 Hello, hello, hello, welcome to yet another episode of DMTB. This is the faces of DM25 episodes, series exploring the people, making up our movement where we discuss the inspirational stories that are behind those people and why and how they took the step from citizen to activism and politics. I'm Johannes Ver, I'm a volunteer coordinator for DM25 speaking to you from Berlin and I'm really happy that I'm joined here tonight by these people, Nina, Lilia and Jonas. Welcome to the faces of DM episodes. Good to have you, thank you for taking the time to speak to all of us. All of you have been DMers that are active on the ground helping as we are in this current situation and on having a war on European soil and helping people who are suffering from that war. And we are going to speak about this topic tonight on how to be active on the issue by helping people and of course also furthermore what everyone can do to help trying to end this war. But before we go into detail about that, I would ask you to introduce yourself shortly and I would like to start with Nina, just tell us a little bit about you, where are you? Who are you? Hi everyone, my name is Nina. I am 27 nearly, I come from Serbia originally but I also have Bulgarian origin and I'm currently based in Montenegro. Great, thank you very much, Lilia. Hello everybody, my name is Lilia. I'm coming from Bulgaria but I also have dual citizenship. I'm having also a Greek citizenship. I share my time between Greece and Bulgaria and I'm kind of active recently in DM and Mera 25 and it helps a lot that my city in Bulgaria is exactly on the border with Romania and all the refugees passing by through here. Thank you, Lilia. For the listeners also Mera 25 are the parties that DM 25 is building up as part of our movement in different countries like Greece and also Germany where Jonas is based I think, Jonas. Yep, hey, I'm Jonas, I'm French and I'm now based in Berlin where I studied for two years. I'm 21, I'm right now in a positive test to go on a shared flat so I might cough once in a while but I'm very happy to be here as well and active with DM since November I think. Thank you, Jonas. Yeah, I think the pandemic is something that we almost are forgetting about but it's still something of course that we also need to work on and overcome several things. One of the things that everyone of course can do is becoming a member of a political organization like DM 25 to get active on all these kind of issues and yeah, I think as a follow-up question it would be nice to hear from you why did you join DM 25? When was it, how did you become a member and what is actually the most important thing that you would like to do in your country with the DM 25? Maybe we can start again with Nina. Okay, so I've been following the development of DM 25 since the beginning but I only joined in January 2021 and I rather joined to support the movement but I wasn't very active I was quite busy with my personal life I joined the local DSC but since it was in Serbia I didn't really last long and in the Balkans the DM is not very active unfortunately I'm not even sure how many people are aware of DM so we're trying to spread the awareness at the moment I became active in DM in the end of January, beginning of February because of the situation between Russia and Ukraine and this is where I joined DSC for peace and international policy where we started working on campaigns that were dealing with the situation and then as the situation intensified our activities multiplied as well Thank you very much I think, yeah that is just very good that you come and I think we have a lot of work ahead of us in many countries but it's great to see that we are actually active on the ground in different places and making a difference and maybe now we can switch it around and go to Jonas since I know that he also has been active with the local collectives here in Berlin Yep, so I also follow GM for a long time but started to be active in November 2021 in the Berlin DSC Yeah, I think the reason that built my interest to GM was the Euro crisis and yeah, I get interested in DM policies through these events but now in Berlin I'm mostly involved in just organizing but it goes well once in a week meetings where we meet with other members of GM and add something else that I forgot so never mind, yeah I'm just trying to be active once in a week in this dimension Great, I think, yeah going to a local collective meeting is actually a great first thing to do so if you're in Berlin you know, you see that video still in early 2022 maybe on Thursday evenings at 7pm at the Volksbar close to the Volksbühne where DM was actually founded you can meet Jonas Lilia, when did you become a DM member and I actually know that you are active in several countries for DM-35, right? Correct I'm from the very beginning I'm a member of DM from the very first months of creating DM and later I'm from the founding members of Mera25 in Greece I have been following Verofakis and his ideas from before he has created DM-25 I have read most of his books and publications so I was kind of tending towards his ideas from the beginning and when DM was created it was just the correct place for me to join and to do something for a few years I was not very active in the beginning because I had kind of personal problems but the last three years I'm trying to participate more actively, especially in Greece and the reason for this is that I believe we have to live in a better world and to do something better what Nina says about Balkans it's very correct it's not easy to convince Balkan people to have a hope and to believe in something new this is why maybe in Bulgaria DM is still kind of sleeping and this was the initial idea last year to try to wake up the organization in Bulgaria because some people tried to start it and to build up the organization a few years ago but it was not a successful attempt so from last year I'm trying more actively to rebuild the organization and up to now there are about 60 members that are interested in showing interest and about 20 people were coming to our regular monthly meetings and we are starting to do something and now with the crisis in Ukraine the things are becoming one idea more important because I believe only an organization like DM that is based on more humane ideas can really support people and help them to understand how nonsense is a war because the only people paying the price for the war are the poor people rich people never pay the price so this is it Thank you Lilia I think it's a very important thing that you just said that of course we have to be aware on who actually suffers from the war besides national identities and borders