New Website

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This is the old Website of the LINKE Berlin Internationals. It will stay online, particularly as an archive (the new Website contains very little published before 2019). But we won’t be posting anything new here.

To see the latest news from the LINKE Berlin Internationals, please go to http://www.theleftberlin.com

Newsletter 28 September 2019

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Here’s our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin. Finally we’ve earned a Saturday morning lie in.

  • Thursday, 3rd October will be a public holiday for Reunification day. At 5pm, Victor Grossman will be presenting his new book about the DDR A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee in the Roter Laden
    This is starting later than originally announced as Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen are organising a demo for Fair Rents on the same day at 1pm. We’ll be meeting in the LINKE Block at the Haus des Lehrers on Alexanderplatz.
  • If you want to know more about the rental situation in Berlin (and who doesn’t?), Thom McGath from Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen will be speaking on Why are Berlin’s rents rising and what can we do about it? on 28th October at 7pm. Note that the Roter Laden is being renovated, so we’ll be back at our old meeting place in die LINKE Neukölln offices, Wipperstraße 6
  • On Saturday 7th December we’ll be having our Keihnachtsfest – the not-Christmas party. There will be music from Nicolás Rodrigo Miquea and a spoken word performance by Jacinta Nandi. Maybe more to follow. Its in Café Plume, Warthestraße 60 and everyone is invited.

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

 

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:

New on our Website:

 

Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

Newsletter 21 September

pbutland Non classé

Back from our holidays with our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin. Again an early release because of today’s pro-choice demo. See you at Washingtonplatz from 12 noon.

  • Thursday, 3rd October will be a public holiday for Reunification day. At 5pm, Victor Grossman will be presenting his new book about the DDR A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee in the Roter Laden
    This is starting later than originally announced as Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen are organising a demo for Fair Rents on the same day at 1pm.
  • On Saturday 7th December we’ll be having our Keihnachtsfest – the not-Christmas party. There will be music from Nicolás Rodrigo Miquea and a spoken word performance by Jacinta Nandi. Maybe more to follow. Its in Café Plume, Warthestraße 60 and everyone is invited.

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

 

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:

Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

What we’re up to – report from our recent organising meeting

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1.       General organising – Telegram group

We’re experiencing meeting overload, especially as most people are involved in other initiatives as well. So, we are going to set up a new Telegram group where we can do most of our day-to-day organising.

We hope that this can replace future organising meetings (next one was planned for October 14th) and give us more time for our other activities

If you’d like to join this group, please send your phone number to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

2.       Climate Strike this Friday

We urge anyone who can to take part in the Climate strike and demo on Friday. It starts at Brandenburger Tor at 12 noon. The LINKE meeting point is at the [solid] stall on Brandenburger Tor at 11.30

3.       Pro-Choice Demo on Saturday

Its going to be a busy long week-end. On Saturday there are important demos against the Christian fundamentalist “Lebensschützer”. We’ll be joining the Büdnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung at 12 noon at Washingtonplatz behind the Hauptbahnhof.

More info (in German) here

If you can help carry our banner, or give out leaflets about our future meetings, please get in touch.

4.       Meeting on Monday: Reproductive Rights and the coming Poland elections

As well as our Hanna, Joanna Bronowicka, RAZEM candidate in the elections will be speaking.

Its at 7pm in the Roter Laden. Please share this facebook event

5.       3 October Victor Grossman book presentation AND fair rents demo

On reunification day (3rd October) Victor Grossman will be presenting his new autobiography in the Roter Laden as planned.

However, we’ve put back the start time to 5pm.

This is because Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen have called an important demo for fair rents.

It starts at 1pm in front of the Berlin Congress Centre opposite Alexa, so you’ll have time to go to both. More info here.

6.       Meeting on October 28th

For our October meeting, we’re still trying to find a speaker on the Hong Kong rebellion. We’re still chasing up some leads but still have no definite speaker. If anyone has any contacts who may be able to speak, please let us know.

