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Become More – Insights from the engine room of the campaign “Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen”

An interview with Judith and Leonie from the DWE Sammel-AG (working group for collecting support)


13/03/2022

The success of the Berlin initiative Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen (DWE) has made a furore world wide. Around 60% of Berliners who were eligible, voted at a referendum on 27th September 2021 for the socialisation of large real estate companies.

The path to this result was long and rocky. First, signatures had to be collected in two phases. In the first phase, 20,000 signatures were required. Many more were collected, namely 77,000. In the second phase – between  April and June 2021 – 175,000 signatures had to be collected. This requirement was clearly exceeded with 350,000 signatures.

An intensive election campaign followed with rallies, street actions and door-to-door chats leading to a brilliant referendum triumph. This was only possible because hundreds of activists were motivated to join. The strategy was planned by the Sammel-AG (a working group for collecting support). Hannes Strobel discussed this with activists Judith and Leonie.

Hannes: What is the Sammel-AG, and what is your function in the campaign?

Judith: The Sammel-AG is one of six working groups in the campaign. At the moment its core has ten to 15 people. The working groups are responsible for different tasks. For example, the Action-AG is responsible for rallies and demos, the Publicity-AG for press work and social media, and so on.

In the first phase of collection, the Sammel-AG was the group where most of the necessary signatures were collected. But in the second round, we needed many more signatures. You can’t manage that with 10 or 20 activists. It was clear that we needed a Berlin-wide structure to manage this.

Leonie: Our concept finally came together. We planned the collection in four pillars. Firstly collection at the workplace or University, however this was unfortunately impossible because of Corona. Secondly, the large coalition partners like tenants’ associations, trade unions and parties which contributed some of the signatures.

Thirdly the occasional activists who integrated well with the help of our App. Hundreds of collection activities were entered into the App, which you could  spontaneously join. And fourthly – the most important pillar – was our own structures. From the very beginning, we didn’t “just” want to collect signatures, but we wanted to politicise people and to build sustainable structures.

Hannes: What do the structures that you have built look like and how have you done it?

Response: We were clear that collecting signatures in the second phase must be decentralised. It was about managing to create contact points everywhere in Berlin, so that people could set off collecting independently. So we had the idea of so-called “Kiez teams”. This was a group which coordinates the collection of signatures locally and looks after the logistics; but it also considers how we can grow.

This now has at least such group in all 12 districts of Berlin, like Tempelhof-Schöneberg. In some districts like Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg there are two – one each for Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain.

Many people without much previous political experience took part in the Kiez teams. Some because they were personally affected – for example because their house had been sold. Others because the subject of rising rents was important to them. They gained their first political experiences in our structures. Many of the new people say that they have learned and picked up a lot. Working in the Kiez teams in solidarity helped that a lot of course.

Leonie: At the beginning there were real, physical meetings, where we could invite people throughout Berlin to a central place. The first was at the end of 2019, before Corona. At this meeting, we presented our guidelines. This was a  guide into what the first steps of organising a Kiez team could look like. After that, people came together by district and discussed together where collections in their district could make sense. And then Corona came.

Hannes: Did Corona affect the campaign? How did you deal with the situation?

Leonie: At first there was a complete standstill. Our concept was based on meeting people, that they could come together. That became possible. Finally, we reacted well to this Corona situation with digital meetings for new people.

The meetings happened in the evening online. They were well structured, diverse with short inputs from the campaign. Above all, these meetings were interactive. They went quickly into small groups where the people could discuss what matters. The meetings generated enthusiasm to join in, making people highly motivated.

The good social media work of the Publicity-AG has helped us. Nearly 80% of people came to the meeting for new people via Facebook, Instagram and Co. Seventeen people took part in the first meeting in June 2020; in September  40 people; in October 100, then 120, 150. Finally between 600 and 700 people flowed into the structures of DWE, all of whom had an initial motivating meeting. We then passed contact details of new people to the Kiez team or AG, where they wanted to work. The Kiez teams then contacted and integrated the interested people.

Judith: This is how the Kiez teams grew rapidly. Until then at most five or six people were active in the Kiez teams – this figure multiplied. This was really exciting. In Kiez teams like Neukölln, ten to 20 new people came every week. For many people it was totally motivating to get politically active where they live, in a district that they know.

Generally, the meetings took place only online. That has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, some people were surely left out, such as older people who don’t have so much technical affinity. This was hotly discussed at the meeting for Kiez teams. On the other hand, for many people, it offered a possibility to come. That saved us through the Corona winter.

Leonie: it was noticeable that the Kiez teams that advanced most quickly were those where individual cart-horses took the lead.

Hannes: What do you mean by “cart-horses”?

Leonie: Cart-horses are individual people who pro-actively organise Keiz teams and invited people to the first meeting. Some cart-horses came out of the Sammel-AG. The dynamic was to think about the concepts. The educational work took place in the Sammel-AG. Then people took this knowledge and used it to build a Kiez team.

Judith: They also took care of reconnecting with the campaign as a whole. That is they took on an important role of mediator. They were also integrated new people. A critical point was to bring new people to the point where they could take over tasks and responsibilities themselves. This was sometimes very difficult. This meant that the cart-horse needed a good overview and instinct who could take over which tasks. It was about emboldening people, for example, to moderate a plenum of the Kiez team, to empower them, and to enable people to gain experience.

Hannes: that sounds as if many of the individual people were there by chance. Is that correct?

Leonie. No. We took a very strategic approach. At the beginning, collecting signatures and the corresponding structures were mocked a little by some in the campaign. It was viewed as something that had to be done but wasn’t so important politically, it was just a support service. This meant that we could act quite freely as the Sammel-AG.

At first we produced “socio-spatial” potential analyses. We went through every single district with criteria like the number of renters, the stocks of the housing concerns that we wanted to expropriate, past election results, etc. We wrote a strategy plan which we implemented step by step.

