I’m M, a black transgender refugee woman. I live in Bad Saarow which is a lager that is isolated between a forest, a lake, and some Nazis which is halfway to Poland from Berlin. It takes me two hours and four trains to just come here to make this speech. I am not even sure how I will get back to Bad Saarow.

Why am I here today?

Racism, mass migration, civil wars, lack of proper leadership, and stability can all be traced back to slavery, colonialism, and the scramble for and partition of Africa. In this city of Berlin 137 years ago 7 European powers divided the continent Africa like it was cake. Our history and cultures were erased. Our grandparents suffered heavily, they were tortured and families have broken apart. The land was forcefully taken and they were put in concentration camps where they were detained without trial. Artifacts, religious items, and many other prized things were collected from our lands in the name of the Queen, they now sit in museums making European countries money.

And to this day the dialogue in and around reparations is non-existent. After independence, these European countries never formally acknowledged their horrific actions. They installed their cronies as leaders who mismanaged the countries ensuring no proper accountability so they could get our precious minerals where the common citizen never gets to see a penny from exports. Wealth is in the hands of a select few. Countries fall into chaos. As western countries collude with African governments then later in their statements say they are corrupt. Women and children suffer indiscriminately. Young kids work in the mines of the DRC and Germany continues to do trade with the corrupt governments. This is Neocolonialism. As western governments continue to work with these thugs and crooks who are the governments of these countries they are legitimizing them. Then there is the war profiteering business which makes a lot and I mean a lot of money. Germany makes 1.6 Billion (with a  B) euros from selling arms to Israel. They also make a lot of money from selling Medicines and medical equipment to Palestine. Intentionally turning a blind eye to the ongoing occupation, massacre and apartheid rule on Palestine by Israel.  How crazy is this? To add to that, 40% of all total sales of arms done by Germany  is to North Africa and the Middle East where the majority of refugees are from. I leave you to make the correlation

So then refugees from these war-torn countries flee to the perceived ‘safe’ countries… that is western countries and come here, we are treated like we do not belong. Being put in lagers that are in ghost towns. This is real-life psychological torture Germany. Families are being shoved into tiny rooms. These asylum cases are dragging on for years; others have spent over 10 years and are still waiting with no right to work or any sort of schooling or any avenue to get any legal recognition. This is a shame Germany.

All refugees are denied the right to choose where they want to stay but it even gets worse with LGBTQI+ refugees who face danger and discrimination in everyday life. As a Black transgender woman, I, like many others, experience intersectional discrimination, far often than not these actions go unchecked and we suffer in silence!

Navigating the system as a Black Trans refugee is shockingly hard, you have social workers who are not well versed in dealing with the specific issues faced. Access to hormones is limited and almost impossible. The Government should take action to ensure more protection and ease of access for medical needs for trans refugees.  

We demand the right to safe housing, not isolated from LGBTQI+ communities and wider society!  We demand the right to choose where we live! Trans rights are human rights. Refugee rights are human rights. 

We demand Germany to take charge as it did in 1884 while partitioning my continent to do the same now and serve a formal apology to countries affected by colonialism. That should be followed by the return of antiques and artifacts back to where they belong, In the motherland. Reparations are not up for discussion; they are way overdue. And we should dictate the terms.

We demand for german corporations to take a stance against doing business in war torn countries or with dictatorial regimes.

We demand an expanded curriculum in schools talking and teaching extensively about Germany’s colonial past, racism, and a more diversified education covering gender and sexuality. 

If you want to be allies, work with refugee-led, grassroots organizations. Donate your money, your time, and use your voice and your votes.

You have a civic duty to dismantle all the systems that continue to oppress me. Make a fair, equal and just system a reality for all.

In this time, we were fighting for: abolition of the Residenzpflicht, the voucher system, the right to study the German language, the right to work and study, and abolition of Lagers – to break the isolation all asylum seekers are placed into.

