Demonstration on 5th of July 2014 12.00 Hachmannplatz, Hamburg-Hauptbahnhof
http://www.lampedusa-in-hamburg.org
Recognition of the group ‚Lampedusa in Hamburg’ – now! Immediate work permission – right to stay e.g. via § 23
For these demands the group ‚Lampedusa in Hamburg’ fights for more than 1 year with uncounted public meetings, visits of schools, universities, neighbourhood-assemblies, churches, with demonstrations and other actions, recently with the Sit in on the place before the townhall, where 5 people were injured by brutal police-attacks and 7 people arrested. For these demands we demonstrated together in the 1 May-demonstration of DGB (council of the unions) and afterwards with a parade. Later that day, a former school-building in Laeszstraße was entered and declared to become refugee welcome centre, the Lampedusa in Hamburg-house.
Declaration of the group Lampedusa in Hamburg, June 2014:
LAMPEDUSA IN HAMBURG HOUSE
> We want to use the house as a historical place of Lampedusa in Hamburg.
> We want to use the house as a symbol of Nato-War-Refugees.
> We want to use the house to show our professional and creative skills.
> We want to use the house as a school to study, e.g. the german language.
> The house belongs to us as our fundamental rights – we are sick and tired of sleeping on the street.
> We need the house to protect our dignity.
> We need the house to stay together as one big family.
> We need the house to continue our legitimate political fight.
Today, after the end of the winter emergency programms, many members of the group are homeless and again on the streets of this town Hamburg, to which they belong since more than 1 year. They worked in diverse professions in Libya to provide for their families in their countries of origin, had to flee because of the NATO-bombs and did not find opportunities to build up a new existence in Italy after their dangerous flight over the Mediterranean Sea. They want to live in Hamburg and we want them here. They have become part of our lifes, they and we need this house. We, friends, neighbours, colleagues, fellow students, supporters, fans will demonstrate again and again and again until the Senate of Hamburg recognizes this.
Lampedusa in Hamburg – they are here to stay!
Immediate Recognition of the Italian permission for the right to stay and work!
FIFA’s 50 billiondollar war on Brazilian people,startedwith the first worker oppressed, the first poor black person killed by police, the first indigenous forcefully evicted, the first teacher beaten by police, the first journalist or social activist attacked, the first protestor clubbed, the first kid in the favelamurdered by stateuniforms, the first sex worker raped by police, and the first child sold into sexual slavery.
The World Cup is for the rich, the copsare for the poor. It started with the first home stolen , with the first rent raised, with the first law changed for FIFA’s sponsors, with the first patient left to die at the hospitals’ doors, with the first worker killed in their stadiums.
“I don’t even want to look at this (at the biggest World Cup stadium in the world, at Maracana). Because every seat here could be a house to take a family out of a favelas or take in children at risk.” Behind the stadiums, is an industry ofchild sexual slavery and exploitation, as this documentary shows.
”The problem is civil obedience… The rule of law has regularized and maximized the injustice that existed before the rule of law, that is what the rule of law has done. Let us start looking at the rule of law realistically, not with that metaphysical complacency with which we always examined it before.” — Howard Zinn
Homes werestolen from the poor so that stadiums and parking lots could be built. The worst state repression against poor is the least spoken of: 40,000 poor people have been gone missing from the militarized favelas; they are called Amarildo. Kids were killed with impunity in the favelas occupied, and militarizedby police who later brag about their murders. “While there is no official record of the killing of children in the streets, a non-governmental organization said 121 known cases and a number of other episodes unprovable. “The tournament organizers and local people with great power in the country do not want tourists or international press to see the inequalitiesin Brazil, so groups hire hitmen to rid the streets of homeless people , “said one of the interviewed, in a documentary by a Danish journalist who exposed that homeless children living on the streets are killed so that “streets can be kept clean”.
Military police passing by a homeless man sleeping on the street, Rio de Janeioro, June 4th, 8 days before the World Cup. photo by Ruy Barros
The state’s criminality towardsthe poor has increased exponentially as hundreds of thousands, maybe 1 million all over Brazil, were evicted from their homes for FIFA’s stadiums and parking lots – which translate into huge profits made from public money by the capitalist class in Brazil and FIFA.
Under the pretext of the ”war on drugs,” the state has unleashed a ”pacification” process, based on the general criminalization of the working poor living in the favelas. Instead of recognizing its institutional racism, its own fascist policies, its own manipulations, its oppression towards the working poor, the state used its power to criminalize the poor and the sociallyabandoned, to dehumanize them and turn them into easy subjects of even more oppression. Poverty is widely feminized.
