 what we should be doing in every European country. The idea came naturally out of the idea that such movements, such attempts have to exist in every country in Europe. And not only that, but these movements and initiatives have to be connected. We need not only state, even more. We need transnational, global, large-scale actions. Do you realize that what we are doing in this room is we are answering the question that journalists keep putting to us. Is the European identity possible? Is it possible to have a pan-European movement? Well, it's in here. I mean, of course we have to grow in numbers, but we are growing. If you can do what you're doing here now, you've answered the question. And then it's simply a matter of bringing that answer out to the rest of you. So this is what DM is about, a broad coalition of Democrats. The purpose of which is to put the demos back into democracy against the European Union establishment that sees people power as a threat to its authority. Initiative for DM is something that we usually find in good old science fiction paranoia films, which work like this. Somebody enters a room and everything seems normal in a room. Then you do something which was simply not taken into account by the system. There is a series of buttons. You push the wrong button and everything goes wrong. Walls start to fall apart and so on and so on. That's the art to demand something relatively modest. Nobody can be opposed to it. But if you follow to the end this demand, everything will begin to fall apart. I mean, you open up the path towards rearrangement of social relations. We must place the realities of seizing the night. And the day after we can act now and build this project, push for a new European constitution and ultimately seize the day. We need to do a better job. And the only way to do that is by working together, by speaking up louder, by being very emotional, by putting our passion into our speeches, not only our reasons. When we started making the waves, we also soon realized that we are in fact part of the huge tide of hope. Inside of hope, we see in the M25, in Barcelona and Comú, in Zagreb and Ash, and all the other moments that inspire us. Now we are sure that our problem recognizes no borders, as we are sure that our strength lies in solidarity. And our message is that we cannot give up. And it will continue the struggle to reclaim our cities across our countries and across our Europe. And we will win. Thank you. To build something you are, it's like you must have to do. Yes, baby, I hope that now Europe will do good choice. Let's shake Europe, gently, compassionately, but firmly. Good evening, Berlin. Good evening, Germany. It's great to be here again. In this theater, in which everything started. The M25 would be born here, in the front stage, last year. And tonight, the M25 is here again. Rife with a plan A for Europe and ready to handle. When we, dear mares, are in Athens, we are all Greek. When we are in Berlin, we are all Germans. Even if our Germans and our accents are inexcusable. Almost a year ago, in this splendid theater, we decided to get together to bind forces across different countries to reach out and hold hands with contempt for borders and political party division lines to shake up Europe, gently, firmly, compassionately. This is what we've been doing since February 2016. We rejected the politics of borders and divisions. We rejected the politics of conformity and disintegration. We rejected the old style of doing politics. Of cynical deals between politicians whose number one priority usually is or was how to secure careers for them and how to secure memberships of the inside of the network of power. We embraced a kind of politics which is really not very popular. We embraced the politics of concentrating on policy work, on the hard, boring work of answering questions such as what should we do if we had power? What would we do about the banks? What would we do about fighting poverty across Europe? Not just in one country, but throughout Europe. What would we do regarding public debt, regarding the low level of investments that is eating up the insides of our societies, of our hopes, of our aspirations? Since February 2016, what DiEM25 has been concentrating is to provide answers to questions that the European Union and our governments have not asked. Since 2008, we've been suffering an insidious economic crisis which is causing Europe to disintegrate, to spin out of control with tremendous costs for human beings, with tremendous impact on xenophobia, on all those centrifugal forces that are tearing us apart. Have you noticed that since 2010, the European Union, the European Commission, the European Union Council, the European Parliament, the federal government here in Germany, the French government, the Greek government, the Spanish government, they've not asked one question, one important question. What must we do to end the European crisis? When Greece collapses, oh, it's a Greek problem, and we have to do something to bail out those corrupt, lazy Greeks. When the Irish fail, then we have to do something about the Irish banks and Irish austerity. Then when Portugal fails, oh, it's a Portuguese problem. When Spain's banks go pear-shaped, kaput, then we have to do something about the Spanish banks. When Italy is unsustainable, as it is. This is an Italian disease. Then we have negative interest rates destroying the pension funds of a Swabian housewife that upsets Mrs. Merkel and Dr. Soeble, and this is a problem of the European Central Bank that keeps interest. None of them are asking the question, what is going on in Europe and what should we do with the architectural design, with economic and social policy at the level of Europe? We are facing a systemic crisis in Europe, and the one thing we have not done is to deal with it systematically. So, DiEM25 decided to do that, which the European Commission, the European Parliament, our governments have not done, to come up with a comprehensive policy framework which consists of realistic, pragmatic, at the same time, implementable policies, which could be implemented tomorrow morning, and therefore radical policies, because compared to what we have been doing all these years, which is simply to extend the crisis into the future by pretending that we have solved it, compared to this extend and pretend tendency, our policies, policy framework, policy proposals are very radical, even though they are very pragmatic. For a year and a half, we have circulated since our birth here in the Volksbühne on the 9th of February 2016, we circulated a questionnaire to experts, economists, not just in Europe, in America as well, and to all our tens of thousands of DiEM25 members, questions that pertain to all the problems that must be tackled to end the Euro crisis and the European Union disintegration process. What do we do about banks? What do we do about public debt? What do we do about private debt? What do we do about investment? What do we do about poverty? What do we do to bring an end to this crisis which is causing us to spin out of control? These answers that we got, and we've got hundreds of answers, from DSEs here in Berlin, in Hamburg, in Portugal, in Greece, in Britain, from experts, it took almost a year to collate these answers, to give them a sense of concreteness, a beginning, a middle, and an end, to make them gel together, and this is the European New Deal policy paper which we presented two months ago in Rome on the 60th anniversary of the European Union. The Treaty of Rome. And in Rome, in the launch of our European New Deal paper, we made a pledge. We said that, well, after working in the reverse to what usually political movements do, usually political movements get together, they say, oh, we want to be a political movement, forge an alliance with other politicians or people who would like to be politicians, ask for people to vote, and then if you ask them what are they going to do if they win government, then they say, oh, I will think about it. We're doing it the other way around. First we answer the question, what needs to be done? In Rome, we announced it. I will say a few words about it. But the most important thing is, first we came up with answers as to what needs to be done, and then in Rome we said, okay, now let us begin discussing how we are going to do it. Who is going to implement this European New Deal, because if you expect the deep establishment, Dr. Schoible or even Martin Schulz or Macron to do it, you will have to wait for another lifetime. So the announcement in Rome was that we're going to meet two months later in Berlin at the Volksbühne on the 25th of May. So here we are. And this wonderful meeting of us is simply the celebration of conversations that happened from the beginning of the day this morning and will continue all the way into the night and all the day tomorrow amongst political partners, political organizations, civil society movements who are here in Berlin to discuss with us how are we going to give an opportunity to the peoples of Europe, throughout Europe, from Ireland all the way to Greece and from Latvia through Germany all the way to Portugal to support our European New Deal proposals in a ballot box, in an electoral contest, in their own localities and countries. So allow me to say a few words about the European New Deal. To begin with, we have identified as the main phenomena that are killing Europe, destroying Europe, tearing Europe apart. Two, first, involuntary underemployment. The millions of Europeans who either can't get a job or they can't get a full-time job and they're forced to have a mini-job or those who are qualified, they have a PhD in physics and they have to do delivery runs working for a pizzeria. Secondly, involuntary migration. Migration is a fantastic thing. Human beings have spread across the planet since we were born, I believe, in Africa. And no country, no border should stop us from migrating if this is what we want to do. But the tragedy of forced migration is that people who have no interest in leaving their communities are forced to leave their communities and come to Berlin, go to London, go to Canada, not because of the weather or because of the food, but because they have no prospects in their own communities. How do we stop involuntary underemployment and involuntary migration, those corrosive forces throughout Europe? We need, we believe, at least five policies. One, we need to tame the financial sector, to tame banks, to tame the bankers and to democratize money and credit. We need to create a regulatory system that prevents banks from being toxic. It is preposterous that Deutsche Bank has six times the exposure, six times the size of Germany's national income. No bank in Europe should have more than 20% exposure of the country's gross domestic product. There should be very harsh limitations regarding bets and wages and the equity ratio of banks. There should be, most certainly, a new public digital payment system that competes with a private payment system of the banks. Secondly, we need to fund green investment. It is ludicrous that in Germany today, when interest rates, the cost of borrowing money, is zero, sometimes negative. You have the lowest level of investment in your history and the highest level of savings. You only need to state this to realize that we are all in trouble. If Germany, with zero interest rates and surpluses everywhere, has the lowest level of investment since 1950, then you know that this Europe is simply not sustainable. So we need to create an alliance, a partnership between investment banks, like the KFW, like the European Investment Bank, and central banks, so that the money printing capacity of the central banks is harnessed to create investments into the things that we need to grow and this investment in the things we want less of, like diesel-powered cars, for instance. So we need to fund the innovators, but at the same time, we need to fund the society's maintainers, those good people who provide care in the communities, who look after all these mundane processes that are not high-tech and even innovative, but are essential, like those who clean the sewers, those who replace electricity lines, those who look after schools and hospitals. So we need basic good provision and that needs to be funded properly. Fourthly, have you noticed that increasingly, with the use of digitization and artificial intelligence, social capital is multiplying. Every time, I can see somebody here looking on the phone, every time you check on Google something, you search, you are contributing to the capital of Google. But Google is not sharing its income with you. So capital is becoming socially produced increasingly but privately exploited. We need a universal basic dividend. We need a part of the shares of corporations to be publicly owned so that the dividends, the income that they produce, is distributed across society. If we don't do this with automation, exponentially rising, we are going to have more inequality, more instability and in the end, even the corporations are going to suffer. And lastly, we need to defeat the Euro crisis. We have a whole chapter on how this can be done tomorrow morning. We do not need the treaty changes that Emanuel Macron is proposing and Wolfgang Schruble and Martin Schulz say 9-2. We can reconfigure and recalibrate and redeploy existing institutions like the European Investment Bank, like the European Stability Mechanism to deal with simultaneously the creation of more fiscal space for our governments, a proper banking union, a restructure of all public debt in Europe without haircuts and an investment-led recovery program for the Eurozone. If you read our European New Deal paper, we are proposing the creation of some very important new institutions that can be done on the basis of enhanced cooperation which is already part and parcel of the panoply of the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty. Create a European equity depository, a social wealth fund for Europe as a whole. The funding for that fund should come from the profits of our central bank. Do you know how much profits the ECB makes every year? Huge quantities of all these dealings in purchasing bonds and corporate debt. From the target to intra-European payment system, from the dividends of corporations that I met, that I mentioned, from a share of the monopoly profits that corporations make from intellectual property rights, from a pan-European inheritance