Berlin: Call for the demonstration on the 1st of August in Neukölln

By: fawda - July 28th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

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]

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Berlin: Renewed alarm at Rigaer94

By: fawda - July 13th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Today july 13th, there are strong police forces, construction workers and securities in the area. Alarm, now it’s getting exciting! Mouth-to-mouth info:

It is now being decided whether the police will take responsibility for the Rigaer94 conflict, and carry out the eviction which began Thursday 7 july and will continue today. At 8 o’clock the so-called Lusche, the new dubious alleged property manager, arrived first. He and his lawyer Bernau wanted to gain access to the house by force, which failed because of the human chain in front of it. His physical attack was answered accordingly. Then immediately masses of cops arrived, who had already been in stand by in the neighborhood but avoided the street in front of Rigaer94. There are at least a hundred of them, if not two riot squads again in action. At the same time, construction workers and the security company arrived. The construction workers called on residents “one to one”. It was reported that some of them wear Combat18 tattoos. They and the cops had to register that there was a new, massive entrance door. So for the moment, the intrusion into the house was stopped. According to information obtained, the police command at the highest level, i.e. the police chief, is currently advising. Nothing will happen until they take responsibility. What happens then will bring clarity about the operation since Thursday. Was it a coup attempt by the middle level police or a well planned action by the political leadership in an attempt to make everything look like a coincidence. The lies will stop.

On the other hand, the anger against the attackers on our living together in solidarity is endless!
Prepare yourself for everything, friends, it is serious! [Read More]

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Berlin: Rigaer94, they tried to bury us but forgot that we are the seeds

By: fawda - July 11th, 2020  Filed under: News

From friday till saturday evening securities were in front of our house, that does not have any of its front doors anymore. Yesterday morning, around 6:30 am the cops attempted to enter again our front-house block. The so-called “Hausverwalter” Torsten Luschnat arrived at 7 am in order to enter the 4th floor flat in front house of 94. Of course, there is still no owner of the house known but the cops and their commanders in the senate decided to trust the new company, that pretends they are legally allowed to enter. Luschnat Immobilien did not even follow any legal frame and attacked the flat in order to evict it. The attack started from the construction team secured by the cops, by trying to smash through a bricked up door attempting to injure people who were behind it. The people behind the barricades showed an active defense and managed to ruin these plans. Therefore, it was impossible for the workers to enter. They and the cops went to the attic and smashed a hole into the ground ending up in the next door appartment. Unfortunately for them, also the tenant who lives there, managed to keep them out of the flat. Because of the escalation, the cops, afraid of leaving the legal frame, were not willed to continue and stopped the procedure. After those failed attempts of entering our flats, the cops stood in front of our door with the security team. At the same time, the construction team started throwing all the stuff from the ground floor flat, that had been evicted on friday, to the trash. The security team and the workers started to use the toilet and kitchen of the flat. Actually, as soon as they realized that there is a contract still existing, with a person present being able to show it, the doors of the apartment were closed. To demonstrate their power, the cops, from time to time, decided to prevent people who are not registered to come inside. In the afternoon the cops left their position in front of our house. Before the demo arrived, the securities also left being secure by cops. Hundreds of solidary people joined the demonstration and gathered in front of our house until late in the night. [Read More]

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Berlin: Rigaer94 raided. Another eviction attempt

By: fawda - July 9th, 2020  Filed under: News

Today at 07:00 in the morning, a hundred riot cops walked over the bicycle rack in the yard of Riga 93 to climb over the fence into our yard one by one. At the same time they occupied the roofs of our block. The cops, along with LKA 5 and 6, then gained access to apartments on the 3rd floor of the front building under the pretext of a search for forgery of documents and others. According to the press, they also searched an apartment on Karl-Marx-Allee.

