Invitation to th 3rd Assembly

“Berlin for all!” is directed against the current austerity policies and the spreading racism. All those who do not judge a person by his or her passport, those who want to live together in solidarity and who do not feel represented by parties and politicians are welcome to join the initiative.

Our next meeting will take place outdoors, at Victoriapark on the Kreuzberg hill. Thereby, we will continue the tradition of movements like #NuitDebout and 15M.
We will use the meeting to flesh out more concretely what the slogan “Berlin for all!” means in practice. Several working groups will present their plans for action for the summer – as for example a “Housing Tribunal” and the “NoStress-Tour” to different refugee shelters. Furthermore, we will discuss our “extraparliamentary agenda” for the upcoming Berlin parliamentary elections in September. As always, new initiatives and ideas are very welcome to join the meeting.

No matter if you attended previous meetings or not, we are looking forward to everyone´s participation!

In case of bad weather, the meeting will take place at Mehringhof (Gneisenaustraße 2A, 2. Hinterhof, 1. Stock, 10961 Berlin) instead.

————————————————————————————————————————-
Invitation to the 2nd Meeting of “Berlin for all!”

In mid-February about 250 activists met up at the House of Democracy and Human Rights in Berlin,(Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte) and agreed to create a social, anti-racist alliance: “Berlin for all!” At this meeting, together we formulated a statement, which set a shared goal: We want to put an end to neoliberal communal politics that are destroying infrastructure and administration through mislead economization while at the same time spending billions on prestige real estate objects. We want to put an end to politics that are putting the poor of the city in competition with each other, that are evicting trailer villages and others and undermining the Tempelhof Referendum in order to create temporary refugee housing in these spaces, instead of using the vacant buildings in the city for this purpose. The many new arrivals in Berlin and those that have been here are now neighbors that share the same social rights. In the coming months, we will fight together to enforce these rights.

Now, a few weeks after this first meeting, we want to meet again and make everything more concrete. Several working groups were created at the first meeting. Over the past few weeks, some of these working groups had further discussions and have already come up with several ideas for actions.
Of course, “Berlin for all!” must make room for shared discussions. After all, we have not known each other for very long and are certainly aware of our differences. At the same time, it is important that we will take action and move together as soon as possible. Thus, we want to ask ourselves: What is our current state of ideas, actions and how can we continue to work on these together, in order to realize them as soon as possible? At which points did we hit dead ends and why? What do we need in order to take a big step forward together?

Besides these important thematic discussions, we also want to address the question of our actual internal work practices: Who is in charge of which communication channels? Who “is allowed” to speak on behalf of “Berlin for all!”? And, do working groups “need to” have their actions authorized before they can begin to put their ideas into actions? Such “structural questions” must, after all, be discussed as well.

Therefore, we cordially invite all of you to the 2nd meeting of “Berlin for all!”. We look forward to everyone’s participation, regardless of whether you attended the 1st meeting or not!

Friday March 25, 2016 | 12 noon | Paula-Thiede-Ufer 10 | verdi Building | Near “Ostbahnhof“

—————————————————————————

Statement of the constitutive assemby on 14th of February

250 activists came together at Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte (House of Democracy and Human Rights) and decided to start a social alliance: We are sick and tired of the neoliberal municipal politics in Berlin, which has allowed the infrastructure and administration to deteriorate, drowned money in prestige projects, and played out the city’s poor against one another! There is enough here for everyone! And that is true regardless of people’s backgrounds. The many who have newly arrived in Berlin and those who have been around longer are now neighbors, who have the same social rights. We all need to be able to live here without violence and discrimination! We all need access to education, to childcare, to health insurance! For this, all of us, old and new neighbors, will fight together in the coming months. The political elite is not on our side! The senate should make room for lived democracy, in which we all can take part in deciding how we want to live together! Today is a good day for Berlin, because starting from today there will be many bad days for the ruling government in Berlin, and because from today a common commitment stands in Berlin’s public space: We don’t want to live without solidarity! We cannot live without solidarity! We will fight together for our social rights, and we will not discriminate based on who has what passport! Life is beautiful. Berlin for all!

————————————————————————-

An Invitation
It’s time to launch a social and antiracist offensive in Berlin! The social question is adressed in a new and more pressing way, as social infrastrucutre is continualy cut down and almost 80.000 Persons newly arrived in Berlin in 2015. In this situation we don’t want to leave the field to the right, be it the extreme right with their xenophobic hatred or the market-fundamentalists with their urge to economize and cut-down everything. They will try to play off the already established against the newly-arrived, the lower against the middle classes. This is why we need a new social alliance in Berlin: A joining together of all social and political forces which straightforwardly names the conflicts in the city and adresses them progressivly: housing crisis, racism, attacks against refugees, forced evictions, the terrible conditions at the Lageso, etc. An alliance which is able to develop solidary practices and offers broad political and activist participation, which raises the visibility of already existing initatives without coopting them.

Against the fragmentatiton – for a social alliance
Like almost no other metropolis, Berlin is still shaped by places of solidarity, by a multitude of social and political initatives and the independet existence of it’s neighbourhoods. The countless initatives for refugees, the struggles for a right to the city, the referendums and plesbicites, all are expressions of an Berlin from below. This is often contrasted by a feeling of growing powerlessness: The ruling classes unwaveringly continue their politics of austerity, their ruinous cutting of the city’s infrastructure while at the same time Billions are trickling away into the corruption of „Berliner-Filz“. The everyday struggles with precarious jobs, rising rents, cut-back welfare benefits and discriminatory practices form a whole which continuosly threatens many of us. As important as the work of the many political initatives is, they are often fragmented and can’t form into a common, abled to confront the ongoing attacks.

Starting point and collective movement
We, in this situation, have to find an solidary answer to new and upcoming distrubutional conflicts. We should start of with a clear statement: Berlin is for everyone! Everyone who is and wants to be here. Everyone who’s here, belongs here. Everyone who wants to come, should have the possibility. We don’t differentiate between those longing for a good life in solidarity.

But only the statement is not enough. We’ll have to take another step. A step further, turning the distributional conflicts between lower and middle classes, between newly-arrived and already established into a question of distribution between above and below. The city is for everyone.

We were thinking of a campaign, that
-offers a variety of possibilities to participate.
-raises our agency and combines creativity with a dose of conflict – keyword civil disobedience.
-intervenes into the electoral campaign from a non-parliamentary perspective

Therefore we want to invite everyone interrested and active to a first meeting. No matter if young or old, if new or already experienced. No matter if newly-arrived or in Berlin for quite some time, if already organized or as an individual. In the meeting we will develop and discuss Ideas. We will confer about how to raise visibility of and conncetions between the already existing struggles and how to apporach struggles necesary but not yet exisiting. Finaly, with all our diversity we want to raise a collective, a strong voice reclaiming a different Berlin. Our Berlin In a word: “Berlin for all“ should be a social alliance changing the public debates and struggles in the city.

Sunday February 14th | 1 pm | Haus der Demokratie und Menschenrechte | Greifswalder Str. 4 | Berlin