If we fail to get someone about Hong Kong, we’re considering asking Thom to speak on the campaign against rent increases in Berlin (this depends on DWE not having a meeting that night. Thom is looking into it).

For the November meeting, Carol McGuigan from Labour Berlin will be speaking on Britain after Brexit.

7.       Conference in 2020

We’re planning on organising a conference in the first half of 2020 with actors from recent social upheavals and revolutions (Sudan, Egypt, Iran, Latin America, …) Its early days yet, but there is the possibility of getting sponsorship from the rosa luxemburg stiftung. If we need to do this, we need to have a proposed programme soon.

Phil and Dimitra have made some rough suggestions, but we need to sit together to get something more concrete and talk about possible partners. So, we’d like to sit together later this month.

If you’d like to join this discussion, please fill in this dudle.

8.       Not-Christmas Party / Keihnachtsfest

We have made a decision. This year’s party will be in Café Plume on Saturday, 7th December.

If you’d like to help out, get in touch. We also have a budget for live music and other fun stuff, so if you know any musicians who may like to perform, please send your suggestions.

9.       Budget

Now’s about the time that we make our budget proposal for next year and see if we’ve spent everything from this year’s budget.

For the first half of next year, we have 3 concrete plans:

·         Meeting with the lawyer from the trial against Golden Dawn in Greece and someone who’s worked on the NSU affair in Germany (Dimitra has contact with the Greek lawyer)

·         Meeting with the president of the Belgian Workers’ Party (Judith has contact)

·         Conference (see above)

If we still have money this year, we’d like to get the following

·         New visiting cards (we’re running out of the first ones, and some of the information is out-of-date)

·         Stickers, lots of stickers

Phil will talk to Ferran about what our budget is looking like.

10.   Theatre Project 19th October

Our friends at Gabriela Germany and Migrante Europe are currently organising a Theater performance about the campaign against the Extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. It should take place on October 19th in Berlin.

We are supporting this performance, and will talk to people from Gabriela about what we can do concretely. If you’d like to be involved, let us know.

LINKE Berlin Internationals
Join our mailing list – send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

Newsletter 6 September 2019

pbutland Non classé

Here’s our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin. Its coming out early this week because we’re going on our holidays (let’s see if a newsletter is possible next week. Probably not). But please try and get to tomorrow’s demo against the very British coup.

  • On Monday, 16th September at 7pm we have our next organising meeting in Café Plume, Warthestraße 60, Neukölln. This is where we plan our next activities. Anyone is invited to just turn up, but send us a mail to get a proposed agenda.
  • On Monday 23rd September, Hanna Grześkiewicz and RAZEM election candidate Joanna Bronowicka will be speaking on Reproductive rights and the coming Polish election
  • And save the date: 3rd October will be a public holiday for Reunification day. In the afternoon, Victor Grossman will be presenting his new memoir A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee in the Roter Laden
    Note that Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen will be organising a demo for Fair Rents on the same day. As we’d also like to take part, we probably won’t be starting at 2pm as planned. We’ll let you know about the new starting time as soon we get more info about the demo.
  • At the end of the year we’ll be having our Keihnachtsfest – the not-Christmas party. You still have time to say when you’ll be free, and when not. Please fill in our Dudle here.

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

 

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:

New on our Website

Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

Newsletter 31 August 2019

pbutland Non classé

Here’s our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin.

  • This week’s newsletter is going out early again as there’s a protest going on this lunchtime against Boris Johnson proroguing the British parliament. Between Hotel Adlon and the Europahaus on Unter den Linden from 11am. A larger protest is planned for next Saturday, September 7th. More information as soon as the registration is confirmed.
  • 4th September will be the tenth anniversary of the Kundus massacre in Afghanistan which resulted in the most people being killed by German soldiers since the second world war. We’re organising a special meeting on Kundus with Christine Buchholz MP, who represented die LINKE in the parliamentary commission on Kundus. It will be in Karl-Liebknecht Haus, starting at 7pm. The meeting will be in German with translation into English available.
  • On 23rd September, Hanna Grześkiewicz and RAZEM election candidate Joanna Bronowicka will be speaking on Reproductive rights and the coming Polish election
  • And save the date: 3rd October will be a public holiday for Reunification day. In the afternoon, Victor Grossman will be presenting his new memoir A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee in the Roter Laden

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:

New on our Website

Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

Newsletter 23 August 2019

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Here’s our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin.

