Interkiezionale

A home doesn’t always need four brick walls, and freiräume sometimes come on wheels.

Køpi wagenplatz is synonymous with a way of life that attempts to exist autonomously and self determinedly, offering a clear and visible answer to a dominant culture of property as status that shuts its front door on community, neighbourhood and solidarity.

On the 10th of June the trial against this structure will take place.  The “legal” existence of this self-organized project, as various other houses in Berlin, is being decided from people who have only one priority: to serve the interest of the capital, the landlords, the real estate companies. Our position is to make clear that not only we’ll defend every threathened project but we stand for the self determination of our existence and our life. We do not recognize their institutions but we want to be present to every decision that is taken for us, without us.

Thats why we call for a manifestation in front of the court on the 10.6 at 11.00 at Turmstrasse 91.

In order to show to state and capital that we stand together in every threat and against their institutions.

Let’s block the street and be loud! Together we build collective moments against the reality they impose on us!

Solidarity is our weapon!

For a self-organised way of living, for a city from below!

Solidarity with Køpi Wagenplatz

Interkiezionale

General assembly for intensifying our struggles

We invite your structures and you people to the General Assembly (GA) on 06.06.21 at Mehringhof, for a general reflexion and discussion about our tactics in the pasts months but also, and most importantly, about how we continue the struggle for our spaces that are under constant attack. Those places are important for our self-organization, where we share solidarity and mutual-aid. Additionaly, some are also living spaces that are threatened by a gentrification process that affect all the city and contribute to the the marginalization and elimination of some parts of the society. For this reason, we don’t want to focus only on the structure of Interkiezionale, but on all people that feel connected with emancipatory struggles in the city.

Here are some questions we hope can enable us to go into a reflection and  be ready to debate in the GA:

How do we continue with our struggle? As we see in the pasts months, our defensive position doesn’t prevent the loss of spaces. Do we want to continue this way or can we change? Do we have some proposals?

Why is there so little convergence of the struggles that we have a clear ideal connection with? How should we change our approach to other structures? How we can create stronger solidarity networks between us?

Do we want to keep the focus on special days (eg.Tag X) or we want to mobilize broader against the attack on our struggles?

R94 and Køpi Wagenplatz are the projects that are threatened now and facing a possible eviction. Which tactics should we use? Can we break with the prevailing defensive dynamic and work on other ways?

We propose some workshops/exercises through information sharing to push our demo culture after the VV.

Sunday 06.06.21 14°° – Mehringhof

Call by the Interkiezionalen for the Mietenwahnsinn-Demo at 23.05., 1pm Potsdamer Platz

May 2021 and yet another project nears eviction, yet another space receives its court date from a state seemingly intent on the elimination of all emancipatory structures. A state which has the audacity to revoke the Berlin rent cap in the middle of a pandemic, proving spectacularly that the interests of capital will always take precedence over people’s needs, and that reform will always fail.

When we fight for our spaces, it is not only our subcultures, our countercultures or our comfortable bohemian existence we fight for; rather, as pre-figurative realizations of our ideas -mutual aid, solidarity and self-organization- our spaces represent a step towards a city without landlords, without police, politicians or any form of exploiters or abusers and a collective answer to an atomized existence and the commodification of human necessities this current attack springs from.

Isolated within the walls of our projects, these ideas become meaningless, alienated and cease to exist. It is only by seeing the fight for our spaces as the fight against every eviction, every new startup in our kiez, every post rent-cap backpayment, standing together with every struggling renter, priced out family or rough sleeper, that we truly defend our projects and give meaning to our ideas, that they can spread beyond our walls.

This means freiräume not as ends in themself, as buildings within which we can remove ourselves from society, but rather as places from where we can further intervene in our surroundings, open ourselves to other struggles and attack the nature of property itself.

As market forces and state agenda attempt to alienate our projects from the wider city, atomizing them and attempting to depoliticize them while evicting one after the other, now more than ever we must not retreat into ourselves. Now is the time to open our doors and take to the streets, in solidarity with the myriad intersectional struggles in our city. When we exist only as four walls, we are weak, we are  easilly evicted and we are lost. When we exist as projects interconnected with our neighbours, our comrades, our kiezes and our city’s shared struggles, where we can constantly fluctuate and develop, we are strong.

A struggle against the housing crisis and a punitive state decision is not a struggle for reform or a recognition of state legitimacy, but is a struggle for our spaces and the neighbourhoods they belong to, against the city of the rich and against property and capital itself.

Lynch the landlords! (Dead Kennedys)
Freiraume fur alle!

Interkiezionale Meeting-Point: 1pm historic traffic light Potsdamer Platz or at the “Enteignen, Vergesellschaften, Selbstverwalten” Hochtranspi

German version here

Continue reading →

Andreas Geisel-Interior Senator of the Displacement Policy!