For example, at first there was only one Kiez team for all the districts of Mitte, Wedding, Moabit, Tiergarten and Prenzlauer Berg. But our potential analysis clearly showed that it made sense to build a Kiez team in each of these districts. We decided to immediately set up a Kiez team for Mitte, one for Wedding and so on.

At first the people who were active in the original large Kiez team didn’t find it so cool that we’d taken this decision without them. But the decision stood, as it was clear that it made sense.

On top of this, different workshop formats were developed by the Sammel-AG which always had the aim of teaching multipliers with ‘Train-the-Trainer’ formats. For example, there were subjects like “how do I collect signatures well?” or workshops about argumentation.

Judith: That functioned really well. There was then a pool of activists in the Kiez teams who could carry out these workshops for new people. The expertise needed to give a workshop multiplied in the campaign.

It was always clear that there was no template that you could use in every Kiez team. Each district has its own demographic structure and idiosyncrasies. It worked a little different everywhere. We had a place in the Kiez team council where we could comprehensively swap experiences.

Hannes: What was the importance of the Kiez team council?

Judith: It became clear very quickly that we needed a place for networking and sharing experiences of the Kiez teams. The Kiez team council was consciously set up as a parallel structure to the DWE plenum, so that the Kiez teams could gain a greater weight and their own voice in the campaign. At first, parts of the campaign looked down on the Kiez teams.

The first Kiez team council met in December 2020. Each Kiez team sent two or three delegates. As Sammel-AG, we moderated the networking and exchange of knowledge between the Kiez teams, and introduced information from the campaign as a whole. For example, “how is the socialization-AG currently discussing the socialization law?”

The Kiez teams could learn from each other and swap skills – for example, how you could best integrate new people or the best strategies for collecting, and later for the election campaign.

Hannes: Speaking of the election campaign, what was your role as Sammel-AG?

Judith: That was a quite difficult phase. Until the end of June 2020 we had been collecting signatures, and then the election campaign started at the beginning of August. Until the end of the second collection phase, it seemed very tight whether we would collect enough valid signatures. This meant that we didn’t grapple with the election campaign until quite late.

But it was clear that the Kiez teams must carry out the election campaign. Who else was there? As Sammel-AG we saw our role to carry on coordinating the Kiez teams and to look after knowledge transfer. The election campaign showed how important it had been to build local structures.

Leonie: There were also conflicts. For example, some in the campaign were critical of building structures in the outskirts of town. This was supposedly a waste of energy and resources. Instead it was proposed that people from the city centre should occasionally travel there to collect signatures. But a large majority in the campaign agreed that there was no sense in neglecting the outer districts.

Take Marzahn-Hellersdorf. Nothing came out of there. So, relatively early we went to the support-AG and asked if they were interested in supporting us. Because it was clear to us that it would be incredibly time-consuming and difficult and we didn’t have the capacities to work there, although we felt that this district was really important.

Hannes: What next for DWE, and what is your role as Sammel-AG?

Leonie: If we had lost the referendum, it would have been very unrealistic to sustain the structures that had emerged. Now it’s going forward somehow. Without the pressure of collecting signatures or having to win an election campaign, we have the chance of rethinking again. There is the possibility of us diversifying as a campaign. The pillars now take centre stage: carrying out lobby work for a socialization law. Organising and considering our own structures,

Judith: At the beginning we intended to include more local tenants’ initiatives in the collection. But it became clear relatively early that many people didn’t have the time or capacities for this as they were busy with their own fights and conflicts.

Now, together with the Kiez teams, we are asking ourselves how more people can be part of our structures? How can the Kiez teams become more diverse? As the Sammel-AG we also ask ourselves whether we should continue mediating between the Kiez Teams and the campaign? The Kiez teams are now developed groups and have become more self-confident. For certain things, we’re not needed so much.

This interview originally appeared in German in Común magazine. Translation: Phil Butland. Published with permission.

Russia and Ukraine – Berlin Bulletin No. 199

Every single wartime death or wound is terrible, every missile, every bullet is unnatural. This means opposing all imperialisms


12/03/2022

These are terrible, terrible days. A young Ukrainian woman described to me, with tears in her eyes, the conditions for her bed-ridden grandmother, for relatives and friends, some with toddlers and babies, in many parts of Ukraine. Any remaining uncertainties I may have had on one question disappeared; this war is a crime, an awful crime; it is correct that so many are demonstrating and demanding an end to it.

But in marching and demonstrating, in Germany, the U.S.A. or elsewhere, it would be wise to look carefully at some who are next to you, or up there on the speakers’ platform, waving blue and yellow flags and loudly praising resistance, democracy, people’s sovereignty and other fine goals. Am I mistaken in wondering: didn’t I see some of them before, actively opposing just such goals? And don’t some of them smell suspiciously of luxurious skyscraper corner offices, or of that giant geometrical structure near the Potomac, or of the Bender Block, its Berlin equivalent?

Was it not their forebears who began the 20th century by wresting Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain but then, like Gen. Jacob Smith, when facing fighters who had expected freedom, gave his soldiers the commands: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn, the more you kill and burn the better it will please me. I want all persons killed who are capable of bearing arms in actual hostilities against the United States.” Asked by his major: “Are 10-year-olds really to be designated as capable of bearing arms?” – “Yes,” was his answer.

In 1935 Marine General Smedley Butler told how he kept up the tradition: “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service … most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.”

After August 1945, with much of the world in ruins, well-tailored or smartly-uniformed gentlemen extended such efforts worldwide. North Korea was bombed so ferociously from 1950 to 1953 that hardly a building over one storey high remained standing, big dams were destroyed, three million people were killed. Beginning a decade later, 400,000 tons of Napalm were sprayed on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Again, some three million were killed, rain forests destroyed, generations of misshapen babies were predetermined.

Highly-educated cloak-and-dagger men spread out worldwide. In Iran, in 1953, the CIA organized a coup to depose popular, democratically-elected premier Mossadegh, who had tried to end foreign exploitation of Iran’s oil resources. He ended up under life-long house arrest; the re-installed Shah was upheld in his bloody rule for 26 more years.