This week’s newsletter is going out early as we’ll be demonstrating in Dresden against racism.

  • Two days after the demo on Monday 26th August, Corinna Genschel, who represents die LINKE in the #unteilbar alliance will be speaking to us about #unteilbar and the role of die LINKE in the fight against racism
  • 4th September will be the tenth anniversary of the Kundus massacre in Afghanistan which resulted in the most people being killed by German soldiers since the second world war. We’re organising a special meeting on Kundus with Christine Buchholz MP, who represented die LINKE in the parliamentary commission on Kundus. It will be in Karl-Liebknecht Haus, starting at 7pm. The meeting will be in German with translation into English available.
  • On 23rd September, Hanna Grześkiewicz and possibly other guests will be speaking on Reproductive rights and the coming Polish election
  • And save the date: 3rd October will be a public holiday for Reunification day. In the afternoon, Victor Grossman will be presenting his new memoir A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee in the Roter Laden

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

 

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:

 

Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

Results of our orga meeting, 15 August

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Hello everyone

This week we had our monthly organising meeting, where we discuss our coming activities. Here are the minutes of the meeting, There’s a lot of info here, so if you only want to know about specific things, scroll down to the appropriate header.

Our organising meetings are open to anyone who is interested in the activities of the LINKE Berlin Internationals. They are coordinated on a separate mailing list. If you would like to be added to this list, please contact us on lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

#unteilbar demo, 24 August

In the discussion it became clear that not everyone knows the background to the demonstration. This is understandable, so here is some of that background:

Last year, an alliance came together to organise solidarity work with refugees. They called themselves #unteilbar, and had significant support outside the “usual suspects”, eg from clubs, theatre etc. In October, #unteilbar mobilised 250,000 people for refugee rights,

After that – very little, but two things continued to happen. First, electoral successes for the AfD, secondly the gradual takeover of the party by the explicitly fascist wing. And there are local elections in Eastern Germany this year, including on 1 September in Saxony and Brandenburg, where the AfD is expecting to have good results. So, #unteilbar has called a new demo for a tolerant society on 24 August in Dresden. At least 2 trains and many buses are going from Berlin.

We have so far sold 33 tickets for buses to the demo. Its not too late to book a ticket from us, but there’s only 1 place left in the bus we’re travelling on (after that we’ll sell tickets for other buses). For more information, contact us on lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

We’ll have a leaflet for the demo telling people about our future activities and need people to carry our banner (Refugees Welcome here in different languages). If you can help, please do.

LAG meeting 26 August on #unteilbar

Two days after the demo, we’ll be having our monthly meeting (always the fourth Monday of the month in the Roter Laden, Weidenweg 17 in Fredrichshain (U-Bahn Weberwiese). This month Corinna Genschel, who is responsible for die LINKE’s work in social movements will be talking about what’s happening in #unteilbar, and the specific role of die LINKE in the alliance.

This follows a discussion that Corinna led at our summer camp where we talked about how die LINKE can work “with and against” other parties some of whose policies have contributed towards the disillusionment in politics and the growth of the AfD. At the orga meeting we also discussed how this would work on the parliamentary level – would a Red-Red-Green government change things and how likely is that of happening?

Public meeting on Kundus, 4th September in KL Haus

4th September is the tenth anniversary of the Kundus massacre, which resulted in the most number of people being killed by German troops since the second world war, including many children. A general election was coming, and the ruling SPD-CDU government tried to play down the effects of the massacre (more information here).

