It feels incredible to type these words into the keys: The Liebig34 is cleared.
At 7:00 a.m. Robocops started sawing and flexing fences, doors, windows and barricades and at 11:00 a.m. the last inhabitants* of the Liebig34 were dragged out of the rooms.
We are sad. We are crying. We are exhausted. WE ARE ANGRY.
They can‘t imagine the determination they have awakened in us. This act of violence will explode in an act of counter-violence and self-defense. Already so much solidarity has happened in the last nights, months, years and has shown what we are capable of doing. This eviction is a moment of radicalization. We can use it and together we can express our hatred for this shit. [Read More]
Berlin: Liebig34 is evicted. Call for day X demo 09.10.20
Berlin: Interview with Liebig34 as it resists eviction
The anticapitalist struggle is an intersectional one. Liebig34 provides a perfect example. In their fight against housing being a commodity, capitalism and patriarchy, they have been a symbol for radical queer feminism for 30 years. Now, the project is faced with the threat of eviction. Being the valuable and inspiring project that Liebig34 has been, it cannot be taken away. Liebig34 stays! This interview serves to provide an insight into the immense value of Liebig34 and hopes to encourage action and solidarity.
What is the origin story of Liebig34, what is it, and what are it’s main principles, values, and goals? What have been some of the biggest changes in the last 30 years? And what has kept Liebig alive and active for all this time?
Liebig was originally squatted on June 30th, 1990, the summer after the fall of the Berlin wall, where many buildings were left empty. The house sits on the corner of Rigaer Straße, a place particularly known for its squatting history. [Read More]
Berlin: Call for demo against eviction of Liebig34 on October 3rd. Chaos instead of eviction
Demo October 3rd – Friedrichshain – 9pm
We are angry! Angry that Liebig34 is about to be taken away from us. Angry that every attempt at a self-determined life is being tried to be crushed. We are fed up with all the harassment by cops in the neighborhood and everywhere else. We are fed up with their repression, the state and its servants, who make it impossible for people to shape the city they live in. We shit on investors for whom Berlin is nothing more than a Monopoly board on which they can move their houses around. We don’t give a shit about the yuppies who, with their new buildings and condominiums, are displacing the people who spend their lives here, for whom the street and the Dorfplatz is more than just the way to the co-working space.
We demand a city from below. We want to occupy houses. We want to decide for ourselves how we want to live. [Read More]
Berlin: Don’t touch Liebig 34! Eviction date on 9 october 2020
Today, on September 15, we received mail from the bailiff T. Knop. They threatened to evict Liebig34 on Friday, October 9 at 7 am!
We will not let that happen! How is it possible that an attempt to evict is being planned even though it is publicly known that a different association than the defendant is present in the rooms?
How is it possible that in times when a second wave of Corona and #StayHome is expected, a home is to be evicted by so many people?
How is it possible that especially now, in times of fascist marches and a shift to the right, a feminist, leftist and queer house project is being attacked so massively?
We are angry but determined. We will not easily give up the Liebig 34.
Support us in our struggle.
Come to the general assemblies, annoy politicians and homeowners.
Be creative! Let’s make the eviction attempt a disaster! [Read More]
Berlin: International Call for Action and Discussion Days
International Call for Action and Discussion Days in Berlin 30.10.-01.11.2020
International Demo in Berlin 31.10.2020
UNITED WE FIGHT!
Connect Urban Struggles – Defend Autonomous Spaces
Over the last years we experience a global resurgence of reactionary politics. State and capital, in a constant process of intensifying exploitation and expanding repression, used the global capitalist crisis, which started a decade ago, as a chance to further restructure relations of power in their advantage. Their political answer is materialized in a shift to the right, with a political alliance of neoliberal economic policies coupled with strong nationalistic narratives and repressive policies against resistance and progressive movements. The new face of authoritarianism has unleashed an all out attack against individuals it considers unnecessary or those that choose to resist and collectivize against the ruin of their lives. In our current period, states the world over used measures against Covid-19 to extend repression, policing and surveillance against societies. At the same time, the failings of neoliberal healthcare systems have led to masses of deaths and increasing inequality due to access to healthcare. [Read More]
Berlin: Liebig34, another trial against our house!
