FUCVAM (Uruguayan Federation of Housing Cooperatives for Mutual Aid) was founded in the 1970s, as the result of an incipient movement of mutual aid housing cooperatives in Uruguay. It is made up of a multiplicity of cooperatives that broad popular sectors can join in order to collectively build and access the right to use and enjoy a housing unit.

Its fundamental proposal of “mutual aid” is based on the fact that it is work on the ground by associated people that lowers housing costs. Cooperatives are generally built on terrains assigned by the state, at a low cost, with low-interest state loans. Participants are required to fulfill their work hours, as well as to participate in meeting spaces, assemblies, and education and integration activities. This structure also includes the Gender Area that, in the heat of the feminist tide in Latin America, started to question inequalities and violence both within and beyond the Federation. We spoke to Isabel Zerboni, a cooperativist and member of the Federation’s Gender Area.

How does the Gender Area of FUCVAM and the movement work?

FUCVAM was founded in the 1970s. It is a union-type structure, and therefore its operation is very patriarchal in many aspects. However, since it is made up of families, it has always had a very broad vision and a way of working that is closely tied to domestic life. For example, collective purchasing is something that has always occurred, in order to be able to buy things more cheaply. Our movement has always addressed the social problems that traverse us. Generating collective alternatives in terms of health care, education, consumption, solidarity food aid, intervening in situations of gender violence, against child violence, unemployment, and collective child care were always major issues. We always look for alternative ways of supporting families based on solidarity. This has given FUCVAM a twofold characteristic as a movement and a union organization, with a flexible territorial structure, but also as a union that makes demands to the state.

The Gender Area emerged in 2015, as a result of the feminist wave, that is where we come from. We started to see that we needed a space within the Federation to discuss these things. At first, we identified as a gender area, as the years passed we became feminists, and that is how we identify. Some 200 compañeras from all around the country participated in the women’s gatherings. We hold panel discussions, educational activities, sensitivity workshops, and mobilizations. We are working to generate gender committees in all the departments where cooperatives are organized to start working on the territorial level. Because, since we are located in Montevideo, the capital, sometimes it is difficult to reach the whole country.

Much of our work has focused on the issue of gender-based violence, since we are a movement made up of families. One challenge that we face now is identifying those cases of violence within the cooperative structure. There are different types of violence that are not always recognized. The way our organization has handled it is, in situations of gender-based violence in families in the cooperative, the aggressor has to leave the cooperative. If a man beats his wife or children, he has to leave immediately. The cooperative must guarantee that the woman can stay in her home.

You all also work on feminist urbanism. Can you tell us about that?

Feminist urbanism is a new issue for us. In the Gender Area, we see it as having a great potential for helping us plan the use of space. We want it to be present when members of the cooperative sit down with the advising team, with the architects, to plan the cooperatives. There are architects who come in with a proposal, they give it to the cooperative, the cooperative reviews it, approves it, and the exchange ends there. But we think that the whole process of elaborating the project should be participatory, and that cooperative members should be able to share their opinions, not only in terms of “I like that color tile, or I want the stairs to be made of such and such a material,” but the discussion should go much deeper. We think that, just as the foreman must have the will to teach, the architects who work with the cooperative must have the pedagogical vocation to transmit specific knowledge so that the cooperative is in a position to fully participate in the debate. Often the asymmetry of knowledge places you in a position that the other can prevent you from intervening if they do not want you to. The architects who work with the cooperative need to first carry out a pedagogical process with the cooperative members, communicate what they are going to do, the objectives and range of available possibilities, so that later the cooperative can shape what they want to build. After the construction process, the cooperative has a lot of very important, very rich knowledge, they know the construction plan in detail, and are is positioned to debate it with anyone. The problem is that that point it has already been built and there are few opportunities to change it. Some modifications occur in the process, but only minor ones, the structural elements have already been consolidated.

Thus, as the Gender Area, we do not want it to be a project that is presented by the architects for the cooperative to either accept or not. What we want is to think about it collectively from the beginning: where do we want the recreation space, what do we want the garden to be like, how are houses distributed in the space, the sidewalks, the materials, the vegetation, etc. One of the things that arose in the workshops is the need to grow, that is, to have space so that the houses can be expanded in the future. And we can predict that.

