w2wtal and so_ko_wpt call for an active participation in „We’ll come United“. Participate in the many campaigns and events at Wuppertal and join us at the community Carnival in Berlin on September 16th. To get there, a bus from Wuppertal will be organized. (by Loba)
On the streets against German conditions in Europe!
The time for an intervention in the hyperventilating right-wing discourses in sight of the Bundestag elections is well-chosen under many aspects. It’s the time of an election in which, for the first time in more than fifty years, a radical right-wing party is threatening to take seats at the Bundestag and it’s also the second anniversary of the so-called „summer of migration“. But its also still the time of the year when 25 years ago in Rostock-Lichtenhagen, the newly reunited Germany showed its most disgusting side, which determines asylum policy and social treatment of migrants until today. The political reaction to the pogrom at the „Sonnenblumenhaus“ was a frontal attack on the right of asylum – half a year later the German asylum law was almost destroyed and the „Dublin system“ was our new reality, which could not change the racist hatred; three days after the decision to change this basic law of asylum on May 26 in 1993, five women and girls were burned to death by Nazis in the house of the Genç family in Solingen.
A quarter of a century went by. The very German mechanism of the mutual reinforcement of right-wing agitation and compliant politics didn’t change at all. Discourses in media and politics resemble those of 25 years ago in a treacherous way. Speeches about an „uncontrolled access of foreigners“ or about a „mass-invasion of asylumseekers, worrying a large group of the population“ and about an „organized human trafficking“, are not part of recent statements of De Maizére about sea-rescue, Seehofer about September 2015 or from Gaulands campaign-office. These are quotations from CDU politicians in 1992, which prepared the asylum amendment, adopted by the CDU and the SPD (quotes from formerly CDU-MP Seite; CDU-Interiorminister Seiters; Rostock’s CDU-Major Zöllick). Only the sender of racist messages has changed sometimes. The AfD takes the other off the dirty work. Today this new right-wing party is invited in talkshows with every demand for the final elimination of the remnants of the asylum law we once had, and today this party blames the victims of violence as perpetrators. Thus, the current neo-liberal state can be sustained by people like Merkel, who are required to show a less brutal face in public, than it is experienced by refugees and people in search of refuge each day: in deportation-jails and chartered deportation-flights, in the camps and slums of Greece or Italy, as slaves in torture- and rape-camps in Libya or otherwise drowned in the Mediterranean Sea.
We don’t give up! No surrender! We’ll come and rage United!
Then, as now, violence and hatred of a minority of the population are intensified and instrumentalized as a justification to implement new restrictions, create a new class of persons without rights, and to force people to death. In contrast, the many people who were celebrated as representatives of the „welcome culture“ in 2015 for a short while, but then often discredited as „good people“, remain unheard. The booming political silence about the attitude of millions of people who are still active with and for Refugees today is so loud that many of the civil society actors are silent now; the almost complete foreclosure of Europe can be done nearly undisturbed. „We’ll come United“ is an attempt to finally counteract this silence, and to show that we are still very many. We will show that we do not agree with almost daily new chicanery of asylum law, the criminalization of sea-rescue-organizations or deportations to Afghanistan, Greece, Italy or elsewhere.
One week before the elections, many refugees who live with us now and many people who are still engaged in migration topics should go out on the streets and make sure ourselves and everyone else that we do not capitulate. Not before a ballot, which almost lists exclusively anti-immigrant parties, not before the stoked climate of fear, not before a new regime of control and surveillance, not from repression, and of course not at all before right-wing extremists and racists. And even though the demonstration parade in Berlin will be a colorful, multifaceted manifestation, we won’t let it take us to express our growing anger.
Days of action in Wuppertal from September 1st. Breaking the racist discourses!
In preparation for the trip from Wuppertal to Berlin on September 16, which is jointly organized by several initiatives and groups from Wuppertal, a whole series of events will take place during the „We’ll come United“ days of action. It is intended to break the ongoing right-wing discourses. Among other things, we will inform about the situation of refugees in Greece (on the 3rd of June with Cars of Hope), discuss the state of the society in which refugees arrive (on September 5th with Astrid Messerschmidt), talk about the change of the discourses since 2015 (with Regina Wamper on September 8th), listen to a lecture about antiziganism (on September 12th with a speaker of Antifa AK Hagen) and learn about the criminalization of humanitarian sea rescue in the Mediterranean (on September 14th with activists of the „Sea-Eye“ mission). In the meantime, further discussions and actions take place every day. Pay attention to the announcements and spread the dates – the whole program is available on a special website for the days of action: wcuwpt.noblogs.org.
At all events, we will collect some money for the joint bus trip to Berlin. Its primarily intended to finance discounted bus tickets that are available to those with little money. A donation lets everyone participate indirectly in the demo parade, even if someone can’t go to Berlin personally. To this end, the initiators also launched an online donation campaign: youcaring.com/wcuwpt