The newly elected LINKE parliamentary faction staged a protest inside the Bundestag. One of those MPs, Christine Buchholz, who has worked on the parliamentary commission on Kundus and spoken with many of the victims, will be speaking at a meeting that we’re organising on 4th September.

The meeting is in Karl Liebknecht Haus at 7pm, and we took the decision this evening to provide an English translation and to try to film the meeting.

Pro-choice activities in September

On 21st September there is an annual “pro-life” (anti-choice) demonstration organised by Christian fundamentalists, with leading AfD members in the front row of the demonstration. As ever, we will be joining the counter-protests organised by the Bündnis für sexuelle Selbstbestimmung (https://www.sexuelle-selbstbestimmung.de/).

There will be a planning meeting next Monday to decide what exactly will be happening. More information after then.

On 23rd September we will be having our LAG meeting. This time the subject will be the coming Polish elections, and their possible effect on reproductive rights. Hanna will speak, and we decided that we would invite another Polish activist to also speak (Hanna is on it, backed up by Phil if required).

On 28th September, there is an International Day of Action for safe abortions. At the moment, nothing has been planned for Berlin, but if there is, we will do our best to support.

Solidarity with Sudan

Phil had a meeting a couple of weeks ago with Sara Abbas from SudanUprising. Members of SudanUprising were also at the orga meeting, and Tom has contact with people who organised an international conference for Sudan last month, and are planning another.

We believe that Sudan will continue to be an issue for the coming months, and will try to cover it on our Website and meetings (we would welcome any articles on the subject, and are approaching Sudan Uprising and the MENA Solidarity Network in the UK for possible texts). We have also started work trying to organise meetings of Sudanese activists with members of the German and European parliaments.

In early September, there is a planned meeting of leftists from German PoC movements and movements in the Global South, including Sudan. This meeting will be largely closed, but there should be a plenary session where other activists are welcome. We will pass on more information as soon as we know.

Next year, we want to organise a day school or weekend conference with speakers who have experienced revolutions and social upheavals to compare and contrast their experiences (Sudan and Hong Kong are the obvious current examples, but we’re also thinking of Egypt, Portugal, Chile …) This could be a significant event and needs help organising it. If you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch.

Future meetings

For our meeting on 28th October, we’d like to get someone to speak about the current protests in Hong Kong. Hanna and Phil are trying to track someone down, but if you have any suggestions, please let us know.

If we can’t get a speaker on Hong Kong, we will invite someone from the climate movement or Sudan.

For the meeting on 25th November, Carol McGuigan, the chair of Labour Berlin will talk on Britain after Brexit.

In the new year, as well as the above subjects, we’d like to invite a speaker from Berlin4Bernie. If you have any other ideas of possible subjects, let us know.

Keihnachtsfest

We’re going to have to start planning our Christmas party. We normally have the party in Café Plume, and we have a budget to organise live music etc.

To help set a date and choose the music, we have set up 2 Dudles:

In the music dudle, vote for as many or as few artists as you want (anonymous voting is also ok). Once we get an idea which the most popular artists are, we’ll approach them.

Date for orga meetings

Until now, the organising meetings have been a moveable feast and we have tried to find a date when everyone is free. This has led to a lot of unneccessary work, and has not been very effective as people don’t know to block the date when planning other meetings.

We would therefore like to suggest that future meetings take place on the second Monday of each month (date chosen from when the people at tonight’s orga meeting would be free). If you know of any problems with this, please contact us ASAP

special pleading: actually on the second Monday in September I’ll be on holiday, so it would be great if this time we meet on the third Monday in September (16th)

Website

It looks like we’ve solved all the problems we had in setting up our new Website and will be soon ready for launch. After this, we are very interested in publishing any articles about international politics.

This can be something that you write yourself, or something you can recommend (but we need author’s permission). It does not have to follow any particular line (we’d like to encourage debate) but should be roughly from the perspective of the international left.

Anything else?