tax, and finally from a pan-European carbon tax. These funds must go into a common social wealth fund for Europe as a whole. We call it the European equity depository from which to fund the basic goods that I was referring to before and the universal basic dividend. Our European New Deal agenda is also presenting what we should do tomorrow morning in a very short term. For instance, the public digital payment platform which you can implement this in less than a month. The anti-poverty scheme that we need in order to solidify Europe can be funded tomorrow morning from the profits of the European Central Bank. The European Investment Bank and KFW European Central Bank Alliance, it only takes one announcement to start activating it. This can be done within a month. In the medium term we are proposing the new bank regulation regime, the housing and jobs guarantee scheme as well as the green transition investment program. And in the longer term the activation of the universal basic income. And once we have stabilized Europe and we have produced hope again, then we can sit around the table as European citizens to discuss how we're going to draft that which we are missing. A democratic constitution for Europe that replaces all the treaties and which gives Europeans an opportunity to create a European demos and put the demos back into democracy. The problem with events like this is that it is very difficult to practice democracy in practice, to have a genuine conversation amongst us. There are just too many of us. And there is this hierarchical division of roles with somebody having a microphone and others don't. DM-25 is making a small step towards giving you a voice in this amphitheater as we speak today. You will see on the screen, as long as it appears on the screen, a series of addresses, telephone numbers where you can tell us what you think as we speak in real time, send your messages to DM Voice. There is a telephone number where you can SMS a text. You can send a tweet to DM-25 Voice or email to voice at DM-25 org. And as this event, as this meeting progresses, your messages are going to be projected on the screen. So we are going to give to the best of our abilities through DM Voice a visual expression to your thoughts, to your concerns, to your questions and to your statements. Now, it is with great pleasure that I'm going to introduce the next video. It is by Ken Loach, the most wonderful director-activist-politician-philosopher that I have come to ever meet. He won the Canfield Festival with a movie entitled I, Daniel Blake, which is the best depiction of what we live under today, which is no longer neoliberalism, ladies and gentlemen, comrades, friends. I call it punitive illiberalism. Ken Loach is a member of DM-25 and we are very, very honoured that he is. This is a message to support DM-25 and to wish you luck and sense solidarity to the meetings you are having. I guess the decision to leave the European Union should not have come as a surprise to us in Britain with hindsight because many working-class people feel alienated, left behind, abandoned, not represented politically. It's a society getting more and more unequal. If you're poor at your own fault, if you haven't got a job, well, you haven't filled in the right form, and you'll be sent to a food bank to eat from a charity handout. At the same time, the rich get richer. Billions given away in tax credits to the richest and the rich corporations. And the European Union has been a party to this, so it's no wonder people left. But that doesn't mean we don't need to co-operate in Europe. And I support DM's project and Yanis Varoufakis's exposition of that. We need to work together. We need to have an economic policy that links up across Europe that's based on, in the end, will not be based on the principles of this European Union of prioritising profits for big corporations over workers' rights, of demanding ever more privatisation of crippling countries like Greece where people have been left in desperate poverty of the demand of the European Union bosses, undemocratic bosses. So we have to work together. We have to work together respecting our diversity. We want a diverse Europe of independent countries but really co-operating, working together where people don't have to leave one country to get a decent living and go to another country. We want a Europe that looks outward to the globe, sustains the globe, works together for our common interest. We can only do that if we work together. So solidarity with DM, solidarity with the meeting. See you soon. And now I would like to invite to our stage here at the Volksbühne excellent colleagues, comrades and friends. I shall begin with somebody that just lives across the road. My great friend and comrade Katja Kippen of Die Linke sticking to Berlin, I will ask Dominic Slett, a member of the DSE, the DM spontaneous collective from Berlin. Agnieszka Giemianowicz-Pek from Poland representing RASM, the leader of Sinistra Italiana Nicola Fratojani from Italy. Julen Bayou who represents the Greens and the progressive forces that have allied themselves in France with DM25 and a candidate in the next election for the National Assembly of France. And last but not least DM25 Stallworth European Alternatives Extraordinaire Lorenzo Marcelli from Italy. Well I'm going to post some questions and you can reply in any way you want you can even ignore the question and give us your own take on what really keeps us up at night and what we should worry about. I shall begin with Katia, since you were first on stage we are in your city we have a federal election for the buddhistag coming up. Katia, how do you see the prospect of a coalescence of progressive forces both within Germany and in Europe along the lines of what DM25 is not only proposing but hoping for dreaming of working towards? This is really a crucial question Dear friends, Yanis wanted me to speak in English, however since we managed to convince Tatja Miller to be an interpreter and he is not only an interpreter he is also a very famous person within the social movement for climate justice some even say it's yours some even say he is the George Clooney of the social movement for climate justice I didn't want you to miss him and his English pronunciation is so much better than my so sorry for speaking German Yanis as you know I am a green European and as a green European I find two things the current cost of the European Union and the idea that a return to the national plate could somehow bring the left. Alright, this is working Dear Yanis, as you know I am a glowing European and as such there are two things that absolutely horrify me one is the current cost that the European Union is taking and the other is the idea that some sort of retreat into the national state will be some sort of salvation The more important it is that we not only talk about Europe but also about what the Zornes-Röte has in mind and also about how Europe could look like, that excites us and the idea is from Diem 25 that it makes something conceivable, a Europe that excites and only for that you have to thank Diem 25 and you Yanis Thank you So that's all the more important not just to talk about the stuff about the European Union that makes us angry but also talk about a kind of Europe that would get people excited that people can be excited about and the strength of the new deal is exactly that it makes us able to envision a Europe that people can get excited about and even if it's only for that Diem 25 and Yanis but the Pakistan deserve enormous thanks The New Deal takes you back to a historical example of the New Deal it was about rights and the modern form that today is to express there is an absolute social right for everyone to be protected from poverty and for that there is a possibility in every country to introduce a sanctions-free minimum protection that everyone protects from poverty such a minimum protection would be the material expression of a Social Union Okay and so the New Deal obviously refers to FDR's project of a needle in the 1930s and back then it was about rights and the expression the approach today would be to have everybody in Europe have the social right to be protected from poverty and a Europe that excites would be one that protects people from poverty by way for example a sort of guaranteed basic minimum that would make certain that people do not fall into poverty A Europe that is enthusiastic sets economic balance instead of competition competition-based can only be one country on the cost of other countries the whole world can never be competitive A Europe that is enthusiastic would put itself fully at the service of the idea and practice of climate justice because, and this by the way has not been the fault so much of the evil government in Brussels but in fact the federal government which essentially is one of the most important countries in the world to be protected from poverty and to be protected from poverty and to be protected from poverty and to be protected but in fact the federal government which essentially is rather more of a car lobbyist government has always struggled to make sure that in Europe we work towards economic growth rather than climate justice and protecting the health of people and excellent idea and a Europe that excites would also attempt to solve the question of refugees and the migration question in a way in solidarity and together and the concrete proposal after that is that regions or countries that would take in more refugees or migrants than their average share would receive some form of welcoming dividend and the funds for that would be taking from taxing the rich but this enthusiasm Europe that excites people would have to get out of the spiral of militarization of this growing arms race and have a foreign policy aimed at detour and peace the problem is the counterattack and power which is in the way and I think one important understanding of the oppression of the left government in Greece, some will have to go. And someone who has to go is the German Finance Minister, the former opponent of Yanis Varoufakis, Wolfgang Scheuble, and by the way, Angela Merkel. Now, obviously, the situation as it is right now, current social force relations in Europe are kind of opposed to this kind of programmatic. And it seems to be that one of the lessons that we learned from the last few years is that some people will definitely have to go. And one of them is Yanis old Nemesis, Dr. Wolfgang Scheuble, and also Chancellor Merkel. And there's only one democratic way to do that. They have to be voted out of office. And I say this knowing full well that at this point in time, having a center-left government in Germany is not the most likely possibility. So neither the polls yield this, nor is it currently very likely, given the sort of opinions in the different parties that have to be involved in my party included, there are some sort of significant debates about it, but I'm convinced at this point that the strongest kind of support that German leftists can show to the left, all of Europe, is to get Merkel and Scheuble out of office. And in order to get there, obviously, we understand that what we would ultimately need is a sort of Europe-wide left force that would gather together all the different programmatics to the left that are environmentalists that are emancipatory. Oh, for God, Jesus, I forgot. I forgot. I forgot socialists. That's terrible. Oh my God. I'm very sorry. Left ecological emancipatory and socialist comrades. Absolutely. That was awful. So to come to an end, what's right now happening, obviously, there's a battle for the future and the soul of Europe. And unfortunately in these battles, recently it's more than neoliberals and the right-wing populists that have been visible. But if there is to be hope for Europe, then that hope can only lie in the strengthening of the third pole of the sort of, sort of the sector of solidarity in society, that the left, and then I lost you at the end, actually. A social alternative. I keep forgetting all the social words. Okay. As a social, there's a social alternative to the left, and then I lost you at the end, actually. A social alternative. I keep forgetting all the social words. Okay. As a social alternative, that there's a social alternative from the left in Europe, and Dn25 is a start into that. Well, thank you, Shen. Thank you. Keep your questions coming. We will try to use them and put them to our panel. So permit me very briefly to just answer myself, a couple of them. One was, if I recall correctly, how much money does the European Central Bank make in profits from its operations in Europe? Well, interestingly, we don't know, because they don't tell us in the spirit of transparency, but if you want me to give you as an economist an estimate, now with quantitative easing, it's at least 50 to 100 billion a year. It's a very substantial amount of money from which we could fund an anti-poverty program instead of giving it to Dodo Soeble and Mr. Deiserblum, because this is what happens with the money now. It goes back to the treasuries of the surplus countries. There was another message saying, how does DiEM25 conceptualize art and art activism? Are we using it simply to beautify what we do? No, we don't. We do not have an instrumental approach to art. We are not socialist realists. We do not believe that art is there as a useful tool by which to propagate ready-made ideas. We believe that the aesthetic, the intellectual, the philosophic, the artistic and the musical even are part and parcel of producing politics. Ken Loach is an excellent example. He's not the only example. His films inform our politics, inform our economics, inform the way we are doing politics and economics. So keep sending your messages. We will come back to that. We have now had just some greetings from Sweden. Allow me to go to Dominik, we are going to stay with Berlin. Dominik is at the other part of the spectrum of institutional politics. He is an activist, a member of the Berlin DSC. Yes. I have a question for you, Dominik. When you see people like Katja, who's a member of the Bundestag, or me, who's been, even for a very brief period, a finance minister, what do you think about doing politics with people like us? Is this something that is exploitative for activists? Or is this something that we can actually build upon in order to create a progressive movement which is both pan-European, powerful and at the same time open and horizontal to people