(en) Germany, Direct Action Berlin* Declaration of Intentions (14.10.2013)

Some of us were a group of activists who came together a year ago around the subject of 
anti-zionism, and were tired of the activities that were taking place in Berlin on those 
topics, which for us were passive. We tried to add more direct actions to those fields, 
especially with the aim to talk to, mobilize and empower people. Our work in the first 
year was only based on actions reacting to events, and in this process we found out that 
this kind of political work is not what we believe in. now we try to begin to organize 
ourselves in different ways. ---- The meaning of action for us is the dialectic between 
praxis and theory. Those theories come from the political experience of our daily life in 
connection with our class, race, gender position and citizenship status, not from academic 
or institutional knowledge.

We believe that we as activists have to be reflective about our race, gender and class 
privileges in ourselves and in our group. We should try to not prioritize issues, to look 
at issues from different perspectives, and to not ignore or marginalize any kind of 
perspective. We do this because we know that we are all gathered from different 
perspectives and positions.

We see the connection between different struggles and don?t see political issues and 
struggles as separate from each other. We try to develop a discourse that progresses and 
evolves. We see power in working in a group. A group is dynamic and changes and therefore 
empowers, motivates and builds, which an individual activist cannot. In this process we 
will empower ourself and other comrades, and enrich our political, theoretical and 
practical knowledge while always criticizing and improving ourselves.

Politics means to not sit in the position of other people, to plunder their voice and 
knowledge - their perspective and experience. Politics means empowering ourselves, 
politics comes from our daily lives, from our oppression in the society. Our understanding 
of solidarity is creating an atmosphere for other oppressed people to empower themselves 
and destroy the oppressing system. This solidarity has to be practical and daily.

We don?t see our role only in doing local political work in the places that we are 
physically at right now. We have different histories and backgrounds, and come from 
different places, some of us had to leave their homes and are living in exile, and have 
political responsibilities to the societies and places they came from. We see ourselves as 
international activists, and see oppression and injustice as traits inherent to the 
structure of the system and therefore not local.

We see our audience in the people who are marginalized and suffering because of inequality 
originating from class, race or gender issues. Those who are suffering from capitalism, 
patriarchy, colonialism, sexism, heteronormativity, racism, imperialism, dictatorship, or 
totalitarianism regardless of geographic limitations. For us an audience is not a passive 
role. Our audience are, and see themselves as being, our potential political partners.

Our political work is not a reaction to the white western political discourse, and we do 
not focus on parliamentary politics and politics from above, or on politics connected to 
institutionalized power. We do not follow male dominant forms of organization or reproduce 
those structures, or the feminist bourgeoisie forms of organization and discourse. We do 
not follow the negative form of identity politics ? to focus on narrow labels of certain 
identities, as dictated to us by our oppressors.

We don?t want to react to or follow fashionable political trends. We don?t want to follow 
or reproduce political definitions built by white, masculine or heteronormative hegemony. 
We do not organize with people who are not critical and reflective about their privileges 
and positions. We do not provide ?political entertainment? to people who do not take the 
responsibility to organize and take responsibility of their own political work, or are 
looking for an orientalist or exotic experience, social capital, or only do politics in 
order to get money from institutions and organizations. We do not have hierarchy in the 
group; we work horizontally and do not work with people who want to treat the people in 
the group unequally.

We see it as our political responsibility to share that we are organizing ourself in order 
to achieve those political aims, to produce political content and to motivate other people 
to engage themselves in the process of political organizing.

Direct Action Berlin, 14.10.2013
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* Antiauthoritarian anticapitalist