and all these things that we try not to care too much and beyond 25 about because we are transnational movement that works beyond borders and beyond national identities and yeah, regards every human being as the same I think it's also mainly a good point to just point out to say that we are aware that this is just yet another war this is not the only war that has been going on in the last years and we are of course active on all kinds of fronts against all of those wars and that's by our petition against this war also states no more wars in general there's a war in Yemen going on there's other conflicts around the world that we are also aware of if you want to sign the petition by the way you can go to dm25.org slash peace and spread the news about that petition and that transnational effort to work against any kinds of conflicts and what are the other wars going on this of course this issue in general is a sad one and we are all aware of the suffering going on and one way of course to be active and to be productive and to show that this is not the end and the world will go on and we'll try to make it a better place is to be active with the people that are directly suffering and all the three of the people who are with me here have been active on that so maybe we can now hear from you what you have already been doing in your countries to be able to help the people suffering from the current crisis Nina let's start again with you Thank you Hanna, it's actually I'm not active in the field like you elaborated my first activity in this topic was to create the petition and the petition text that you just mentioned and thank you so much please read the text, don't just click the button it's very important to understand what Liliya was trying to say about how the war only hurts the small people and this is relevant both for Ukraine and Russia and Belarus citizens it's not just all of them have to have to migrate they're all victims of the same political game if we may call it that way as for the activities in the field I actually got involved in the whole situation because I have a lot of colleagues that are Ukrainian citizens and I was very emotionally hit by the situation and what I tried to do is to help them while they were migrating to Poland with other people connecting with some organizations my friends in Poland and help them move as painless as possible so this is the only activity that I did in that direction but I am active with a small group of people that are coming from the ACP for Peace and International Policy and we are working on a campaign that is advocating for peace essentially trying to elaborate what it means to have a war and who does it serve and how we are all affected with it and how we can all say no to it as well like you said Johannes this is not the only war happening right now and people are suffering around the world and we are also we will have inflation and we will have other consequences in other countries around across the globe not just Europe it's very important that we understand this mechanism and who is the real enemy it's not Russians against Ukrainians it's the people against the oligarchs and the governments that are supporting the military industry and everyone who is profiting from this Thank you Nina since the short cap has come up now a couple of times I want to shortly say DSC means the N25 spontaneous collective so these are all collectives active in different fields locally or on thematic topics like peace and international policy that we are working on of course on the long term also and steadily as we are doing it on other fields like the Green New Deal for Europe where we already have a policy in place that proposes something that is different and makes us independent from gas price shocks for example and also the influence of the oligarchs that possess most of the companies that are actually profiting from that trade Jonas what have you been doing to be active and trying to help something that just every citizen every civil society can do when there's times like this Yeah I think I recognize myself as well in the process that Nina described that I first got very emotionally in touch with it because of friends or people I knew that were living there or had Ukrainian roots and I directed text in my former music teacher who was from Ukraine and I talked a lot with her and then in a second time I contacted a Ukrainian friend that I know here in Berlin and we already talked a lot about the situation in her country a few months before the war actually started but since this I was in very close contact with her because of her family and I asked her how they are doing and how they see the plans of escaping the country one day she just asked me if I actually could help her to go with her to Romania and catch her family up there and drive them to Berlin so this was last weekend and it was a very quick and spontaneous decision but in this time I thought this is the only thing I can do and we went to Romania together and found or picked up her family or the kids and the female parts of her family because her big brother and her father have to stay in Ukraine because they are men and they have to go to war which was of course also a terrible situation and then we drove through Romania for I don't remember exactly how many days because I think they lost a little bit sense of time but we went through Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic and Germany and now they are the six of them safe in Berlin in a very small flat but it's of course better than what they escaped and yeah this was a very tiring experience but I felt that this was just the thing I could help with in this moment thank you Jonas yeah I think this is a great help that you gave to people and I wanted to say that I also was shortly involved in helping for some hours the other weekend in the refugee welcome centre here at the bus station in Berlin there's by now probably more than 10,000 people arriving in Berlin every day that had to leave their homes and that is of course a very dire and emotionally draining situation as we all have said already and it was the same for me the only good thing then is to see that actually civil society people are active on that you can see thousands of people in Berlin that are giving donations that are trying to help of course it's very difficult especially to find places to stay for people this is the biggest issue I think in Germany but in general it's great to see that so many people are active and I think we are also here talking about it to show people that yeah it is not that hard to do something I know that everyone also has a full life and limited time but I think there's