was very clear that people were kettled and arrested based on racial profiling. 

It’s not a good look for a German policeman to say in court: “I didn’t know what was happening. I was just obeying orders.”

R-AJ: There’s also this movement since Documenta last year. There is this way of looking at the arts and trying to scrutinize how art is being used for political reasons. It’s very draconian. There are a lot of judgements and pre-judgements sometimes in Germany without even looking at the content.

Do you have any last words?

MJ: I had a conversation with one of the policemen who was taking people to the police cars. I was saying that people are being arrested for doing nothing wrong. You are arresting people just for being Palestinian and presenting themselves visually. And one of the policemen said: “I know that arresting people is wrong, but these are the orders”. It is not that different from the past, just putting it under the cover of so-called democracy.

Tomorrow’s demonstration by Nakba75 has been banned by the Berlin police. A full programme is still taking place near Köpenicker Straße 40. Full details here.. The rally of the Jüdische Stimme has not been banned (yet). Please come to Oranienplatz at 3pm on Saturday, 20th May to show that you will not accept such repression.

Gallery – Cacti: A Visual Protest Against the Silencing of Palestinian Voices in Germany

 

Some first thoughts about the 2023 Turkish elections

Erdoğan did not win, but he did not lose either. Memet Uludag shares their thoughts on a disappointing night for the Left in Turkey’s 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections.


16/05/2023

The election results at a glance

Erdoğan has been in power since 2002. During his time in power, his party won numerous local/national/presidential elections as well as multiple referenda. In the 2023 election however, he didn’t win the presidential race. There will be a second round on May 28 between him (49.35%) and the opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu (44.98%). Nevertheless, he didn’t lose either.

The unofficial parliamentary results suggest an unsatisfactory result for the opposition. Led by Erdoğan’s, the Peoples Alliance got 49.32% of the vote and 322 seats (Erdoğan’s AKP: 35.40% – 266 MPs; Far-Right MHP: 10.06% – 51 MPs; Other right-wing parties: 3.85% – 5 MPs) compare to the opposition Nation’s Alliance’s 35.21% of the vote and 212 seats (Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP: 25.97% – 168 MPs; Far-Right İYİ: 9.84% – 44 MPs) and the Labour and Freedom Alliance who got 10.47% of the vote and 66 seats (Kurdish led HDP (or YSP): 8.77% – 62 MPs; Left-wing TİP: 1.70% – 4 MPs).

With nearly 50% AKP and their allies are well ahead of the rest and command majority in the parliament. The far right MHP have also increase their vote. The Kemalist/nationalist CHP are yet again stuck around 25%. For the past 20 years, it seems, they can’t go above this figure. The Kurdish HDP have performed below expectations.

So what happened and why?

How was there no defeat for AKP? With nearly 90% voter turnout it’s not voters apathy. There has been a serious economic crisis, rising cost of living and inflation. The sitting government has badly managed the earthquake disaster and floods and shown increasingly more authoritarian rule. Yet, they still perform above expectations at the polling booth.

There is huge disappointment even depression among Kılıçdaroğlu supporters. I am disappointed. Not because the opposition didn’t win but Erdoğan and his party didn’t lose. And the project of socialism has made little or no gain compared to rising far-right, nationalist, reactionary forces.

Some will say – as they did after many elections before – that people are stupid and vote like sheep. That would be a typical Kemalist (modernization philosophy of the transition era between Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey) response. As before, this will prove their snobbery towards the working class and their inability to admit their mistakes and the failures of their politics. Erdoğan and his party didn’t lose. Not because they were brilliant but because the politics of the opposition was/is not good.

It is clear. A big majority of the working class people don’t trust and have not forgotten or forgiven the Kemalist CHP and their past. Despite the efforts by Kılıçdaroğlu to present a reformed party (especially in relation to Muslim working classes) they are not winning support.

The opposition bloc promised social-political reforms but it is clear that people didn’t believe them. They did not run a left wing campaign. They ran a nationalist/populist one. They have targeted refugees. Their campaign included racism, nationalism and even militarism. The government has ‘better’ and stronger versions of these.

But the key message is clear. People don’t trust the Kemalists, even if they don’t like Erdogan’s rule and the AKP government, they don’t look up to the opposition.