like yourself? Well, it's both, I guess. It helps pretty much for our local group to get the big names, people coming to us and asking you, we know you from Internet, we know you are DM. So on the other side, they actually surprised that there are real DM activists and not just a digital crew which somehow connected or is networking. So it helps reaching out. So we're going outside and start doing our thing. And this is how we do it. So we do it grassroots, we try to be organic, to be open, democratic and we let ourselves grow. So for example, when we have the New Deal and it was launched in Rome, there was quite an attention for this time and this helped us as well. So we get invitations actually by the Social Democratic Party from Potsdam and we went there and we presented the New Deal in a short way and they said, yeah, that sounds pretty social democratic. So one can think about that whatever one wants to. But in the end, there were the basic members of the Social Democrats and they were saying, yes, this is something we need in reform. So there is the will of the basis of the Social Democrats at least in Germany to cooperate because they think the New Deal is professional and all our grassroots activists actually worked with that New Deal. They have taken part in developing it. And this was quite impressive. So this very New Deal is not only helping, it also gets more professional people coming to our DSCs, to our local groups. There was, for example, a bank up from the Green Party and he said, yeah, this New Deal, we need that, we need to control the banks more. We need to do the capital dividend. So yeah, it's both. And it also helps us giving like a framework. So within this framework we see that the New Deal is also mentioning the right to rent for local initiatives, for example. And so we organized here in Berlin our DM Lab and within the DM Lab we invited like city from below, we invited like give something back to Berlin which is dealing with migrants here in Berlin. And when we're inviting them, we're also trying to learn from them. So what can we do as DM for you? What do you need? And they say, yeah, we lack political representation actually. And so we said, yeah, maybe we can help out with that. We stay open, being organic, being democratic and just listening and not talking too much in this case. So yeah, and it's almost a full-time job actually now to be an activist for DM because there's more and more attention from every side one can imagine and still we are learning within that process. And this is actually something that we also learn from the CC as well because for sure there are professional politicians and they help us as well then we try to find it out by ourselves. So yeah, to answer your question sure, it helps but also we're trying to be autonomous deceased autonomous local groups which develop an own agenda for their very own region and for their very own local area. Thank you. Can you allow me a personal comment? One of the greatest pleasures since I entered the role of the realm of politics is to be part of the M25 for one reason. Do you know how wonderful it is to be part of the same transnational organization with people like Dominic and people like Agnieszka and these guys here without a confederacy in between us one transnational organization it really doesn't matter whether we are Greeks, Italians Germans, Poles this is on its own a great source of comfort speaking for myself. Agnieszka Poland is at the forefront of a major clash with what has been dubbed illiberal democracy the north-south divide that we used to have in the European Union has now been augmented with an east-west divide but this is what happens when we have political fragmentation Rasm, the political party that you represent is pushing against this awful specter is the European Union something which is relevant to you and how can the rest of us Dm25 help Thank you Yanis for that question and let me answer with a few words about why such political party as Rasm national political party, left wing political party decided to invest its efforts but more importantly its hopes in such movement as Dm25 Rasm is a new progressive, relatively new progressive left wing party in Poland based on principles of equality social justice and human rights but from the very beginning of our existence we realized that the problems we are dealing with on the national level cannot be addressed properly only on the national level. They are inherently linked to they are inherently linked to processes like globalization and social and economic processes that are taking place on European level. So the Dm movement and the idea that a progressive renewal of Europe can be possible came to us as a great illumination and a great relief we saw Dm as a partner we dreamt of the partner that knows that Europe has to be saved, that it has to change but that it has to be done by radically democratic methods and this is why we joined Dm with all of our enthusiasm and hoping to be inspired by its ideas but also to offer some of our own Polish and Eastern European perspective on what changes Europe needs. We believe that we can achieve a much needed synergy between RASM as Polish political party and Dm in the form it is currently taking. The creation of Dm was a result of a very careful diagnosis of the European crisis that there is a European core and periphery which is being exploited by it. This periphery usually meant countries like Greece or Portugal touched by the crisis of the common currency. However in RASM we see that Europe has not one but two peripheries. Apart from the south there is the east. Eleven former communist countries that mostly are outside of the Eurozone with the population making one fifth of the population of the European Union. We believe that the Eastern periphery needs its own revival and its own new role in Europe because as much as the center economically drains the south it also drains the east with a slightly different mechanism. They are not about debt, they are not about Euro but they are about the difference in wages and social security systems between east and west. Workers in the east today earn several times less than their western colleagues. They operate on an ultra precarious and highly insecure labor market. They barely organize. Both local businessmen and foreign investors run businesses. Slap contracting and exploitation of workers is the very essence of how the eastern economies are organized and how they compete with each other. No wonder that eastern Europeans exposed to the dramatically damaged labor market at home prefer to immigrate to the UK or to Germany. And so millions and millions of easterners are living abroad. And Diem of course addresses many of these problems with ideas like the job guarantee program or the new investment politics or the universal dividend. We greet this with joy and are very glad to see new solution emerging. But as a representative of the eastern Europe we want not only to promote them in our region but we also want to work further on and we want to contribute ideas on how to deal with the imbalance between east and west. For example we need to find a way to equalize wages and social security system across the continent. In Rasm we believe that it is time for an open discussion about on such topics like Europe wide trade unions European unified work standards and perhaps an institution overseeing them or a convergence program for the minimum wages in Europe. But the second key point for eastern Europe is the political rights of migrants. We urgently need a radical change in the way we think about migration of Europeans. We must stop thinking about it as a separate process of immigration and immigration and start talking about it as internal immigration within one European organism. The political crisis in almost all western countries revolves around the exclusion of the newcomers from the shrinking system of social benefits and workers' rights. Masses of people around whom the debate revolves have zero effect on the way they say about themselves. They are EU citizens with a strong European identity and yet they're afraid they're working rights and sometimes even their right to stay where they are living is decided above their heads. So we would like to pose a question also to our DM partners that perhaps it is the time to give migrants in their new homes. Perhaps this is the time to make residency and not exclusively sit in the ship the legal basis for voting rights also in the national elections. Because we believe that only with such rights such political rights migrants can really and surely emancipate themselves from the status of a human resource and become political actors. So to conclude we are convinced that to build a truly progressive and truly democratic Europe and to address this imbalance between East and West we need to think of two things. One is the economic foundations of justice and equality and the second is this emancipation of all Europeans. Thank you. The Americans used to say no taxation without representation. We should apply this to migrants here. Nobody has a problem with them paying taxes but they have a problem with them actually having a say as to how the taxes are going to be used. This is a degree of hypocrisy. The questions are still coming. There was an interesting one. Are we creating another layer of bureaucracy when we are talking about universal basic dividend? That was before that Katja. Well, sometimes you need to create a layer of bureaucracy in order to remove another one. Take the universal basic dividend. This means zero bureaucracy because it's universal. In other words everybody gets a share of that dividend. A computer can do it. It can simply be money that arrives in your tax file number throughout Europe. If you think about the jobs guarantee scheme, what it does is it offers people who have to live on the dole, who have to live on employment benefit, an opportunity to earn money and pay taxes. So yes, there will be some bureaucracy that is necessary but other layers of bureaucracy, punitive bureaucracy of the kind that Ken Loach's movie is portraying beautifully will be removed. But of course we must always be aware of the monsters we create while we are trying to slay other monsters. This is a point that we take very well in the end. Now, before we move to the other three, there was going to be a comrade from Britain here with us today. But unfortunately the British Prime Minister decided not to let him by calling an election on the 8th of June. Therefore, Clive Lewis who is a comrade that I was referring to could not be here with us because he has to knock on doors as we speak. Katja knows about this. But he wants to send us a message. Clive Lewis is a member of parliament for Norwich South in the east of England. He's a member of the M, he's a good friend and something tells me that he may appear at some point as the next leader of the Labour Party. Clive Lewis. I'm sorry I can't be in Berlin but this is the next best thing here in Norwich. We're fighting a general election campaign. We're fighting against hard Brexit. But we're also fighting for progressive politics here in the UK and progressive alliances. It's still something that many people in this country find very difficult. There's a lot of tribalism politically here in the United Kingdom. But we also know there's a lot of tribalism about saying that there's far more that unites us than divides us. And actually if you look at the aggressive forces across the world, Le Pen, Trump and across Europe, they are actually quite unified in what they're saying and it's time now for progressives across Europe to begin to solidify their voices and to speak with one voice across Europe and here in the UK to say that actually things can be different things can change, things must change because the consequences for not just ourselves but for future generations if we don't are quite tragic and that's why I'm quite proud to be part of DiEM25 and I wish you every success today and over the weekend on this historic conference in Berlin. Let me use this opportunity of having Clive Lewis even by video conveying this message of solidarity and support of what DiEM25 is doing in order to convey to you what we are doing as DiEM25 in this general election in the United Kingdom even though we are not participating directly as DiEM25 nevertheless I believe, we believe that we are performing an important role in this election one that Clive Lewis mentioned indirectly let me tell you what we're doing in Britain as you know the electoral system is what is called first pastor post so there are single member constituencies constituencies electing one person and the person that gets the most votes gets elected even if they only got 25% of the votes that's it, all the other votes are null and void they are thrown in the dustbin if there are six or seven candidates and one gets 25%, the other gets 23%, the other gets 22% the one with 25% gets the seat and the others mean nothing now this is a very toxic political system which allowed Mrs. Thatcher to rule with an iron fist for years without ever securing more than 30-35% of the votes it's a highly anti-democratic system what we are doing with the help of Clive Lewis and Clive Lewis is taking a risk doing this because he's going against his own political party, the Labour Party official line to do this with us we are building in practice a progressive alliance what does this mean well take for instance Brighton the city of Brighton Brighton is a constituency that elected last time Caroline Lucas another member of DiEM25 she was here on this stage when we set DiEM25 up now it is absurd that the Labour Party is standing against Caroline Lucas therefore jeopardizing her possibility of getting elected and making it possible for the conservatives to get elected similarly the Isle of Wight which is off its small island off the coast of Brighton there the green party is ahead the second party is the conservatives and the third is the Labour Party if the Labour Party were not to stand then the green candidate would have won against the conservative party and the Labour Party cannot do this because this is the old way of doing politics and it drives us mad part of this cohort of DiEM25 were driven mad by our own comrades in the Labour Party so this is what we have done our members in Britain DiEM25 members and now we have lots of members in Britain and we have especially after Brexit they