many things that one can actually do Lilia what have you been doing so far in that particular situation now I was kind of lucky that exactly this period from the end of January me and my husband we arrived in Bulgaria and we were planning to stay here for few months and we are staying exactly in the town of Rousse it's a small city in Bulgaria exactly on the border with Romania 60 km from Bucharest and it's one of the main gates between Bulgaria and Romania so one big amount of people who are passing exactly my city trying to escape the war so we were very lucky because we were involved from the very first moment and up to now in a lot of actions organized by municipality by simple people, by volunteers by different organizations supporting these families arriving here even tonight at 7 o'clock we are going to meet at the border Ukrainian family arriving from Odessa up to the last moment they were thinking that they will be able to make it there and not to travel because they are a big family a couple for kids and grandmother but finally they were forced to travel and this morning they called me and they asked for our help so we are going to meet them and we have already found a flat for them to stay for one few days one two days and after that they are planning to go to Greece what actually we do here is we organize first of all buses and minivans and simple cars usually buses this is the most convenient transportation Bulgarian buses are going to the border Romania Ukraine and they are the collecting people driving them back to the Bulgarian border and the border exactly where is my city different organizations are waiting for these people and organizing the next steps of their trip most of the people arrive here with a specific one they have already communicated with relatives, friends, organizations and they say directly where they want to continue their journey so we like volunteers we are helping them to reach the bus station to take the next bus the train we are organizing some people to travel by car all this for free of course covered by different funds and organizations and donations from people usually there is a gap a few hours or few days between arriving to the border usually they arrive late at night extremely tired and this gap of few days or few hours from one trip to the other we are trying to fill it up with normal humane accommodation to stay in a warm place to have something to eat to have the basic things that they need starting from sanitary napkins to diapers to hot soap to medicines some people are having a medical condition so we have doctors we have the Bulgarian cross Red Cross helping as well they are people that really need some clothes so we are bringing them clothes as well and some people have absolutely no money so we are trying to help them with some pocket money because some people are really desperate in general maybe the most important thing is we are trying to provide them hope and hope for the future because I have been living many years in Russia during the communist time I have finished university there I have been working there for me it was a very painful situation because I have friends from Russia I have friends from Ukraine I have friends from all these extra countries of the US and today I see my old friends not speaking to each other hating each other trying to do something back to each other talking about people that a few years ago were sitting together having fun together and it's very painful very painful to see this to see this situation and to be part of it it's crazy to see educated people that were university teachers that were professionals that were doctors that were having one normal life that in one day they had to leave everything and to start from the beginning this is why I believe we have to help to stop this craziness and yes what Nina says is very correct it's not the point of view and the important thing is not the conflict between Zelensky and Putin it's much more serious and much bigger and it's behind this is the front stage of the theater behind much bigger interests that are trying to demolish the middle class or oval Europe that are trying to make people to be slaves to be at the edge of survival and this is why we have to fight the oligarchs and this bunch of rich people that are trying to actually eat up the world if we want to have a future of course I am much older than you, I'm 53 but I would love my kids and all young people like you to have a better future and to have a home thank you thank you Lilia I told you, I speak too much no not at all I think this was very good to let you elaborate on and share your thoughts with all of us, thank you for that and yeah, I think that is exactly the thing that we are trying to prevent in dm25 from the beginning as dm was founded in the crisis of in the aftermath of the crisis of 2008 and what followed with the Greek spring and the crushing of the Greek spring and back then the German oligarchs and mainstream newspapers putting the Greeks the lazy Greeks as they call them wrongly on the front page in terms of that, the people that actually are the problem which is of course has been never the truth and so dm was founded around that to bring a counter narrative of people actually working together despite any national nationalities or other differences that they met that they can solve by talking to each other like people in a normal civilized society should actually be able to do okay, since we are doing this work in dm25 maybe for towards the finish line of this small call and stream to we could talk a little bit about what you actually think where you would like to dm25 to see in the next couple of years to solve some of these questions that and problems that we have already mentioned and are aware of on that particular issue but also beyond and also if you want to you know make a call for what people out there should actually be doing in this particular crisis now and in general then also feel free to do that and yeah, Nina let's go back to you so the first question was where would I like to see dm going with this well I think that since most of us here can agree that the enemies are not we're not each other we have a common enemy altogether I guess there is a very long process ahead of us of educating everyone else and talking to people just talking to people a lot and working together on this I think this dm has a great potential to start to start with this and I think if we can spread the Balkans then it's a great indicator that we're doing the right thing because as you know Balkan is a barrel of fire with too many potential for nationalistic hatred which is not very founded like any other hatred between