How can we counter the disruptive impact of financial speculation in the real estate market? What are the strategies of some of the many Berlin-based activist collectives, how do they organise their communities? What are their plans for the upcoming Housing Action Day on 28 March, when people across Europe will take to the streets to demand that their homes and cities must stop being sources of profit?

In our first community meetup of the year, we invite you to join us for a warm-up to the first Disruption Network Lab event of the year, EVICTED BY GREED: Global Finance, Housing and Resistance (https://www.disruptionlab.org/evicted-by-greed) which focuses on the issues of financial corruption and tax havens in the real estate market and the countermeasures adopted by civil society.

We will hear from three Berlin-based initiatives, Berlin vs. Amazon, Kotti & Co and KunstBlock and beyond how they work on collective responses to the ever-increasing disruption of the housing market by speculators and real estate investors, with a special focus on what they are planning for the upcoming Housing Action Day on Saturday 28 March.

Program – starting from 19:00:

– Introduction to the EVICTED BY GREED conference
– Input presentations by Berlin vs. Amazon, Kotti & Co and KunstBlock
– Open discussion
– Drinks and networking

Communities

Berlin vs. Amazon is a a coalition of activists, local initiatives, tech workers and artists who want to mobilize against Amazon and the so-called Amazon Tower, Berlin’s tallest building which is scheduled to be completeled in 2023 on the Warschauer Bridge. When Amazon comes to Freidrichshain, the neighborhood will see a demographic shift, with tech firms disrupting the neighborhood staples: small businesses, schools, community initiatives and cultural centers. In Silicon Valley, the consequences of laissez faire capitalism are apparent. The recent victories in New York City and Kreuzberg show that we are not simply at the mercy of real estate, but that we can successfully push back against tech giants through grassroots coalitions. https://www.berlinvsamazon.com/en

Kotti & Co is a Berlin-based tenant initiative that formed at Kottbusser Tor in Kreuzberg in 2011 to fight against rising rents in their social housing buildings, which force more and more neighbours to move out. In 2012 Kotti & co occupied the square in front of the social housing at Kottbusser Tor (Kotti) with a self-built wooden house (Gecekondu – Turkish for ‘built overnight’): since then they have been protesting against the displacement of tenants with low incomes from the city centre and the high rents of Berlin’s social housing. Beside being a tenant initiative, Kotti & co is a project of diversity – bringing together a wide rage of different people, who would usually live a typical urban life next to each other but not connecting with each other. https://kottiundco.net

Kunstblock and beyond is an association of art and culture producers who joined the Bündnis gegen Verdrängung und Mietenwahnsinn in 2018 to show their solidarity against segregation, gentrification and the sell-out of the city. Art is not outside, but often a part of the city’s upgrading. Kunstblock and beyond explicitly resists any appropriation and instrumentalisation of artists, art institutions and cultural funding for city marketing or enhancement in the service of the profits of the real estate and tourism industry. They uncover art-commercial-marketing strategies, stimulate debates and make resistance to displacement visible in artistic actions and public relations.