Originally published on 07/13/2016.
Nearly three weeks ago, when cops and construction-workers violently entered our space, we could not foresee how long our project would continue to exist. Today, we know that we remain unbroken and meanwhile we are currently in the spotlight as a major political topic. Considering the mass of information and the many political actors involved in this conflict, it is vital to stay focused on the most important points.
Who are we?
We are a political housing project consisting of a diversity of people, and a house with the best neighbours you could imagine. We are united by the will to fight against the violent conditions that the state is consistently trying to enforce (especially against us in the past few weeks).
Our passion for freedom forces us into daily conflict with our surroundings, with institutions as well as with servants of the state, nazis, sexists and other assholes. Within this conflict we are also confronted by our own contradictions, but this should never hinder us from working on a revolutionary praxis and from creating, through autonomous struggles, space in which we can develop relations to other people.
The future is unwritten
Since a final analysis of our ideas only makes sense once we have achieved our goals of freedom, self-determination and enrichment, for now, we can only say that the latest happenings are an early affirmation of this autonomous struggle.
What the state views as a dangerzone, is an attempt to create a self-organized and resistant zone, where the people live together without institutionalized violence and without representation by politicians, managers or other institutions.
The way in which many people have self-organized here of late, is a concrete alternative to hierarchical structures and ways of organising. The strength, which allows us (the rebellious part of the north of Friedrichshain) to withstand three weeks of siege, comes in large part from real (not abstract) social relationships. Through meeting on the street, more and more people came to the conclusion that there are many factors that make collaboration a necessity. This was then realized in the resistance against gentrification or against this police state, where all our freedoms are being stripped away.
We have to confess, that the police had good reasons to develop this insidious plan of moving refugees into kadterschmiede. The struggle against gentrification and the police have a strong history in the neighbourhood. But fights against racism are another story. Herein lies the dark side of autonomous politics: it operates within the context of wider society, it makes concessions towards the majority to gain resonance and is betraying itself in segmented fights. Of course, we are also fighting for an anti-racist neighbourhood. But in our case, when we were accused of not wanting refugees in our surroundings, it was connections from outside the neighbourhood that had to raise their voices to extinguish these claims. If this was an actively anti-racist, less Western-European neighbourhood (including us), there would be no basis to this argument.
But we have decided to negate the states power-base by emphasizing our communality, collectivizing individual fights, and trying to stand side by side with one another on the barricades.
Success is already apparent: mass politicization of new generations of rioters, skillsharing in the neighbourhood, opening-up of structures and the collectivization of resources, more and better communication between us and others, self-empowerment, international resonance and destroying feelings of powerlessness and fear of repression etc.
Why a black july?
With the knowledge of the unresolvable contradictions in our small nucleus of social-revolutionary struggle, we called for a black july. The decentralized concepts and calls to send Berlin into chaos are an alternative to the struggle within the framework of cultural political norms. The informal organisation and free association of decentralized networks that create their own rules, has always a strength. Especially in times when the state seeks to erradicate its enemies. Looking at the elements of psychological terror of the siege by the police and at the warlike rhetoric of their leaders, we have come to the conclusion that they do want to break us.
Social revolutionaries always have to ask themselves if they are still resisting, or if they are already taking part in their own extinction.
Revolutionary politics are not negotiable
Of course there is no question in our minds, that even in the unlikely case of a political solution for the fight for our house, nothing is over. We did not throw ourselves into the struggle, risking our health and freedom, just to give up our higher goals when we get back the Kadterschmiede. We will always be part of the radical resistance against gentrification.
We are the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood is us – there will be no individual solution to the problem of gentrification, only a collective fight.
Point of no return
We hate the cops in every way and the riots during the demonstration on saturday bring us joy. We don't only want to kick the state out of our street, but also want it out of our lives. The last weeks have only strengthened our position.
In all that has happened here; the („illegal“) eviction of the Kadterschmiede, the siege on our spaces, the violence inflicted on us, the publication of our personal data via nazi websites, the use of a police snitch for false-flag actions against cheap cars, the cancelling of the court-trial about the illegality of their actions -
All these facts make it clear; there is no necessity to talk to the pigs...
How to go forward?
Today, a court decided that the whole eviction was illegal. In this law-and-order loving society, this plays straight into our hands. A big part of the argument from our enemies has fallen apart. But they continue their declaration of political war against our structures and our struggles.
There is no reason to hold back. We will continue to work to make this whole ordeal a bigger disaster for the politicians and the cops than it already is. Their disaster is measured by the positive outcomes for us, not just on our success in direct confrontations with a police army in the most secured area of berlin. The fight continues.
Soyons ingouvernables!
Seien wir
unregierbar!
Let's be ungovernable!