In 1954, back in Latin America, 100 CIA agents spent up to 7 million dollars for “psychological warfare and political action” against Pres. Jacobo Árbenz of Guatemala, who had angered CIA-Director Allen Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, by requiring the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita), in which both were financially involved, to sell large areas of unused land to poor farmers who had no land. A small but well-equipped army invaded, ousted Arbenz and put the CIA man on top. The land reform was canceled, so was the literacy campaign. In the years that followed thousands were jailed, tortured and killed; countless Maya villages were decimated.

U.S. assassination manuals compiled in Guatemala were then used in nearly every country of Latin America and beyond. Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic in 1961 and Ngo Dinh-Diem in Saigon in 1963 were both killed. Especially tragic was the torture, murder, dismemberment and dissolution in acid of Congo’s poet-statesman Patrice Lumumba in 1960, in CIA-connivance with the slightly quicker Belgian colonialists. Equally sad was the death of Salvador Allende in his burning government palace in Chile in 1973. Henry Kissinger, who helped with the plans, made his views of democracy clear: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and let a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.” General Pinochet, in connivance with the CIA, the State Department and Chilean torture and killer squads did the rest.

But the CIA, despite all efforts and Mafia aid, failed in 638 attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, though approved by eight presidents, and including a bombing attempt in a crowded stadium.

Until 1990 such attacks were largely motivated by a deep hatred of anything even slightly connected with that fearsome menace, socialism – and its threatened confiscation of the millions – billions today – which they or their fathers had piled up thanks to the muscles, brains and sacrifices of the other 99% of the world’s population. Not a penny should be taken from them, they determined, and this made them mortal enemies of the USSR and the so-called Eastern Bloc.

But after 1990, with this motivation and rationale gone, others were needed. “Human rights” were again invoked, sometimes in curious ways. The journalist Lesley Stahl interviewed Secretary of State Madeleine Albright about U.S. sanctions against Iraq: “We have heard that a half million children have died, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. .. Is the price worth it”?

Albright’s reply: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price – we think the price is worth it.“

This soon included more killing from the skies, long before Kyiv or Kharkiv. In 1991, during the Persian Gulf war, the destruction of the Amiriya bomb shelter in Baghdad killed 408 civilians, most of them burned alive. In 1999 the “human rights” of Kosovo were bravely defended by NATO’s bombing of civilians in Serbia, now at last with the help of a unified Germany.

Then came 9/11 and the need for a full-scale “war against terror,” twenty years of death and destruction in Afghanistan and, in 2003, more frightful bombing of Iraq. 29,200 “Shock and Awe” air strikes during the initial invasion, 500-pound bombs on densely-populated cities meant hundreds of thousands of deaths of which “46 per cent were girls and women and 39 per cent children.”

Some may recall 12-year-old Ali Abbas, who dreamt of becoming a doctor. Then the bomb hit. Unlike both parents and his siblings he survived, but he no longer had arms, just a pair of stumps protruding from each small shoulder. Journalists reported his agonized shrieking as doctors huddled over him – and his later question: “What did we do to the Americans?”

Every single wartime death or wound is terrible, every missile, every bullet is unnatural. There are too many similar tragedies now in Ukraine. Yet, while writing this, I find myself thinking: despite each and every tragedy – thank goodness that Ukraine has not been hit like Iraq in 2003, with the death of hundreds of thousands. Yet alas, while I see the Brandenburg Gate lit up with Ukrainian blue and yellow, I recall no Iraqi colors there in 2003, nor those of Palestinians in 2014 after the death of 547 children during the bombing of Gaza.

In the years that followed, as military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere were mired down or lost, symbols, slogans and catchwords about terror wore thin, the fearfulness of words like Islamism, communism, socialism eroded, like Bolshevism and anarchism in earlier eras. The gargoyle faces, the grayed grimaces of Reagan’s Evil Empire warnings in 1983 needed replacement, for the pressures remained. Putin’s angular face and physique often have to suffice – or is the yellow peril back in play? And what are those pressures, refurbished but still very real?

Some are easy to call by name: Lockheed, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon, friendly German rivals like Rheinmetall, Krupp, Maffei – and a further limited list. They earn their billions by producing  and selling their products, which must constantly be multiplied, replaced – or used. Thus, while military actions by Putin or any others may be treated by such folk with loud cries of condemnation or sympathy for the victims, behind their dampened Kleenex hankies we can sense their jubilation as military budgets soar, now nearly $780 billion a year in Washington, and the German government, previously tugged one way by traders with Russia or China, now being overwhelmed by the military monopolies, ambitious expansionists and devoted Pentagon friends who, since the march into Ukraine, have gained the upper hand. The military budget now aims at topping the 50 billion euro level, with ever more spending for jets, frigates, armed drones and more personal armor as well; after all, those patriotic lads or lasses in uniform must not be neglected, but always sent well-armored to their deaths.

And how many have the courage to disapprove of all of this? To vote against it, in the Capitol or the Bundestag? Only a very, very few, now angrily disqualified or ignored.

Not only manufacturers of armaments are waving blue-yellow flags with one hand and concealing profit calculations with the other. If their real hopes come true, if Putin’s move goes awry and ends up with a regime change in Red Square, as in Maidan Square in 2014 but far bigger, what new opportunities would be opened up! Many doors were opened thirty years ago when a drunken, easily manipulated marionette was installed in the Kremlin! But just think of the chances with a more permanent pawn! Many are surely dreaming of wide new Eurasian monoculture, of unlimited raw materials, new markets, skilled proletarians. Tyson and Cargill, Bayer and BASF, GM and Daimler, Nestlé and Unilever, Murdock and Springer, Facebook und Amazon must certainly be checking electronic atlases for maps reaching from Smolensk to Vladivostok – and across the Amur, too, where great multitudes could then be reached so much more easily.