In this way they were criminalizing the political movement and the political work as a whole showing how much they wanted to suppress the movement. Drugs have always been used to undermine political movements and uprisings.

So this is when racial profiling subtly started. The denial to access the school which they so much wanted was one reason why they did not enter to do the arrests. When the police came, 3 men ended up being arrested and were put into prison for 5 months while the investigations took place.The justice system claimed that they were trying to run away but the reality is that they were actually protesting in order to get their right to stay. This was a whole 5 months of detention without trial!

Through the Oranienplatz movement, we were able to abolish the Residenzpflicht and the voucher system and got the rights to study, which is what the asylum seekers today are benefiting from.

But now the situation is different – there are the Dublin regulations which are what are being used to illegalize people. This is a law that dictates which country will be responsible for your asylum application. In reality, it has meant that once you enter a European country you have to go through the asylum process there, in the country of arrival. If you try to go to a 2nd or 3rd European country and apply for asylum, they can and will deport you back to the country that you arrived in. This is a tactic the EU is using to deport people.

Because of the Dublin Regulations, many people have become illegalized or undocumented, forcing them into an even more vulnerable situation. This exposes people to all sorts of violence: sexual exploitation, forced prostitution, poor working conditions, and unpaid work. It’s also why some people are forced into operating from this park to earn a living.

And this is how the state uses the vulnerability they create to criminalize people. With laws like Dublin and the criminalization of drugs they are able to justify racial profiling – to stop and arrest people who they suspect are selling drugs or who are here quote ‘illegally’. These criminalizations happen in the streets and it always come with immense police violence and racial profiling.

Now there is a new outcry on the war on drugs and the face of crime has become black or Arab men.

Our question is: Who brings the drugs here and who uses them? Who are the real consumers of these drugs?

When we go back to history, with evidence from the film ‘Wir Kindern von Bahnhof Zoo’, we can clearly see the history of drugs here. There was no Görlitzer park but drugs were still being sold and from the film the peddlers of the drugs were the Germans themselves.

Berlin is heavily publicly commercialised as a great tourist attraction – a place for the European tourists to come and celebrate the ‘multikulti’ and the free drug atmosphere. On the other hand, this same freedom is not applied to the people who are forced to engage in drug peddling.

So we stand here, almost ten years after the Oplatz movement and occupation of the school began, still fighting for the end of the racist asylum and migration policies of the EU – and the end of the policing, racial profiling, and criminalization we experience.

The right wing is using migration to create fear, if you do not want migrants, let us address the reasons as to why people flee because right now the unwanted migrants are fleeing because of the economic and political chaos and turmoil created by Europe.

As we will keep saying: We are here because you destroy our lands.

Let’s vote wisely! Let’s join forces and let’s not stop demanding for a more humane asylum system until we achieve a dignified life for all!

United we stand, divided we fall! … OUR LIVES MATTER!

Hello everyone, l am Jennifer from the International Women* Space and the Break Isolation group.

I acknowledge the efforts of many here, who have contributed to fighting the stigmatisation and racism against African people and people with African descent.

Racism acts to depoliticize us, to prevent us from organising, seeks control of our lives be it socially, economically or politically. Our decisions too, but today we are here to repeat that we will never stop to organise, to protest, to demand justice for those affected and killed by racists, because BLACK LIVES MATTER.

There is a black genocide taking place in the Mediterranean because we live in a world where goods from Africa can enter freely in Europe – but not the people from Africa.

This is the continuation of the colonisation and exploitation of Africa and her resources. This is why so many people flee to seek asylum. But when they do, they are put into an asylum system that tortures and murders in cold blood with no remorse.

A system that traps people in the Lagers to not only keep total control over them but also to isolate them as much as possible.

A system created to profit off of locking up and killing black people.

A system that violates and takes away people’s right to work, to privacy, to education.

The asylum system is one of the most brutal forms of institutional and structural racism here in Germany. And it does this all in the name of human rights.

