strange town, strange maps… Last Friday I went to a nice party in Berlin, and this party was in the „Rigaer Strasse“, where a lot of former squatted houses are located. Since years they all have contracts, but the gentrification process initiated years ago by renovating all the houses in the area gives the locals a lot of pressure. Rents for flats are continuously rising, and poorer people have to move out of the area to other, to cheaper places.
Thats why people announced an action weekend to protest against gentrification. After a demonstration in the afternoon a lot of parties went on in this area and people used the spring evening to sit on the streets . The nights are still cold, at some point some of them started to make a fire. Maybe in the middle of the street, maybe not, I have no idea. But actually this was the time when the police joined the event. In the location I was I just heard the bartender saying ‚all out, police is coming‘ and outside police in riot-gear came running trough the streets trying to catch anybody who might be claimed for whatever responsible later.
They didn’t arrested me, that’s something. But Germany and and especially Berlin showed me his ugly police-face once again. Oh, the map. Yes, it shows you under the title ‚burning barricades‘ symbolically the problems I have with this town.
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