In the Gender Area, we also want to carry out this idea of co-planning the project from a feminist perspective. We want to not only debate the aesthetic dimensions, but also be able to include the discussion about care so that those common spaces are planned from that perspective.

All the cooperatives used to have a large communal hall for meetings. Today this space is losing importance and has been greatly reduced. The Ministry [of Housing and Territorial Planning] has been reducing the number of square meters for building cooperatives and removing the communal halls from cooperative projects with less than twenty families. As FUCVAM, and especially the Gender Area, we think that the communal halls are fundamental for the community development of cooperatives and that we must fight for them, because it is precisely in that physical space where a ton of collective activities occur, such as committee meetings, assemblies, celebrations, cultural activities. Enabling the cooperative to participate in the architectural project guarantees that we give that room an important place.

There are other issues besides the communal room. We have had medical centers, community gardens, libraries, football fields, sports spaces, etc. that are being harmed with the reduction of square meters on which to build.

We are convinced that feminist urbanism can contribute many elements for spatial planning. However, we are in an earlier stage that has to do with studying how space is used in the cooperatives that are currently inhabited. That is why we are carrying out a collaborative research project with compañeras from the School of Architecture who are working with compañeras from the Gender Area to study how collective space is used in the currently inhabited cooperatives. We have been working on this for two years. Our long-term objective is to put forth a proposal in which we can increase the inclusion of different generations, taking care into account, recognizing that we will not always be young and healthy, that at some point we will go through processes of illness or disability that will stop us from using our houses like we do today, and not only our houses but also the rest of the cooperative. For example, the issue of stairs has been greatly debated. On the other hand, care particularly concerns us because we share a lot of the care work within the cooperative. Support among compañeras takes place naturally, the challenge is to better plan the space to strengthen that aspect. In principle, we want feminist urbanism to be a tool for thinking about the cooperative projects that already exist, analyze how we can improve them, and that this experience be useful in the planning process. 

We are carrying out two processes: research that we hope will result in a proposal to work with the cooperatives being formed and, in turn, encouraging education in feminist urbanism, in order for the issue to be studied within the organization. This will allow us, as the Gender Area, to be able to later go out and work with the cooperatives being formed and promote that debate in each cooperative. But that will take place in a second stage, that is our hope.

It is difficult because our movement is made up of over 500 cooperatives and they all have different degrees of participation. This will happen little by little. Being able to put forth a feminist vision of cooperatives is an idea for the long-term.

When we speak of feminist perspectives regarding housing, the issue of non-discriminatory access also becomes clear. For example, what do women who are heads of household do with the hours they are required to work in the cooperative?

All the cooperatives include single women who are responsible for their children, it is a very common situation. Even more, many compañeras approach the cooperatives to solve housing issues caused by situations of violence, as a way to escape those situations. Then, what people who are solely responsible for their nuclear family can do is present a collaborator, then that person collaborates to fulfill the hours.

The cooperative is a very important network for the women who live in it. There are more women than men living in the cooperatives. If something happens to a woman, the cooperative looks for a way to support them. We have developed thousands of strategies in these 50 years of history. There are cooperatives only made up of women who are heads of their households. There is an LGBTIQ+ cooperatives, there are Afro women. An impressive diversity of cooperatives has arisen that have to do with social movements, with struggles for diversity, with the feminist struggle. Cooperatives have also emerged from unions, for example, of construction workers, that are almost all men. Then there are those that came out of teachers’ unions or unions of cleaning workers that are almost all women. There are also many cooperatives that have arisen from the children of members of other cooperatives, born and raised in cooperatives.

How can people join cooperatives?

Anyone over the age of 18 can affiliate with a cooperative. There are a lot of cooperatives in Uruguay, therefore a large part of the population already knows that they exist. There are cooperatives in all of the neighborhoods of Montevideo and in almost all the country’s departments. What happens is that a family approaches a cooperative and, if there is room, they can affiliate, first as an applicant and then as an owner.

