this is our 9th protocol to form a “lager mobilisation network” in berlin. again, around 25 people were there – thanks to u all. please add, correct and criticize in the comment section.
next meeting tuesday/dienstag, 10th november 2015, 7pm / 19 uhr
at migrationsrats office adress: oranienstr. 34, 10999 berlin-kreuzberg right backyard, 2nd floor please ring the bell, if the door is closed, next to u-station kottbusser tor
protocol #9 – forming a ‘lager mobilisation network’ in berlin
1. introduction of the network for our new freedom fighters
2. reports
3. women in the lagers + lager buisness-report
4. demo of the so-called refugees
5. what to do in emergency cases (mass deportations are to expected)?
6. redistribution of donations
7. organizing a legal work shop for us and how to spread it further in the lagers?
8. next meeting
1. introduction of the network for our new freedom fighters
our goal is to have a decenteralized lager-mobilisation in berlin and hopefully one day in brandenburg. we already visited some lagers, did some research about the shit living conditions inside and how they are built to make money off of illegalized and isolated human beings we label as “refugees”. right now there are over 23.000 people (official number by lageso) just in berlin in lagers.
the lager-mobilisation-network is an open network with decenteralized working groups against the slavery which is taking place inside the lagers – so join like u want and your personal scheduele allows u to participate; plus we do not do anything “illegal”. we are people from all over the world and speak english during our meetings, but german translation is always possible, for other languages hit us up please – or if possible bring your friends with u.
after some re/thinking rounds, practical action and personal connection we developed two guidlines for the coming steps, but these ideas are dynamic and realated to our possibilites and the exprience we gain, a short summary:
i. short and mid-term:
a. we will go and talk with groups who know and can teach about the legal problems and educate ourselves in this direction and then visit again the lagers in small groups and spread this hardly needed information as the people asked us when we were visiting them; in addition to this we take info flyers etc. with us about the legal situations. we also invite (not force…) the so-called refugees living in those lagers we visit to be part of our group.
b. we want also be part of the “neighbourhood/welcoming-initiatives” and bring some alternative ideas and information from the self-organized struggle additional to their great charity work.
–> therefore we need some more people who speak different languages like: arabic, albanian, dari/farsi, serbo-croatian, tigrinya, urdu etc. – every languages is needed.
–> decentral working activists: people who are interessted to take care of the lagers in their around their living places like the districts they are living in and contact the people inside of lagers and participate in “neighbourhood/welcoming-initiatives” there – we (will) start very slow but very focused idea on this.
ii. long-term:
we are searching for rooms all over berlin outside but next to the lagers to build up small communities so people can organize themselves for the time they are forced to live inside of lagers. plus we will accompany them and try to bring alternative content like workshop etc. to those places – if its needed!
–> if u have a room or contact for such rooms (house projects, meeting-rooms), please let us know
–> if u know people for such content/workshops, please connect them to us
—————-
2. reports:
center-east-berlin:
104 people, 5? women, only small kitchen, only few social workers, not really talkative, will consider whether work shops inside prepared by us are possible,
preparation of a legal work shop, that is easily adaptable also to other decentral groups
preparing flyers and information that covers legal status, working rights, education access, health insurance
a neighborhood-initiative is organizing an open meeting in lichtenberg this saturday in terms of finding appartments and alternative living spaces to the ‘lagers’.
new law: people have to wait minimum 6 months until they can start searching for a flat and move out of the lager.
the situation of people from the west-balkan remains critical. how to prepare these people? are they informed about their legal situation? the eu considers west-balkan countries as safe countries
center-north:
thursday: ‘introductory’ work shop in this district for the neighborhood with a person, who is experienced in asylum law – to explain the neighborhood initiative what the current situation is like, what the new law is about, how to act regarding the law etc.
(report to be continued by next week): languages needed: arabic, urdu, panjabi, dari?
report after the #districthilft-meeting: concerns about the group, they work only in 2 lagers, that are both close to each other in the places aroud
big group, not really politically active back-ground, they want to help, organized in groups with different focuses: child care, language course, etc. humanitarian but not political
organized in awo and also work as official volunteers of awo’ – also the reason for the concentration on only 2 places???
meeting was more about ‘representation’, not connected to self-organized migrant groups, even if there are self-organized collectives next by is it more important to ‘help’ on the inside level or should we rather start to put pressure and critique the government and legal issues?
we go inside the lagers because we want to create contact to the people inside, to further act and work together inside with the people. in emergency lagers, that are big enough, it is easier to enter. small ones exist almost for a year or more already and they are hard to access.
center-south-berlin:
group of 10 so split in 2-3 groups, people inside justs arrived 2-3 days earlier, everything very new, approximately 600 people going to be extended to 2300 people, hangars with tents inside, visited hangar nr 1 (for families only) 2 more are being prepared 3&4, at the beginning lot of talks outside, after 2 people entered the rest could follow. only 2-3 securties inside, overwhelmed. lager is run by tamaja (also owners of the jahn-sporthalle). it is clean and warm inside, food is provided. (helps the positive reputation of the owner of the organization) problem: no showers – people have to take the bus to get to shower. also problematic: not all people are registered yet. people who arrive, are asked who wants to stay in berlin or want to go to other cities? the people who want to head to other places are not allowed to enter the place or receive food. political work is not welcome here.
people from the neighborhood are ‘instrumentalized’ to help and do the work like the organization and distribution of the donations. our work should focus on the people and not aid a company that is not willing to hire and pay people for the work.
brandenburg:
see protocol crabgrass-report, no kitchen (2 self-organized stolves), 2 showers, 110 people (all men), connection with the administration – build a lot of trust first to enter, a lot of information needed – especially about the legal status of the people,
possibility to get clothes is in m. but also the administration does not know about the public transport system there – people would have to buy the stuff there direct connection to seelow
1 activist from afghanistan – speaks very good english and farsi – can we organize to get him to the meetings? yes, not every week but possible.