Germany now even says that having a Duldung is a reason for imprisonment, deportation, expulsion and extradition. The Dublin regulation has caused the illegalization and deportations of thousands of people.

Now there is the hysteria on ‘war on drugs’. Allow me to say that it’s a war on black people. If this really is a war on drugs? Where are the faces of the consumers and the drug barons?

Let’s be clear: the criminalization of migration by the German state is the greatest criminal act of all!

The magnitude of structural and institutional racism in Germany against people of African descent can be seen in the racial profiling by the government and security agencies.

There is a repeated denial that racial profiling does not exist in Germany by the police authorities. It is unacceptable that a police officer cannot be called a racist! If we see a racist act and we cannot name it, how can we denounce racism?

So let’s be clear: Racism is everywhere. Black genocide is happening everywhere.

So when we come to the streets to demand the absolute minimum – that is, that it is acknowledged that BLACK LIVES MATTER, we also want to take a minute to remember our brothers and sisters whose lives were taken by German institutions like the police.

We want to remember:

Rita Owour Ojunge who was killed already 2 years ago in a Lager in Hohenleipisch.
A Lager in the middle of the woods in Brandenburg in total isolation.
Rita’s assassination is still an open criminal case until today.
Rita’s assassin was never found.
A case led by a white police force …
That couldn’t care less if a woman’s black body was missing.

We want to remember:

Robble Warsame, who was living in an Ankercenter – a big deportation center – in Schweinfurt that was repeatedly – like the other refugees living in this Lager – brutally beaten by the security in the Lager before he was taken to the police station where he was later beaten and killed by the police. Again a white police force that is so confidentially telling the lie that he hanged himself.

We ask: How is a man who is 1.78 meters tall supposed to strangle himself with a strip from a blanket, that is considered unbreakable – especially made to prevent suicides in prison- that was placed at a height of 1.50 meters?

We want to remember:

Oury Jalloh, who was killed 16 years ago by police officers in custody at the Dessau police station. After his killing the police launched a campaign to paint him as a criminal, a drug dealer.
A story that we all just know too well.
16 years during which his murder was covered up by the German authorities over and over again until today!

And they are just three cases that we know of. But they stand for thousands and thousands of people that are getting brutalized and killed EVERY DAY.

We demand Justice for Rita and all the people who have been killed by white supremacy:

– in the so called refugee camps in Libya that the German Government is financing
– in the Mediterranean, which has become a mass grave, killed by border security like Frontex – also financed by Germany
– in the Lagers
– in the deportation centers
– at the police station
– at the Ausländerbehörde
– at the Jobcenter
– on the street
– at the park

So we have to fight every day actively to not only chant today that BLACK LIVES MATTER,

but to demand that BLACK LIVES MATTER!

As a last point I want to acknowledge changes that have been happening in the last years in our community:
There is more unity, people are denouncing the colonial tool imposed on them for so many years.

And we are more WOKE – because we are FED UP!

Let’s continue in this spirit, because united we stand, divided we fall!

… OUR LIVES MATTER!

8th March 2021 Demo – IWS Speech

We are here today to demand justice for Rita. Rita Awour Ojunge disappeared on April 7, 2019 from the Lager in Hohenleipisch, where she was forced to live. It took the police over two months before finding her remains, which laid only 200 metres away from the Lager where she had lived for 7 years. Over a year later, the investigation has still not been concluded — despite constant pressure on the police.
We know Rita’s case is not the only one, she represents one of many others.

The German Asylum System caused the death of Rita Ojunge.
White supremacy and racism caused the death of Rita Ojunge.
Misogyny caused the death of Rita Ojunge.

The mainstream white feminism sees the corona crisis as a regression of women‘s rights as women are returned to their traditional roles of being isolated in their homes – as if they, white middle class women, are the main casualties of the pandemic – as if they are the first to get hurt both economically and physically.

