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A whole lot of this has been happening in my neighborhood, so I feel like I should drop in some context. First, the "attacks" have been uniformly non-violent.
by wheels 17y ago
A whole lot of this has been happening in my neighborhood, so I feel like I should drop in some context.
First, the "attacks" have been uniformly non-violent. They've been expensive acts of vandalism, not actual attacks on people. Second, the article is wrong. These are not concentrated in the richer, more upscale areas. They've been targeted at luxury cars in the alternative, bohemian districts.
These districts have strong alternative (punks, squatters, etc.) leanings. One of those is the district that I live in. People actually move to those areas because they're hip. The problem is that as hip places start to get hipper they also tend to get more expensive and gentrified. Gentrification tends to lead towards changing attitudes in urban development, so...
The Spree is the main river that runs through Berlin and locations along the Spree that run through the alternative parts of town have been earmarked for a construction project with the city's cooperation called the "Media Spree" where large office buildings would be built on both sides of the Spree and many of the local bars, clubs and other alternative gathering points in the area would be shut down.
There have been referendums on this and they have been overwhelmingly voted down. Nevertheless those pushing the development project keep finding ways to work around the results. There is a vibe within Berlin's alternative scenes that they're being pushed out of the boroughs that they've claimed as their own since the wall came down, and it's starting to piss some people off.
Now, I don't condone burning cars. But we're talking about Berlin -- one of the world's last punk holdouts. Fredrichhain-Kreuzberg (most densely populated borough, and most alternative) has a local government that is an alliance between the "Left Party" (Socialist / Communist) and the Greens. Along with the heating up of economic pressure there have been more raids on squats and I think that vandalism is being ratcheted up is a desperate push back.
- onreact-com 17y agoYou live nearby it seems ;-) Nonetheless you got some things wrong: There are no more squatters in Berlin. Just people who legalized once squatted buildings 15 or more ears ago. Also I don't see a connection between the burned cars and the Mediaspree gentrification issue. The cars get burned all over the city (not just the area you refer to) while the anti-gentrification movement is using democratic means to fight the megalomaniac Mediaspree project.
- wheels 17y agoYes, I knew that the squats had been legalized; I didn't realize that it was that far back. But the big ones around the Kreuzberg / Frerichshain / Mitte border still function culturally as squats. As for cars, if you at the linked map, the concentration is clearly in Frerichshain and Kreuzberg with a decent amount of spillover into Prenzlauerberg (which isn't surprising): http://www.brennende-autos.de/ http://www.brennende-autos.de/ Edit: Incidentally, if your "Impressum" is up to date, your office is about 200m from where I live. :-)
- anamax 17y ago> First, the "attacks" have been uniformly non-violent. They've been expensive acts of vandalism, not actual attacks on people. Okay - then you'll have no objection if someone empties the residence of someone you like and levels it. After all, that's just an "expensive act of vandalism". > Second, the article is wrong. These are not concentrated in the richer, more upscale areas. They've been targeted at luxury cars in the alternative, bohemian districts. Oh - then that's alright then....
- wheels 17y agoI don't approve of it. Like most politically motivated destructive acts, there's a context involved. This article is just not good investigative reporting. It's kind of like reading about terrorists that do what they do "because they hate freedom". Reality is more complicated. Good journalism brings out those nuances. The issue of what amount of social disruption should be tolerated in protest within a democracy is a delicate one and one that I don't have a firm stand on, but it's short of burning cars.