From the legal point of view, a family can join a cooperative as long as their economic income is between 0 and 70,000 or 80,000 Uruguayan pesos, which is around 2,000 dollars. It is a criteria based on economic income and the number of members of the household. If you earn more than that, you cannot join a cooperative because the state does not allow it. But, since the minimum is zero, you can enter even if you are unemployed. This is relatively new, it has only been like this since 2008. This model was always designed for working men and women, therefore the minimums were always very low, but originally they did not account for the possibility of having no family income, however the new regulation does. In any case, the cooperatives often allowed people to stay who had lost their jobs, nobody was ever kicked out for not having a job. When the state lowered the limit to zero, it did so at the union’s request. That was a demand put forth by FUCVAM, along with the counterpart of the subsidy for the quota to be able to pay back the loan. That means that, if you cannot pay the quota because of low family income, the state will subsidize you so that you do not have to leave your house. Winning this subsidy guarantees access and that people can remain in their homes. 

Marxist feminism has been around in some form or another for over a century, but has undergone something of a revival in the last decade. Rooted in a critical but nevertheless fundamentally positive reference to traditional Marxism, today it constitutes an independent point of reference for an ever-growing number of scholars and activists around the world. Accordingly, current debates within Marxist feminism revolve around an analysis of societal developments as much as they do around challenges and reformulations of more traditional approaches, mostly from the Global North.

Since 2015, an important space for these debates has been the International Marxist Feminist Conference, organized by the feminist section of the Berlin Institute of Critical Theory (InkriT) with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. As organizers get ready for the fourth conference scheduled for 11–13 November, Alex Wischnewski spoke with organizing committee member Jule Guikoetxea about how Marxist feminism can help us understand the COVID-19 crisis and what new debates are emerging today.

Feminist debates often emphasize that the pandemic did not represent a real break with existing relations, but only exacerbated the uneven distribution of resources and access to care along the various axes of oppression. What do you think? Which new challenges are emerging, and how can Marxist feminist approaches respond?

Since the approaches coming from Marxist feminism are diverse and hybrid, the challenges and contradictions differ. To name one that has emerged during the pandemic: the state. More and more voices on the Left and in feminism are calling for more and better public structures. This is not necessarily in contradiction to the twentieth-century Left, but it is in the way the Left, including many Marxists, understood and theorized the state.

Traditionally, the state often appears as a class enemy in the form of a unified subject or thing, not as a set of relations, strategies, and structures. Now, however, we have seen that public structures saved many workers from death, expropriation, and absolute impoverishment, while others were expropriated and made precarious. That is to say, the state can kill, repress, torture, and marginalize thousands of people, or it can treat thousands of people with cancer, even if they have no money.

That is why the question is more complex than many Marxist analyses suggest, particularly those based on a liberal and androcentric “state phobia” that objectifies, alienates, and essentializes the state. We always say that the state is neither good nor bad, because it has no heart. We find that one of the most pressing demands in Latin America is for the right to free abortion, meaning guaranteed by public structures, ergo, by the state. The same is true of care, health, and education: the majority on the Left, whether Marxist, socialist, or feminist, want it to be public, which requires a state.

That is why I believe it is very important today to think about the state from a non-androcentric and materialist perspective as well as from a decolonial and anti-racist one, which does not reproduce the Eurocentric and supremacist discourse that the state was invented by capital or the bourgeoisie. The state precedes capital and the bourgeoisie, and public administrative structures precede the European state by hundreds of years, in Asia to begin with.

So, again, we see how in thinking about one of the most important (whether dominating or emancipating) structures of our era, it continues to be thought within an androcentric framework without taking into account that in the second half of the twentieth century, at least in some countries, the state “assumed” care work that women performed (and still do in many places) for free, by means of public day-care centres, public health care, or public housing. It diminished the unpaid work that women do, which is essential to their economic and social development.

There is a simplistic, one-dimensional and linear vision of the state, and a colonialist narrative that is quite widespread on the Left, insofar as there are forms of public organization that do not necessarily involve the concept of a liberal institution, or the perception of a public space and a private sphere that certain enlightened or modern ideologies attribute per se to the state.

But the state is not the same everywhere. For the Colombian theorist Ochy Curiel, who will also be speaking at the conference, the state is a purely colonial matter. She therefore promotes forms of self-organized and autonomous communities. Do decolonial approaches like this one challenge Marxist feminist debates in Europe?