additional: seelow (tomorrow 4. november) mobi-group forming from youth-organizations and die linke to do something about the situation in seelow
one person from seelow moved to h. -> situation is like seelow but there are also families and children.
east-berlin:
a. this place is open for 2 months now, speaking with the volunteers – barely any english speaking people there (mostly farsi, arabic, russian) all new arrivals and not registered yet
building up relation to the volunteers who work there – if it works out, we can have an info-board to hang our flyers, infos etc.
are there delegations from lageso going there to register the people? there were rumors that there should be a team going there but nothing had happened yet.
b. this seond place has the same issue <<<< afghani people in from place a. can connect with our friends from this one
turmstrasse
problem that people in front of lageso don’t have shelter. they receive ‘hotel bons’ but the hotels refuse them.
3. women in the lagers + lager buisness-report
a. international women space: they are interested into our group and want to know about our documentation. also how many women are actually in the lagers? how to contribute?
b. collaborative work already happens with an initiative who document the situation of the lagers in financial terms: how much money do the organizations make with the refugess and how are the living realities in comparison? this initiative also has a specific focus on the situation of women.
publicity and information has to happen in 2 directions:
–> inform the people inside about their issues + inform the people outside about the inner structures of the organizations!!!
lots of organizations are either haf-public-/half-private or but always focus on the profit they make of the “humanitary work”.
4. demo of the so-called refugees
afghanistan problem:
a lot of deportations since germany and afghanistan work out contracts to facilitate easier deportations of afghani
one afghan activist wants to organize a demonstration and to connect with other people around in the area, who are ‘active’
proposal: visit next week in tempelhof to figure out, if there are politically active people
– one person in waldsiedlung is a former activist too, he wants to visit the meetings
connect the people
– write an information sheet about the changes in the agreement between germany and afghanistan
– people stop sleeping in the lagers because they are scared about being arrested and deported over-night
– problem also for the people who have been here for several years already.
– demo should concern all people, since the deportation process will spread to other -‘nationalities’ too. can it happen in the next 3 weeks? where to organize it?
– contact d.s. to help organize a demo and have a fixed date => after we can go to the people in the streets and lagers to mobilize
19th november – uni & school strike (meeting every wednesday 6pm in potse/drugstore) concerning the legal situation of the so-called refugees in germany, connect with them to co-organize the demo together??? will it be powerful and effective enough or is a self-organised “refugee”-demo a better solution?
– the idea is to have a self-organized demonstration by the so-called refugees to make the message clear it is about the issues of the refugees’ legal situations
– is it possible to use the demo on the 19th of november as a vehicle/platform to advertise the “refugee” emergency demo
– we cannot talk about the deportation problem as long as we are not concerned with it.
– who is the author of the demonstration?
——————-
5. what to do in emergency cases (mass deportations are to expected)?
emergency phones to prevent evictions exist in lagers,
– problem 1: normal deportations happen quietly – how to act???
– problem 2: the so-called refugees frequently don’t know, if it is a ‘normal’ or mass deportation + if a deportation is prohibited once, the police frequently comes the day after
– are there existing emergency networks in the lagers???
– awarness is important also ask, if the people have these existing structures
– what are the legal guidline to stop deportation?
–> there are some people working on “stop deportation groups” – contact them for advice!
6. redistribution of donations
there are a lot of donations in frankfurt oder. can we pick them up and re-distribute them? clothes, things … depending on the needs we could arrange the redistribution.
in g. winter clothes are needed
how to coordinate the transport from frankfurt o. to berlin?
a) call first what is there, how much and when to pick it up
b) when we have the date – we need a second car to pick the stuff up and bring the donations on one specific spot, where every group has access in case they need to pick up donations and distribute them themselves – bring the stuff to the emergency lagers e.g. lageso (problem: they are already full with useless stuff and cannot coordinate the distribution), center-south (we have contact to the kleiderkammer there – under wear and warm clothes) center-east-lager needs a lot of kitchen stuff and winter clothes for men)
7. organizing a legal work shop for us and how to spread it further in the lagers?
– topics: basic information, legal situation, self defense, etc.
– rooms are available: in x-berg, office available in moabit, k9 is organizable,
– people with right knowledge (law and language) needed
– money for the tickets
– conatct to babylonia (for translators during the work-shops and to create a reader) for work-shops in the
– legal work-shop for us: maybe next tuesday at the meeting?, additional readings can be found at the flüchtlingsrat
– when can the work-shops be given? are they flexible? how frequently?
8. next meeting
please read our previous protocols too, we dont want to repeat ourselves every time from zero:
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/10/31/protocol-78-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-network-in-berlin/
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/10/15/protocol-6-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-group-in-berlin/
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/10/11/protocol-5-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-group-in-berlin/
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/09/30/protocol-4-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-group-in-berlin/
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/09/29/protocol-3-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-group-in-berlin/
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/09/19/protocol-2-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-group-in-berlin/
https://www.oplatz.net/2015/09/11/protocoll-1-forming-a-lager-mobilisation-group-in-berlin/
“if u are interessted to join and help us instead of talking blabla or “attend another meeting with no practical result”, please come to our next meeting and get active – put it!”
next tuesday/dienstag
10th november 2015
7pm / 19 uhr
at migrationsrats office – www.migrationsrat.de
adress:
oranienstr. 34
10999 berlin-kreuzberg
right backyard, 2nd floor
please ring the bell, if the door is closed
next to u-station kottbusser tor
berlin, 03. november 2015 – www.oplatz.net
we are one