Contrary to their usual procedure, they refrained from using a helicopter and made no attempt to penetrate the rear building so far. In the meantime, they led the worst traffic lawyer in town, Markus Bernau, around the front building, presumably with the intention of supporting him in legal actions against the apartments occupied there. Torsten Luschnat, who thinks he is our new property manager, also gained access to these apartments. The so-called owner company has already proved several times in court that they can’t really prove anything, not even their legality to take legal action against us. The previous court rulings have dismissed all claims. [Read More]

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Berlin: Attack the city of the rich. Defend the projects

By: fawda - June 12th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

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]

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Berlin: Let’s take the struggle into our hands again

By: fawda - May 26th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

A short call for the reopening of our structures.

Now that the arteries of the capitalist system are again pulsating in the rhythm of production and consumption, we find the re-opening of Kadterschmiede and other common spaces of the projects as important as mentioned in our previous text. [1]
During the “unofficial” lockdown people where pushed to continue going to work or companies found the alternative solution of home office to prevent a breakdown. For almost a month now the industry of education is open again. At the same time the public spaces are under constant attack to prevent political and social interactions.

In times when it’s mostly fascists who reclaim the public spheres and the cops try to control every corner of the city, our spaces cannot be kept closed any longer. [Read More]

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Berlin: On the closure of Kadterschmiede and our handling of open spaces

By: fawda - May 8th, 2020  Filed under: Communique, News

Wednesday, March 25th

Our lawyer told us that he should pass on a telephone threat from the police to us. The content of the threat was that the cops would enter Rigaer94 if Kadterschmiede would not close officially. After a due to timepressure admittedly short discussion, we then announced on twitter and our website that we would not open that day.

Already at 8 p.m. there were about ten team cars of a cop unit in the next vicinity and at the Wedekindwache (cop station in the south of Friedrichshain) the technical unit provided heavy equipment. For a large part of the evening the area of Rigaer Strasse, between Zellestrasse and Dorfplatz, was occupied or sealed off by police. In front of our door the new BP-unit (Brennpunkt- und Präsenzeinheit /“Criminal Hotspot and Presence-Units“ [1]) was stationed again. The usual yellow press and massmedia had been informed and was present on the street from early on.

A few days earlier we had published and postered a text with the title “Self-organization in a state of emergency – Why we still consider open social spaces important”[2]. Though we still politically think it‘s the right thing to do, we took a shot in the dark in two aspects. Neither had we considered the reaction of our enemy in the form of the state, nor had we removed all the uncertainties among ourselves regarding hygiene issues. So, because of our lack of a wider discussion and analysis around the topic of opening our own space we also seemed unprepared for the repression on that Wednesday. We had fallen right into the trap we set ourselves, as we would not have been able to defend any decision we could have made collectively. [Read More]

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Berlin: 2019 A decisive year ?

By: fawda - December 31st, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

Within the next days the contracts of Liebig34, Potse, Drugstore, Großbeerenstraße 17a and Syndikat are ending. The future of many other projects like Meuterei, Rigaer94, Brauni is not much clearer. Whether they just have more time or the so called owners are playing with concealed cards, we have to develop and adopt a defense for these projects.

A good moment to go into a counteroffensive

The restructuring of the city is thundering on and even a bourgeois middle class can not ignore the consequences anymore. The City is becoming more and more dense and those that still fit in it richer with every wave of gentrification. Houses are getting forcefully vacated, renovated and turned into condos. Renters get forcefully evicted when the so called owners are coming up with more modern schemes of maximizing their profit, renters cannot keep pace with rent raises or are just plain “too annoying”. The last vacant lots are getting covered with new luxury lofts even when they very well were used since their beginning by the people around. Commercial premises are being rented out at such a steep price that businesses inevitably have to become more high priced and exclusive even when the operators might not want that. [Read More]

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Berlin: They‘re coming closer! International call to support Rigaer94

By: fawda - November 26th, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

On the 15th of November, five hundred cops, including special forces with assault rifles, attacked Rigaer94 to make a house search in the case of a trouble in a shop some month before. The investigation is labeled as „robbery and bodily harm“. A video published by the shop owner shows, that this is an obvious lie in order to create a reason for a martial attack against rebellious structures. The pigs came at 6 o‘clock in the morning and managed to open the doors quickly, meanwhile aiming with their rifles towards anyone showing up at the windows.