But we know that these living conditions, where even social distancing is impossible, and this type of physical, social, political, economic isolation has existed in the Lagers for a long time with the existence of the Lagers. This is the actual daily situation of women living in the Lagers from the time they enter and apply for protection in Germany and Europe. White middle class feminism has always been racist. It has never acknowledged our struggles because they benefit from it.

And then in the Lagers, social workers are using the colonial tool of divide and conquer to perpetuate the good and bad refugee syndrome. The result is continued racism towards black communities.

All of this shows: No Lager is safe. We need to self-organize.

Especially now, as Germany and the EU, under the veil of the pandemic, continue to practice restrictive border controls, constant racial profiling and rampant deportations which are enhanced by the Dublin regulation. The pushbacks and the collective expulsions continue to take place, denying people the possibility for personal and independent asylum examinations. These are fundamental violations of the right to asylum at the borders.

There is a commission that has been formed to investigate these acts being perpetuated by Frontex. But how can we trust this Commission? As Audrey Lorde says, we quote “the master’s tool will never dismantle the master’s house”.

We call for an independent, transparent and democratic commission which includes the players themselves. And as long as we are living in this country, in Fortress Europe, we demand to be a part of any politics that affect us. We have been silenced for too long and we will no longer remain silent.

We demand justice and conviction of Rita’s murderer!
We demand the abolishment of the Lager and asylum system!
We demand the dismantling of the Fascist and colonial Frontex system!

Break the silence, break the system!

Our life our resistance, break the silence break the system!

Call for 8th March 2021
International day of Women*´s Struggle

from the Alliance of Internationalist Feminists – Berlin
to all Women*, trans* and inter persons, especially trans*women, working class women*, refugee women*, Black women*, Indigenous women*, women* of Colour and disabled Women*

-In 2020, the Frontex budget was increased by more than 120 million Euro to 444 million Euro while many thousands have died on the shores of Libya and in the Mediterranean, and hundreds have died in the Atlantic on their way to the Canary Islands.
-During this crisis, the German government saves large corporations like Lufthansa with millions of Euros – money that goes towards financing deportations. On the other hand, the German arms industries are profiting more than ever by selling and exporting guns to so called “Conflict-Zones” and creating more war and death in many places, including Yemen and Northern Syria.
-Romani People are the largest minority in Europe and face ongoing and constant marginalisation, #gentrification, racism and genocide until today. In Europe, Romani people are confronted with inhumane circumstances, such as no access to water or medical care. Also police brutality against Romani has increased. Romani people are being held accountable for Corona and pushed into isolation. Europe calls it “prevention” and forces entire houses under arrest.
-In the forest near a village on the border of Croatia and the European Union, thousands of refugees have been living since December last year without shelter, no access to water or medical care in minus degrees. Bosnian authorities in the Bosnian city of Bihac moved hundreds of them to an old garbage dump. The European Union is not even watching.
-In Fall 2020 the weather is getting colder but fires have destroyed Greece’s largest migrant camp, an overcrowded facility on the island of Lesbos, leaving nearly 13,000 people without shelter. Meanwhile, European border agencies, German police officers are pushing back refugees to Turkish water – illegal deportations known as “pushbacks”.

These are not stories of a Netflix horror show. This is called: White Supremacy.
White supremacy doesn‘t have any shame in destroying the world and people’s lives through imperialist, colonialist, neoliberalist and extractivism agendas as well as femicide, embargo, border and deportation policies, supporting dictators and occupations with weapons trade and war.

We, the Alliance of internationalist Feminists believe Self-organization and self-defense is our strength in fighting against fascism, capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy.
Our struggle has been here all along and is connecting us around the whole world. We stand hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder together. Because the fight of each sister* is the fight of all sisters*. Let us show our determination and autonomy beyond borders. Another world is possible.

Let’s be organized.
Let’s be uncompromising.
Let’s dream big.
Let’s stand up.

