Kompass – AntiRa – Newsletter No. 67 – March 2018

+++ Swarming - We`ll Come United on Tour for 2018 +++ 15.3. in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Bremen: International Day against Police Violence +++ 17.3.: International Actionday against the EU-Turkey Deal +++ 19.3. in Szeged: Not Guilty! Freedom for Ahmed! +++ Yallah-Exhibition starting at 20.3. in Vienna  and Extra Newspaper +++ Against the deportations to Afghanistan +++ Alarm Phone: 8 Weeks Report +++ Central Med: Joint Statement of six Rescue-NGOs +++ Counter-Investigation against the criminalization of Jugend Rettet+++ Newsletter of bordermonitoring.eu on the Balkan +++ Text for discussion on perspectives: Contested Spaces - Solidarity Cities +++ Text of the platform for the Transnational Social Strike on Migration +++ Review: Charta from Palermo - Speech of Leoluca Orlando in November 2017 in Kassel +++  Outlook: 20.4. on Chios: Start of the Trial against Moria 35; 10th to 13th of May in Göttingen: Conference of the big Coalition of Antiracism; June 2018: Education not Deportation… Schoolstrike! +++

Dear friends!

Its finally warmer again, but times are not better. The new GroKo (german government of big coalition) will make worse, what the old government started to aggravate. The particular symbol is „Mr. Obergrenze“ (minister Seehofer, who mainly demanded upper limits to accept refugees), who was choosen to be a new Home Secretary and who will use his concept of „AnkER-camps“ to increase the numbers of deportations. Victor Orban, who was invited with ostentation by Seehofer in January 2018 to the conclave of CSU, just introduced in Hungary the draft for a bill, in which the discrimination and criminalization of supportive structures for refugees and migrants should become the norm. And after the racist government coalition of Kurz and Strache in Austria we face now election victories of right wing populist and extreme right in Italy. Springtime should look different.

Against the aggressive neo-nationalism the neoliberal EU-supra-nationalism appears almost as soft alternative. But they are hostile brothers, who combine exclusion and exploitation with different political attitudes. We never should forget, that the EU-border regime is responsible for thousands of death in the mediterranean sea. Frontex and the national border police units are not in a contradiction, rather they cooperate in „best way to combat illegal migration“ even in Hungary or Bulgaria.

Be it neo-nationalist or neoliberal racism: the struggle for freedom of movement and for equal rights for all can only progress in transnational networks and synchronous local practices: to exchange and to let circulate experiences of daily struggles beyond all the borders, to block deportations wherever possible and to support by all means necessary the „underground railroad of migration“, from the external borders to the inner cities.

The concept of citizen asylum is picked up in more and more cities in order to take a public position against deportations but also to build up more spaces of protection. Swarming is the title for the concept of mobilization of We`ll Come United and first groups started to share and to spread experiences of resistance from and in communities. And in Zagreb recently a networking meeting took place from groups, who are continously active in the Balkan and on the side of the people moving on these routes. These are only three examples for a still and again vivid and multiple resistance.

In our Kompass for December 2017 we had already mentioned the Charta from Palermo and in our current issue we want to present it again (in the review-section below) as potential „emancipative pole“ and against the background of the election results in Italy. The Charta offers a base for the vision of solidarity places and of protected spaces, carried or tolerated by municipalities, which certainly can be realized only in small steps and in all kinds of greyzones. 

„But things are changing everywhere and there is an obstinate and sometimes inscrutable mix of initiatives, with the tenacity of the migratory movements as their engine…“, this is written in a recently published strategy paper under the headline of „contested spaces“. It should be discussed - as the above mentioned practical projects and campaigns - in a conference, which will take place in Goettingen from 10th to 13th of May. A „big coalition of Antiracism“ is inviting to this event, which we strongly want to recommend to all activists and interested people. 

With solidarity regards,

the Kompass Team