Of course, in Latin America the colonial European state was imposed, but public structures are not a European invention. Communitarianism is all very well, but the community cannot treat hundreds of people with cancer, for example, because there are poor and rich communities. That is why there are many feminists—not only, but also within the different currents of decolonial feminism—who do not agree with each other on this issue. The divisions are not that simple. Yes, decolonial proposals challenge classical Marxist feminist approaches in many ways, but most participants are as Marxist as they are decolonial or as structuralist or poststructuralist, materialist and transfeminist as they are decolonial and Marxist.

Therefore, it is necessary to differentiate enlightened or classical feminist Marxism from the framework that includes new decolonial perspectives within a Marxist political economy, such as postcolonial, ecofeminist, materialist, or transfeminist scholars. One of the decolonial critiques of this classical feminist Marxism is that it is Eurocentric, racist, colonialist, and patriarchal, that is to say “Enlightened”, since such a framework assumes that the Enlightenment framework or analysis has universal validity, although everyone knows that the “Universal” is a white male tending towards heterosexuality.

Secondly, the idea that with the end of capitalism all other forms of domination will disappear belongs to a monotheistic metaphysics that is also very typical of white and European infantilism. It is important to understand that this is a critique shared by a large part of communitarian and materialist feminism, not only decolonial.

The debate on the state already reveals different, partly conflicting approaches. What role do Frigga Haug’s 13 Theses on Marxist-Feminism, which she has proposed as a common basis, play? Is it necessary or even possible to somehow formulate a unified Marxist feminism?

The 13 theses on Marxist feminism that Haug proposed and that were worked on in the various conferences are a guide to order thoughts and articulate new struggles. They are not a final manifesto or a dogmatic proposal, they are theses to be rethought, reformulated, used, dirtied, and developed infinitely, if you will. They are heuristics, a technique for collective thinking.

That is why it is important to discuss them in our meeting, to see how, after the latest events and in the midst of the fourth feminist wave, we can think together about the focal points that can articulate a joint struggle for the emancipation of all.

Originally published on: https://www.rosalux.de/news/id/45302/rethinking-care-work-and-the-state

„Without us, the world stops working“ – This was the slogan under which millions of Spanish women launched a general strike on 8 March 2018. The strike was more than just a strike, however, giving women the opportunity to discuss different related topics and engage in processes of self-organization around questions like work, care, and consumption.

No other left-wing social movement has protested and organized against patriarchal structures on a global scale as successfully as the feminist movement in recent years. The reasons behind this dynamic are diverse and vary from country to country, but nevertheless exhibit a certain European commonality.

Beginning with the 2007 financial crisis which later expanded into the euro crisis, many countries enacted harsh austerity measures. In Southern Europe and Ireland, this austerity was largely the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, it was the pressure to succeed placed on the EU new member states and their desire to gain rapid integration into the European economic market which compelled respective governments to accept tight budgets.

Accession candidates such as Serbia and neighbouring states like Ukraine subjugated themselves in anticipatory obedience to the EU and its demands, in order to avoid endangering progress towards membership and further rapprochement.

Whatever the individual case may be – the mantra of saving money for the sake of balanced budgets, improved competitiveness and debt avoidance has devastating consequences on women’s working and living conditions as well as gender relations more generally. The national studies on the effects of austerity on women commissioned by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung are devoted to exploring these developments in more detail.

Under the title „Austerity, Gender Inequality and Feminism after the Crisis“, the authors not only evaluated data on women’s levels of employment and income, but looked more closely at how cost cutting measures have directly affected equality, as well as rule changes and new regulations in the same spirit.

How do savings policies affect gender roles in the family? Who takes responsibility for raising and caring for both young and old when the state ceases to provide support? What does it mean when gender equality commissioners and the support programs tied to them have their funding cut? Where do women go when there are no crisis centres available for victims of domestic violence? Who will look after unwanted children if abortion is ruled illegal?

The studies depict a topography of what effects the European austerity diktat has had on gender relations, and formulate demands for a left-wing feminist politics rooted in social justice and gender equality.

In addition to a German study, further studies are available in English from Greece, Spain, Ireland, Ukraine. Studies on Croatia, Russia, Poland and Lithuania will follow shortly.