What this all adds up to is a continuing hope for world hegemony – always with God’s help of course. Senator Mitt Romney, once a candidate for the presidency, put it clearly:

“God did not create this country to be a nation of followers. America is not destined to be one of several equally balanced global powers.  America must lead the world, or someone else will. Without American leadership, without clarity of American purpose and resolve, the world becomes a far more dangerous place, and liberty and prosperity would surely be among the first casualties.”

Supporting this God-given path are not only big-biz executives, financiers and military brass, but also a subservient media, obedient politicians aiming at highly-paid jobs when they leave politics, a number of labor leaders and power holders in academia. They all form the Establishment, one quite similar in all so-called free market democracies, except that for over eighty years the USA sector has asserted its role in the pack as alpha wolf.

In a broadcast with Amy Goodman on March 2 2007 one vector of a world-wide program was revealed by General Wesley Clark, a memo by then Defense Secretary Wolfowitz which described “how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off with Iran.”

The timetable didn’t work out exactly – timetables often don’t – but was close enough. And If Iran could really be tamed once again, as in 1952, Georgia would then be close. And Russia as well.

Another vector was even more  crucial. When East German annexation was agreed upon in 1990, Soviet army withdrawal was matched by the American and West German verbal promise to a very trustful Gorbachov that NATO would never expand past the Elbe River into East Germany or beyond. The promise was soon broken. The Pentagon-based NATO moved with its military technology into East Germany and on to Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans, the Baltic countries, thus surrounding all but the southern flank of European Russia with an increasingly tight, hostile ring, featuring broadened, strengthened highways and rail lines pointing eastwards, potential missile launchers in Poland, swift jet planes, fueled and polished, in German and Belgian hangars, with nuclear bombs waiting nearby, and annual aggressive military maneuvers along Russian borders. NATO  was spending 1110 billion on armaments, Russia 62 billion.

And then north and south were linked. In 2013 the Ukrainian president, no angel, faced a choice between the unsteady but undeniable advantages of economic cooperation with Russia, its main energy supplier, or biting at the bait of promised western prosperity, with all the luxuries it symbolized for many Ukrainians, especially in its western regions.

The US-American leadership decided to move ahead. No doubt they were thinking of fat dividends and even more about closing that tight ring, or noose, around Russia and gaining control of Sevastopol, the big naval base on the Black Sea. After spending five billion dollars or more on propaganda and organizing anti-Russian groups and parties, it re-animated its earlier “orange revolution.“ Joining with openly pro-fascist groups – with swastikas, Heil Hitler salutes and all, it managed the ouster of the elected president, who had to flee to safety. In a famous decision, revealed in a hacked telephone call between the U.S.A. ambassador in Kyiv and Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State, the American puppet Arseny Yatseniu, referred to endearingly as “Yats“ by Nuland, was installed by her as prime minister.

Leadership positions in Ukraine have changed several times since then, as the influence of varying oligarchs altered. Some things remained constant. Russian speakers were discriminated against and suppressed, resulting in the vote of a great majority in Crimea to become part of Russia once again – as they were until 1954. Two Russian-speaking eastern provinces defied the anti-Russian pressures and broke away, with Moscow support. Armed Ukrainian militia units, some with openly pro-fascist symbols on their uniforms or skins, kept battering against them. Perhaps it was their strength which prevented the Kyiv government from abiding by the peace agreements of Minsk, in which Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Kyiv had agreed on seeking solutions, with partial autonomy for the Russian-speaking provinces, or was it pressure from Washington and local oligarchs which moved the current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at first seemingly in favor of negotiations, to back out?

Since that goal of world hegemony in many wealthy American brains, Republican and Democrat, was never abandoned, and only Russia and China stood in the way, Ukraine was clearly being built up as a counterforce against one such barrier, indeed as a ramp for further action. Which leads us to 2022.

Putin clearly disapproved of any ramps close to his borders. He hardly needed to leaf in the history books for the years 1812, for 1918-1921, but especially for 1941-1945 to strengthen his resolve. With the increasing threat from an enlarged, aggressive NATO, he could not possibly ignore a Ukraine eagerly pushing to join up as soon as possible, after it had already joined in NATO wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. All the offers Russia made to negotiate the issues – above all a bar to Ukraine officially joining NATO – were rejected in the West as “non-starters” and accompanied by further waves of recriminations and new sanctions.

Was this extreme hostility by media and politicians, with its implied threats (and its actual incidents, as in Syria), the reason for Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine? Despite TV hours and piles of paper and ink expounding about it, I see absolutely no basis for warnings that Putin has plans to “expand his empire”;  I have not seen a single word threatening  Finland, Poland, Romania or the Baltic trio, which are often loudest in exhortations. And Germany? The idea of Russia attacking Germany is fully unthinkable – though not enough to hinder big armament expansion plans in Berlin.

In the past Russia was systematically threatened and also attacked – and is surrounded by a world with over 750 American military bases, with an American military budget bigger than the next ten countries combined, and with four times as many NATO soldiers as Russians in uniform. Even when Russia deployed troops outside its borders, bitter as these occasions were, they were only in countries which were on its borders, and hence – if under unfriendly control – were viewed as potential threats as much as Russian or Chinese deployments in Mexico or Canada would be viewed in the U.S.A. Ukraine definitely borders Russia – its heartland. Militarily, the USSR and Russia were always basically on the defensive, not on an offensive track.

And yet its soldiers, tanks and planes have invaded Ukraine, with results just as horrible for those affected, even if not on the same scale, as American attacks in the Philippines and Vietnam, Nicaragua and Iraq – or in two of the worst crimes ever committed by humankind – at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We cannot look into Putin’s mind, nor know of possible threats he seems to have considered immediate. We must strictly reject any nonsense disputing the will of most Ukrainians to remain independent and sovereign – though not to become part of a NATO-led threat.