Where: In Front of Representation of the European Commission in Germany (Unter den Linden 78, 10117 Berlin)
When: Monday, 08.03.2021, 2pm
+Bring your slogans and signs!
++Cis men are not invited, they are advised to take another action to stop violence against women*.

Alliance of internationalist feminists

Unser Leben unser Widerstand, brecht das Schweigen, brecht das System!

Aufruf zum 8. März 2021
Internationaler Frauen*kampftag

Von der Alliance of Internationalist Feminists – Berlin
an alle Frauen*, Trans* und Inter-Personen, insbesondere Trans*Frauen, Frauen* der Arbeiterklasse, geflüchtete Frauen*, Schwarze Frauen*, Indigene Frauen*, Frauen* of Colour und Frauen* mit Behinderung

• Im Jahr 2020 wurde das Frontex-Budget um mehr als 120 Millionen Euro auf 444 Millionen Euro erhöht, während viele Tausende an den Küsten Libyens und im Mittelmeer und Hunderte im Atlantik auf dem Weg zu den Kanarischen Inseln gestorben sind.
• Einerseits rettet die deutsche Regierung in dieser Krise Großkonzerne wie die Lufthansa mit Millionen von Euro – Geld, das in die Finanzierung von Abschiebungen fließt. Andererseits profitiert die deutsche Rüstungsindustrie mehr denn je, indem sie Waffen in sogenannte “Krisengebite” verkauft und exportiert und damit vielerorts für noch mehr Krieg und Tote sorgt, unter anderem im Jemen und in Nordsyrien.
• Romnja sind die größte Minderheit in Europa und sehen sich bis heute mit anhaltender und ständiger Marginalisierung, Gentrifizierung, Rassismus und Genozid konfrontiert. In Europa sind Romnja mit unmenschlichen Umständen konfrontiert, wie z.B. kein Zugang zu Wasser oder medizinischer Versorgung. Auch die Polizeibrutalität gegen Romani hat zugenommen. Romnja werden wegen Corona zur Rechenschaft gezogen und in die Isolation gedrängt. Europa nennt es “Prävention” und stellt ganze Häuser unter Quarantäne.
• Im Wald nahe eines Dorfes an der Grenze zu Kroatien und der Europäischen Union leben seit Dezember letzten Jahres Tausende von Geflüchteten bei Minusgraden ohne Unterkunft, ohne Zugang zu Wasser und ohne medizinische Versorgung. Die bosnischen Behörden in der bosnischen Stadt Bihac haben Hunderte von ihnen auf eine alte Mülldeponie gebracht. Die Europäische Union schaut nicht einmal hin.
• Herbst 2020 – das Wetter wird kälter, aber Brände haben Griechenlands größtes Flüchtlingslager, eine überfüllte Einrichtung auf der Insel Lesbos, zerstört und fast 13.000 Menschen ohne Obdach zurückgelassen. Währenddessen drängen europäische Grenzbehörden und deutsche Polizisten Geflüchtete in türkische Gewässer zurück – illegale Abschiebungen, bekannt als “Pushbacks”.

Dies sind keine Geschichten einer Netflix-Horror-Show. Dies nennt sich: White Supremacy.
White Supremacy kennt keine Scham, wenn es darum geht, die Welt und das Leben von Menschen durch imperialistische, kolonialistische, neoliberalistische und extraktivistische Agenden sowie Femizide, Embargo-, Grenz- und Abschiebepolitik zu zerstören, sowie Diktatoren und Besatzungen mit Waffenhandel und Krieg zu unterstützen.