On August 26, the default decree of June 3 was again confirmed in the Berlin Regional Court against the association Raduga e.V., which has left the house beginning of this year. The new verdict does not come as a surprise; here, once again, the court is acting in the interests of the owner and his capital interests, negotiating a living space as an object of speculation. In Padovicz’s sense, the Liebig is to be evicted as soon as possible. In addition, the property shark is to get 20,000 euros stuck in his throat. It took only half an hour for the Berlin judiciary to once again judge the fate of the people in the Liebig. Half an hour to decide whether people should be put on the street or not.
The association will appeal and bring the case to the court of appeal. We can still be evicted at any time, but Padovicz would have to raise a substantial „security deposit“ of 60,000 €. Not unlikely given his assets. [Read More]
Berlin: Action Week for Liebig34, 07-13.09.20
International Call for the defence of Liebig34 (updated call out, 2020/08/15)
Liebig 34 is being threatend by eviction. When state, cops and the owner want to evict, they will only have a desaster on their hands. As an anarcha-queer-feminist selforganized house-project without cis-men, directly at the square „Dorfplatz“ in Friedrichshain, Liebig 34 is a place where resistive actions and collective moments are decided and organized. A place where self-organization becomes a dangerous word, where a project is becoming a starting point of struggles and not just a space of self-reference and alternative entertainment. The project itself has taken part in the planning of many of demonstrations, published numerous calls and texts and carried out various radical actions. But it is also a symbol of radicalization and empowerment for the antagonistic scene in Berlin and in Germany, as it shows how to fight various forms of resistance.
Liebig34 consists of a collective which is working with a focus to overcome more and more internalized structures of capitalism and patriarchy. In a world where patriarchy makes up one of the main pillars of the capitalist system, militant feminist groups and collectives, which make clear that the resistance and the fighting back is not a cis-men privilege, are more than necessary. In a patriarchal world, in which patriarchy and capitalism are intervoven, it is more than necessary to actually fight patrairchy and not have it be a sidenote in a text. Let us not be divided by oppression and let’s fight together in this for a liberated society. [Read More]
Berlin: Successful demo despite police violence
Press release of the Interkiezionale
Berlin, August 3, 2020
On Saturday august 1st, an angry and powerful demonstration took place under the motto “Get out of the defensive”. The demonstration was directed against the announced evictions of left-wing projects, such as Syndikat, Meuterei, Potse and Liebig34. It also wanted to send a signal against the shift to the right and the increasingly authoritarian state [1]. The demonstration of 3,000 people (count from 20:18) was attacked and dissolved by the police after a quarter of the demonstration route. Later, an angry spontaneous demonstration moved through Prenzlauer Berg, showing that the police could not stop the protests.
The Interkiezionale coalition of threatened projects and supporters considers the demonstration a success. True to the motto “Get out of the defensive”, the active participation of many soldiers made it possible to give the demonstration a resistant expression and not to let the police attacks take away the street. Instead, the demonstration drew attention to places of repression and brought their anger against the everyday structural violence by police and capital to the streets. Places such as the job centre, the SPD office or the luxury new building on Flughafenstraße were targeted. [Read More]
Berlin: Syndikat call out. Get off the defensive!
Demo August 1st – 20 o’clock – Herrfurthplatz, Berlin-Neukölln
Times have been rough not only since the coronavirus. The fascisation of society is progressing. The danger of socialism and the hatred of everything left is evoked like a prayer wheel. The horseshoe theory enjoys great popularity. Under the cloak of totalitarian theories and far from any facts, a constant equation of two supposedly equal extremes against a hallucinated bourgeois “middle” is pursued. This liberal-bourgeois equation of socialism and fascism has a certain tradition in Germany, as does the collaboration of this bourgeois “middle” with fascism in order to take action against socialism, or against everything they perceive as a socialist danger. This is also the case with their anti-feminism, another interface between the “bourgeois-conservative middle” and fascists, which aims to maintain the conservative ideas of their system of rule by maintaining the binary gender order and, to this end, tries to turn back the achievements of feminist movements.