had a shock to the system they had an existentialist angst crisis so they we have a lot more of them now we even have a national committee of DiEM what they have done what they are in the process of doing they worked out amongst themselves which candidate DiEM25 will support in every constituency in many constituencies will be the Labour Party candidate like Leib Lewis in others it will be the Green Party candidate against the Labour Party candidate in others it will be the Scottish National Party in others it will be Plaid Cymru the party of Wales there will even be some constituencies when a Liberal Democrat is contesting a seat where she can win from the Conservatives that we are going to support there is even one Conservative that we will support because he is quite weird and he is very progressive this is DiEM's way of doing politics of building alliances across countries and across political parties ok on this note I am going to take you to France and Julien Bayou Julien there was a question here Julien is represented with the Greens he was in alliance with Benoit Amon if I am correct in the first round of the presidential election DiEM25 could not go all the way towards supporting Amon in the end because there were aspects in the programme that we could not agree with but together in the second round we took a very critical position towards Emmanuel Macron we supported him and we said together we will support Emmanuel against Le Pen with the same energy with which we will fight you the day after you win the presidency so we have to together Julien allow me to ask you a question which appeared on the screen before how are we going in the context of the European New Deal and the progressive alliance that we are trying to build everywhere how would we ensure that the investment funding that will come out of this alliance between investment banks the European central bank and central banks in general it will be directed genuinely to a green transition and not to creating more white elephants not to creating more planetary threats Can you hear me? Thanks I am very happy to be here and just to say that you said about voting for Macron against extreme right but promising to fighting his liberal reforms it was very well received in France so I am very glad for that I think we missed something though because of course we avoided Marine Le Pen and extreme right but it's a new status quo I mean Macron is very much like Hollande and it will provide new trickle down economics and liberal reforms that will strengthen economic despair social despair, social crisis and so I am very afraid that we might lose another five years so this is why I am here and this is why we need to build this progressive green anti-austerity pro-European government, whatever the political background so I am very happy to be here and I think we need to strengthen our game because in the political presidential campaign it was very hard to explain where we wanted to go regarding Europe European Union was obviously a key issue but the line was very hard between Frexit, the extreme right or a status quo everything is fine in Europe Macron or the plan B from Mélenchon and plan B is basically like camera options we want to negotiate the negotiation is a failure then referendum and then we are out so we don't want this I think a lot of French, the vast majority of French don't want this this is why Mélenchon lost but everybody understood the plan and the strategy so obviously as you said we need to adopt a framework and we need to broadcast this program and explain it and widely but the manifesto is not enough and the European New Deal is too detailed so perhaps we could have something a bit like I don't know if you read this in a cell, time for outrage that started the indignados movement it was only a small book, 30 pages 3€ available everywhere and we could call it our plan to shake Europe here's the plan and it's only 3€ and then join us but we also need a strategy and only promising to change Europe won't be enough I think we could propose a strategy around disobey for common good austerity is not for common good and the negotiations between closed doors are not for common good, it's a bit like vampires if you want to fight them you bring crude light so we could promise to disobey disobey regarding the negotiation between closed doors and we will explain what has been discussed between the European Council or the European agencies and disobey the 3% rule I mean France I think has never respected this rule since 2009 so we could disobey this rule for a good reason fighting climate change because when we say we are investing in the European New Deal to create jobs and fight climate change Chauble can say it's a French climate I don't care obviously it's the world climate so fighting and disobeying this 3% rule 3% rule deficit to invest in the European New Deal the green transition and for renewables and so on and then we could also organise a coalition against tax evasion because the public services we miss it's only because as you said the rich don't pay their share their fair share and I know if France wants to tax activities from Google or Apple someone will come and say well it's not legal on the European law but if I'm here in Berlin and I buy something on my smartphone I should pay taxes to Germany and not to Luxembourg and we should explain that the treaties implies loyalty and the way Luxembourg or other countries and Juncker works it's not loyal so we can disobey and tax activities where they are made so this disobeying strategy could help get concrete and show what is the plan to change Europe for the common good and then the thing we need leaders I said your comment was very well received but we need other spokesperson whatever the background the main thing is to adopt a common agenda a common policy framework and not to say well you are from this party and in this country and this is something that cannot work so it's not where we come from but what we want to do together so I'm very happy to be here for this reason too in France the political parties are a mess it's time for bold measures, bold actions so it's very very scary at the same time but it's also very exciting so this is the plan Nicola Fratigliani representing Sinistra Italiana the progressive forces of the Italian political scene which is going in the same way as the Italian economy fragmenting, dividing and multiplying how are we going to give Italian progressives radical Europeans in Italy a voice first of all I want to say sorry to speak in Italian and not in English and secondly thanks to Yaniske has invited me here to speak with you we need courage determination and imagination and memory the situation in Europe is very grave and the project is at risk the discussion is polarized on one side we have the fascists and the regressive nationalists to give stability to their privileges none of these two answers face the central problem the inequality which is growing more and more inequality in income power democracy chances opportunities to give perspective to the left in Italy we need a platform to articulate this perspective as Yanis says we don't want to talk first about alliances and then about proposals but the other way around and this is also valid for Italy where we want to do exactly this we know that during the crisis it hasn't gone it wasn't the same for everybody poor people very few have become rich and the majority has lost income and influence so we have to confront the subject of redistribution redistribution of wealth redistribution of work with the reduction of time redistribution of power and democracy we need to fight against tax injustice on the 1st of June in Italy there will be a campaign that I propose to build all together in Europe a campaign that I propose to build all together in Europe we will be in front of a great big apple store in Turin they want to say there that apple is making billions of profits but pays only 0,005% of taxes there are some who take and take and take and give anything to the others and now it's time to ask those who take and take and take to give something back we need a European political space we need that space also thanks to the construction of political alternatives in our countries by giving this influence in the different regions and countries my congratulations to Link in Germany for the important work and we want to support it here and now I'm going to turn to my great friend and colleague again from Italy Lorenzo Marsilli, but he's international he's Pan-European he cannot be pinned down he's a member of the Coordinated Collective of DM25 one of the accomplices behind I'm going to combine two questions that appeared on the screen the first question was European you deal paper, policy paper maybe splendid, but of course politicians in power are not interested in good ideas so what are you going to do about it and the second question was what happens in 2019 I'm one of those people that Theresa May calls the citizens of nowhere as it were European, so if you allow me I stand up because we have a problem of restlessness in our DNA look, let me tackle this question by telling you what happened a few days ago a few days ago my grandfather turned 104 I will convey this to him and then I was thinking what gift do you give to someone who is 104 I'm going to try and explain to him what we're doing here tonight I'm going to try and explain to him the ideas that we have, the new deal perhaps not entering all the technicalities of it and so I did I started telling him about our vision for Europe belief that we can go beyond the false alternative of completely bankrupt criminal status quo or a return to a past of nationalism and borders I tried to convey a crazy idea the Europe that is based on equality and justice, Europe that can protect its citizens and not a narrow elite, Europe that can save migrants at sea and not only bankrupt banks and then I added but then I shrugged my shoulders and I said but of course I know this may sound very utopian and if you look around you it may sound completely unrealistic the powers that we won't listen to what you said as the question said and he answered something very interesting to me, he said I was born he said when the first world war broke out I grew up in fascist Italy when I was your age I was in the middle of a war and my boat was sunk off the coast of Somalia I came back to Italy to find a ruined country and a child of three that had not yet seen before then we managed to do away with monarchy we managed to do away with fascism to build democracy and to reach a level of prosperity that I, he said would have never dreamt of so let me tell you this when you say that this may sound unrealistic my experience tells you that only one thing is unrealistic and that is to believe that things remain as they are because they don't this is an applause for my grandfather he will appreciate this enormously and I must say what he said really resonated with me because I spent the last years of my life crossing Europe north and south, east and west meeting hundreds of movements, thousands of activists trying to say that alternatives exist, that we can break out of a rigged economy and a rigged democracy we can transform Europe bottom up and I always said this with conviction with real belief and yet there were moments, there are moments when doubt creeps in when I myself think that perhaps this is not something that we can actually achieve, over the last years we have seen a proliferation of manifestos movements campaigns that demand another Europe and yet the direction of travel is stubbornly wrong, the policies continue to be wrong democracy continues to retrench in front of our very eyes and so more and more people turn away from the idea that Europe can be transformed that Europe can be reformed that change is possible and I understand this feeling, I feel this sometimes, in me I feel this in many of the people that I speak to and when I do this I too like my grandfather I go back to history and I look at our past and I tell myself that 150 years ago slavery was legal in the United States that 100 years ago when my grandfather was learning how to speak and then was going to school, we inhabited a time when if you were a poor worker and you could not afford the doctor you were left to die of curable illnesses a time when if you were a white man you felt you had the right and indeed a duty to go and colonize and exploit anybody who had a darker shade of skin than yours, a time when if you were a woman you were not allowed to vote and certainly you were not allowed to disobey your husband, a time 50 years ago, let's go closer to our era, just 50 years ago when racial segregation was still reality in the United States of America, when 25 years ago racial segregation was still reality in South Africa every one of us will have many more stories to add to this, but the bottom line is one, over the last 100 years we have won, people like us have managed to emerge from a system so corrupt so barbarous as to be unspeakable we have done this and how have we done this, we have done this through the power of popular mobilization we could not have done it without the labor movement we could not have done this without the feminist movement, we could not have done this without the ecological movement, without the antiracist and the anti-colonial movement and many more, today the challenge we have in front of us is to return to be part of this glorious tradition and yes the time is ripe for a pan-European political movement that has the crazy ambition of turning this continent upside down from the bottom up and to do it by 2019 now what is 2019 it is the date of the next European elections, but when we talk about 2019 we are not talking about the petty boring games of electoral politics or the petty boring games of old parties that are mostly interested in getting a few people in parliament so that they can continue to be paying salaries, what we are talking about is the need for a pan-European political revolution that returns ownership of this continent to its citizens what this means is that we need to be able to construct a vehicle for such a pan-European political revolution, we need a force we need a pan-European movement that is able to campaign, mobilize, organize perhaps also win elections all across Europe from Portugal to Poland, we directly need this today and I think your experience in Greece testifies today, the spectacle in 