·Slovenia:  Austerity Measures and Gender Equality in Slovenia: The Legacy of Socialism after Neoliberal CrisisAnamarija Šiša, Antonija Todić

·Greece:The gendered aspects of the austerity regime in Greece: 2010 – 2017Aliki Kosyfologou

·Spain:Economic Boom, Recession and Recovery in Spain: The Permanent Care Crisis and its Effects on Gender Equality. The Search for Feminist Alternatives.Inés Campillo Poza

·Ukraine:Crisis, War and Austerity: Devaluation of Female Labor and Retreating of the State.Oksana Dutchak

·Germany:Who profits from the crisis? The impact of neoliberal state restructuring and the political shift to the right on women’s lives in Germany.Alex Wischnewski

·Ireland:Irish Feminist Approaches against Austerity RegimesMary P. Murphy and Pauline Cullen

·Russia:«Should women have more rights?» Traditional Values and Austerity in RussiaMarianna Muravyeva

·Croatia:«Death by a Thousand Cuts» - Impact of Austerity Measures on Women in CroatiaMarija Ćaćić and Dora Levačić

·Lithuania:Austerity Policies in Lithuania - Austerity, Gender Inequality and Feminism after the Crisis in LithuaniaSeverija Bielskytė and Jolanta Bielskienė

·Poland:Unsatisfactory Success and Hidden Austerity Policies. Feminist Approaches to the Austerity Paradigm.Agata Czarnacka

Originally published on: When the Belt Can't Get Any Tighter - Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (rosalux.de)

Photo: Massive demonstration in Madrid against sexist violence / … | Flickr

CENTRE FOR EQUITY STUDIES | Despite considerable economic growth in recent years, many of India’s citizens still struggle to get access to basic public goods. Our partner, the Centre for Equity Studies (CES), examines how state institutions fail to provide equal access to necessities like healthcare, sanitation and safe working conditions. Which groups are especially vulnerable to exclusion? How do different dimensions of exclusion reinforce each other? And what are possible interventions?

These are the leading questions of CES’ flagship publication, the Indian Exclusion Report. While root causes often lie within historically grown inequalities and discrimination, CES looks at the state as the main responsible actor to intervene and guarantee equal rights. The report points out where policies and institutions fail to deliver or how systemic tax evasion deprives the state of necessary resources. Moreover, it identifies especially vulnerable groups.

The cooperation between CES and RLS focused on particular sections within the India Exclusion Report. One focus lied on home based workers in slums, who manufacture goods which are later sold in shiny malls and retail shops. As their payment is meagre, often the whole family has to participate in the process. However, this does not guarantee any fair distribution of income among the family. Moreover, home based workers do not enjoy any form of occupational safety. Another group in focus are the so-called “manual scavengers”. Although the manual cleaning of latrines and sewers has been recently banned by the government, it is still reality for around one million people. Exclusively performed by Dalits, this exemplifies the continuous existence of “untouchability” in India. The project was completed in 2018.

The Centre for Equity Studies was founded in 2000 as an independent research organisation for issues social policies, the interface of social exclusion and government services and communal conflict. Based on their research, CES prepares policy interventions and conducts empowerment on the grassroots level to develop alternatives to existing laws and programmes. The India Exclusion Report by CES is one of the most acknowledged publication on the topic within India and abroad.

Full report available in http://indiaexclusionreport.in/

Originally published on: Documenting Social Exclusion - Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung (South Asia)

Photo: India | A. Other improved drinking water source B. Protected… | Flickr

Last month’s successful referendum to “expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.” marks a milestone for the tenants’ movement—in Berlin and beyond. For the first time in German post-war history, a majority voted in favour of socializing large real estate companies to combat displacement and housing shortages. The referendum instructs the Berlin Senate to “initiate all measures” to bring about the socialization of real estate companies that own 3,000 rental apartments or more in the city. This Enteignung, German for “expropriation”, applies to around 240,000 of the 1.5 million rental apartments in Berlin and thus covers a considerable portion of the city’s housing market.

Berlin offered a unique point of departure for the referendum. The housing situation in Berlin is a concern for the entire city, as even middle-class residents feel the strain of high rents and fear being pushed out of their neighbourhoods. On average, Berliners spend about 40 percent of their income on rent. At the same time, Berlin is home to a number of political players who have gained a great deal of experience and expertise in rental issues through their many years of work: from traditional institutions like the Berlin Tenants’ Association to initiatives like Bizim Kiez or the veterans from the squatter scene of the 1970s and 1980s, the city is home to a network of actors who are deeply rooted in Berlin’s civil society. The campaign and the referendum made it possible to bring these many actors—who are well-networked but often fight on different fronts—together to work towards a common goal. In this way, the tenants’ movement was able to develop new strength and, after years of being on the defensive, to go on the offensive once again.

