Hello everyone,
This week’s demonstrations for Palestine are on Friday at 4pm at the Auswärtiges Amt under the motto Let Rafah Live, and on Saturday at 2pm at Wilmersdorferstraße / Kantstraße under the motto Palestine will never die.
This week saw the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There will be several events this weekend organised by Leftists with different perspectives on how to respond. On Friday at 6pm, there’s a demo at the Bundestag Stop the deaths in Ukraine – for a ceasefire and negotiations. On Saturday there are at least 3 actions: at 1pm Peace in Ukraine and Russia at the Bundeskanzleramt, at 1pm Defend Peace at Brandenburger Tor, calling for military support for Ukraine, and at 3pm Stop the Warmongerers at U- and S-Bahn Lichtenberg.
On Friday, the Alliance of International Feminists is organising an event Down with Imperialist Feminism. This is a soli-event to get in touch and raise money to cover the costs of the 8M Demonstration this year. Doors open at 6pm, and from 6-8pm there will be an open discussion round with the alliance-Orga team and YOU! Following that, there will be an opportunity for us to come together and spend the night with music, some delicious foods and drinks. Spread the word come over and join us! This event is open to all! It all takes place at Reichenbergerstraße 63A.
On Saturday, there will be a demonstration Görli stays open. Berlin’s Senator of the Interior Spranger and mayor Wegner claim that they are winning back Görlitzer Park for residences and making it safer. To do this, they are building a a fence around Görli and closing it at night. But residents and tens of thousands of other people already use the park all year round to grill, to jog, or to access the sport and children’s areas. In Summer they chill, in Winter they skate or come to the winter market. The demonstration to keep Görli open, but with better funding starts at Falckensteinstraße 14 at 2pm. It is organised by Görli Zaunfrei, who is our Campaign of the Week.
Right2TheCity, the non-German working group of Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen are organising two events on Sunday. At 2pm, there’s a Tenants’ Support Forum for people in Wedding. Having issues with your landlord? Questions about your rent? Want some support navigating the Berlin rental market? Come talk with tenants in a similar position! It starts at 2pm in Linkstreff, Malplaquetstraße 12. Then at 5.30pm in the Rote Insel, R2CKino will be showing the film The Healing. Neighbourhoods in Copenhagen face racist, xenophobic housing policy that seeks to evict tenants and privatize their social housing. “The Healing” is about how one community uses powerful, creative, joyful forms of resistance to energize their fight.
Our latest Palestine Reading Group will be taking place on Sunday at 7pm in our usual venue of Agit, Nansenstraße 2. This week we’ll be discussing the Israeli “Left”. Follow the link for suggested reading. We hope that the Palestine Reading Group will soon have a new, larger, venue, but we’re still working on the finer details. This means that for the time being, the dates and venue of Reading Group on our Events page are tentative. We will be post the definite information in future Newsletters. You can also join our Telegram Group to keep up with the debate and suggest future subjects or readings.
There is much more going on in Berlin. To find out what’s happening, go to our Events page. You can also see a shorter, but more detailed list of events in which we are directly involved in here.
Please note that the Berlin LINKE Internationals Summer Camp has been postponed, because the original date clashed with a national demonstration against the AfD. Summer Camp will now take place on 21-22 September, still in the Naturfreundehaus Hermsdorf. More information, including a draft programme, should be available soon.
If you are looking for Resources on Palestine, we have set up a page with useful links. We will be continually updating the page, so if you would like to recommend other links, please contact us on team@theleftberlin.com. You can also find all the reading from our Palestine Reading Groups here.
And Berlin-based Palestinian storyteller Rasha Al Jundi is launching a limited print sale to support taking her ongoing project “When the Grapes Were Sour: Embroidered Palestinian Stories from Exile” (@embroidered_exile on Instagram) to the UK between May and June. Al Jundi has received Al Mawred’s Wijhat grant, which will partly fund her travel and logistics costs. She still needs to raise additional funds to support documentation and production costs of new stories of Palestinian exiles living in the UK. You can find more information on her website. The selected images are from her one and only trip to the occupied homeland, which she documented as a visual diary titled “I Just Want to Kiss the Earth”, original published on theleftberlin.
In News from Berlin, man assaulted by police on Luxemburg-Liebknecht demo is still alive, Postbank workers to strike, protest outside Russian agency following suspicious death of Navalny, and Berlin employment agency eager to find more jobs for Ukrainians.
In News from Germany, CinemaxX and CineStar employees plan a 4-day national strike, public transport workers to strike in Lower Saxony, and Lufthansa ground staff also plan to strike.
Read all about it in this week’s News from Berlin and Germany.
New on theleftberlin, Nathaniel Flakin looks at the Nazi connections of many German companies, Rachael Shapiro reports from her violent arrest outside Axel-Springer Haus, the latest photo and cartoon in Rasha Al-Jundi’s and Michael Jabareen’s series It’s So Berlin!, Hari Kumar looks at the death of Alexi Navalny, and Nathaniel Flakin contests the Central Council of Jews’ claim that it speaks for all Jews.
This week’s Video of the Week shows the brutal police attack on the demonstration commemorating the Hanau massacre 4 years ago. We’re currently writing a report from the demo which will be published on theleftberlin.com soon.
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Keep on fighting,
The Left Berlin Editorial Board