Was this war then a result of Putin’s fears of some planned NATO provocation or attack? Was it because of an apparent change in President Volodymyr Zelensky’s seemingly more balanced, peace-minded position, more interested than recent predecessors in getting along with Russia, to a more aggressive stance, rejecting the Minsk agreement and any others of its kind? Whatever the reason, Putin evidently concluded that his decision was inescapable. Was it? Can actions of this kind ever really be inescapable?

The invasion, for whatever reason, has not only caused great misery in Ukraine, but also given an immense steroid push to the forces on the political right, the traditional Russia-haters, those thinking constantly of protecting and increasing their fortunes, and those who want no peace, but only victory, any victory over Russia. They want to demolish not only the reign of Putin but Russia in general as a barrier to capitalist expansion, to a hegemony ruled from Washington, Wall Street and the Pentagon.

It is these people who are demanding no-flight zones; 27 former Pentagon and State Department officials and a former top NATO military commander joined Volodymyr Selensky in calling for a no-fly zone, although they know full well what that means. As even Senator Marco Rubio of Texas said of the demand: “It means starting World War III.”

On the other hand, the march into Ukraine has caused saddening collateral damage, another likely season with the splintering and weakening of progressive forces who work for peace and whose growth is becoming almost desperately necessary in the face of a growing fascistic menace.

Perhaps more explanatory background facts will emerge some day. Today, however, I feel most clearly; I am against killing and destruction. I will therefore join in a march for peace – but not in step with the greedy, violence-hungry forces who have taken up this issue to pursue their own disastrous goals. They are not my allies and I fear the atmosphere of hatred now being cultivated, even against books and sopranos. It is getting dangerous. My over-riding hope is that current talks may lead to peace, to an end of death and destruction, and to the repair and renewal of all efforts to build a world without exploitation, without aggrandizement, without aggression, without war.

Lula and the 2022 elections in Brazil

A victory for Lula in the coming elections would be a massive gain for the Left in Brazil and worldwide. For this reason, we must critically look at some of his positions and the underlying limitations of Workers Party politics.


10/03/2022

Brazil will hold presidential elections on October 2nd, 2022, and Luiz Inacio Lula is leading the polls against the neoliberal fascist candidate Bolsonaro.

During Lula’s presidency (2003-2010) with the Workers Party, Brazil made important advances in social policies like the Bolsa Família Program, healthcare, access to education, infrastructure, famine eradication, strengthening of the minimum wage, and increasing in workers’ rights.

In 2016, the presidency was taken by Dilma Rousseff’s vice-president Michel Temer, who actively participated in the coup. Since then, we have been observing an offensive from the capitalists, pushing counter reforms at a fast pace and attacking the Brazilian working class.

When discussing Lula’s politics, it is important to not oversimplify them as purely class conciliation. That would be lazy and unfair, instead, the point is to bring a critical perspective to the Workers Party alliances and to name where the power lies under their politics.

Brazilian media, car wash operation and Anti workers Party effect

The Workers Party (PT) and Lula have gone through a systematic attack by the Brazilian communication oligopoly, which has played a key role in building the Anti-PT feeling in the country.

The car wash operation had extensive media coverage and ended up putting Lula in prison just before the elections he would win. The “Car wash” served also as an instrument for the coup against Dilma Rousseff (PT). The operation was in tune with the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, carrying a moralist concept built on top of the anti-corruption agenda. The judge Sergio Moro, who condemned Lula to prison, later became the minister of justice in Bolsonaro’s government and he now wants to run for president.

In a leaked message, Deltan Dallagnol, the chief of the operation task force and the prosecutor, referred to Lula’s prison as “a gift from the CIA”.

It was not only the national bourgeoisie that had its interests at stake, but also US imperialist desire to destabilize the Brazilian congress and economy.

Shortly after Petrobras (a big Brazilian oil state company) discovered huge oil reserves on the pre-salt layer, US funds started to push for privatization, underpriced exploration concessions, and with Michel Temer, the oil price started to be at parity with the dollar, increasing significantly the gasoline costs for the population while increasing the profit for the shareholders.

As a contrast, Dilma Rousseff  had previously passed a law to allocate 75% of the pre-salt royalties plus 50% of the social fund coming from these oil reserves to the education budget.

When it comes to sovereignty, the US also managed to push for an agreement that was approved by the Congress, to legislate over decisions on the Alcantara Base, a strategic Brazilian air force base on the north Atlantic coast of Brazil.

It is important to establish these points and clarify that the Workers’ Party program is not the same as the bourgeois program.

Where is politics being fought to respond to such a brutal offensive against the working class?

One of the highlights of the Brazilian conjuncture is how naive and non-materialistic it is to think that politics should happen only inside of institutions. The Workers Party, which had long built a big, but only electoral basis, had no power to call for the masses to defend the historical achievements of the working class.

PT also didn’t have the strength to take over the media and to announce that a coup was in progress. Shifting public opinion with the truth would have been an important step. With the Workers’ Party weakened, the coup came along with the bankruptcy of liberal democracy.

The idea that nobody could predict the rise of fascism in Brazil, or that the political class and the institutions were not mature enough to handle fascism escalation must be rejected.

The Brazilian republic’s history is based on oppression, slavery, economic dependency, militarization, and genocide of the poor and black population. The current liberal democracy is consistently failing to solve those problems, and in fact it is just working exactly as it should be on its own realism.

Neoliberalism has delivered social inequality, growth in the imprisonment of black people, a militarized and brutal police, famine, unemployment, and always the possibility of unleashing fascism whenever any progress is made by the workers.

It is important to highlight that the black population massacre was not different during the 3 presidential mandates of the Workers Party (Lula-Dilma). According to Infopen, the population in prison has almost doubled from 2005 to 2016, whereas 64% of the people in jail are black. In some states, like Acre, this number goes up to 95%, Amapá 91%, Bahia 89%. No significant measures were taken over the brutal interventions in the favelas, and there was no effective action to push for the dismantling of the military police.

Many instruments of power were not confronted by the Workers Party like media regulation, political reform, tax reform, and agrarian reform. It seems the importance of effectively building power together with the people and not through closed doors agreements has been long forgotten. The coup and the imprisonment of Lula show that being in government and being in power are different things, and making agreements with the rich has a high cost.

