#besetzen (#squat #occupy)
We hereby inform you, that we, self-determined Berliners, will no longer accept the stupidity of empty houses, poverty, evictions and lack of space to live in. Soon, we are going to take back the houses. We want to encourage all of you to realise your secret dreams of living without profit. We ask for solidarity for activists and neighbours and to join in and reject the logics of rents and ownership.
We have nothing to lose but our next rent-increase.
The City of the Wealthy
We oppose the city of the rich. In their city, every flat, every place, every park, and every moral is adjusted to those who are able to afford it. Most Berliners, us included, are not rich. Quite the opposite. Of all federal states, Berlin has seen the biggest increase in poverty. That is directly related to the ‘System Rent’, which re-distributes money from the bottom to the top. We fight the ruling authoritarian ideas from economic players and politics, valorising every square meter. Preventing this nightmare has nothing to do with despising the well-off. We are simply opposed to the fact that social participation stems from income as well as social and cultural background. The poor, Homeless, refugees, the old, they do not fit into the city of the rich.
This is why we fight for…
…a City from below.
It lives in the heads of people and is taking shape in local gatherings, collective movements, economies in solidarity and neighbourhood-centres. Here, problems are faced contrary to capitalist incentives and needs are focused. We stand for the right to choose one’s own living situation and organise it in and around the neighbourhood. To gather and resist means to stand up for one’s needs and is the social alternative to an expensive city. An alternative to a city in which we are so busy working, our flats only serve as a place to sleep and the coming-together with neighbours becomes impossible. The options of leaving, working more or social isolation is a choice between pest and cholera. Fighting for a city in solidarity on the other hand, means not giving in to gentrification. The city from below is a struggle, also against the laws that protect owners and bosses.
Squat!
We fail at finding spaces for non-commercial living while being offered one room flats for 700€, meanwhile, apartments and buildings next door remain empty. The government could expropriate speculators. But why should they, when evictions improve their social statistics but they don’t see the lives behind the statistics. Leaving expropriation to the parties that sold this city in the first place is not an option for us. For that reason, we will take our future into our own hands. This spring, we will take the space we need. We will squat the houses and our share of the square meters to withdraw it from the logic of speculation and ownership. We are going to take the consecutive step toward a self-determined city from below populated with people who shape their districts and spaces themselves.