The Pillars of Success

Three components distinguished the campaign from the beginning and set it apart from other left-wing struggles: firstly, a determined orientation towards the middle of society, secondly, a legally sound “plan to win”, and thirdly, a professionalism that allowed the campaign to be prepared for the other side’s attacks at all times.

1) Targeting the Middle of Society

Hundreds of thousands of Berliners are under existential pressure as a result of the situation on the Berlin housing market. This not only affects the poor, but also people with middle-class incomes. Around half of Berliners qualify for a so-called “housing entitlement certificate” granting them access to a flat with subsidized rent. Changes in ownership, costly modernizations, and exorbitant asking prices have soured many Berliners’ attitudes towards the free housing market. The campaign therefore targeted its messaging at all of Berlin’s renters and not only individual groups excluded from the majority, as left-wing campaigns tend to do. Instead, the specific plights of marginalized groups were embedded in the larger issue of affordable rents, allowing people of different backgrounds and status positions to see their situation reflected in the campaign.

The campaign therefore not only defended the welfare of tenants affected by major real estate companies such as Deutsche Wohnen or Akelius, but also repeatedly emphasized that the expropriation of for-profit housing companies would benefit all Berlin renters. It was to their advantage that the starting point of the struggle for cheap rents was a very concrete emergency. The juxtaposition of “Berliners against real estate sharks” was linked to widespread experiences, which were thus easy to communicate. This critique of capitalism was not an abstract lecture hall exercise, but linked to an everyday consciousness that, even without the theory of surplus value, understood that one person’s rent is another person’s profit.

2) Plan to Win

The decision made by the people who got “Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen” off the ground to rely on a referendum proved to be a slam-dunk. On the one hand, this step made it possible to pursue a concrete, legal path to curb Berlin’s spiralling rent prices, while on the other hand, it allowed broad swathes of the population to identify with the project. Traditional instruments of movement work—such as direct action or civil disobedience—allow small groups to draw attention to their concerns, but these instruments are rarely suited to winning over majorities for radical and far-reaching policy proposals.

By focusing on the referendum, the campaign also sparked the interest of people outside the city’s left-wing subculture. As a result, hundreds of people from different walks of life could be won over to participate. After all, it takes less effort and expense to collect signatures and go to the ballot box than to enter into a long-running legal dispute with a private landlord together with your neighbours (as important and indispensable as that work is).

The focus on winning a referendum also forced the activists to step out of their traditional milieus and neighbourhoods and address all of the people of Berlin. Whereas most social movements in Berlin remain spatially and habitually restricted to their traditional neighbourhood stomping grounds, efforts were made very early on to broaden the campaign, as evidenced by actions in places like Marzahn-Hellersdorf and other districts outside the S-Bahn ring that separates the suburbs from the inner core. The initiative’s activists were willing to go into the kinds of neighbourhoods and housing blocks in Berlin that are oftentimes criminally neglected by the Left.

In short, they didn’t just want to be right or stand up for the right cause. They wanted to win.

3) Political and Legal Professionalism

It also paid off that the campaign began its political and legal work on socialization early on. This contributed to the fact that even middle-class layers of the population grew increasingly sympathetic to the referendum. The focus on “expropriation” alone probably would not have led to majority backing for the referendum without being linked to a robust policy formulation.

Particularly remarkable was how the campaign utilized all of the resources and networks at its disposal. Over its many years of work, the Berlin tenants’ movement has accumulated a very high level of expertise on issues of rent policy. Now other actors were brought to the table. The initiative commissioned legal opinions from constitutional lawyers and conducted in-depth research on its opponents. A concept for how to finance socialization was developed at an early stage. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation supported the initiative with policy papers and studies, and the party Die Linke also contributed its resources and skills where they were requested and needed.

The referendum campaign showed what the broad Left is capable of when it works together towards a shared goal. The cooperation between different progressive actors, whether institutional or non-institutional, was an important factor in the referendum’s success.