  • Berlin4Bernie is gearing up for the coming US elections, and we’re doing what we can to support them. See our weekly newsletter for information about their meetings

  • Our long-planned joint meeting with DiEM25 about the left after the EU elections is starting to happen. Some DiEM25 members are travelling with us to the #unteilbar, where we can talk about it concretely. If you’re interested in getting involved, please get in touch

  • In early 2020 we want to organise a meeting with one of the lawyers involved in the Golden Dawn prosecution in Greece, and the NSU affair in Germany. Dimitra has been in Greece where she’s been talking to one of the lawyers. More information when she gets back to Berlin next week.

  • Judith is in contact with the leader of the Belgian workers party, which has had spectacular success recently, who is interested in coming to Berlin next year to do a meeting. When we’re clearer about when he can come, we can discuss what this meeting could look like.

  • Veteran journalist and member of our group Victor Grossman has a new book out, covering his defection from the USA to the DDR. We are talking to Victor about organising a book presentation.

  • We are supporting 2 meetings organised by the Latin American left on Venezuela. Both meetings will be in Karl Liebknecht Haus. Language: Spanish, with translation into German:

    • 28 August: Victorias y Desafíos del Poder Popular en Venezuela (ESP-DEU)

    • 6 September: La Lucha Feminista y el Poder Popular en Venezuela (ESP-DEU)

Newsletter 17th August 2019

pbutland Non classé

Here’s our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin.

  • There are coming elections in Eastern Germany, where the AfD is expecting to make big gains. #unteilbar have called a demo against racism in Dresden on 24th August. Buses and trains are travelling from Berlin and you can book bus tickets from us (€15 each) by sending a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.
    There are now 32 (possibly 33) people around die LINKE Internationals travelling together. There is one (possibly 2) ticket free for the bus we’re travelling in. When that is full, we should be able to get tickets for other buses, but they’re also selling out. If you want to travel, contact us ASAP.
  • Two days after the demo, Corinna Genschel, who represents die LINKE in the #unteilbar alliance will be speaking to us about #unteilbar and the role of die LINKE in the fight against racism
  • 4th September will be the tenth anniversary of the Kundus massacre in Afghanistan which resulted in the most people being killed by German soldiers since the second world war. We’re organising a special meeting on Kundus with Christine Buchholz MP, who represented die LINKE in the parliamentary commission on Kundus. It will be in Karl-Liebknecht Haus, starting at 7pm.
    At our organising meeting this week, we decided to organise an English translation for the meeting.

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:

 

Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de

Newsletter 10 August 2019

pbutland Non classé

Here’s our weekly recommendation of activities and meetings in and around Berlin.

  • There are coming elections in Eastern Germany, where the AfD is expecting to make big gains. #unteilbar have called a demo against racism in Dresden on 24th August. Buses and trains are travelling from Berlin and you can book bus tickets from us (€15 each) by sending a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.
    So far, there will be 25 of us travelling, and we’re picking up the next batch of tickets on Monday, so if you want to travel in the same bus as us, send us a message this week-end.
  • Two days after the demo, Corinna Genschel, who represents die LINKE in the #unteilbar alliance will be speaking to us about #unteilbar and the role of die LINKE in the fight against racism
  • 4th September will be the tenth anniversary of the Kundus massacre in Afghanistan which resulted in the most people being killed by German soldiers since the second world war. We’re organising a special meeting on Kundus in German with Christine Buchholz MP, who represented die LINKE in the parliamentary commission on Kundus. It will be in Karl-Liebknecht Haus, starting at 7pm.
  • Our monthly organising meeting, where we plan future activities, will now take place next Thursday, 15th August (7pm) in Café Plume, Warthestraße 60. Its open to anyone who’s interested, but send us a mail if you’d like to get a copy of the agenda.

If you have any events that you’d like us to tell people about, send a mail to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de.

And now here’s a nice bulleted list of more events that are coming up in Berlin:


Die LINKE Berlin Internationals

www.theleftberlin.wordpress.com

www.facebook.com/theleftberlin

Join our mailing list – send a message to lag.internationals@die-linke-berlin.de