2015 of the Athens Spring of the attempt by Greece to demand a different economic deal for all of Europe and that attempt being crushed by the nation states and the national elites of all the European Union without us being able to declare one hour of strike in Germany in support for the Greek workers, without a Spanish comrades being able to fill the squares of indignados in Spain, in Madrid in Barcelona in support of what was happening in Greece, our collective incapacity to put up a real pan-European struggle shows that we need something that is able to perform that role and we need it directly to make sure that what happened in 2015 is never going to happen again now let me close getting even deeper in your question we need a pan-European political revolution, we need a pan-European political movement, we need a pan-European political movement that can perhaps also stand for elections nationwide and for the first time in the history of this continent create a real pan-European political party that is something that is a discussion that we need to have very frankly but very seriously and very urgently but what this means is that we need to build the capacity of a generation of Europeans to believe in their power, to recuperate their strength and their capacity to act upon that strength the best lack of conviction while the worst are full of passionate how was it, passionate conviction it's a beautiful line from a famous Irish poet WB WB Yitz and the challenge we have in front of us today is precisely that of recuperating this ambition this power, this potency this passion and to put this at the service of a regeneration of a common European home to make it hospitable for a majority and not only for a minority the last sentence, I think that I want to be able, when I'm in the shoes of my grandfather, I want to be able to say that I've done my duty to make the present system and the present system is a system where as Nicola was saying multinational corporations evade hundreds of billions and then they tell us that there is no money for jobs and to put a continent back to work it's a system where we leave migrants at sea and then we blame them of the incapacity of their elites to restart Europe's economy I want to be able to say when I'm in my grandfather's position years from now that I did my part to go beyond this system and I want migrant children to look at the present with the same incredulous eyes with which we look upon the world that our grandfathers inhabited and for that we need passion and we need ambition we have very little to lose but we really do have a whole continent to win back and we have the right to vote an Irish poet in Berlin we know we are on the right track now we've come to the end of this part of the first part of our meeting tonight while we are shifting to the second part let me go back to the question about the role of art and of the artistic and the aesthetic in DiEM25's activities mindset thinking over the last few months we've had the great pleasure as part of DiEM voice to engage significant artists in our deliberations and activities Jonas Stahl from the Netherlands is one such example Jonas is an artist who creates artistically charged spaces, installations he has for months and years had this project for instance to give you an example of creating movable parliaments and placing them in precarious zones war zones like North Syria and asking combatants to leave the AK47 rifles on the side enter those artistic spaces that look like a parliament and function like a parliament rather than shoot one another Jonas Stahl has designed the spaces in which DiEM has had events in Amsterdam more recently in Athens Volkswagen has its own artistic environment but Jonas Stahl is with us in two ways on your way out you will find these stars that represent the decomposition of the stars of Europe of the European Union and the capacity of DiEM 25 fast forward sign to re-energize the stars of Europe to reflate them and to give them passion again you can collect them out there on your way out, not now meanwhile Jonas Stahl is going to appear in front of us in the form of a video what is the role of art in the democracy in DiEM 25 DiEM 25 confronts the current political, economic, humanitarian crisis of Europe but DiEM 25 also recognizes there is another crisis at stake a crisis of our imagination today we are told the future of the EU holds only two options we either follow the ultra-nationalists to leave the Union or we join the austerity elite to stay as an artist I join DiEM 25 in both options what we need is the imagination of a third option of a new union a democratic union in which citizens own their governments and their banks a social union in which education and healthcare is free to all and a transparent union in which we monitor power and not the other way around art can contribute to imagine that new union that is why my studio helps to design new models of political assembly we start from the stars of the European flag but no longer placed in a circle but changing constellation creating new alliances in and around these stars are the red wedges of the DiEM 25 logo they reconstruct these stars into new symbols of our new union in the making seated amongst the stars are the participants to the DiEM 25 assemblies coming from all walks of life just as these stars seek for new constellations so do they seek for new alliances amongst one another our stars travel with DiEM 25 to countless assemblies throughout Europe but today we propose that you take them with you the art of DiEM 25 is your art just as the new union we imagine here today is your union please don't worry we have an art here and it just switched off but anyhow good evening Berlin I will speak English and it will be very short one year ago at this place we had an idea one year later we have 60,000 members across Europe even in non-EU member states like Turkey or Serbia and we have the European New Deal while Merkel and Barack Obama are discussing democracy democracy yes at the Brandenburger Tor and while Donald Trump is discussing new wars with NATO leaders in Brussels we are not discussing democracy but we are bringing back democracy to Europe tonight one year ago this room was full of curious people who came because of one single idea today more than 80% of this room are already DiEMers and a few curious people who hopefully will become part of DiEM one year ago we had an idea in the meantime as you could have seen tonight at the first section as you will see in the second section we have built strong alliances with different political parties from the link in Germany to the Greens from Hungary to Italy from the Labour Party as you have seen with Clive Lewis whom we will support at the UK elections in the meantime in one year we have built strong alliances with different grassroots movements from Blockupai here in Germany to the anti-G20 protests but also to something what we call and other people's progressives all around Europe the rebel cities this is the reason by Gerardo Pizzarello the current mayor of Barcelona because Ada Colau just got a kid and hopefully she will join also the progressive cities this is why Gerardo Pizzarello and Barcelona are part of DiEM this is also why Luigi the Magistris mayor of Naples is also part of DiEM at the same time we are preparing something what we call the progressive agenda for Europe to speak in more theoretical terms this is how we see the constituent process for Europe by developing different policy papers with different pillars such as the European New Deal which is already published and we will ask you also for feedback but also something what we launched and what we started today at the daily events which we had here and some of the people like Ara Balcan and Renata Villa will join us in a second or in a minute which is technology because DiEM is the only movement now in Europe today which is trying to deal with the biggest international movement which is called Silicon Valley in the last months DiEM members have been voting on the official stance of DiEM or raging from Italian referendum Brexit, French elections and most recently Croatian local elections Croatia is a good example of what DiEM is about and not because I'm from Croatia and not because I'm from DiEM of course it might be the reason but in Croatia recently a new progressive Green Left coalition consisting of five political parties succeeded to get 8% at the local elections entering the city parliament and after DiEM supported it also the rebel city started to support it so they also got the support of Barcelona and this is a proof what DiEM is trying to do to be the connection between different progressive movements and rebel cities and political parties across Europe because as you know one of the biggest illness of the Left today and also the Greens is something called sectarianism you know someone goes to one part of the bar and quotes an unpublished third footnote of unpublished Kautzky manuscript and the second person is another corner of the room and talks about post-structuralism and doesn't want to talk with the other person what DiEM is trying to do is to bring together all these people and actually with Zagreb is ours but also with other political projects we are attempting to do that so why are we here tonight as you could have seen it's not on the screen but the title tonight is DiEM 25 2019 next stop question mark today we are posing the questions what should we do at the European elections in 2019 as I have said already as you could have seen from these examples I didn't mention for instance the political party Razem who were here with us today is that DiEM already is getting an electoral form which means that up to now the model of DiEM was first to create the idea then to create policy papers then to create a grassroots movement to push this idea but now we are going a step further the step further is that we are actually taking part in elections across Europe we started with local elections in Croatia we will definitely come to Poland we will also come to Italy but the very big question is 2019 actually instead of depression and left-wing melancholia what we are trying to do is to give hope as you can see and you can be depressive about the French elections for instance because Macron today means Le Pen tomorrow but there is one point about the French elections which actually gives us hope did you know that 12 million people in France didn't vote and this is a number which will repeat itself all across Europe these 12 million people and all those who crossed the voting papers actually give us hope because they show there is an open space what DiEM is trying to do and what we will work hard on to achieve in 2019 is to occupy this space and this is the reason why we are doing this event today but enough of me there is the watch whom you will see now is a great linguist and a great supporter and member of DiEM's coordinating collective Norm Chomsky who has an exclusive message for you and then I will invite the other speakers Norm Chomsky Europe is one of the perhaps one of the richest culturally advanced sectors of the world what happens in Europe is of great significance for centuries Europe was the most savage place in the world back to the 30 years war in the 17th century probably a third of the population of Germany was slaughtered in the 20th century of course a total horror finally that seems to have ended with the European project that is a step of extraordinary significance if that internal savagery of Europe which of course was exported to the rest of the world that is imperialism colonialism if that's contained and Europe becomes a progressive force in the world as it began to be with the European project spearheading welfare state measures and so on that's of enormous significance if that breaks up it's a terrible disaster for the world so what happens to Europe today I think it's poised at the brink breaking up on the one hand and moving forward in the other it's a choice that will have to be made internal to Europe there are forces in both directions there are positive elements I think as we said before GM25 is the most promising of them that I know of the developments in say the elections in Barcelona the Fodemos others that we know about they could pave the way to a revival of the European project which would overcome the very significant flaws and build upon the promise that has partially been achieved and could go forward or it could break up and we could return to a world that is not likely to survive frankly in the first part of this evening we have been talking mainly about how to bring the European New Deal to the ballot box in the second part we go a step further and we will talk mainly about a new progressive international in the building it's my great honour and pleasure to invite great internationalists Renata Villa Saskia Sassen Thomas Sabert Aral Balkan and Ivan Anenadovic Saskia do you have a mic? Well so I'm really glad that you are with us tonight first we will start with someone actually today we also have an announcement similar to Noam Chomsky who is part of the coordinating collective of DM at this table we have well true DMers Saskia Sassen is part of the advisory panel of DM Anenadovic is part of DM25 in Belgrade Thomas Sabert is part of the coordinating collective of DM and I'm really proud to announce that Renata Villa and our members voted it the validating council become the newest coordinating collective member and that Aral Balkan who is not from the Balkans but from Turkey but he has an interesting surname became the US advisory panel member I start with a question for Renata Renata is a good friend and an activist from Guatemala but she spends more time in the airplane than any of us except maybe Saskia and some others in this room she is a lawyer a digital activist who together with Aral Balkan today started something which I think will become a very important part of DM which is something what we call the technology pillar which will speak more about it what I want to hear from Renata and from her experience which is the experience of working with indigenous people there is a I truly believe we should organize a huge pan-european rave a transnational love parade well I suggest in the manner of horizontality and democracy that the person who send the message organizes it and invites us to that rave party because as Emma Goldman said if I cannot dance I will not join the revolution well