WE CALL FOR ANARCHIST PARTICIPATION

From Kontrapolis - Berlin, Germany

WE CALL FOR ANARCHIST PARTICIPATION IN:

–> Manifestation against the Militarization of the Health Sector – 10.07. – 14:00 to 16:00 @ DRK Kliniken, Osloer Str. 36

–> Demonstration „Wedding ohne Waffen! Gemeinsam gegen Krieg!“ – 11.07. – 14 Uhr @ S+U Gesundbrunnen (in the Antifa Block)

The Antimilitarist Assembly Wedding is an anarchist assembly, meaning anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist, and horizontal: it’s open to anyone who wants to take action against war and the military-industrial complex behind it.

What pushed us to organize the assembly was learning that Rheinmetall, Germany’s biggest arms manufacturer, was going to start producing weapons‘ components here in our neighborhood.

The 8th of July is the first day of this shift: from this day on Rheinmetall’s workers are manufacturing parts necessary for the production of tank ammunition, artillery systems, and armored vehicles.

It is important to ask ourselves: why here? Why now?

It’s not by chance that a weapons manufacturer is now operating in our neighborhood. In the name of public safety, Wedding has been already militarized: we can’t walk a few meters without seeing a police van, young people are constantly stopped and searched by the cops, Leopoldplatz is now a Waffenverbot zone: please open your bag so we can check you don’t have a knife on you, but also enjoy these locally produced bio-bullets!

And let’s not forget that, back in March, the house on Schererstr. where we and other groups meet and organize, was raided.

These measures strengthen the narrative of Wedding as a territory that needs to be tamed: not just to ensure safety but to make way for economic development. Development for whom? Safety for whom?

What we are seeing happening here is happening all over Europe, where a narrative of permanent danger is used to justify the idea that billions are needed to defend the country against internal and external enemies.

For those who join the struggle against wars, occupation and militarization, and against the chilling normalization of three years of live-streamed genocide against the Palestinians, repression is not a matter of if but when. As the show trials against the Ulm 5 and Daniela Klette show, while the technologies of repression become more sophisticated, its tactics are old: intimidation, surveillance, abuse and incarceration. Painting people as „extremists“ and therefore a danger to a society that is now being asked to, and later will be forced to, send its children to war.

And yes, we are all their enemies because we refuse to accept that state violence and wars are the only answer. We refuse to accept the normalization of surveillance, repression, and the criminalization of anyone who dares to fight back.

Please, don’t be fooled by the old story of the ‚bad militant‘ versus the ‚good activist‘. We are all good activists until the state decides that we are terrorists.

But who is guilty of killing thousands all over the world through war, dispossession, and man-made disasters? Who is responsible for enforcing a border regime that pushes thousands of people each year to their death?

The only terrorist is the state. And as any abuser, it wants us to be complicit with the violence it inflicts: whether by propaganda or coercion, we are being forced to accept that all public resources need to be redirected towards war, that money is needed for tanks and bombs instead of education, healthcare and an already shitty, already punitive welfare system.

Everyone can be drafted: if not as a soldier, for the infrastructure of war. Are you a doctor? Congratulations, now you’re a doctor for injured soldiers. Are you unemployed? Congratulations, now you work in a weapons factory. Do you work in IT? Congratulations! Now you’re training AI to search for deserters.

We are supposed to quietly accept a number of things: the ASOG police law reform and AI-powered surveillance making it possible to spy on virtually anyone. That deportations and de-naturalization are also used as threats against organizing politically, and which additionally unleash more racist violence. We are supposed to believe that defending the ‚eastern flank‘ justifies any measure: from cuts to anything but military spending, to conscription, to turning all critical infrastructure into hubs to support the logistics of war.

And we are supposed to welcome an arms factory here where we live and work and raise our kids.

We don’t want weapons produced here or anywhere else! We don’t want to be complicit in a system that oppresses us and that kills in countries made into permanent war zones. Let’s be clear: before and after the farce of peace conferences and ceasefires, war never really stops, and what they call peace is only compliance with the status quo. But there is no peace on stolen land! And all the land is stolen when profits and dividends come before people. All land is stolen until the last prison is burned to the ground, until the last border is abolished, and as long as the maintenance of this so-called first world depends on a colonial and genocidal project. And we must always remember what is tested in war zones will always come back to bite us in the ass.

And what we are witnessing today is indeed a test: How long can the state keep up with the fiction of a democratic order? While homes and meeting places are searched for daring to say ’no‘ to war and militarization? While people are stripped of their citizenship because of a post on social media? While our comrades Zo, Leandra, Vi, Daniel and Crow are being subjected to a farce trial in Stammheim, the same place as the RAF?

Only last month, Akel D., a student of Wedding’s Berliner Hochschule fuer Technik was killed in Lebanon by an Israeli airstrike while visiting family, and the initiative to remember him and end university’s cooperation with apartheid was immediately subjected to surveillance and intimidation.

This is a test for all of us too: how much can we take? How long can we pretend that as long as we protest, but not too loud, we will be safe? That if we comply with the new normal, nothing will happen to us?

It’s time to say no! To turn solidarity into action! No conscription for our youth! No weapons for genocide! No police in our neighborhoods! Solidarity with the Ulm5 and free Palestine!

Let’s take to the streets – today, tomorrow, every day.

Self-organize! Desert! Sabotage!