Berlin knows various types of activism where groups formulate their demands either at the level of public and political discourse formation or by specific contributions in the formulation of housing policies towards structural changes. Deutsche Wohnen&Co Enteignen (DWE) Campaign is doing the second, namely - pursuing a radical transformation of housing policy in Berlin, aiming to expropriate and then nationalize over 300 000 apartments owned by several profit-oriented real estate companies, through a referendum and later a regional law.
I am interested in the tactics and organizing practices of the grassroots activists of the initiative, which makes over 1000 people actively involved during 2021. The analysis concentrates on internal minutes and my participatory observations. The aim is to present and analyze the goals followed by the DWE, how they are applied and discussed at the group level. The knowledge about the efforts to influence housing policies and the increased understanding of the mechanisms applied by the DWE will create new possibilities for exploring other movements, but especially motivate further studies on radical housing movements.
Madden and Marcuse (2016) say that emancipatory movements could “sustain non-oppressive social relationships, not in a utopian world, but in everyday life”, and my contribution aspires to find more about the impact of DWE on local movements. Continuing Strobel's (2020) effort to map the history of the DWE movement, here the focus is on organizational issues in 2021. After Holm (2021), the city has a history of housing protests and activism, and the DWE offers it a programmatic character. Lebuhn (2016) writes: in Berlin “urban protests are entangled with participatory procedures” and I intend to capture the dynamics of this grassroots movement to help understand how housing justice movements are adapting to the changes in urban governance.
Mots clés : participation|housing movement|nationalization|grassroots|real-estate
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