What about the Left?

Were a serious, progressive, radical left that can relate to the working classes? Sorry, but nowhere really. The Communists didn’t even register with their tiny votes. Yet, again. No surprise here. Kemalist left and socialists are no different. The Turkish left continues to suffer from its historic co-option to and defence of Kemalism.

The Kurdish HDP have somewhat underperformed. Their claims to be a party of all-Turkey (not just party of Kurds and the Kurdish region) was always vague and never had political clarity about it. They have formed strange alliances with some of the marginal-sectarian-Stalinist and socialist groups which have gained them nothing. The HDP must clarify its political vision. There are lots of challenges and problems here.

Today, all seems very quiet

What happens now?

28 May is the second round for presidential race. The results are close enough. The race for the second round of the presidential election will be decided by a far right candidate eliminated with 5% vote. At a press conference he said he will support the candidate that will give him reassurances for tackling terrorism and deport refugees. Both candidates are engaging with him to win his support. He wants the Kurdish HDP to be criminalised. Guess what, he will get what he wants. And I will vote for whoever he doesn’t support.

Mourning the Nakba in public space

If we cannot return to Palestine and are forbidden from showing our grief in Germany, where should we go?


15/05/2023

Editor’s introduction: Nour Al-Abed was arrested on Nakba Day 2022 for taking part in a minute’s silence for her family and other Palestinian families. This is a translation of the statement that she made in court.

The judge ruled that last year’s ban of all demonstrations on Nakba Day was disproportionate and endangered the right to opinion and assembly. This meant that Nour does not have to pay her fine of €345. At the same time, the judge ruled that she had taken part in an illegal assembly. This means that she must pay legal costs of €827. You can support Nour and other victims of Germany’s repression of Palestinian right to expression here.

Today is the 75th anniversary of the Nakba. For this reason, we are publishing Nour’s statement which explains what the Nakba means to her and her family. Please support Palestinians’ right to grieve their losses, and to demonstrate without arbitrary bans from the German State.

This year’s demonstration to commemorate the Nakba (Saturday 20th May, 4pm, Hermannplatz) has not been banned yet.

The day of the Nakba, May 15th, is an important memorial day for me personally, since my family was expelled in 1948. Collective mourning is an important part of a democratic society. It is particularly important for the Palestinian community in Berlin/Germany to be able to hold collective mourning in public space. The Nakba, which took place between 1947-1949 during the establishment of the state of Israel, was an act of ethnic cleansing. Today, ethnic cleansing is legally classified as a war crime and a crime against humanity. It is included in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

At least 750,000 Palestinians were displaced, which was more than half of the Palestinian population at the time. Over 500 towns, villages and neighbourhoods were forcibly evacuated and mostly destroyed. Palestinian property was destroyed and expropriated. 11,000 Palestinians were killed. There were massacres, rapes and looting.

To this day, the Nakba means a strong traumatization of Palestinian society – locally and in the diaspora. Berlin has the largest Palestinian community in all Europe and accordingly the Palestinian family histories here are also directly shaped by the Nakba.

For decades we have been experiencing a progressive disenfranchisement of our families in Palestine- Despite a UN resolution we have not been able to return to Palestine. After the experience on May 15th, 2022, the question arises: if we cannot return, where should we go with our personal and collective grief? Where else can we go to meet other Palestinians to express our pain? Who owns the city and who owns the public space?

We were born and raised here in Germany. We are part of German society. This is precisely why it is important to us to have the right to collectively mourn our family history, which is characterized by flight, expulsion and expropriation.

My personal family history, like that of most Palestinian families in the diaspora, is one of flight and expulsion. My father was born in Beersheba in Palestine in 1941. In 1948 his family was expelled from the Naqab Desert to Gaza. The family fled a total of three times. This means that, my relatives are scattered in the Naqab Desert, Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan. To this day, a large part of the family lives in refugee camps under precarious conditions without rights. To date, neither my father, nor I, nor my daughter has the opportunity to return to Palestine.

The Nakba is not just a historic event for me. It is part of my story and also shapes my daughter’s life. I also have to explain to her today where her family comes from, how they were expelled and dispossessed and what this loss means for us as a family.

