So, what is all of this about?
Hello and welcome to this blog for the northern kiez of Fredrichshain.
To provide some information about our intentions and motivations, and necessitiy to put up this blog we prepared the following text for you.
For a couple of months it just is so that we cannot avoid referring to what is happening as practically being layed siege to in our kiez by the police. This so far manifested as several raids by the police of Berlin, as arbitrary checks of people’s IDs and shakedowns of their bodies including harassment which at times lasted hours at a time. “Regular” checks of IDs regularly took more than an hour.
All of this happens in the newly invented “kriminalitätsbelasteter Ort”, a locality supposedly particularly burdened by criminality, which is also called “Gefahrengebiet” (“danger zone”). We also saw the execution of “commercial checks” in self organized community space and officially validated pubs, besides many other attempts at intimidation of people in our Kiez.
As to not just expose ourselves to and take these things, or even allow them to split us as a Kiez, which would most likely be one of the motives for the Berlin political establishment applying this manner of acting in our Kiez, people in the Kiez organised the first Kiez assembly in Friedrichshain a few months back. An assembly by and for the people living in the Kiez. It was conceived to make it possible to get to know one another, to discuss and work out strategies and concepts to promote a conscious living together in this neighbourhood. After a few assemblies several work groups formed.
One of these groups had the idea to put up this very page. For one thing, to give the people not living here the chance to inform themselves about and what is happening to us. For another, to create an informational forum for the people of the Kiez.
There came to be a great number of minor and major ideas for elaboration of this particular project. This blog may be a medium to publicize uncommercial dates/events in the neighbourhood, provide historical information about workers’ class borrows (such as Friedrichshain’s northern kiez) and past squatting of houses; it may constitute a platform to bundle press articles and personal accounts of incidents taking place.
But since the Kiez assembly is the most important medium of communication in the Kiez, we decided to not put up an open blog. This means there won’t be commenting interfaces or boards to this page. We consider it indispensable to promote personal communication. Therefore we would much like to not lazily completely rely on “social media tools” that are supposedly simplifying our lives.
This page has just been conceived, so please don’t be angry with us if you won’t find such a great amount of content yet. We are working on that. We would be much happy to receive suggestions, compliments (naturally) and criticisms, and also about people joining us to help doing this.
For all of that you can (of course) contact us via mail: nordkiezlebt@riseup.net