Professional Messaging

It became clear early on that the campaign wanted to build a stringent public image for its project and deliberately avoid the conventional aesthetics of left-wing groups. This could already be seen in the choice of colours and the design of the campaign, which made it interesting and relatable beyond the existing far-left scene. The activists also demonstrated a high degree of discipline in terms of their messaging and avoided overloading their public relations strategy with too many secondary issues.

Over the course of the campaign, the public faces in the media changed again and again. Although some saw this as a weakness—after all, what movement can do without charismatic figureheads?—the approach ultimately worked to the initiative’s advantage. In this way, the powerful opposing side consisting of real estate corporations and neoliberal media could not hit the campaign as a whole by focusing on taking down specific individuals. In addition, the human side of the housing crisis in Berlin was communicated via videos with affected tenants on social media.

In general, the major players in the campaign demonstrated a solid understanding of the power of images. No newspaper article or news report on the topic could do without the well-staged actions of the campaign: purple and yellow jackets, smoke flares, seas of flags, a campaign bus, and a queer cheerleading team transported positive images even to people who are usually sceptical of left-wing campaigns. What tenant in Spandau or Tempelhof could be afraid of expropriators like these? Instead, the campaign conveyed a joyful spirit and a desire for a just city for all. People were not too subtle to “dive” into mass culture, as evidenced by neighbourhood festivals outside the S-Bahn ring or actions in front of football stadiums.

One important factor in the campaign’s public relations work tends to be overlooked: alongside the pretence to fight for affordable rents and push demands for a new path in housing policy, a “conservative” element also flowed into the campaign. The slogan Damit Berlin dein Zuhause bleibt (“So that Berlin remains your home”), which could be seen on many posters and in the campaign’s broader messaging, also drew on the widespread feeling among Berliners that they are losing their established neighbourhood structures and everything they love about the city. This preservationist element contributed to the campaign’s powerful impact deep into liberal circles.

Through the aforementioned political and legal work, it was possible to anticipate and refute the opposing side’s points of attack at an early stage. That said, it is also the case that the opposing side’s campaign never really got off the ground to begin with. Apart from warning letters sent by housing cooperatives to tenants, the economic and media power of the real estate lobby never really had an impact. The bottom line is that the expropriation campaign was always on the offensive and dominated the rent policy debate in the city.

Unanswered Questions

Since the vote, a number of op-eds have appeared about how the referendum campaign has given countless people in Berlin a sense of self-empowerment. This is certainly true for the perhaps 2,000 activists who worked for a long time to achieve this victory. Whether this applies to the broad mass of the city’s tenants to the same extent, however, is another question. Perhaps for many it was simply the right issue at the right time, and they wanted to help the campaign achieve a breakthrough in the vote that occurred on the same day as the federal and state elections. It remains to be seen whether the campaign will lead to deeper roots in the neighbourhoods and milieus over the long term.

In terms of party politics, we also have to take up the question of why the overwhelming electoral majority for an ultimately democratic socialist policy did not translate into a better election result for Die Linke. After all, Die Linke was the only party that openly and consistently supported socialization and also the only force in parliament that actually wants to implement the referendum—in the end, however, less than a quarter of the voters who supported the referendum also voted for Die Linke.

That said, it’s safe to assume that more considerations than just determined support for a referendum enter into the decision of which party to vote for. This suggests that leftists should be careful not to overestimate the importance of social movements when it comes to winning in the electoral arena (and thus obtaining state power).

Conclusion

The “Deutsche Wohnen and Co. enteignen” campaign managed to build up a large group of activists over the years, to unite Berlin’s tenants’ movement, and win a large majority for the socialization of real estate companies. The campaign relied on broad participation, but was also prepared to work and communicate stringently and uniformly—in short: professionally.

But anyone who thought the battle was over was mistaken. The referendum was a so-called Beschlussvolksentscheid, which calls on the Berlin Senate and thus the governing parties to draft a law on socialization. Legally, the incoming Senate is not bound by the result of the referendum. So far, Die Linke is the only party in the Berlin House of Deputies that supports the socialization of large real estate companies. The Social Democrats (SPD), led by Franziska Giffey, have already spoken out against expropriation in advance, and the Greens continue to maintain a low profile on the question.