Kundgebung 12.05 15:00 Willy-Brandt-Haus

Andreas Geisel: A man who boasts of creating positions for 2,260 new cops in the city, brags of arming said police force with 12,000 new pistols yet maintains he stands for “as much freedom as possible, as much security as necessary.” A man who oversees the evictions of Liebig 34, Syndikat, Meuterei, Habersaathstr., Dragoner and Rummelsburger Bucht, on May the 19th Potse, and the increased threat to Rigaer 94, Koepi Wagenplatz and numerous other projects, yet maintains the importance of freiraume. Who criticizes fascism in the police force using the tired liberal ‘rogue’ narrative, encourages perceived minorities to become cops and refers to a potential immigrant workforce as an untapped “treasure trove”. A man who looks away while the far right’s corona conspiracy theorists and neo-nazis gain momentum, while at the same time taking a seemingly personal interest in the demonization of the communities around Goerlitzer Park and the attempted elimination of the city’s radical counterculture.

This is the insidious hypocrisy of social democracy, of the Red Red Green Senate, and of neoliberal capitalism on the whole- embodied in one man. Where liberal quotas and diversity are weaponized, used as tools to further capital or to disguise its racist agenda, or where limited individual freedoms are used to disguise our collective oppression. Where structural exploitation and bigotry can be whitewashed, pinkwashed or brushed under the carpet while appropriating the aesthetics and language of those it oppresses.

What is really meant by security when it involves evicting people from their homes in the middle of a pandemic or threatening them with deportation? Whether he deems one cop or a city full of them to be necessary, one cop is one too many; one racist arrest one too many; one eviction one too many. Attempting to gain more rightwing votes for the SPD in the upcoming elections, as he prepares to finish his term as Innensenator lets ensure Andreas Geisel’s political legacy is of a city that despises him and the politics he represents and where solidarity and mutual-aid are ideas not destroyed so easily. Against the city of the rich, against the SPD, the Senate, the state and the capitalist system.

Self-organization over every authority.

Freiraume not yuppie flats.

Solidarity and mutual-aid for a city from below.

We as Interkiezionale call on all solidary and freedom-loving people to bring the city into turmoil on and around March 25 against the eviction of the Kiezkneipe Meuterei.

The pub collective Meuterei has been creating a space for exchange, networking and solidarity in Reichenberger Straße for 10 years. Such places are increasingly being pushed out of this city. With the Syndikat and Liebig34, we had to say a painful goodbye to two autonomous spaces, and after the eviction attempt of Meuterei, many more attacks on left-wing projects will follow.

Yuppie stores and start-up offices are moving in where there were once places where it was not about consumption, but primarily about social exchange and collective organizing. Gentrification is slowly creeping into every corner of this city to make profit out of the last hole. The cops make sure that even every rotten owner can raise his rent and hawk living space into commodity. For this they beat us out of our stores and houses and our comrades from the streets. Neoliberalization also ensures that politics is oriented towards capital interests and obviously crawls out of and into the asses of investors. Instead of discussing and negotiating with the urban population, they send the cops to beat away annoying calls for justice and affordable rents.

When the cops “regulate” any political struggle and take away all our places, we are left with only the street as a place of resistance. We want to take the streets for Meute and uncompromisingly show who this city belongs to.

If our protest is to be nipped in the bud, we should act from ambush. If every demo is accompanied by cops in a trellis, we should create chaos.

If there are hardly any places left that we want to and can defend, there is no reason not to attack the places that displace us every day.

Organize in your affinity groups and with your projects and come to the neighborhood on March 25th from 6am. But not only in Kreuzberg protest should become visible, but all of Berlin must get to know what we think about displacement and evictions!

In the evening there will be a powerful Interkiezionale Day X demo.

DEMO | 25.03 | 19UHR

Stay tuned, get ready.

The fight for the city from below is not over yet.

Keine Beute mit der Meute!

A home doesn’t always need four brick walls, and freiräume sometimes come on wheels. One of the city’s most obvious rejections of an atomizing, alienating housing market, the wagenplätze are synonymous with a way of life that attempts to exist autonomously and self determinedly, offering a clear and visible answer to a dominant culture of property as status that shuts its front door on community, neighbourhood and solidarity.

