by Victor Grossman
People’s feet have been pretty important around here lately. (No, I’m not referring to some new kind of fetish.) They’ve been used for walking, next to other people’s feet. On March 8 it was mostly (but not only) female feet – marching for women’s rights and against about 20 % less wages than male wages, plus many other kinds of discrimination. A big majority were young of age.
For months now many even younger feet have been involved, all playing hookey! Every Friday afternoon thousands of kids have been walking out of their school rooms and demonstrating, with countless hard-hitting and witty posters and banners. The movement is called “Fridays for Future” and the main demands are an end to the use of fossil fuels – and that politicians move far, far faster with tough laws and measures against worsening damage to the world the kids want to inherit. On one Friday 25,000 took part in Berlin alone, more than 300,000 in 220 cities all over Germany and 2 million in 123 different countries. It all started last summer in Sweden with a little baby-faced and very talented speaker, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg.
There were politicians who righteously recalled that going to school is required by law – hookey playing can mean punishment for parents. But what can you do against hundreds of thousands of kids saying: “School learning is important, but our planet’s well-being comes first”? And with 26,000 scientists supporting them – some briefly joined a sit-down blockade of a main Berlin bridge and even President Frank-Walter Steinmeier approving their message? The mightiest coal barons and their rightwing politician friends hesitate to contradict the kids too openly or sharply. How much positive action can be expected is another matter – for years the government let the big automakers get away with diesel fraud crime, at the cost of the environment, until it simply became too dirty to hide – and prevent indictments. The kids’ fight is being matched by adults – in a so-called Extinction Rebellion by a half-million in London last week, while the youngsters keep demonstrating, even on Germany’s Good Friday holiday. One of their banners against climate disaster asked plaintively: “Grandpa, What does a snowman look like?” Another, inspired by the now world-famous Swedish girl (with a side glance at a world leader) punned: “Make the world Greta again“.
On a very different level, more footwear than usual was used recently by Berliners when bus, streetcar and subway workers went out on a one-day “warning” strike, third of its kind, to win higher wages from the state-owned enterprise. The 2,900,000 passengers who daily use this public transportation could partially resort to elevated trains, run by a different, nationally-owned rail system, but many more than usual had to use bicycles, cabs or “Schusters Rappen”. The idiom means “the shoemaker’s dark horse”.
That 24-hour strike did the trick. The service union with the acronym “ver.di”, Germany’s second largest with almost 2 million members, won a 7-19% raise plus an increased 200 € Christmas bonus. The final deal, a compromise, did not include the demanded 36.5-hour week – possibly meant as a bargaining chip. This was one of a growing number of recent strikes, among them the long-lasting conflict with Amazon. That brutal exploiter is as fanatically anti-union here as everywhere else!
But the issues most deeply troubling Germans are rent increases and affordable housing. All major cities are hit by gentrification. In Berlin, where most people live in rented apartments, fear is spreading – and anger too. Alleged “necessary renovations”, with huge rate increases, are forcing elderly people out of homes they have lived in for thirty, forty or more years – with few if any affordable substitutes. Young couples search desperately for homes; retail shops or clubs which bound neighborhoods together are forced to close by impossible new demands of distant owners.
But resistance is growing. On April 9 more than 35,000 demonstrated in Berlin while smaller rallies were held in other cities. At the main rally on Alexanderplatz square special tables were set up for a so-called Initiative; about 15,000 signed up. If 20,000 sign within six months, which seems easily possible, the next goal is to get the signatures of 7% of all Berlin citizens within four months. That is a far more difficult task, but it has been mastered a few times in recent years. If they succeed, a referendum must be held and if more than a quarter of all Berliners (16 or older) go to the polls and over 50% vote Yes that means victory! The city-state legislature must then pass an appropriate law.
The initiative’s demand is a militant one! “Deutsche Wohnen enteignen” – Confiscate Deutsche Wohnen. That company – German Housing – is the biggest of twelve companies owning more than 3000 apartments each. It owns over 111,000, and has the worst reputation for nastiness, most recently against decades-long inhabitants of East Berlin’s wide Karl Marx Allee, built in the 1950’s as “Germany’s first socialist street” but gradually being privatized since German unification.
The PR machines of Deutsche Wohnen and other privateers are working overtime, aided by many media, to convince citizens and city rulers that the required reparations paid them for confiscated apartments would cost billions and bankrupt the city. Their figures are highly imaginative, and any price paid them would be regained when controlled rent payments went into the city budget and not stockholders’ private pockets, the deepest of them belonging, it turns out, to America’s BlackRock.
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