A short greeting from the We’ll Come United network
After great demos last autumn with hundreds of thousands of people, in the midst of persistent everyday struggles, in a time of growing solidarity and criminalized but still existing civil sea rescue, we are in defensive struggles everywhere. There are countless encouraging stories and yet it cannot and must not go on this way. For the time now, however, we do not have much more left than to continue. But better: with even more people, without any illusions, more radical and wiser!
The fact that despite all movements of the last months the fundamental political situation has not changed in our sense and has even aggravated much is an hint to us what is still to come. Europe’s authoritarian governments have made it quite explicit that they don’t give a damn about the rights of millions of migrants and the demands of the social movements and that they don’t hesitate to enforce their policies – against all and each single of us. The authoritarian shift that has been going on throughout Europe for years is politically desired. For the time being, therefore, it remains a matter of the threatening winter, that an autumn of solidarity can push back, but cannot do away with. In these attacks, we see that we cannot fight individual defensive battles, but must defend ourselves collectively.
The authoritarian politics have already established their position and profile themselves through violence against migrants. But the right-wing harshness of drowning and starving, of deprivation of rights in camps, detention centres and authorities will not stop there. Its racism is social violence: it’s about further dulling of the brutalisation of societies, about getting used to hunger, exploitation, misery and violence. This is what the “orderly return” law, the new deportation prisons and the charter flights of shame, the criminalisation of solidarity and sea rescue and the push backs at the external borders stand for.
On the other hand, it is also clear that many do not follow this path and actively oppose the attacks – in everyday solidarity, in political coalitions, on the streets. We do this in local initiatives such as “Together we are Bremen”, in long-term networks such as “Women in Exile” or sometimes in sudden uprisings such as the one in the camp in Ellwangen in 2018. This is not just about defence – it is about not giving up on the future. Who would risk a few years in jail at the airport or in the Mediterranean without considering that another world is possible? And who, despite all barriers, will continue to head for Europe without believing that things will not stay the way they are?
So we are in the middle of a battle for a future – for the question in which society we are going to live. The uprising of solidarity against the racism of the AfD, Nazis, authorities and European governments remains our path and our goal. We must continue with what we started: Building new social coalitions of solidarity. And we do this by interpreting the great image of our parade in Hamburg as a promise and a mandate to all of us. By making the symbolic act of a nationwide parade reality and everyday life, in cities and communities. And by reopening ourselves and facing up to what is now to come.
Our focus this year will be in Saxony. In the next months we will show presence in the heartland of racism, we will show that we fight without tire and that we are still more than we think. One week before the federal elections, on 24.8.2019, we will be present with a block at the nationwide #indivisible mass demonstration in Dresden – together with many others, with old and new friends! But already before and also afterwards we will swarm out into the cities, into the camps and communities in Saxony and everywhere: Encourage each other, exchange experiences of resistance, build up structures. And intensify the everyday struggles. For a society without racism and exclusion. For a society in which we want to live!
Soon more from us. The trip for the 24.08. to Dresden can be however planned already times.