To this day we have had no right of return and no compensation. To this day there has been no acknowledgment of the injustice that happened. The Nakba Memorial Day on May 15 is and will remain a day of collective mourning for Palestinians locally and in the diaspora, and there must be a right to collective mourning rituals in public space – especially in Berlin, especially in Germany.

Nour Al-Abed is a pseudonym

Sisyphus and the Anmeldung – Migrants in Berlin

The Spiral of Migrant Housing Precarization in Berlin


14/05/2023

Migrants and royalty don’t usually have much in common, but Berlin is a special place. In Greek mythology, the gods condemned the monarch Sisyphus to push a massive boulder up a steep hillside. Just before reaching the top, however, the great stone rolled back down, and the accused had to start again from the beginning, over and over again for eternity. In the same absurd and frustrating way, most migrants who arrive in Berlin and cannot register their address [Anmeldung] are destined to face one rejection after another. Whether to open a bank account, get health insurance, sign an employment contract, obtain a tax ID or have an official address to receive mail – in Germany, an Anmeldung is required for almost every paperwork.

This bureaucratic obstacle is intensified by the most urgent social problem now: 700.000 housing units are needed in Germany [1]. Especially in Berlin, the increase in rents and the minimal supply of apartments in the city centre increasingly drive the inhabitants to the city’s outskirts. This isolates them from the main places of work, culture, health and sociability. Housing has ceased to be a social right aimed at satisfying a fundamental human need – to inhabit. It has become a commodity, something produced and sold on the market in order to generate profits.

The commodification of housing is the result of a relatively new historical form of capital accumulation, marked by the hegemony of finance and rent extraction over productive capital. This process of global financialization of the real estate market affects, of course, all people living under capitalism. It is tied to the transition from an industrial economy to a service economy,  as financial services belong to the tertiary sector of the economy.

But the violence of it, combined with the bureaucratic functioning of German institutions, affects migrants in Berlin particularly severely.  Fragile work visas, poor language skills and low-paid jobs in the cleaning, delivery and care sectors, make migrants the main victims of discrimination when applying for an apartment. They lack contacts and support networks to cope with this situation. Their only alternative is to pay exorbitant prices for tiny rooms that they can usually only sublet or rent temporarily. Under such precarious living conditions, it is practically impossible to register their address in public offices. This obstacle becomes a vicious circle of precariousness that consumes migrant life in Berlin. Without Anmeldung, new citizens remain excluded from the most essential urban goods and services and, above all, from the possibility of access to formal employment.

Anmeldung. Picture; Victoria Rodriguez

Berlin’s struggles for the Right to the City and the new role of Migrants

Berlin has a long tradition of urban protest. At various times since the 1970s, broad sectors of the population have organized to stop the demolition of old houses in working-class neighbourhoods [Altbauviertel]; to stop the construction of highways and large infrastructure projects; and to preserve the public character of spaces such as the Gleisdreick, Görlitzer Park and, the Tempelhofer Feld. One of the main protagonists in these struggles was the autonomist left sector. Together with students, unemployed and marginalized people, that organized a squatters’ movement [Hausbesetzerbewegung].  That came to control, during the 1980s, more than 200 houses in the Kreuzberg district and, after the fall of the wall, 130 in Friedrichshain. Women and non-conforming persons wrote an important but often forgotten chapter in this history of urban struggle. These sectors tried out various anti-patriarchal housing experiments based on cooperation, which took the form of legendary experiences such as Hexenhaus, Bülowstraße 55 and Tuntenhaus Forellenhof.

During the 1990s, the vast majority of Berlin’s self-managed housing projects were being legalized by the political power or evicted by the police. At the same time city government initiated an extensive and systematic sell-off of buildable lots and social housing to private investors. Between 1990 and 2017, a total of 21 million square meters of public land was sold, an area equal to the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district. Of 590,000 social housing units available at the beginning of that period, only about 270,000 remained in 2010. Crucially most of these 320,000 homes were not transferred to individual owners but to large real estate consortiums such as Deutsche Wohnen, Akelius & Co. and Vonovia. These consortia had one objective – the constant increase in the value of their shares, which deepened the processes of housing commodification and urban segregation.