Breathing life into unused land and unwanted structures the wagenplätze demonstrate a possibility outside the framework of consumption and waste, commodity and value, where new ways of relating and struggling together develop. As the city attempts to purge itself of zecken, of those living and fighting against capitalism, it turns on them, as it has done with Liebig 34, Syndicat, DieselA, SabotGarden and other evicted spaces. Along with property speculation, rampant gentrification and the building of a new autobahn thisputs many more at at risk. Whether in imminent danger or not, a threat to one wagenplatz is a threat to all, and a threat to our wider community. We stand together: Köpi Wagenplatz, Scheffelstraße, Mollies, Laster & Hänger, Rummelplatz, Ratibor, Mollies, Convoi , Kreuzdorf, Lohmühle, Wagen- u. Projektplatz Karpfenteich, -unterstrom+, Fips.

Join the demo on the 20th of February at 2pm, starting from Köpi by bike, before meeting the truck convoy at Scheffelstrasse at 3pm. Freiräume are a vital part of a wider anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist fight!

Stop the city! Block the traffic! Circle the wagens!

Interkiezionale 15.02.21

https://stressfaktor.squat.net/node/208623

Continue reading →

Continue reading →

November 25th is the “International Day for the Elimination of Gender-based Violence against Women”. On this day, we want to reflect on repression and gentrification from the perspective of gender, and invite people to participate in the demo from the Alliance of Internationalist Feminists at 18:00 in front of the Auswärtiges Amt (Berlin).

The State, as a patriarchal mechanism, has the objective of controlling all aspects of our lives. For this reason they aim to maintain and reproduce the established social order by repressing any kind of radical dissent outside of heternormative parameters. In order to carry out this task with a sufficient social consensus, a discourse is createdwhich endorses repression against what is considered “undesirable conduct”.The result is the dehumanization of those who resist, and legitimizion excessive violence against our bodies.We see this in the establishment of red zones, the control of demonstrations or gatherings, the use of police or laws such as §129,as well as in the eviction of Liebig34 which was accompanied by a massive campaign against those who were living there using patriarchal stereotypes, insults and threats. We see a queer-anarcha-feminist house being transformed into a projection of macho behaviour by cops and security guards.Liebig34, the autonomous youth centre Potse, the collective bar Meuterei, the Wagenplatz of Køpi and Rigaer94 are spaces which should belong to all of us, as not only are they places where we can express our political stances, they are places where we live and create social interactions. Nevertheless, places where we still are also fighting to be free of sexual violence and patriarchal structures.

Through these legislations against our different ways of living and resisting, the State positions itself as the guarantor of security, using mechanisms commonly associated with masculinity: force, control, aggressionand protection of private property. We also see this in the patriarchal militarized police structures that are used for the imposition ofsocial order, above all, in the public space. It is here, too, that the patriarchal nature of the State can be seen. Through public-private dualism, a binary hierarchy identified as “masculine-feminine” is created: “masculinity” is represented by the State, which controls the public space; and the “feminine” is represented by dissidence, which must be relegated to a private-invisible space. For this reason, in Germany and some European countries, “civic” laws exist that regulate the public space in a hierarchical way by regulating how, when and by whomit is used. This model of city also provokes the stigmatization and expulsion of certain people and social groups. These people are those that do not fit into the model of what is acceptable to the state: the poor, sex workers, undocumented migrants, those living on the streets. Although in Berlin there is a certain tolerance towards these communities, it always takes place in very concrete spaces regulated by heavy police violence, as we can see in Kottbuser Tor or Görlitzer Park.

State patriarchal-control is followed by a gentrification process that welcomes people with a privileged status. While there is an increase in private profit through the concentration of German and multinational companies, investment funds and banks,at the same time neighborhood commerce, bars where we can articulate our networks of mutual support,and projects where we can livea subversive life are eliminated. With this, there is a loss of multiple urban identities in favor of standardized and aseptic spaces which do not respond to the fundamental needs of the population, but promote consumerism and precarious employment. This whole process is accompanied by a displacement of sections of the population due to the increase of rents and evictions. The gender implications of this transformation are evident, not only becausethere is a gender pay gap of 20%, orthe feminization of poverty that affects women* directly, but also because those who manage to stay see how neighborhoodsand communities are being eroded, making daily activities more difficult. Places were trust relationships were established and managed to create safer spaces for women are now getting demolished in order to build start ups, yuppies centers, luxury buildings etc where all relationships are build in anonymity and not in trust, mutualaid and solidarity. And those who areforced to leave not only have to look for another house;relocationcan also mean changing schools and doctors and a general break with your social network amongst myriad other consequences. Those changesaffect our ways of socializing and walking in the street, where sexist violence is  manifested, and this limits our use of the public space. In Berlin2 rapes are registered per day. Consequently, we find a model of city that prioritizes the market and abandons care.

Against any kind of oppression we stand together.Because solidarity is not enough, let’s build more resistance. Let’s be offensive feminists!

In solidarity with Lina, an antifascist arrested on the 5th of November in Leipzig!