Since Lula is free and eligible, the latest polls have shown that 40% of the Brazilians would vote for him. The political circumstances require the creation of a left antifascist and anti neoliberal front. Instead it seems the Workers Party is once more moving towards problematic alliances. The alliances include from religious fundamentalists all the way to figures like Geraldo Alckmin, who was the governor of São Paulo and is well known for privatizations and precarization of public infrastructure, building a police state and conducting brutal operations such as the Pinheirinhos massacre.

Geraldo Alckmin is politically dead; he has no strength, no popularity, and he is a figure who always represents the interests of the oppressors. Why the left needs to clean his way and give his program a chair is a question that needs to be answered. It makes no tactical sense and no strategic motivation.

The point here is not necessarily whether this specific alliance will proceed or not, but what Lula wants to say and to whom he wants to speak to by bringing this discussion to the media.

To the dominant class, it’s a message of moderation, to the people, it’s a message of depoliticization and castration of popular power by saying that if we want to overcome Bolsonaro in the elections, we will need to bend ideologically and programatically; if not, fascism will win.

The Workers Party politics of orbiting around elections also showed up late when the radical left was organized and taking the streets to demand vaccines, to call for national strikes and food for the poor in the most critical moment of the pandemic. The Brazilian communist party (PCB) has pushed for national demonstrations and interventions demanding the fall of Bolsonaro, PT has hesitated to join initially and to strengthen the mass articulation.

When the intensification of capitalism’s contradictions is at its peak in Brazil, Lula uses the following public language about Geraldo Alckmin:

Figures like Geraldo Alckmin need to be seen as the enemies of the working class, as it needs their political program.

To overthrow the austerity program that imposes a limit on public investment, to reverse the counter reform of social security and to give back the workers’ rights, it is absolutely necessary to strengthen the left, to effectively work towards a left unity with popular participation confronting the rich and amplifying the class struggle.

Neoliberalism brought Brazil to such a critical situation that it seems reasonable to the left to issue a blank cheque in order to win the elections against Bolsonaro.

There must be a commitment to:

  1. Reversing the budget ceiling;
  2. Reversing the labor and pension counter reform;
  3. Implementing agrarian reform;
  4. Reversing privatizations in the energy and oil sectors, as well as in the state-owned postal service, airports, mining, and transportation;
  5. Media regulation.

No radicality is expected from Lula and the limitations are clear. Nevertheless, it must be said, the moment calls for a left unity that doesn’t leave behind the confrontation of the ruling class.

The roots of exploitation, violence and genocide politics need to be exposed in massive campaigns of agitation. The bourgeoisie and Bolsonaro must be accountable for more than 650 thousand COVID-19 deaths, unemployment, famine and lack of housing.

No alliances with the oppressors!

Terminal Rearmament

The war in Ukraine is spurring a terrifying arms race that will undermine peace, stifle efforts to reverse climate change, and destroy Ukraine


09/03/2022

As the world gazes in horror at the mass tragedy unfolding in Ukraine, it is often framed by a certain kind of story, a story about the clash of two diametrically opposed forces: an autocratic, ruthless, aggressive Russia, oppressor of minorities, facing off against a democratic, progressive, inclusive West which respects human and civil rights, which fights only to protect them.

There is truth to this story – Vladimir Putin is no doubt a brutal chauvinistic tyrant, violently suppressing all dissent, trampling human and civil rights as well as international law. Yet although Russian citizens can rightly envy political conditions in the West, it should also go without saying that states in the Western camp do not necessarily meet the enlightened standards they pretend to stand for.

However, the problem with this story is more basic: the truth is that for all their differences, the states on both sides in this showdown are playing the very same game. We are told we have no option but to choose a side – but the left must oppose the whole game.

Symmetry and Asymmetry

In this game they play together, Russia and the Western powers all seek to mobilize their considerable political, economic, and military power to bring smaller countries into their sphere of influence and thereby improve their economic, military, and political position.

Despite contrasts in politics and rhetoric, for years both sides have been sparring with covert and overt threats and an escalating brinksmanship – leading the world into an era defined by a new arms race.

We must however acknowledge two significant aspects of asymmetry between them. First, even considering the preceding history, the Russian attack on Ukraine is a criminal initiative of Putin’s reactionary government. It is not a reasonable, inevitable response to any prior action. It is an unforgivable crime, and it cannot be justified.

Yet on the other hand, in the grand scheme of things, Russia is a small, almost minor player compared to the Western powers; in terms of military spending, the NATO states command 18 times Russia’s power. Even if we add China to the Russian side, the Western alliance controls three times as much military power. Were we to subtract the United States’ monstrously oversized military, the rest of the NATO states’ military expenditure would still outstrip Russia’s and China’s by billions.

The past decades have seen a creeping arms race: the states which see themselves threatened by this balance of power have made great efforts to close the gap, while those seeking to maintain their advantage sacrifice more and more resources on the altar of “security”, even as their people’s food security goes downhill.

With the war in Ukraine, this arms race is now going into overdrive.

Just days after the Russian invasion, the German government broke a historical taboo and suddenly announced it will give its military a one-off special fund of 100 billion euro – twice its military budget for 2022. This massive budget will fund a permanent increase in German “security” spending, which the government plans to anchor in the constitution. Future German governments will be forced to allocate at least 2 per cent of GDP to military spending, as per NATO recommendations. This currently represents an increase in the annual military budget of about 42%, some 20 billion euro in current terms.

Considering how vastly NATO already outspends Russia and even China, it is an insult to our collective intelligence to suggest a military shopping spree is necessary to ensure European security. It is likely to achieve the very opposite: while armament is invariably presented as defensive, those it is supposed to defend against naturally perceive it as an open threat – and therefore a reason to close ranks and increase their own armament efforts. Nothing could bolster Russian anti-Western militarism better than this explicitly anti-Russian Western militarization.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said he believed foreign leaders are preparing for war with his country. It will be difficult for peace-seeking Russians to argue against that.