people based on nationality and visiting and so on and I would just like to send a message that next time you are angry because you are not feeling safe or because your wallet is too small for your shopping next time you feel angry because you can't send your child to a good school just think about who you're angry at think about who is disabling you from leading the life that you want to lead someone keeps putting their hands into our pockets every day and we let them so it's not a case that we are working for someone and we're all like Lydia is trying to say being slaves for someone else we are electing our representatives and they work for us and sometimes it's very good to remember that people in the Balkans keep forgetting it we have elections in Serbia in two weeks and we already know who is the winner it's been like that for nearly two decades or so it's everything is predecided for us and this is not this is not how we designed a democratic world we are the ones that need to start making decisions and taking responsibility so it's not even someone else that we're angry at we're angry at ourselves for not having more control over our lives I'm going into philosophy why to kind of hear actually why not be a little bit philosophical actually also you reminded me just now when you said about the Balkans what you just said that also I from personal experience just want to share this the Balkans is also this beautiful place that we in central Europe don't know too much about when once traveling to Albania and it was great for me for example to see how there is a century long tradition of Muslims Christians and other confessions to live very close together one city with the the houses of the different gods next to each other and no problem about it also something that for example in Germany the right-wingers are trying to tell people that you know when that is suddenly a problem which is of course complete bullshit I'm just very glad to see that DMS has DMS on the Balkans that are active and thank you for sharing your thoughts Jonas, what would you like to do with the M25 maybe but also what would you like the M25 to see to be doing what's your thoughts also pretty graphical thoughts you can share them no I think I'm not going to go into too much deep philosophical thoughts but yeah what I'm seeing every time I'm organizing the events is that I actually think this is the most powerful thing DMS can also make just build up a space where people can exchange and talk towards each other and I think this is also the place where a lot of ideas are shared and I feel this is such a powerful tool to enable people to build up a position through discussion and exchanges more than through just listening what big medias are always what we're being told by medias and and yeah I felt also with this whole Ukrainian situation I learned so much through talking with people who are directly confronted to this but I think this is yeah maybe what DM can can do in my mind thanks and then maybe once we come together and discuss and write a program like we for example have done for Germany to also be active out there on some street or help someone who's coming new to the town for them to find a place whatever it might be I think to then also enact is something very powerful yeah Lilia what's your thoughts on where you would see us going well I'm not so optimistic on the future of our world I think the refugee crisis the climate change will get worse and worse and I'm saying this because it means we have to organize and to prepare better for a better fight with better arms and to involve more and more people to train to fight all this crisis and all these people behind because there is still opportunity to build so called another world to reach that point that one focus is calling that another now because there is a possibility to build up a better world but it needs a lot of effort and a lot of people to be involved I think DM should tend to prove into people that if it was possible for people from different religion from different nations to live together without fighting each other 100-200 years ago it's possible to do it now in my country in Bulgaria I was raised in such a situation we were Christians, we were Muslims we were Jews, we were Armenians we were Arabs living in the same country everybody having their religion their culture, their language but we were not fighting each other we were together exactly the same situation was in Greece in general in Balkans because Balkans is a cross road of Europe so a lot of religions and people and nations have met here and they were living for centuries together if it was possible to have in the same city of Tessaloniki 11 different nations having business having communities and living together if it was possible in Yugoslavia to have this situation if it was possible in the Bulgarian city of Filippopoulos to have 13 different nations living together and having at the same square synagogue and Muslim just a second my battery is gonna go down it's possible to do it now I think what these oligarchs are trying to do nowadays is following the principle divide and conquer divide and conquer this is what they are doing they are creating these little problems between us making us to hate each other to fight each other we are not anymore together we are weaker because there is one very simple principle of physics because I am an engineer by education if you have many sticks together and you try to break them it's not so easy but if the sticks are one by one it's very easy to break them so this is what they are trying to do they are trying to separate us so we are not together and it's much easier to break us so let's fight and I hope GM is gonna help us to bring more and more people and to be together to fight together for the same ideas for a better future for another now that is gonna help us to be alive, to be happy and to have a normal life and not to have war thank you yes, lay down your arms thank you Lilias so much and thank you Nina and Jonas to be joining tonight for sharing your thoughts and sharing what you have actually been doing this is also a call for everyone to be maybe not optimistic but to be hopeful because there will be a future and we need to organize together to actually not let us divide and bring people together if you out there want to join Nina for example in the peace and international policy collective or if you want to join Jonas in Berlin or Lilias building DM25 in Bulgaria or at any other place across Europe and beyond please do so go to dm25.org and let's work on what we actually have been trying to describe tonight in this live stream and build this better future together Karpid Yem