Nothing was heard of us for a while. Well, it is summer and we also had to cancel the breakfast by and for refugees in July because of a storm-related flooding of Café ADA at 7/19. Unfortunately ADA has suffered a bit and it has probably to be closed for repairing for some weeks in the foreseeable future. We wish our friends at ADA all the best and we hope everything will be fine again soon. However Café ADA still is open and we hope the next w2wtal-breakfast on August 16 can take place as planned. We look forward to you very much after the long break.
In the meantime we were on a short bike-tour together and we want to do that again: Next Friday (August 7th) a „Critical Mass“ takes place again in Wuppertal, in which we want to participate with you. Cycling in a large group – often several hundred people take part with their bicycles – begins at 7 pm at Kluse, which is the square at the Cinemaxx-Cinema in Elberfeld. But we will already meet at 6 pm at Café ADA to go there together. If someone wants to participate having no own bike, we will take care of available additional bikes. Please tell us about it as soon as possible., i.e during this week’s courses.
Those who wish can stop by on the way to Kluse at the Von-der-Heydt square at C&A in Elberfeld – on Friday by 6 pm a smaller rally of the local no one is illegal-group about the dying of refugees in the Mediterranean starts there.
Otherwise, everything went on as usual during this summer: German society tried to show itselve as „open“ and „tolerant“, a „welcome culture“ is propagated everywhere and civil society initiatives are supported – but as ever – under the surface Germany is as hard as nails and remains a master of foreclosure and exclusion. Not only in Facebook-groups of racist mobs and during rallies full of hate-speech against refugee-accommodations, but also politically: Recently the new so called «Bleiberecht» entered into force, which could lead to many new deportation-imprisonments and politicians proudly proclaim that the number of deportations of rejected asylum seekers and of those who entered via „safe countries“ is at a new alltime high. Prime Minister Seehofer, who rules the state of the formerly Dachau camp, demands the establishment of new «concentration camps» for refugees and in the Mediterranean it is becoming increasingly clear that Frontex vessels are not really willing to rescue refugees in distress.
To make matters worse everything is done to give the impression of a collapsing admission-system for refugees. In Hamburg, Dresden and elsewhere newcomers are now accommodated in tent cities and some authorities even call refugee initiatives to help out with beds over the weekends. 150 migrants were assigned at one day by the state of NRW to Wuppertal, the city housed them at the formerly school in Yorckstraße. What many have predicted for some time seem to happen: The almost daily launch of „Welcome Initiatives» is very welcomed by authorities, because they are jumping in the breach at more and more occasions. The self-inflicted situation of the state and of local governments – previously existing accommodation-capacities were temporarily abandoned and municipal homes were sold to private investors en masse – now leads to a dramatic scene and forces civil society actors to compensate political errors. However, this is nothing less than a shift of overall social responsibilities to purely private benevolence and on a private field of initiative.
Although we understand that official requests for „emergency“ can hardly be rejected, we nevertheless should at least insist on a changing of rules. If it’s expected by refugees and supporters to solve problems which are made by an irresponsible and short-sighted policy, they must be able to do this their own way. First thing which comes to our mind is that it then must be possible to squat empty buildings and houses and to build up self-managed accommodations and common living.
We agree with the statement of Rex Osa (The Voice):
Refugee support must be political!
* If Café ADA must close for a time, we’ll look for an alternative location for the language courses. We will inform you about it.
