Kompass-Newsletter No. 87 - 06/2020
Black lives matter +++ Hanau: 140 sqm for never forgetting +++ 14.06.: This is how solidarity works - indivisible action day +++ 17. to 19.6. in Erfurt and from everywhere: Youth without borders with online activities for the conference of interior ministers +++ 20 June: From Sea to City - Online conference and campaign launch +++ 24 June in Wiesbaden: Because of Corona and generally - Relocation program now! +++ 15th to 18th July (in planning): digital transborder summer camp +++ New network platform: trans-border.net +++ Brochure on the Transborder Summer Camp +++ WatchTheMed Alarm Phone Updates from Central Med, Aegean and Western Med +++ Deportation Alarm: Facebook group against deportations +++ Reviews: 8th July May: denazification now; 23 May: Seabridge actions; 30 May: transnational social strike mobilization for an European residence permit +++ Outlook: 25 to 29 August in Leipzig and online: Future for All Congress; 2 to 5 September: Transnational Decentralised Days of Action 5 years after the March of Hope
DEAR FRIENDS!
Black lives matter! After the brutal murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the wave of protest against racist police violence is spreading from the USA to Europe and the world and back again. An incredible 50,000 in Vienna, very large demonstrations in many cities in Germany - despite the warnings and restrictions due to the pandemic. Nobody could have imagined this not so long ago, and once again it demonstrates the stubbornness and self-dynamics of social movements. And the spontaneous ability to mobilize and the broad anchoring of anti-racist struggles! Whether and how this new movement will be sustained is difficult to predict. Even if the renewed cause is bitter: that it is transnational protests against racism and police violence that break the isolation of the Corona crisis is only great for the time being.
Originally we wanted to start our newsletter again with "Hanau", where the initiative has meanwhile opened its new social center with a moving video clip on 19 February: https://19feb-hanau.org/2020/05/04/140qm/ . The short film impressively captures the simultaneity of desperate sadness and angry strength with which the relatives of the victims of the racist terrorist attack have repeatedly made it into the mainstream media in recent weeks. And there was a quick connection to the USA. Because recently a woman from the families of the victims asked us the same question: "In America a black man was murdered and everywhere there are big demonstrations and fights. In Hanau nine people were killed and everything is quiet. Don't we need an uprising here too?"
Yes, that is shortened, because the list of dead of racist police violence in the USA is very long and the struggles against it have an even longer, strong history. And yet this new friend, who certainly never had anything to do with traditional political organization, hits the right point. The polarised times and the racist escalation at the external borders as well as in the inner cities of Europe would have long since deserved a whole series of social uprisings.
We cannot and do not want to talk away the fundamentally defensive situation, even after the last few days with the impressive mobilisations. Again and again we wrote here in the Kompass Newsletter about the roll-back, which has been dominating since 2016, and at the same time we still put the often quiet, everyday struggles in the foreground. With Corona everything seemed to become even more complicated. Because the virus is undoubtedly a terrible threat. However, "hygiene and distance rules" made it difficult to imagine a new social offensive.
Has Black lives matter already overtaken the situation sustainably? In any case, the mass demonstrations of the last few days have stirred up the leaden times. Hopefully the weird corona protests from the right with their crude conspiracy theories don't need to occupy us further. Instead, there is fresh impetus to think about new progressive possibilities. Possibilism is back and has immediately shaped the meeting of We'll Come United. More than 40 activists met for the first time physically again in Berlin last weekend and immediately took up the inspiration from the street. For the beginning of September - exactly five years after the March of Hope and the breakthrough on the Balkan route - the plans for decentralized days of action - from regional to transnational - have been renewed. The various aspects of everyday and institutional racism and thus also the entire border regime are to be targeted with a variety of actions from 2 to 5.9.2020.
If we look at the calendar above, on the one hand the strategic conferences stand out. Secondly, the various efforts to further develop transnational networking. Both are necessary and both are important. And both of these have to relate decisively to everyday struggles and the building and expansion of structures of solidarity. In the recently published brochure on the transborder summer camp, it was once again formulated as follows: "In the face of states of emergency and intensified nationalist sentiments, our struggles for freedom of movement and equal rights seem to be ever more on the defensive…. (But) all around the globe, countless initiatives alongside the principle of mutual aid emerged. They create a sense of cross-over-solidarity and build structures outside or even against the framework given by neoliberal governments. Does this present us with new opportunities for emancipatory struggles?…No question: we have to move within the ambivalences of the new crisis, and we will continue our daily struggles. Freedom of movement is both, a practice and a vision – a practice and a vision of transnational solidarity during and beyond COVID-19.“
In this spirit,
Anti-racist greetings from the Kompass Team