The silence of reason

No arms race has ever led to peace. This is not a new insight.

But when the cannons are heard, reason is silent; in our networked age, the cannon roar drowns out voices of peace even far away from the line of fire. Everywhere we are now submerged in the kind of discourse typical of wartime: dichotomous, simplistic, moralistic; anyone who mentions a fact which has had the misfortune of being weaved into the thicket of lies and delusions in Putin’s speeches or his regime’s propaganda is liable to be called a Russian agent.

The dominant discourse is also trapped deeply in the cycle of escalation: we must applaud even the most aggressive action presented as aid to Ukraine; those who do not are immediately anointed Putin supporters, appeasers, useful idiots. Even the basic left position of rejecting military “solutions”, opposing escalation and militarization, and demanding immediate diplomatic solutions – is denounced as aiding the aggressor.

Facing the horror of war, stunned by the invasion, we are all, I think, coping with a terrible sense of powerlessness. We are shocked and trying to process, to react, grasping for anything that might stop the terrible things happening, might give relief to the victims.

We dare not consider the terrifying possibility that at this point, nothing we can do could swiftly end this horror, the possibility that the “solutions” we are presented with might be anything but.

Desperately grasping, the Western public clamors to support Ukrainians by any means necessary – providing for continued escalation, strengthening the militaristic undertow, and spurring on the arms race in ways that we will hardly be able to roll back.

The prevailing moralism suggests our first duty is to voice a correct, principled position. But important as this is, our position alone helps nobody unless we account for how it relates to what is happening in practice. Instead of merely declaring our principles, we must take a stand from the particular place where we find ourselves, in relation to the real forces in action.

The New Forever War

Let us examine the actual actions taken by our Western governments to “support Ukraine” and “stop Russia.”

Within days of the invasion, unprecedented economic sanctions were placed upon Russia by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

The central lever of economic power in Russia is well-known: Russia’s oil and gas exports, the central source of the ruling elite’s wealth and power. Yet instead of using this lever, which means paying a real price for anti-Putin posturing, for two weeks after the start of the war sanctions carefully excluded the energy business. The West’s first moves against Russian oil were only announced on March 8.

So while Muscovites have been unable to get cash from their ATMs or use a Visa or Mastercard, while small businesses across Russia are cut off from the global payment systems and major multinationals shutter their Russian operations – oil and gas continue flowing west, and the West has been paying more than ever, fueling Russia’s war economy with as much as 720 million USD per day.

The sanctions thus far, then, fail to focus on decision-makers, largely designed instead, as Kissinger once said of similar measures, to “make the economy scream” – to devastate the general population in the hope that it will rebel and force a change in policy. Failing that, they amount to collective punishment.

In relation to these real existing sanctions, what is the meaning of proclaiming “support for sanctions”? What options are Western governments truly willing to entertain? Does “supporting sanctions” change how they are implemented?

As for military aid, far from being the next step after exhausting non-military options, the flow of arms began in parallel with sanctions. After years of steadily arming Ukraine in the shadow of the Russian threat, the US and Europe are now flooding the country with state-of-the-art military hardware to great fanfare. The longstanding German rule against shipping arms directly to war zones has been shattered to pieces.

Before even trying their sharpest non-military tools, Washington and Berlin, London and Paris appear to be charting a course by which Ukraine will become a new Afghanistan, ground to dust in a new forever war. This is the actual context of debates about military aid and sanctions. What does it mean to support military aid on principal, when this is how it is being implemented in practice?

The left especially must be conscious of how power shapes the options presented to the public. The contours of these policy options are predetermined by the interests of the powerful; they are realized only so far, and only in such form, as they fit ruling interests. If they are suitable, if they are just, this is usually by coincidence.

We ought not harbor illusions that by cheering them on, we are doing the right thing. It is no great moral act to egg on the powerful as they do what they wanted to do anyway. When you legitimize a destructive policy, it matters little if you fervently wish it were more constructive.

Resistance and hope

Latching on to the policies of the powerful can give a sense of power, relieve the sense of helplessness. But in practice, reactively supporting pre-selected measures means relinquishing our power and acting as a mere rubber stamp.

To proactively make the world a better place, the left must first see things for what they are. Since the “solutions” being put forward by the state are not what we might wish they were, we must push back against them. At the same time, we must take a broader view and mobilize people power against escalation and warmongering.

Many in the West lump all Russians together and treat them collectively as perpetrators and enemies. We must bear in mind, however, that the Russian public was not consulted about this war and is still being lied to about its very reality. And while our governments collectively punish them, we who fight for peace know we still have many allies in Russia. Under harshening suppression, their civil society has been mounting unexpected and inspiring opposition to the war.

Since the invasion, Putin’s government has made it a criminal offense to even call it “war”. Independent journalism has been almost completely stamped out. Demonstrating bears a real risk of arrest and imprisonment, but after thousands of arrests, many thousands more continue to protest. Twelve thousand Russian healthcare workers have courageously denounced the war, as have hundreds of municipal council members, scientists, and others.

If there is to be any hope of de-escalation, we need their resistance. And if there is to be any hope for their resistance, they need our support and solidarity. We must draw attention to them, echo their voices across the web and maximize their media visibility. We must continue sending them moral support and find any ways possible to materially aid their efforts.

The Russian opposition fights an uphill battle not only against state repression and misinformation but also against the sharpening of geopolitical battle lines. When we show up against the war and against the West’s belligerence, are also lending them a hand – an olive branch.

The potential of rebuffing violence with peace is not lost on Ukrainians, it seems. Immediately after the invasion, the Ukrainian government set up a compassionate hotline for the families of Russian soldiers; and though the focus has been on armed resistance, some of the Ukrainians’ successes in repelling Russian forces have reportedly been won by non-violence.