okay Renata also dances a lot what I want to ask Renata is you have a lot of experience with working with indigenous people with working with Julian Assange with working from Costa Rica Guatemala to India you are really a true internationalist par excellence why is DM and why is Europe important for the other continents and other struggles especially in a phase where we can see the decline of the so called historical sequence of Latin America for instance where we had radical governments and so on which are now exchanged by neoliberalism and why on the other hand are these continents important are important to reach and to build alliances also with these movements there which is something really interesting happens to me I don't feel more Latin American than when I'm in Europe I don't feel more European than when I'm in Latin America I don't feel more Asian when I'm in Africa and similarly I don't feel more African than when I'm in Asia so somehow this artificial disconnection called borders and nationalities of course not without denying the identity today I think that many many people feel like me and many many people feel that we are part of a united struggle right now for example Brazil is in a crisis with army in the streets beating protestors and similarly lots of journalists are in prison in Turkey and similarly I mean we could go on and on and on but it seems that I mean it is now we have the possibility to know in real time what's going on in our world and we also have the possibility to act in real time and have a position on what's going on in our world but we still lack in the global south somehow the gravitas to make the things really shake and change and it seems that only I mean it seems that we here in this very privileged place Europe we kind of forgot about the duties that this privilege and we now have a very very interesting moment in history I mean with some people rejoice with the decline of the leadership of the US and rejoice on having this crazy man leading one of the most powerful nations in the world but what I didn't see happening was well we going to balance the powers in the world and how what it is I mean it's not that Europe is getting more democratic and it's going to lead the struggles and it was going to stop the abuses that are going around quite the opposite and as you have seen the decline on democracy and the decline on progressive movements in Latin America I got really really really worried about that and I got really really worried about that because it seems consolidation rapid consolidation regional and global consolidation of authoritarian power capitalism abuses and a rapid de facto apartheid in the world and if there's a place to fix it with effects on different parts of the world is here I think that we can really this space this very democratic space can really and break up with the colonialism legacy that Europe spread all over the world and be the party point of a new kind of relationship as the relationship that you and me have or that we all have based on equality, based on recognizing the need of working together respect and above all a big push for women inclusion and having women at the core of all these processes so so basically number one my first commitment with DiEM is we have now the possibility to be connected let's use it for something number two what happens in the other side of the ocean will fundamentally affect what happens here but we here we have double responsibility but what happens on the other side of the world because we have here all the elements to make change happen number three women at the core women are the future and we are going to demonstrate it here right here right now number four solidarity is a very beautiful world but if it is empty if we don't walk our solidarity towards others if we just see solidarity with the poor people of Bolivia well solidarity and yes let's send the 10 euro bill to Oxfam of Bla if that's the solidarity that we want if it's not the solidarity that looks into the eyes of the other and recognizes her as an equal as a peer, as someone like us that really deserves the same dignity and the same rights regardless of the passport that she's holding then it is an empty world this movement is a movement that will recognize on her and all of them in all of us equals and that's the minimum for a democratic movement and that's why Crazy Watermelon is here tonight and that's why I hope that we keep that in mind that's the universalism that we are preaching I mean we can no longer speak only about internationalism because you know soon we will be in Mars so universalism well maybe we stop him yeah and so that's what I have to say that's what I have to say that it is part of something bigger and it's part of something that will have impact beyond just the artificial EU Saskia, I'm really glad to see you tonight today and I'm grateful that Saskia was with us at almost every DM event I hope it will stay like that I hope we will also go to states together with you very very often because we have to go there my question is the following one since the focus of this talk here is progressive internationalism and you have written a lot of important books about the internationalism of global capital it's obvious to us here tonight I think everyone in this room agrees that the only answer to the refugee crisis to ecological crisis wars will also be an internationalism but a progressive internationalism but you have this point but you have another important point because we have to I like this, very good yes I just opened the space no I think what is important in your work and what you are now developing as well or already for decades is the connection can you explain a bit the connection internationalism and the local struggles which are happening all around the world and what is the connection is it a dialectical connection can you explain this a bit and the importance of it sure so one image that I like to bring up is that the global isn't just simply up there the global whatever the global might be the good and the bad it actually is also at ground level it's in places and so my global city model was also about that that even when you're dealing with finance in other words a highly digitized sector it needs anchors and those anchors are also sites where we can engage we can contest so to me this is extremely important now a second element that really comes also out of the Diem project which I find very important is that there is an enormous amount of recurrence of certain issues what you were also saying in many many very different parts of the world and if we just think of Diem, Europe, etc. I'm hoping it will go further than Europe really that there are extraordinary possibilities for resonances of issues that are happening everywhere and so if I wanted to bring in a couple of master images to sort of capture the particularity of this period which is we have long had capitalism but I always like to say that the capitalism that we had after World War II was exploitative, it was extractive but it also was an ironic capitalism because insofar as mass consumption was the dominant sort of logic it meant that even the nastiest people wanted for the middle classes to do a bit better for the sons and daughters of the middle classes and the working classes to do a bit better so it was in that sense sort of an ironic capitalism that breaks that breaks in the 1980s basically with globalization deregulation privatization all terms I think that were familiar with here and then you have the emergence of a predatory logic that becomes dominant both when you had mass consumption as a dominant logic and today what I argue with is predatory logic you have all kinds of other things happening as well but I'm talking dominant logics now a predatory logic installs itself not just in very elementary and rough sectors you know like mining mining is predatory or extractive if you want to give it once you have taken out what you want what you can get out of it you don't care what happens so it's different from the mass consumption period I think this is extremely important and Google once they had the platform great platform but what did it do it gathered information about all of us for free and sold it for a lot of money to corporations and firms that's predatory that's an extractive logic at work compare that to a car manufacturer who when something goes wrong they have to deal bring back cars etc look at Facebook in this period with the fake news bit or the news that they didn't check these are sectors that make billions with almost no effort that is a very disturbing mode of economy and again sort of I call it either predatory or extractive you can choose whatever term you prefer now final point on Diem so it seems to me that one question we might want to ask is how do complex systems change so let's think Diem Diem wants to make a significant change in how things are running the distribution of the goodies all of that now if it is the case and I think that it is a case that complex systems change not by changing everything if you want to change everything you have a major challenge but if they change by just shifting certain capabilities from one type of organizing logic to another type of organizing logic what I just described for the shift from mass consumption to the current period then you are dealing with a very different mode in which you can intervene in order to change a complex system now Diem then represents one sort of set of strands you don't need to change everything in order to bring foundational change that is sort of one of my points and in that sense back to the localities the localities matter a lot and if you can sort of begin to mobilize as Diem is beginning to do very well now I think around particular issues that are both very local but can also travel because that is I think important then you have a you have a vista that suggests we can change because we don't have to change everything in order to bring about a major transformation in the system so that is sort of my take I think the best example Sasuke was just describing and this wasn't staged but it actually shows this kind of interconnections and the hope which we are all together giving here tonight comes from a rebel city which is trying to change a complex system on a local level but already has an influence on the global level which is Barcelona so what we will see now is the current mayor of Barcelona Gerardo Pisarello with his message to us tonight we are challenging speculation we are challenging austerity we have changed fiscal and budget priorities to guarantee the right to housing the right to education the right to clean energy we are trying to make our institutions serve the common good democracy was born on the local level and we firmly believe that that's where we can win it back municipal movements are a key stone to democratize Europe the rebel cities of Southern Europe the feminist cities of Southern Europe must be a beacon of hope in a world trapped between neoliberalism and the far right and that's why we are giving all our support to DM that's why we send you a warm hug in the name of real democracy of political and economic democracy against walls against fear we will overcome so as you can see the Europe we are trying to build is already here in a way there was a question on the screen thanks to DM voice and I encourage you to send more questions about including non-European non-EU member states to DM tonight with us is Ivana from DM in Serbia which is not part of the European Union who knows whether it will ever become part of the European Union or it will become part of Russia or United Arab Emirates I'm saying this I'm saying this because currently in Belgrade there is a big struggle called Nedavi mo Beograd don't drown Belgrade which is influenced by on the one hand Barcelona on the other hand by the big movement in forming now Croatia I think against a big project sponsored by the United Arab Emirates which basically want to build a new Dubai in Serbia so what I would like to ask you is first to say why is DM important why did you personally but also other people from Serbia who are here tonight join DM what is what DM can do actually in Serbia what are the ideas which can be transposed and translated into the very complex Serbian context and can you a bit also talk about the Nedavi mo Beograd and our role there Good evening and thank you for making me feel tonight like a real member of our European family and not as so coming from Serbia and as a representative of a non EU country we face the same fake choices between two lines Euro enthusiastic line and Euro skeptic line so with the blessing of EU our government is implementing harsh austerity measures bringing most of the population to poverty so our factories are being sold to so called foreign investors workers are hired for the wage is lower than in China with zero hours contracts with no rights to form unions and with no rights to go to a toilet break so while the people are left with no dignity our educational system is being destroyed as well as the system of values our very close perspective is to be a cheap worker force at the periphery by the way periphery these days means also a vacuum space for the migrants, refugees so Europe doesn't want them we must have them without any strategy about integrating them into society and we all know that the problem won't just go away if you hide it somewhere and at the same time in the Balkan regions still living in a fragile peace since the collapse of Yugoslavia is constantly going through the waves or warmongerings whenever it is needed for new elections and they do come quite often so with people fed with fake news tabloid headlines left with no need for art or culture they're just going to their lowest urges xenophobia and nationalism and no, it's not because Serbs are like that just like it is not true that Greece is in depth because Greeks are lazy regarding our movement in Belgrade and how did we try to implement our activism or work to DMs policies as a non-EU country was transparency as one of the first pillars so it almost came naturally to us that we should review the whole process of integrations because if this very long period of being a candidate contracts, deals were signed without public knowing anything about it so that's how we started and then of course we started to develop things at the same time don't drown Belgrade project movement was organizing