Wir, die Alliance of Internationalist Feminists – Berlin, glauben, dass Selbstorganisierung und Selbstverteidigung unsere Stärke im Kampf gegen Faschismus, Kapitalismus, Patriarchat und weiße Vorherrschaft ist. Unser Kampf ist schon immer da gewesen und verbindet uns auf der ganzen Welt. Wir stehen Hand in Hand, Schulter an Schulter zusammen. Denn der Kampf jeder Schwester* ist der Kampf aller Schwestern*. Lasst uns unsere Entschlossenheit und Autonomie über Grenzen hinweg zeigen. Eine andere Welt ist möglich.

Lasst uns organisiert sein.
Lasst uns kompromisslos sein.
Lasst uns groß träumen.
Lasst uns aufstehen.

Wo: Vertretung der Europäischen Kommision in Deutschland, Unter den Linden 78, 10117 Berlin
Wann: Montag, 08.03.2021, 14:00 Uhr
+Bringt eure Slogans und Schilder mit!
++Cis-Männer sind nicht eingeladen, ihnen wird geraten, eine andere Aktion zu planen, um Gewalt gegen Frauen* zu stoppen.

Bündnis internationalistischer Feministinnen* Berlin

As the organizers wrote, “Commemoration is a collective act in which we never forget, in which we strengthen each other, make resistance struggles visible and from which we draw strength for future struggles.”

Below is the speech IWS gave during the demo.

Today we are here to remember the 9 people that were killed one year ago in Hanau. We also need to remember the victims of the NSU, Oury Jalloh, who was killed in the custody of police, and Rita Awour Ojunge, killed by the german asylum system, and many other unsolved cases because they show us that the german system was built on racism and it continues to exist through racism.

We must never forget that it is ONE RACIST SYSTEM!

It is the same system that covers up the states involvement in the NSU murders –

It is the same system that ordered to shut the emergency exit of the arena Bar – the place where the victims were killed- because they didn’t want people to be able to escape their regular police controls

It is the same system that after an unspoken media campaign of criminalizing and portraying non-white people, migrants and refugees -especially men- as aggressors and a threat to the white german state – exactly are the ones who were killed one year ago

Bundesregierung now wants to express their condolences when they repeatedly openly stigmatize and criminalize Shisha Bars to the point that they became a symbol to be attacked? That resulted in the death/killing of 9 people? NOW they want to show empathy?

After the NSU-Murders, after the Murder of Oury Jalloh, of Rita Awuor Ojunge, and the murders in Hanau, the racist police controls are ongoing, the racist attacks are ongoing, the racist deportations are ongoing.

All this is a symptom of a racist society. After every attack, after every killing, we are told that is an individual, a psychologically unstable guy, a victim of his circumstances. We tell you it is not one crazy guy, how come we ALL meet this same crazy guy over and over again:
in the police
in the Ausländerbehörde
on the U-bahn
on the Street
at the Amt
in the Schools.
at the Kiosk
at a flower shop.
at a shisha bar.

This crazy guy is everywhere! And we say again: there is no Einzeltäter, this is a racist society.

So if we are speaking of the racism in the Heims, about the racism on the street, racism in the deportations, we are speaking of a racist system, which has killed the 9 people in hanau one year ago.
and which is killing us every day!

So let’s get it clear: the
the state does not
never did and will never
protect us,
we have to organize ourselves!

Racism acts to depoliticize us, to divide us, to prevent us from organizing. But today we are here to repeat, that we will never stop to organize, to protest, to demand justice for those killed by racism.

Kommt mit uns am 19. Februar zusammen, um Ferhat Unvar, Gökhan Gültekin, Hamza Kurtović, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Sedat Gürbüz, Kaloyan Velkov, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu und allen anderen Betroffenen rassistischer Gewalt zu gedenken.

Gedenkorte am 19.02., ab 16 Uhr:
Rathausplatz, Neukölln
Oranienplatz, Kreuzberg
Leopoldplatz, Wedding

Antifaschistische Demo am 20.02.
14 Uhr, S-Bhf Hermannstraße

Hanau war kein Einzelfall.
Erinnern heißt verändern,
Gedenken heißt kämpfen!