Fascist terror attacks in Hanau and Halle, right-wing networks that organize & arm themselves, armed fascists in the state apparatus that prepare for a civil war, secret service and state involvement in the NSU that are kept under lock and key. This list could easily be extended. The fascist danger is real. [Read More]
Berlin: Call for the demonstration on the 1st of August in Neukölln
The new phase of evictions has started. Not, as expected, with the announced eviction of the Kiezkneipe (neighbourhood bar) Syndikat, but with an attack from the cops.
An attack that was masked as a raid, with the plan for it to turn into an eviction of parts of our house. It was coordinated with some disgusting figures representing the so-called owner, in order to gain control of a space that is a thorn in the eye of a pacified european metropolis. On the 9th of July and the days that followed, we defended ourselves and reduced their filthy plans to ashes – taking back the evicted flat, pushing out the cops and bureaucrats and regaining control of our house.
This would not have been possible without the common fight and solidarity that goes far beyond our little rebellious neighborhood. Numerous people participated in the spontaneous gatherings in front of the house and nightly demonstrations in the richer neighborhoods of Berlin. While some people were cooking for everyone, others took part in the 24/7 shifts around the house. Many things destroyed by the cops were reconstructed almost immediately and different groups claimed actions in solidarity with Rigaer94. Showing once again, that solidarity in all its forms is our strongest weapon against the coordinated attacks from the state on the movement and its upcoming attempts to evict our spaces in Berlin. [Read More]
Berlin: 30 years Liebig 34 – We never stop!
The Liebig 34 will celebrate its 30th birthday at the beginning of July. Eviction titles, media hype and annoying cops don’t spoil these days. Viva la Liebig!
Thirty years ago, after the fall of the Wall, people from a wide variety of backgrounds flocked to East Berlin to take advantage of the chance offered by the unresolved chains of command and the unspeakable vacancy. Entire streets and blocks of houses were occupied, redesigned and filled with ideas and creativity. The streets of Friedrichshain were full of life and very practical solidarity. At one corner there was a discussion meeting, in the next open-air cinema and there food was cooked for the whole street.
In these hours also lies the origin of our collective, which entered the rooms of Liebigstraße 34 in July 1990 and thus made the beginning of this project. In the following years a lot changed: the squat became a feminist house project without cis men. Through hard work and years of struggle it was tried to create a shelter and to offer an alternative to the cis-sexist everyday life.
Now, 30 years later, is the project to end? [Read More]
Berlin: Attack the city of the rich. Defend the projects
The gentrification in Berlin continues incessantly, and with it displacement. Not only people but also spaces are affected: Spaces of the radical movement, open spaces, safer spaces for people affected by discrimination, non-commercial spaces, spaces of subculture, of political networking and spaces where people try to live concrete utopias.
One struggle – one fight
In recent years, spaces such as the Liebig14 house project, the youth centre Drugstore , the community space Friedel54, the wagon places DieselA & Sabot Garden, the O-Platz occupation and the occupied school in Ohlauer Straße have already disappeared.
But it does not stop there. Many other spaces are currently under threat. The youth centre Potse, the house project Liebig34 and the bar collective Syndikat & Meuterei expect an eviction before the end of the year. Other spaces such as the house project Rigaer94, the house project Köpi137, the community house Lause10/11 or the community garden Prachttomate face a similar threat in the near future.
No spaces – no movement
All of these are spaces that live and fight for a different Berlin: a Berlin in which we know our neighbours, in which we create our houses and our neighbourhood together and jointly determine how public space is used. A Berlin where there is room for self-chosen living concepts. A Berlin in which we can try out alternatives to the exploitative and oppressive relations of wage labour, care work, educational system and on the basis of rent and ownership. [Read More]