Statement that was read out during the Liebig 34 press conference on October 6th, during which a representative of the collective was taken into custody in front of running cameras.

In recent years and especially weeks, many things have been said, reported, and conjectured about Liebig 34, the anarcha queer feminist corner house on Liebigstrasse with 30 years of collective history.
Now, shortly before the official attempt to evict it, we will say a few things ourselves.

First of all, we want to make it clear that the eviction of Liebig34, which is already being planned with an absurdly huge police force, is an illegal eviction. The representatives of Raduga and Mittendrin association will give more details on this matter.

We do not point out the illegality of the eviction because it surprises us. We point it out because it shows the arbitrariness of a so-called constitutional state.
The eviction of Liebig34 is often discussed in public This example shows that who receives justice in this state depends on economic and political interests. It shows an urban policy that acts in the interests of major investors and capital, and not in the interests of the people who live in this city and have been shaping it for decades.
With Liebig, not only would a home be lost, a cultural meeting place, but also a central piece of Berlin’s urban history.

That state structures do not work in the same way for all people, but on the contrary limit, obstruct, and are violent in many places through repression and discrimination, was something that most people who have found refuge in various ways in the Liebig34 during the past 30 years had to experience first-hand.
The fact that Liebig34 tries to be a shelter for these people makes it a unique place. To an irreplaceable place in this city.

For 30 years Liebigstrasse 34 has been offering living space and attention to people who are not supposed to have a place in the city of the rich.
The house is a struggling place where people decide every day not to conform.

For 30 years, the Liebig 34 has been a place for people who are affected by patriarchal violence of various forms, affected by hostility against trans people and who are marginalized in other ways. In all this time, Liebig34 gave people who experience stalking a place of refuge, has mades rooms available for refugees, homeless women could knock on the door and in our guest room could rest a while from the cold and violence. Those affected by sexualized violence experience solidarity and protection at this place. people who do not conform to the binary gender order, or will find a space to unfold, which is not available in a heteronormatively structured society. Women and LGBTIQ – people in a precarious living situation could live in the Liebig34, while otherwise due to rental prices and discriminatory housing and move-in policies there was hardly a chance to gain a foothold in Berlin.

The new construction projects in this street and this city promise a supposedly ideal world, created for all those who have enough capital to escape the real contradictions and problems of this society. The Liebig 34 is a place where people cannot and do not want to afford this.

Over the years, the Liebig34 has become a place where people organize themselves and develop anarchist and feminist utopias together, such as how a life without patriarchal and structural violence could look like. In Berlin there are hardly any possibilities for people to organize themselves in this form of solidary togetherness. And above all, the Liebig is a house in which exclusively LGTBIQ people organize in this unique way. When it is getting evicted, it cannot be replaced.

Fewer and fewer of these unique places that help Berlin achieve its image as a diverse and culturally diverse city are still in existence, and they have to make way for luxury buildings and capital investments. Through its mere presence, Liebig34 hinders the advancing displacement dynamics in the northern neighborhood, which has devastating effects on most residents. Many long-established residents have already had to move away. Others fear for their own existence in the neighborhood with the imminent eviction of our house. The Dorfplatz and the Liebig are a place for many people who cannot find a place in the city of the rich. An attack on this house is an attack on all these people.

As anarchists, feminists and antifascists, we are in conflict and confrontation with this capitalist state and its organs of repression. Therefore, we do not demand a solution from above but rather an approach from below.

The Liebig34 has been an integral part of this neighborhood for 30 years. She has helped shape it, entertained it, teased it and pointed out contradictions.

The Liebig34 is sand in the gears of advancing gentrification. She is colorful, she is resistant, she is a survivor who bravely carries on, even though she is constantly exposed to attacks from outside. Be it police harassment, sexist violence, arson attacks or other Nazi attacks – Liebig34 does not give up. It remains loyal to itself, despite police attempts to demoralize it and political power struggles for profitable urban space.

In Berlin there is currently an unscrupulous wave of evictions against self-organized projects that will have a devastating effect on the neighborhoods. After the eviction of the syndicate in Neukoelln, an eviction order has now also been obtained against the Mutiny (Meuterei) bar and the self-organized youth center Potse.

That there is a strong reaction to this and that these places are to be defended in different ways, from creative to militant, is not surprising, but simply necessary. Here, people fear for housing, collective places of organization and solidarity, but also for the future of this city. Because once these houses and projects are gone, we can cannot bring them back again. The Liebig34 is a symbol for a city from below, a symbol of solidarity and freedom, it is about cohesion, about queer life, about feminist struggles. Liebig is part of the feminist history of Berlin, part of the history of the squatters, its walls are telling stories of 30 years of creativity, non-conformity and solidarity.

In times of increasing right-wing conservative and neo-fascist attacks, Liebigstr. 34 stands up against racist violence, actively defends itself against far-right structures and stands for diversity and tolerance.

Above all, Liebig34 is a place that has shaped the lives of so many people. The many different creative expressions of solidarity that the house receives every day from all corners of the world clearly show how many people identify with the struggles and ideas of Liebig34 and how painful the loss would be if the house would be evicted.

The eviction of Liebig34 is an act of violence, because to take people their living and shelter space by force is inhuman. But the Liebig34 is not just a house that is inhabited, the Liebig34 is a house that is loved and lived, day after day, for 30 years. And places that you love, you don’t give up so easily. You fight for them, with all means. With all your power. And that is exactly what we will do. We will not voluntarily give up this house but rather defend every part of our utopia that is manifested in concrete.

Liebig34 lives. Liebig34 stays.