21.12.2013 International Demonstration // Start: 14:00 pm at Rote Flora Hamburg
Defend Rote Flora – Let the Esso-Houses stay! // Against racism – Right to stay for everybody!
With an international demonstration on the 21st of december in Hamburg we want to show that there will be massive resistance if they try to evict Rote Flora. The demonstration will also include the fights for the Esso-Houses, the right to stay for all refugees and a radical critique of repression and „risk-areas“.
The 24 years old squat Rote Flora called out for a defense-campaign in october this year, since the formal private owner Kretschmer and investor Gert Baer wanted to quit the squatted status of the house and sue against the current zoning-plan. They announced the plan to set up an six-stories building with an concert-hall for 2500 people, integrated social-center, shops, offices, kindergarden and 3 stories car park. To realize this they want to found an joint-stock company together with international investors.
Stay incompatible!
Baer and Kretschmer criticize in public that Hafenstraße in Hamburg did not get evicted in the 80s and declared Rote Flora to an opposite political model. According to press releases their aim is to demoralize the squatter-scene and prevent squatting in future by destroying Rote Flora. Their attack is ideological not only directed against Rote Flora as an single project. They understand their engagement against squatting in general. Meanwhile Baer names the several hundred users of Rote Flora a „criminal and terrorist organization“. Cause of the current threat we call for international solidarity actions. Even before some investors smell profit we want to frighten them and give their project an negative image and make clear that their plan is more a loss of money than profits. Rote Flora will not trust the politics in their pacifying. Renovation- and zoning-plans can change as well as the attitude of politicians and media. The governing senat anyways seems to care more about getting themselves out of the situation. Through privatisation they push unpleasent decisions to the private economy while playing innocent. This does not remind just about the Esso-Häuser which are under threat of demolition but also about the confrontations around Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen. Rote Flora always made clear that the current conflict is about the city and society itself. It is not about some walls at Schulterblatt (the street Rote Flora is located) but is part of and related to the circumstances they are surrounded by. It is not about keeping the house but about Rote Flora as an political project and political idea. We are aware of that we might prevent an potential eviction only previously politically. Through wide solidarity and a strong movement that does not stay in a defense pose but has the intention for an radical change.
Shut Down Fortress Europe!
The last month and weeks in germany were shaped by the fights of the refugees for the right to stay. In Hamburg people were on the streets at spontaneous demonstrations and protests to stop racist police controls which should give the basis to deport the refugees from Lampedusa. Through different forms of protest and action the government was pushed into defense. In the meanwhile the senat uses the church to try to divide the group of refugees from Lampedusa.
The more important it is that all protestgroups talk out resolutely and noticeable. The permanent stop of racist controls is not an object of negociation in the confrontation about the right to stay for the Lampedusa refugees. The right to stay is not a question of where you come from or an individual case! Permanent and unrestricted right to stay for everybody – abolish Dublin II!
While there are a lot of people in solidarity with the refugees fights in Hamburg, Berlin and other cities it came to racist demonstrations by local citizens in the suburbs and countryside and a series of fire attacks at refugees housings. Racism still comes from the center of society and the repression by the state promotes the populist atmosphere. An antifascist praxis is indispensable as well as an antiracist reference in fights in urban policy.
Capitalist urban development
Another example how fights in the city overlap each other and refer to each other are the Esso-Houses on St. Pauli. More than 100 renters are under threat to be displaced for a huge building with luxury flats. Existing clubs and shops should close for high expensive commerce. They try to use the local citizens interests against the residents interests and the politics dropped any imagineable alternative to clear the way for the investor „Bayrische Hausbau“. The first dismissals went out for February 2014.
Any option for an preservation of the building or an new formation in the interests of the residents were denied. An more radical resistance and wide protests seem to be the only way left to change the situation. Although the mixture of protestors are much more heterogeneous on St. Pauli the problems for Rote Flora and the Esso-Häuser are quite similar. The city privatises the conflict and plays uninvolved. As a result massive protests and an eskalation seem to be the only perspective against a policy that tries to push through their interests as an capitalist force.
For an extension of the fights
Citys are worldwide places of political fights and more and more often they relate on each other and get connected to each other. Not only the questions and investor constructs but also protest experiences and political aims overlap when people demonstrate against gentrification, evictions or rising rents in Istanbul, Athens, Barcelona, Frankfurt, Berlin, Amsterdam or Copenhagen.
In this process political movements grow of the social basis in the cities. The fight for Rote Flora overcrosses with the fights for squats and social centers worldwide - there is resistance against gentrification, protest against privatization, selforganization and sabotage against repression and the inhuman system of deportion and armed borders.
Rote Flora is just one of many places where these conflicts are part of the protest. Neither at Rote Flora, the Esso-Häuser nor at the Centro Sociale or other spaces it is about single projects. It is about an radical different understanding of city and society. About solidarity accross borders, a praxis of appropriation and socialization of the existing to attack capitalist forces and patriarchal norms.
Right to the City – Fight Capitalism! No Border - No Nation!
Contact: flora-bleibt@nadir.org Info: http://florableibt.blogsport.de