Tag: community
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“Berlin taught me to dislike the word integration”
WHP: You worked in humanitarian aid around the world for many years. What ultimately motivated you to found Just-Go-For-It? Marilena Chatziantoniou: I started working in the field of humanitarian aid in 1998. My first assignment was in Albania, where I worked for a small German NGO, just months before the Kosovo crisis. I remember falling in love with the job and…
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Finding Trauma Instead of Belonging: A Review of I Keep My Shadow Light
TL;DR “I Keep My Shadow Light” is the self-published debut novel by Fionnuala Kavanagh. This challenging work follows a cast of four characters from different backgrounds as they try to find a home in Berlin. Very dark in places, the book gives us a chance to read something that would probably never come out of any publishing house. Its uniqueness alone…
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Migrants With Degrees Are Not What Germany Is Looking For
Education is a right, not a privilege. This idea has been a founding principle of modern democracies. In practice, however, access to education is far from guaranteed for everyone. As of this year, Germany has significantly restricted access to state-funded intermediate and advanced German courses for migrants participating voluntarily. Many rejected asylum seekers, people with insecure residence status, and migrants without…
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Tempelhofer Feld: Berlin’s Most Emotional Urban Conflict Is Back
We are approaching an election in September. Hopefully, you’re reading along in the Berlin Wiki to bone up on how stuff works in German elections, the lexicon, and the issues. Well, one of the issues we’re going to see debated concerns the Tempelhofer Feld. So let’s talk about that for a bit. The other night, I was at 20% Berlin’s live…
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Good Intentions Are Not Democratic Enough
“What you do for me, but without me, you do against me” — the exact origin of this quote is unclear. Nevertheless, it captures something that frequently happens in Germany when it comes to the political participation of historically excluded groups. Policies are supposedly made for migrants, yet not with them. Gender equality is debated while no women are involved in…
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What Happened When I Tried to Organize My Neighbors
There’s a lot of talk today about building community. At our March WahlheYmat Talk, the crowd brought up the subject, specifically that we should be creating more of it. Ideas flew around the room. We are living in an era of schism, where the people pulling the levers of power are trying to create an “us and them” narrative, defining who…
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