Criminal Queers Support Ohlauer Rebels 

This is a communique for a banner drop in solidarity with refugees fighting for their lives in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. It was published on Indymedia on June 30, 2014, and is signed by “Some criminal queers and accomplices”. For more background on the struggle around the refugee-squatted school at Ohlauerstrasse, see the Ohlauer Infopoint blog here.  There is also a useful timeline of the first 5 days of events in English here.

“We do not speak in place of, or wish to speak over the voices of the folks occupying the Ohlauerstrasse school. The actions of these rebels have echoed loudly and powerfully from Berlin to Istanbul, Athens and beyond. To threaten to burn down a building and jump off the roof seems to us to say:“revolt or death”. The occupiers’ threats to the city and cops express a clear refusal to passively submit to the fate set out for them, and a choice to instead use their bodies to enforce their survival. For nearly a week now the occupiers have endured constant police harassment on the roof, while rejecting as misleading and insufficient every empty “offer” from the city. For these actions we have only respect and admiration. At the same time, we have sensed a certain discord between the content of such actions and the form of some of the language used to describe them. A discourse of “nonviolence” and “human rights” keeps resurfacing, one which has made a point of distancing itself from “criminals”. We find the refugees’ rebellious actions inspiring, but we won’t position ourselves against those who are structurally criminalized. We count ourselves as among those for whom today’s prisons are built, and don’t wish to portray ourselves as innocent or blameless…on the contrary. We do not strive to legitimate or represent ourselves within the existent. We see this as a losing game, which ultimately serves only to demarcate who is killable and rapable, while positioning the State as an ally.”