As a result of social and political pressure exerted by the public and organizations representing the interests of tenants, the Berlin Senate enacted a law on February 24, 2020, setting a limit on the price of rent for certain types of housing [Mietendeckel]. The great concerns that this raised within the real estate lobby and the liberal party (FDP), the Christian Democrats (CDU) and the extreme right (AfD) were decisive for the legislation to be declared null and void by the German supreme court [Bundesverfassungsgericht] after approximately one year of being in force. However, in the context of the generalized crisis unleashed by Covid-19, the social discontent caused by the retroactive payment of the differences that had been received by the tenants benefiting from the Mietendeckel generated a favourable climate for the triumph of the campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen. Organized by various individual and collective participants, this initiative succeeded in passing on September 26, 2021, a referendum proposing the expropriation of 243.000 housing units in Berlin that are in the hands of the three large consortiums mentioned above. The bill consists of creating a public law institution [Anstalt des öffentlichen Rechts] to administer the properties and carry out a progressive compensation to the shareholders for an amount significantly lower than the market value of the properties. However, the real estate lobby and the aforementioned parliamentary alliance, in which the Social Democracy (SPD) is also an accomplice, have succeeded in blocking its implementation over the past two years.

A novel historical feature of the struggles for the right to the city was  the political participation of migrants. The conflicts over the occupations in Kreuzberg during the 1980s were led by German leftist groups. But the protests of the new century highlight, instead, the role that racialized families in neighbourhood initiatives such as Kotti & Co or the encampment at Oranienplatz and the occupation of the Gerhard-Hauptmann school building. These were carried out by migrants and illegalized people between 2012 and 2014. These experiences are meaningful because they confer visibility, for the first time, to different groups that had previously been marginalized from urban debates. It gave them the possibility to demand answers to the problems that afflict them: “Who has the right to live in the “centre” of the city? Those with more economic resources, those who have lived here for generations, or those who identify with a particular urban lifestyle? On what criteria are these habits and lifestyles defined? Is it possible to defend them against commodification? What does the exclusion from the right to vote mean and, how does that affect democracy in the city?”

Translating the Language of Struggle on the Social Production of Habitat

Ciudad Migrante is a space organized by the “Bloque Latinoamericano“, in which anyone can participate to reflect on  the real estate market and bureaucracy effects on migrant life in Berlin. Its main objective is self-organization and mutual aid, to develop collective solutions to the housing access problem. Over the past year, the participants of the initiative have developed communication tools to help migrants to better understand their rights as tenants and, above all, to defend them. In collaboration with artists and geographers, illustrations, videos, texts and maps were produced to provide critical guidance on navigating the process of finding an apartment in Berlin. In a practical and accessible way, these resources explain key mechanisms. These include how a room can be obtained;  the characteristics, rights and obligations of the different types of rental contracts; the common scams to watch out for; directions to resources to counter gender-based violence in the home; and many other indispensable informations that are required when arriving in an unfamiliar city.

But beyond their analytical and communicative function, Ciudad Migrante’s tools are conceived as instruments for training and political action to fight against the precariousness generated by bureaucracy and the real estate market. These resources express the concrete needs of the Latino population in Berlin. Their political inspirations are borrowed from Consejos Comunales de Venezuela, Federación Uruguaya de Cooperativas por la Ayuda Mutua (FUCVAM), Movimiento de Ocupantes e Inquilinos (MOI) of Argentina and Movimiento de Trabajadores sin Techo (MTST) of Brazil. Those are  just a few of the best-known experiences of urban struggle in the South America. Despite the vast diversity of political traditions, all these organizations resulted from the engagement of the people in the processes of social production of habitat. It is the common language of self-organization that the Bloque Latinoamericano chooses to articulate, with its own voice, before the State and the parliamentary parties in Berlin, terms and conditions of the migrant struggle for the right to the city.

Footnote

[1] This is the main conclusion of the study “Building and Living in the Crisis – Current Developments and Implications for Construction and Housing Markets“, presented on 12.01.2023. The analysis was commissioned by the Berlin “social housing” initiative [Soziales Wohnen], in which the IG BAU trade union, the tenants’ association [Mieterbund], a Caritas social unit and two builder’s associations are involved.

This article originally appeared in Spanish on the Bloque Latinoamericano website. Reproduced with permisson.