The World We Are Struggling To Create - Speech for the Anti War Rally on 23rd of June 2025

Every border implies the violence of its maintenance. Nowhere is this more visible right now than in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians are being starved to death as a matter of policy. It is a calculated act of cruelty designed to bring about their destruction. It is the violence implied in the maintenance of the border made manifest.

Imagine there were no borders, nor regimes to enforce them. Starving Palestinians could evacuate. The trucks full of humanitarian aid could enter and deliver much needed food, baby formula and medicine. Tens of thousands of activists could cross into the Gaza Strip to provide aid. This is the world we are struggling to create.

Of course, Palestinians are not the only people suffering at the hands of imperialist regimes. All over the world, people are being displaced by violent, militarized empires. The places they once called home are being made unliveable through invasion, occupation and exploitation. Look at any of the heavily fortified borders that separate the Empire from the Global South: the US-Mexico Border, the EU border fortifications at Ceuta and Melilla and in the Balkan. Look at the outsourced prison camps realized or proposed by the Global North empires of the world: the UK plans to deport its refugees to Rwanda, the US is sending them to torture prisons in El Salvador and the EU is planning to set up prisons in Albania.

Wherever these atrocities are perpetuated, they are perpetuated for, by and in the name of people in the imperial core. In the name of “us”, here in Germany, France, the US, the UK, etc. They are committed by our governments, with our taxes, to secure our trade routes and our resources, with weapons and surveillance equipment designed and manufactured by our universities and economies.

That also means it is our responsibility to destroy this system from within. We need to stand in solidarity with our oppressed siblings all over the world.

I want to close this speech with a quote by the Black US American revolutionary Assata Shakur. She wrote in “Letter to my people”

It is our duty to fight for freedom

It is our duty to win

We have to love and support one another

We have nothing to lose but our chains.

When she wrote these words, she adressed them to her fellow Black Americans, but I want to put it to you that these words apply to all of us. From Los Angeles to Lampedusa, from Khartoum to Al-Khalil, from Berlin to Balochistan.