protests against the project Belgrade waterfront which is basically expropriating part of our city cancelling the law and constitution of our country so don't drown Belgrade is for a year now organizing protests against this horrible project we went out on the streets we very soon met people from the movement and just before we traveled here we had a meeting with almost all the left wing movements in Belgrade trying to find a common ground towards the upcoming city elections where don't drown Belgrade will possibly go for the elections so with the positive example from Croatia and the Zagrebiz hours we strongly believe that we can make it happen in Belgrade DM is important for us because it's giving us the different kind of perspective we don't want to be part of Europe where the peripheral countries are being bullied and exploited but we want to be part of democratic another European Union with equal nations united equal nations and I believe that we can make it happen Saskia mentioned Google I guess there is no single person in this room who doesn't use Google which means there is no single person in this room who doesn't work for free for Google there is probably also no single person in this room who didn't hear about smart cities now they are developing also smart pyjamas, Nato is developing something what they call smart defense we can expect also all other of smart things which are probably very stupid which make people even more stupid but it is a dangerous phenomenon we have also Internet of Things and if there is one international movement which is maybe even stronger than other movements like G20 or many other movements even maybe stronger than the Troika and stronger because it's almost invisible and people are not aware of it it is represented by Silicon Valley and by the newest technological developments which are doing something what Marx would call the privatization of the general intellect this is why today we started to discuss something at DM which will become a very very important part of DM's policies but also a very important part of DM's struggle and I'm really glad that for the first time we speak about it precisely in Berlin which is a city of a huge tech community which is a city where whistleblowers from WikiLeaks have found refuge which is a city where the lawyer of Julian Assange is sitting at the stage which is a city precisely at this theater we had Julian Assange at Edward Snowden and this is also the reason why today we have Aral Balkan here who will explain us what did you discuss actually today and what do you think in which directions what is the most urgent task DM has to do together with the activists but also with other experts we are now gathering all around the world to fight against this bad version of internationalism thank you so much yeah you mentioned smart things and yeah smart you see smart things are not always smart is one working? yeah you mentioned smart things so today whether it is your smart television that you have in your home or whether it is the smart phone that you have or a smart watch that you are wearing or a smart teddy bear that your children are playing with or a smart pill that you swallow that sends information from within you all of these modern technologies work in the same way they work by gathering data information about us and that is an aspect that we are not going to change that is a fact of life the real question is who owns and controls these technologies and the data and the insight that is being gathered about us now if we can answer that question with we do as individuals there is no problem here we have individual sovereignty we own and control them and we are getting smarter about ourselves so that is where the smart comes in but if the answer is that corporations own and control these technologies and this data and they are getting smarter about us and by extension if this data is available to governments as we know that it is from the Snowden revelations then we are talking about a very different type of social system that we are living in we are talking about a corpotocracy we are talking about what Shoshana Zuboff would call surveillance capitalism and that is the problem today because we are not sleep walking into this we are there today the first thing that we have to do is acknowledge where we are so that we know where to move away from and that is part of our remit with what we are doing with the seventh pillar here so there are you said what are the most urgent things we should be doing well there are some fires we need to put out very urgently in Europe for example there is an e-privacy proposal that is now at the parliament which I believe stands for erosion of privacy because there are for example some of the provisions that are in there they all sound positive but if you actually interpret them they are quite negative so smart cities if you are in a smart city and just by having a phone with you as you are walking around you are being surveilled via wifi and via your bluetooth all the city has to do is to put a sign up there saying you are being watched and it is like okay thank you for telling me how do I not be watched oh turn off your phone unacceptable so we are granting internet service providers the same rights as google and facebook to monetize our data and all they have to do is ask for our quote unquote consent however if we don't give our consent they don't give us access to their services so it's not consent it's a very predatorial to borrow a term form of consent so there are fires that we need to fight the e-privacy directive the proposal is one of them strong encryption and end to end encryption is under threat in the UK they actually passed the IP Act which grants the government the right to ask for back doors on all surveillance technologies ask someone from England or from the UK whether they know about this and more than likely they'll say I've never heard of it and so that's something we need to fight net neutrality everyone having equal access to the internet is under threat right now so these are fires we need to fight in the very very short term that we can if we are looking into the medium term and the longer term we need to regulate effectively companies effectively when they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby the European Commission because we are institutionally corrupt we have lobbying, we have revolving doors the very people at the European Commission today who should actually be protecting our rights as citizens may in two or three years time be working for the companies that they should be regulating this is corruption we have public-private partnerships where public institutions work with private institutions but which constitute really a de facto privatization of our most intimate data in Italy the full entire medical records of 61 million people are in the process of being sold to IBM in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam all of the license plate information has been given to Google in real time so that Google can tell the city and the citizens when there are free car park spaces and they also know where everyone is so in the medium term we really need to regulate but we can't regulate no matter what our policies are if we don't battle institutional corruption if we don't remove the influence of corporate finance in public policy making then we're not going to be able to regulate effectively and then let's think about what we can do in the long term because criticizing, understanding this is important where we are is the most inspirational counter-narrative to Silicon Valley because they have tools that work today they come to Europe and they say the only way to do technology is the way we do technology and we have to be able to say bullshit, no this is not true we know we know that we can build decentralized free and open interoperable technologies from the commons I want you to imagine an internet of people because that is our goal here to build an internet of people imagine an internet where starting in Europe every European citizen has ownership and control of their own space on the internet and then when we're talking about these smart things all of our smart things can then connect to this place that we own and we control and this is not a system that will require you to have technical knowledge to use this is an interoperable system so any organization lots of organizations hopefully will host these for us in an interoperable system and because the core of this is something that should be a human we should be supporting it and funding it from the commons but then because it's free and open anyone can build and expand upon it and then share that back to the commons so what we're building really with an internet of people is an ethical core on which we can build an economy and we can build an alternative a counter narrative one that is based on ethics one that is based on a core that is compatible with democracy and I think that we have a unique opportunity with DM we have a unique opportunity here in Europe to make this vision this dream a reality and that is what we're here to do today with you and together with you and I think that that is what we can achieve with DM thank you well DM is not just about talking so if you are interested in this and I guess most of you who use Google Facebook and smartphones are interested in this I invite you all tonight to join DM to follow what will start happening at our website to join the team which Renata, Aral and other people are leading because this is a struggle we can only fight together there is another struggle which is taking place very soon in Europe the very next step where DM will go in the next two weeks is Crete in Greece after that the next step which will be the last event before summer although we will continue to work during summer and also hopefully to do some rave parties as they said there at the beginning of July we are going to Hamburg and we are going to Hamburg because in Hamburg the G20 will happen and I am going to ask Thomas who has decades of experience in activism in philosophy and in organizing and someone who is very often in Hamburg as well to explain why G20 is important and why this organizing against the G20 is important as well can you maybe just say what will happen in Hamburg what was the experience which we learned from the World Social Forum from all the protests which were obviously insufficient to stop such big events and so on business as usual continues why are we going to be there why are you going to be there I think I also have to get up because it is clear to talk about Hamburg while sitting in a chair why so I will tell you if we talk about Hamburg and if we want to talk about Hamburg and the G20 we first have to go back some years and I of course will just recall I will not go into details if we want to think about Hamburg we first have to think about Seattle then we have to think about Porto Alegre we have to think about Jenova we have to think about Florence we have to think about Mumbai of mass protests against those people who are calling themselves today G20 which ended up at least in Hailingda that was we all thought by this time it is a wonderful beginning unfortunately it was not a wonderful beginning but it was an end an end somehow of the last sequence of a progressive international we had and this was a progressive international which started in Seattle ended in Hailingda and the result of these sequence was that we put an end to the end of history this is what we should not forget then second step will be shortly to remember what has happened in between immediately after Hailingda we had the great breakdown of the capitalist crisis we are still suffering on 2007-2008 which again brought us the experience that capitalist world order is the unique world order which is not defected by crisis but which is reproducing itself out of it crisis so this is what we learned in 2008 and 2007 then the next step I think we have to recall is the Arab Spring again a possibility to show that there is no end of history the end of history is ended Arab Spring was completely unexpected also unexpected was and I think we have to recall this the end of the Arab one end of the Arab Spring and that is all the millions of people in Syria and Yemen and other places which are dumped into their blood some of those people responsible for what is happening in Syria and in Yemen will come to Hamburg but then after the Arab Spring we had the global movement of occupying running one time around the whole world somehow ending up in southern Europe then there was the next invention which is important for us to recall after weeks and months and years of mass demonstration and general strikes we decided to invent a kind of translation into institutional politics by inventing new forms of left parties and some not so much new left parties but also by inventing forms of rebel cities as new forms of democracy that was invented by then and then we know that one of the most important experiences, experiments of that phase was brought down again by people who will come together in Hamburg I mean the Greek experience the Greek experiment that also was a kind of end which was followed at least very important place for that in Germany by what we call the summer of migration then the summer of migration was ended we have to experience what we still experience and that is the global rising of the nationalist international May Trump but also Modi Erdogan some of them again will come and meet in Hamburg what we have in theoretical terms in philosophical terms during this whole time we tried to understand what was happening which I now just call up by the idea that what we are experience is the global confrontation on the one hand of empire on the other hand of the global multitudes we are I think no longer completely sure if that is still the case Hamburg now and now I am at the end somehow Hamburg will be a place where we can ask ourselves the question if we are still involved in the global confrontation between bio-capitalist empire and the plurality of multitudes it will be a place we can try to give answers to this question who is we and now I will collect some of the people I will name some of the people coming together to Hamburg the decision of the G20 to make their next meeting in Hamburg in one respect was an absolutely strategically stupid decision because Hamburg at least in Germany everybody knows is the stronghold