Therefore, it is now crucial that the campaign quickly change its modus operandi in order to put pressure on the Green and SPD deputies. This is not an easy task. But whatever means the campaign will adopt in the future, its creativity, political experience, and last but not least the overwhelming democratic mandate of more than one million “Yes” votes are reason enough to be optimistic about the future.

We will find out in the years to come whether the issue of socialization also resonates in other regions of the country. What is certain, however, is that the three essential building blocks for success—targeting the broad middle of society, a plan to win, and precise political work—show the way forward for movements and progressive actors across Germany—and a path to win majorities for left-wing politics.

Martin Neise works on political education for Die Linke. He was a candidate for parliament in Berlin-Mitte in the 2021 elections.

Translation by Loren Balhorn.

Originally published on: A Blueprint for a Left That Wins - RLS-NYC (rosalux.nyc)

Photo: Lisa Mangold

Let’s talk about Gaza

 Life in Caravan Structures

 June 2016

Almost two years after the 2014 war on the Gaza Strip that caused the destruction of more than 12,000 housing units [1], 300 families still continue living in provisional structures like caravans [2] . Bessan Shehada, project coordinator of the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Regional Office Palestine (RLS) in the Gaza Strip talked to a group of female relatives from the AlNajjar family who have been living in caravans in Khuza’a town [3] since they were displaced in summer 2014.

 Why you are sitting outside your caravans?

It is too hot inside the caravan. Nobody can bear this heat for more than 10 minutes. When the sun rises in the morning, we go outside the caravan to sit in the shades escaping from the sun.

Why you are living in caravans? Where are your houses?

During the 2014 Israeli war on Gaza, we fled to UNRWA schools around. Some of us were trapped and used as human shields in their houses. The majority of the over 500 houses in our village were destroyed, when the Israeli military went in with their tanks. After the Israelis withdrew from the town, we came back to find out that we do not have houses anymore. Everything was destroyed.

Why do you still live in caravans? What is happening with the reconstruction process?

We are waiting for our turn in the reconstruction process. The biggest problem is the siege: The Israelis don’t allow cement to come in to the Gaza Strip. How could we possibly build houses without cement or other necessary construction materials?

Do you know when your turn will come?

We do not know anything. Whenever we ask, the people who are responsible for the reconstruction process just pay lip service. They have been promising us for the past two years to reconstruct our houses but time is passing without anything happening. We do not have any control over our lives.

How are you managing to live under these circumstances?

We do not have any other choices. Our husbands are unemployed so we do not have enough money to rent apartments. We fully depend on humanitarian aid from international organizations to survive.

How is life in a caravan like?

It is miserable. There is no water, no electricity, and no infrastructure. The bathrooms smell horribly and insects and rats are living with us. It is unbearably hot in summer but freezing during winter. Caravans are simply not for humans. It is pure torture. 

How do your children spend their time?

The young men and women who are forced to live in caravans have basically lost hope. They are unemployed living under an extremely bad situation. They can neither work, nor travel or get married. They are very helpless. All our children who still go to school used to be hardworking students with good marks. Now, they are not anymore. How would they be able to concentrate while they are living here?

What are your dreams as women?

We dream of a house where we have privacy, where we are able to sleep or take shower whenever we want, where we can uncover our heads inside our homes. We are forced to cover ourselves all the time, because we almost live in the street.

Are you angry?

We are very angry. Everything about this situation we are living in makes us angry. This anger is also eventually going against those we are living with including our own family and children. We are living in a circle of anger.

[1] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (2016): Internal Displacement in the Context of the 2014 Hostilities. Retrieved June 25, 2016 from http://gaza.ochaopt.org/2015/07/internal-displacement-in-the-context-of-the-2014-hostilities/[last accessed: 06/27/2016].

[2] Shelter Cluster Palestine (2016): Palestine May 2016. Retrieved June 25, 2016 from http://shelterpalestine.org/Upload/Doc/16e94567-472e-4675-8c50-e69b32f055da.pdf [last accessed: 06/27/2016].

[3] Khuza`a is a Palestinian town in the Khan Yunis Governorate in the Southern Gaza Strip. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Khuza'a has a population of 9,700 inhabitants. The town of Khuza'a is around 500 meters from the border with Israel.

Originally published on: 2016-06_caravans_final (rosalux.ps)

Photo: Free Gaza | Wilhelm Joys Andersen | Flickr