Abortion is the essence of every woman’s right to own her own body! Abortion is a question of public health, and we from the International Women Space stand in total solidarity with the women in Poland and totally against this newly near total ban of abortion in their country!

The approval of the ruling has been delayed and today we are here to recognize our achievements but also to say we will not recognize decisions taken by the body of a supreme court, formed by a majority of religious fundamentalist white men!

Not in Poland, not anywhere! Misogynistic laws must be broken! Violent laws that lead women to perform unsafe abortions must be broken! Because all women know and everybody knows Women DO make abortions and will CONTINUE to make abortions!

We are sure that all these powers in Europe: Governments, Legislators, the catholic church CANNOT care less if women making an abortion is not a white woman! If it’s a migrant! If its a Black woman or a woman of colour.

We call on doctors in Poland and all around the world to go on civil disobedience! And provide safe abortions!

The irony though is that the same people banning abortions for white women would EVEN support sterilization for us migrants. This is how Capitalist patriarchy works and this misoginist system must be held accountable for the Femicide!

Another irony is to see how much empathy is given to foetuses when full grown, living human beings are drowning in the Mediterranean Sea trying to reach Europe! And no state, no institution care! No church, no defenders of human life care! White apathy is violence! White supremacy kills. Whose lives matter?

We call all internationalist feminists to raise against all misogynistic laws!

Hoch die Internationale Solidarität!

—

We also attended the demo on 31st October in Berlin – Wir Sind Richtig AngePISsst!:

Video from leftvision:

Photos by IWS:

Today our thoughts and our hearts are with the victims and survivors of the attack in Halle and their families. Please know that you are not alone, that we are many.

In IWS, the International Women’s Space, we are a group of migrant and refugee women, and some of us are also Jewish. A year ago, we were in our weekly meeting as we heard about the shooting in Halle. It was immediately clear to us that this is an anti-semitic crime, but also a crime against all of us:

The shooting in Halle was clearly an anti-semitic and anti-Jewish attack, but it was also a misogynist attack, an anti-Muslim attack, an anti Black and racist attack.

We are now exactly one month before 9.Nov, the so-called crystal night or Reichspogromnacht. The official German memory culture would like to shift the role of the state from the executioner to the protector. But what we take from our history is that we cannot rely on the state for protection, not of ourselves and certainly not of others.

Today, the state offers us, as Jews, protection. In the form of financial resources, police officers, and ridiculous public campaigns like the racist Shabbat-Shabbat campaign of the CDU.

The reality is that we can’t be protected by a state that is racist and capitalist.
A state that exports weapons and fails to secure the lives of those who escape war.
A state that sends 5000 policemen to evict 20 women from their home in Liebigstraße right here and now in Berlin.

A state that protect the right of rich white cis-men to accumulate wealth, but not the rights of women, queers and migrants for housing.

A state that is responsible for hundreds of asylum seekers drowning in the Mediterranean sea.

A state that closes its eyes to its own deeply rooted racism and that blames Muslims and refugees for importing anti-semitism.

They tell us Einzeltäter – but as feminists, we know that there is no such thing as Einzeltäter. All these men are products of a patriarchal white-supremacist system that puts profit over people.

Our fight against anti semitism must be in the context of resistance against racism, capitalism and all forms of state violence.

Enough with the bullshit idea that Germany is done with racism after the Second World War, and all it has to do now is to “Never Forget”. We won’t let Germany white-wash itself by instrumentalizing Jews.

The German state, with the complicity of reactionary Jewish institutions, acts systematically to separate anti-semitism from other forms of racism, and to isolate Jews from other minorities. We say NO. We choose solidarity over the illusion of state protection.

And so, as we stand here today with the survivors of Halle, we also stand with the families of the victims of Hanau, with the women in Liebig, with Roma and Sinti who are fighting to protect their Holocaust memorial, with all the victims of the German asylum system and border regime.

Together we are strong!

– IWS