of the militant tendency of the German left and these people are personally angry that these guys will come into their neighborhood I mean it's a kind of private problem which has to be turned into politics and it will be turned into politics and we will experience in Hamburg what all those comrades which are still faithful to the autonomous tradition of the German left are able to do this year we will experience that one of the nasty guys which will come to Hamburg in July is Mr. Erdogan we have here in Germany thousands of brothers and sisters from Turkish or Kurdish background these tens of thousands of brothers and sisters will think about their way how to welcome Mr. Erdogan in Hamburg we will see this then this evening we had Katja Kipping sitting here and I will remember that of course Hamburg also will be a contribution to the Germany election campaign Hamburg will open up the possibility to give a statement, a comment a contribution to this campaign how it is running, how it is not running and we shall ask the question if it is not our duty to give a farewell to Dr. Schäuble so Hamburg also is a place to comment on this and to find an answer to this question and then at least of course Hamburg will also be the place where we are doing just the same thing as we have done already in Seattle or in Heiligndamm it will a place where we will have thousands and tens of thousands public conversations about who we are what do we want what do we mean by coming together and what will be the biggest challenge we are facing in Hamburg I think the biggest challenge we are facing in Hamburg will be that the Bio Capitalist Empire if it is still existing will try to divide us that is what they are already doing and that is what they have tried to do in Seattle and in Mumbai and in Porto Alegre and in Heiligndamm and they will again try to do this, they will try to divide us and they probably will divide us between those where they are thinking we can absorb these people bring them on our side this will be the one idea and then they will think we have to divide these people from those people which they evidently cannot absorb and they will have the idea to bring these people down by force so the strongest challenge we are facing in Hamburg and the answer we have to give in Hamburg and the plays DM and the role DM can play in Hamburg then will be that we will resist against these attempt to divide us to separate us, to isolate us from each other not because we want to agree with everything nobody must agree with what the next of us is doing we should have our differences we must have our differences but instead of in resisting the attempt to divide us we have to try to bring our own differences into a productive correspondence and I think this is the most important task we have to face in Hamburg to bring our own differences in a productive correspondence and then I think still we will have politics of a multitude in the form of a progressive international thank you if you want to hear more beautiful speeches like this Thomas just published a very big book and it was published in Hamburg by the way so I suggest you to read it well I'm not really good at this what I will say now because as most of you I really feel bad when asked for money and DM is not really good in asking for money but this event wouldn't be possible without dozens of personal donations by our members and by ourselves and this is the reason why we made this event today this is also the reason why I have to call you that if you have a penny to donate to DM our attempt is pretty ambitious we want to fight against Erdogan, against Trump, against Theresa May against Google, against Silicon Valley and G20 so please if you can donate to DM or if you have any ways to build this movement stronger give us our ideas I have to stand up now because for a special reason because this event also wouldn't be possible without the place where we are standing tonight this is Volksbühne and probably all of you from Germany know what is happening to Volksbühne and what will happen in the next months it is still a question mark whether DM will be able to come back to Volksbühne ever or if we want to come back to the Volksbühne this event is also happening because of the invisible work of many people of the invisible work of many DM activists who helped to work on this event but this event is also possible because all the people who are working for the Volksbühne all of the people who are now in this room who you cannot see, who are there at the pools and who are there at the cantina and all around and this event and who will lose their jobs in one month but this event also wouldn't be possible without a very special person who has to be at Volksbühne already one year ago this is Sebastian Kaiser last year, last year when we invited Sebastian to stage he was somewhere else because he has hidden somewhere this year he said also please don't invite me to the stage because I don't want to come I think this is the honesty and the modesty of people like Sebastian whom I appreciate and respect as a great friend and I hope after he leaves Volksbühne actually he is already part of DiEM so Sebastian if you can say a few words about the place where we are normally I'm doing the introduction on those political or philosophical evenings now it's more an ultra-reduction don't worry I will not punish you or torture you with a next and long speech actually I want to refer not to Volksbühne so much but to one sentence you said one year ago, he had the first DiEM meeting he said the marriage between capitalism and democracy it's over and I'm now very curious who will be the next partner of the divorce democracy but there is also one thing I want to add because it's not only democracy and capitalism what is now disconnected maybe what we witness now especially with the technology is also that another marriage comes to an end or that the ideological connection becomes more obvious and this is the connection to freedom so I think also that the marriage between capitalism and freedom is also coming to an end I never understood the logic between these things that was more ideological and one person who always ensured the freedom of radical art production and of the maximum freedom of articulation of sorts is Frank Astorff I personally thank him Frank Astorff is the director of that house for 25 years I personally thank him a lot for this and I think many people like also you or DiEM got a benefit from this and from the art from the way he enforced people even to go to more radical art productions and sorts of thoughts what is more to say I try not to be I mean we will lose this house for events like that I'm sure for analysations we heard today but also for the practical work I try by myself not to be very sad or very pessimistic about this it's not easy but at least I try today or tonight an important setup for an alternative Europe an important impulse for an alternative Europe was set up and I'm sure we will continue with this we will continue with this not only in Berlin but everywhere in Europe and we will find spaces there and maybe we even come back here I don't know why but we should stay here well occupied the folks there is one sentence only one sentence I want to add to what Sebastian said it is something what I have seen today at the Rosa Luxemburg Platz and it is a quote by Rosa Luxemburg who said I was, I am and I will be and I think this is the message for folks and for all of us who are here tonight we will come back I have bad news there is a third section and a fourth section of this event but this is just part of the joke that Yanis Varoufakis is probably somewhere there and he will give us ah, he's there, yeah can you come here Yanis will conclude this evening I hope we will see each other in Crete in Hamburg and in Brussels already in September and I hope we will also, Yanis hahahaha you have another speech you asked me to give come on so what, this is my speech, is it now do I speak now? well, okay now I will ask my stretcher to wrap this up allow me to do this but just reminding you the power of a great idea you can have millions of people with weak ideas simply reproducing and recapitulating the same old tired status quo and you can have 3 people, 5 people 50 people with a great idea changing the world whenever you are confounded by doubt that we can change the world just think of the 1820s, 1830s when some very strange people go together with a very weird idea that we can create a society without slavery everybody was saying to them what a society without slavery? what happened? there has never been a society without slavery and it was true just because there had never been a society without slavery that didn't mean that it was impossible to create one don't be broken do not succumb to the notion of Tina even radicals, deep down fear that maybe you know what Shoebley is right, there is no alternative do not allow this the seed of evil the seed of conservatism to penetrate your psyche and your minds do not be broken do not succumb to Tina chunk Tina replace Tina with Tatiana that astonishingly there is an alternative this is what dm25 is about the european new deal that we spoke about today that we have discussed in sessions earlier on today is all about presenting the alternative the alternative for Europe, the alternative for Germany for Portugal, for Croatia, for Greece for every single nook and cranny of our continent only if we believe that it is possible for us to design a different future is that future is going to become not only possible but inevitable the populists win Brexit bring Donald Trump to power give a great deal of votes, 11 million for goodness sakes to Le Pen on the basis of the slogan we want to take our countries back you know what we want to take our countries back we want to take our cities back we want to take our neighborhoods back we want to take our workplaces back but to take our countries back we need to democratize Europe not disintegrated and this is the message of dm25 and this is the message of the european new deal this is not going to happen through the gradualism of Brussels and the europe group and the european union summit it will not happen on the basis of tradeoffs and negotiation in opaque back room discussions it is not going to happen the way Macron is promising to do it by introducing austerity in France to convince Schaeble to give him some federation light in Europe it is going to happen on the basis of dm25's policy of in the EU against this EU the policy of what we call constructive disobedience we put forward constructive proposals sensible proposals common sense proposals proposals that even a liberal or a progressive conservative in this junction might agree with and at the same time we disobey their orders to respect their irrationality and their concerted misanthropy they call us populist those who promise all things to all sorts of people on the basis of doing exactly the same and expecting a different result which was Einstein's definition of madness they call us utopian who is calling us utopian those who imagine that austerity will produce growth if it is generalized and applied everywhere those who believe that cutting pensions, reducing workers' rights everywhere in Europe is going to be to make Europe a better, happier and more progressive place they call us subversive the ones who in 2009 in the Buddha stag in this city gave 600 billion to Deutsche Bank Finance Bank and all the other little banks and they made you pay for it on the basis that the greatest and most cynical transfer of banking losses onto the shoulders of the weakest taxpayers is somehow consistent with democracy and moderation they are the subversive ones they are subverting logic they are subverting decency they are subverting hope and they are producing cynicism they are producing the alternative for Deutschland the Le Pen's, the Golden Don's those who are destroying Europe are the product of the so called liberal establishment which in 2015 took it upon itself to create alternative facts to create truth reversal about what we were trying to do when all we were saying was a very conservative very basic liberal idea that you cannot escape bankruptcy by means of greater loans that are given on condition that you shrink your incomes 2019 question mark was the headline for today's event and today's deliberations in the various fora that DM25 has put together well tonight we are taking that question mark out and we are replacing it with an exclamation mark 2019 is our objective it is our target for what? for taking the European New Deal and giving it an electoral expression in every European country in the European parliament elections at the very least on the 9th of September we shall meet again this time in Brussels at the Bazaar theater we have our own version of the state of the union meeting on the 9th of September every year Mr. Jean Claude Juncker who very famously once said that the European establishment when they are going to get stuff they must lie he is going to be delivering on that day the state of the union speech we are going to be delivering the real state of the union speech with an announcement about converting the union's national political party 9th of February of September in Brussels but DM25 is not some external agency out there doing things on your behalf or my behalf DM25 is either you or it is nothing unless you join us unless you take another 20 people from your place of work your place of enjoyment your families and you encourage them to join DM25 and join us by debates by means of creating new DSC's new spontaneous collectives so that we can be enriched by your presence and your input DM25 doesn't exist there will be no saviours of Europe it is either us or no one and it better be us let's make of using this summer to increase the membership of DM25 by tens of thousands throughout Europe but we need your help for this and we need also something else we need you to organize some donations for DM25 because we have done a great deal with nothing for a year and a half so if you go to DM25.org and you press the button that allows you to become a member also donate something a little bit from everyone contributes to a great deal from for the movement as a whole lastly a year and a half ago we promised to shake Europe compassionately, gently but firmly we are doing it comrades let us continue to do it and let us not allow history to overtake us thank you very much