In the same moment, four other houses were searched in different areas of Berlin in this issue. Later the Minister of Interior, Andreas Geisel (Socialdemocratic Party), declared that all this was not politically motivated but instead was an offensive against the criminal underworld. But everyone knows that the raids were nothing else than attacks on anti-authoritarian ideas and combative structures in order to claim the monopoly on violence.

In addition to the pigs, the guy who declares himself the lawyer of the official housowner (the british mailbox company Lafone Investments Ltd.) entered the scene in Rigaer Strasse in the company of some construction workers in order to destroy the doors of the house. But he was stopped by the presence of comrades and finally sent away by legal threats by the lawyer of Rigaer94. Nevertheless the presence of the dubious circles that claim the ownership of the house for several years now, is again a meaningful sign. [Read More]

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Berlin: Raid in Rigaer Str. 94

By: fawda - April 12th, 2018  Filed under: Communique, News

Two weeks ago the current reinforcement of the siege of Berlin-Friedrichshain’s Nordkiez culminated in yet another crazy raid in Rigaer Str. 94, at the center of the so called “danger zone”. Two residents were imprisoned.
At approximately 8 o’clock in the morning on 29th March 2018 our dear friend was assaulted and arrested by special forces. 350 pigs were luring around the neighbourhood and waiting for him to be alone, walking his dog, Raf. Only then they dared to approach him. They ripped off his keys and entered Rigaer94 to raid his home. Dozens of pigs supported with ballistic shields and backed up by helicopter entered his flat, seeking to humiliate his teenage daughters, who, too, rank very high on the pigs’ personal lists of enemies of the law and order.
After two long years of round the clock siege, this is the most recent climax of escalation and police terror in our Kiez*. The answer won’t be violent enough.
In the course of the action another resident of Rigaer94 was arrested. They both are kept imprisoned in JVA Moabit. [Read More]

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Berlin: Courtdate in the eviction case against the groundfloor of Rigaer 94

By: sisulscz - April 11th, 2018  Filed under: Communique

“OUR IDEAS ARE NON-NEGOTIABLE” – Courtdate in the eviction case against the groundfloor of Rigaer 94

In Court

On the 14th of May 09:00 AM, the doors of the court will open up again to enforce German law.
The discussion will revolve around paragraphs that were created to protect and perpetuate the capitalist system, paragraphs that value property the highest of all. On this date of course, judiciary, the senate and the owner will try anything to leave the courtroom with an eviction title. This letterbox company will try to enforce the claim, that stones put on top of each other are their property. Little later they will try to take our spaces violently, breaking in with hundreds of their uniformed bandogs.They will think themselves victorious.
[Read More]

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Berlin: Rigaer 94. A call to resistance

By: fawda - December 22nd, 2017  Filed under: Communique

The police state unleashes its full range of possibilities: early this Monday, presumably 100 faces of people, who took part in the events of Hamburg, got published. The state campaign yielded completely its disguise of prosecution and started a smear, that should break any kind of resistance. Let’s not be silent towards these incidents, this general attack on the last social and resistant elements remaining. To burn this society of snitches and murderers and fascism at the stake is a still unaccomplished duty.

It is clear to every reasonable human being, that the episode of Hamburg was absolutely necessary. The lies and fake debates of the repression authorities and the system conformant and right wing media did not achieve to rewrite the successful resistance against the G20. In one of the most self-confident democratic regimes of the whole world with a differentiated apparatus of power and the image of invincibility, ten thousands of people dared to upraise, taking great risks and partly serious consequences for their own lives. A composition of protests, resistant and offensive actions transformed the summit of the ruling powers into a disaster. A disaster for the brand of Hamburg, Germany and the most powerful themselves, whose most important meeting now has an unpredictable future. [Read More]

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