Such measures do not instantly dissolve the invading army – but nor do so-called military solutions. Because nothing can simply end the horror, we are left with the hard work of undermining the political forces which make it continue.

Doomsday and Collapse

In the present conflict, even more than before, we face multiple doomsday scenarios at once.

A great deal of attention is turned to the threat emanating directly from the Kremlin: that Russian forces might succeed in conquering Ukraine, imprison or murder Ukrainian opponents en masse, and perhaps not even stop there.

The ultimate doomsday scenario of full military conflict between nuclear-armed powers seems closer than ever, though the West appears to be willing to sacrifice Ukraine before risking it.

However, even if peace is quickly restored, as we must hope, the danger will not have passed. The rally to the flag, international militarization, an unbridled arms race – these currents are already shaping political and geopolitical conditions and will continue shaping them long after the Ukrainian catastrophe.

While we argue about how to help Ukraine, while our governments bluster and prevaricate, the arms corporations are celebrating a bullish market and planning ahead.

We must be deeply suspicious of any narrative which leaves no option but military force. Even when draped in the noble rhetoric of standing up to bullies and protecting the weak, militarism is poison. Proliferating across camps and borders via arms races, it rots societies from within. Instead of solving problems, bloated “security” budgets turn our hard work into means of destruction, wielded to threaten and murder our siblings abroad and standing ready to oppress us at home.

Disastrously, this militaristic turn comes just when precious few years remain for humanity to veer off course from terminal climate breakdown, precious few years to start repairing the damage and stabilizing the climate before it is too late. To now divert the best of our resources towards means of destruction – this could spell the end for humanity.

Instead, we must urgently create a massive wave of protest, across borders and sectors. Instead of escalation and destruction, demand a just, sustainable peace. Instead of rearmament, disarmament.

Organizing for peace may not have the allure of power carried by the state’s pre-selected “solutions”, but unlike them, it is entirely in our hands, entirely within our power. It means building power, rather than relinquishing it or submitting to it. It is something no government can do for us.

Organized, tenacious collective action, based on the power of everyday people to reshape their world; far-sighted, transnational, internationalist. This is what left power must be like, the only real power which can make the world a better place for everyone.

Against the new forever war, against nuclear apocalypse, against climate collapse – let us mobilize a global peace movement!

Film Review – Debout Les Femmes!

A new film highlights the terrible working conditions for care workers in France, and the start of a fight to change them


08/03/2022

Debout les Femmes! had its German premiere just in time for International Women’s Day (or International Working Women’s Day, as Clara Zetkin originally dubbed it). The film’s subject is the incredibly low wages and insanitary working conditions for (almost exclusively female) care workers. The workers affected range from those who visit pensioners to give them baths and haircuts to the cleaners in France’s National Assembly, who are paid below the minimum wage.

The first scenes were shot at the beginning of 2020, but then the film takes a dramatic turn as Covid hits and a desperate situation becomes even worse. Hospital workers are not provided any protective clothing so have to spend their already sparse spare time sewing plastic coats. Still it’s not as bad as the hospital down the road where they’re wearing bin liners. Workers are supposed to be keeping a safe social distance, but that’s not so easy when you’re giving an old man a bath.

Film of Emmanuel Macron explaining how everything is in hand appears alongside women explaining their day-to-day working lives. Most of them have lost their permanent contracts which means that they’re now only paid for the hours at work, not in travelling from one place to another. This results in people working 60 or more hours a week in a part time job. Many are also working 6 or 7 day weeks, and getting up at 4 o’clock every morning.

Enter the unlikely duo of Bruno Bonnell and François Ruffin – two MPs from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Bonnell is first introduced to us as “France’s Donald Trump” – he presents the French edition of The Apprentice and was elected as part of Macron’s cobbled together coalition La République En Marche! Ruffin is an MP for the far Left La France Insoumise (LFI), and is also one of the directors of the film.

Bonnell and Ruffin are co-sponsoring a parliamentary bill to improve working condition for low paid women workers. It’s easy to understand why Ruffin is on board – this is what the Left is supposed to do. Bonnell is a more contradictory character. A self-proclaimed capitalist, he appears to be one of the few businessmen with a social conscience. He even has a moving backstory of a disabled son who died as a child.

You could imagine having a drink with Bonnell and enjoying yourself, although maybe this is because the film concentrates on his bill with Ruffin and not his other politics. Bonnell and Ruffin listen attentively as women tell them about their desperate working conditions. They promise to get something done, and draw up a set of amendments to a parliamentary bill.

The problem lies in parliamentary majorities. Each bill is rejected by roughly the same number of votes. The only people voting for each amendment appear to be the 17 LFI deputies plus the occasional maverick like Bonnell. Not even the Greens or the Socialists are prepared to support better conditions for working class women. If the women are to win, it won’t be through the current parliament. We are unlikely to see much change after next month’s elections.

In the Q&A afterward Debout les Femmes!‘ German premiere, with producer Thibault Lhonneur and LFI MP Danièle Obono, there was some mild criticism that most of the film runs as a white male saviour story, where a couple of powerful men save some working class women, many of whom are migrants. In the film’s defence, it could be argued that precisely because of power imbalances, the women do not feel confident enough to fight for themselves. The criticism is justified nonetheless.

This is what makes the final scenes all the more important. Ruffin organises an alternative assembly of women inside the parliamentary building. The film stresses their gender, but it is just important that this is an assembly of working class women, who have been socialised into feeling that only other people are empowered to make decisions which affect their lives.

Debout les Femmes! ends in a sort of defeat. No-one gets a massive pay rise or improved conditions. But we do witness a development of consciousness that may lead to future victories. At the start of the film, the women are reading out a list of serious grievances which show how they are undervalued and ignored by society. By the end, they are standing up and demanding change.

A film which shows a change in consciousness is more effective – both politically and artistically – than one which shows endless victories and the inevitable drive towards world socialism. It has a dialectical quality which implies that greater victories are to come. I look forward to the sequel where working class women are leading the fight and gaining the significant gains that they so sorely deserve.