Kompass-newsletter No. 124 - 05/2024
We`ll Come United conference +++ New materials against deportation and for the right to stay +++ 8 theses in defence of the migration society +++ 23 May - 8 June: demonstrations against right-wing extremism +++ ‘Migrantifa’ not protected as a trademark +++ MedicalBus - Radical Aid against Borders +++ Balkan route brochure +++ PICUM: Cases of criminalisation of migration and solidarity in the EU in 2023 +++ Albania deportation camp +++ Reviews: Valetta: Human rights defenders award for El Hiblu 3; Trapani: Iuventa case dropped +++ Outlook: 21.8. to 25.8.: We`ll Come United summer camp in Thuringia
Dear friends.
In spring 2014, a good ten years ago, the last major ‘No Border is forever’ gathering took place at the Studierendenhaus in Frankfurt/Main. At the end of April 2024, around 350 activists from many cities took part in the We'll Come United conference at the same location. A strong momentum, as the preparatory group also formulated in a first summary: „... In two plenary sessions, current struggles against the EU border regime were presented and discussed and the background to flight and migration was thematised. The great multiplicity of anti-racist initiatives and everyday projects that came together in Frankfurt was reflected in 28 workshops prepared by various decentralised groups. At the end of the conference, there was broad agreement that these three days had been a productive exchange in a respectful atmosphere…"
In addition to practices of resistance against deportations and the infrastructures for freedom of movement at the external borders, another focus of the programme was the discussion about the mass demonstrations against the extreme right. Is it and will it remain a bourgeois fear movement against the AfD that does not want to know anything about the policies of exclusion that are actually taking place? Or are there approaches and ideas on how this movement could develop in the direction of an anti-racist migration society? Does it make sense to get involved and intervene? In Frankfurt, the relatively young anti-fascist platform presented eight theses in defence of the migration society, while the Roma Center campaigned for a joint manifesto. Both could form the basis for coordinated intervention when large parallel demonstrations take place in over ten major cities on Saturday, 8 June 2024, one day before the European elections.
We'll Come United (WCU) does not (yet) have the strength to organise its own large mobilisations. In this respect, new large parades, such as those organised by WCU in Berlin in 2017 and Hamburg in 2018, are not conceivable in the foreseeable future. However, the spirit, the potential shared power of everyday struggles, the society of the many who have arrived and continue to arrive, was palpable in many moments in Frankfurt. That visibly did everyone who was there good. And this will - hopefully - continue for some time and spread further, in the spirit of the WCU stickers: Solidarity will win!
Solidarity greetings from the Kompass crew