All residents of these poor communities were treated as criminals, because they were poor.
”Pacification” meant in fact exactly the opposite of this word: militarized gentrification and land grabsfor the profits of the political class sponsors and for FIFA. Armed military police, and the state army – soldiers ontanks and helicopters armed with machine guns – invaded the communities according to the map of FIFA’s multi-billion dollar construction projects.
Defenseless people were attacked by armed troops, evicted at gun point, beaten, threatened, and shot at. This while sick people were literally dying on the floors of hospitals turned into war zones; poor kids were forced into prostitution to buy crayons for school; public transportation, utilities, rents and other costs of life skyrocketed so that profits can be easily made in the coming years from tourism. Houses became prohibitive for the working poor as they could no longer aford rents. The lack of other public services provokes nightmares for the local population when confronted with emergency situations.
FIFA is being rejected with hatred or indifference by 70 percent of the people living in Brazil; and even media in this country which support FIFA admit that cops are trained to inflict violence, that they go after people to attack, beat and cause them harm; they are trained to be violent and brutal; and they are utterly racist.
This video blog is trying to make the voices of the people living in Brazil be heard, and help them break through the commercial and the yelling of the football fans at the fancy stadiums in the middle of misery and human suffering; and also break the deafness of FIFA’s kings so they are aware of their inhumanity, rapacity, and outrageous behavior towards other human beings.
FIFA and their sponsors should be madeto pay for all the suffering they have caused in Brazil,beforethey provoke more in Qatar, where their stadiums are built by slave work and where at least 4,000 people are expected to die working in the next 6 years for the rich’s multi-billion dollar game.
The resistance towards FIFA in Brazil started with the forced evictions and when the public learned that the cost for the cup will be 10 billion, then 30, then 50.
A year ago, 1.4 million people were on the streets to protest the cup, and to demand a decent chance at life. Passe livrelivre protests against the rise of the public transport fares, and to support the elimination of transport fares, have been inspiring the struggle against capitalism in Europe, in the United States, and in Latin America. They have gone on relentlessly over the past year in Brazil. “Nao vai ter copa” (there will be no cup) also translated into “Nao vai ter tariffa” (there will be no transport ticket).
The state turned like a criminal against the population, since last year when the first peaceful protestors were attacked and beaten by mad cops. Civil disobedience became common sense.
Police attacked teachers when they went on strike and peacefully occupied the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro. Teachers were repeatedly attacked and beaten by police ”shock troops.” This is just an example, from September 29, 2013.
”Black Bloc do not beatprofessors,” shouted 50,000 teachers who took their strike on the streets, but this time BB defended them from the cops’s batons. Some profs became Black Bloc:
August 2013: ”I’m an American citizen. I’ve been here for 3 years, and this is how they do it? THIS is how they do it? Then, fuck them!”
The streets were justa replica of much worse violence police have been unleashing for decades in the favelas, the communities inhabited by the working poor. ”Pacificationpolice”kill:
Cops kill and threaten the families of the victims to shut up: ”They’ve already threatened me, told me if they catch me at night on the street, said they will kill me.
They said they will kill my father if they catch him alone at night…. This is going to Youtube, man, we have to post this on Facebook and twitter…”
Homeless in the name of FIFA – this is one of the World Cup’s homeless: ”Anywhere people go, the government sends its military police to evict them with the use of force and violence. These people were occupying the sidewalk beside the city hall, fighting for their rights after being evicted from an occupation at a telephone company (named Oi) abandoned building. This is Brazil under a dictatorship in the name of mega-events…”
Home to 130,000, Mare was invaded and occupiedby the state army at the end of March – to crush social resistance.
5,000 working homeless families were evicted at gunpoint from a public building Telerj: ”Dwellers that was sleeping was being awake with kicks in the face. They even took some merchandise from the people in there! Water, Beer, Styrofoam. They thrown us away like we were animals.” … Terror… “They destroyed everything.”
”Well, they took everything from us, we are showing that we need a place to live. While we don’t have a place to live, we will live here and there, everywhere.”
”They have no humanity. They are heartless .” “Today we suffered one of the biggest violence this city ever saw. This was one of the most violent evictions this town have ever lived. Today, each one of those that are here will never forget. It will be forever in our memory.” ”If Dilma have money to make Rio beautiful, why don’t she give us a place to live? We want house! We want a house!”
The song of the street captures the best the meaning of all their struggle:
