#363: The BVG strike will finally end this weekend

Also a few notes on Berlin cops

Feb 21, 2025

The boundaries are no longer safe! Merz and Weidel … embracing. Photo: Center for Political Beauty

Dear 20 Percent,

I try to focus on Berlin news but it’s hard to ignore the federal election Sunday, especially since it could affect us immigrants/expats with less friendly immigration policy.

And my social media bubble is full of euphoria that the most-presumed outcome may be preventable. The most presumed outcome is a coalition between the conservative CDU and the center-left SPD with the CDU’s Friedrich Merz as chancellor. Merz wants to abandon recent immigration reforms (dual citizenship, for example) and has already once buddied up with the AfD, which is … bad.

But “election math” is a little like “girl math” and a new possibility has emerged — a coalition between the SPD, leftists Die Linke and the environmental Die Grüne. That may sound familiar to you — it would be the same “red-red-green” coalition that ruled Berlin from 2016 to 2023.

The SPD’S Olaf Scholz would remain chancellor since the SPD would be the senior partner, though that sounds weird for a party polling at 16%. This new constellation is thanks to a surge by Die Linke because of the phenomenal social media presence of its top candidate Heide Reichinnek as well as Merz’s dalliances with the right.

It will be a more interesting election than usual, especially considering the bizarre and terrifying foreign relations about-faces from the US.

Maurice will have more on Tuesday and we’ll have a special podcast as well.

Have a good weekend — it’s supposed to get warmer.

Andrew

The strikes could get worse in March

Welcome to Day 2 of the BVG strike or as we like to call it — I-was-going-to-work-from-home-Friday-anyway. The strike will end tonight at 3am and is compounded Friday by a handful of other strikes among public workers, according to Tagesspiegel. Trash workers aren’t picking up regular trash, organic waste and recyclables (in Germany, you even have to separate press releases about trash) and workers are striking at power and heat utilities as well as our water company. Union Verdi wants €750 per month for BVG workers as well as an additional month’s pay (known as 13th month’s pay) — no details on what the workers at other public institutions want. BVG offered €225 more per month, according to taz. If BVG doesn’t make a reasonable offer by March 22 the workers will go on permanent strike. The strike is having unintended consequences: an S-Bahn was so full that emergency personnel had trouble performing CPR on an S-Bahn passenger who collapsed in Adlershof Thursday — the rescusitation attempt was unsuccessful 😢.

Bad cops

Hats off to Berlin prosecutors for reeling in the Berlin police who once again attempted to curtail freedom of expression in our city-state: Cops Wednesday forced the Gorki Theater to remove a massive poster depicting top AfD politician Alice Weidel making out with top CDU politician Friedrich Merz, according to the Morgenpost. The poster urged people to vote in the federal election Sunday (see above). Cops said the theater had to remove the poster to prevent a possible crime — the crime being insulting someone — even though neither Weidel nor Merz had complained. The poster was created by activist artist collective The Center for Political Beauty and was an homage to the most famous (but aging) Berlin grafitti on The Wall — Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev smooching East German premier Erich Honecker. Prosecutors reviewed the poster and ordered its return. Das ist, as the song goes, von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt (It’s protected by the freedom of artistic expression).

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Good cops

Can I criticize the cops and commend them in one newsletter? Yes, I can. Because I’m a thinking adult. It sounds like a good crime drama or one of those US police bodycam videos: Berlin police stumbled upon two men trying to break open an ATM near the bus station in Westend Thursday afternoon but the pair fled in a VW and a Skoda. Cops discovered them moments later at a nearby gas station and used their cruisers to block the cars in. The perp in the Skoda rammed his car free and absconded. The VW also tried to ram its way free but undercover cops then shot out the tires of the car and arrested the 39-year-old driver. German police should maybe share their bodycams with US colleagues because the outcome on the other side of the pond would have been very, very different.

🍺 🥨 Germany-wide news 🥨 🍺

🩴 Birkenstocks are footwear, not art
🦹‍♀️ Immigration doesn’t increase crime
🦸‍♀️ More about that Heidi Reichinnek person
🏙️ How Germany’s poorest city is countering the AfD

Factoid

Well, a god may have helped but who knows. Photo: German federal archive via CC3.0

About that famous grafitti … The mural “My god, help me survive this deadly love” was painted on the eastern side of Die Mauer in 1990 by Russian artist Dmitri Vrubel and restored by the artist in 2009. The painting is a copy of a 1979 photo of a kiss between Brezhnev and Honnecker during celebrations for the 30-year relationship between the Soviet Union and East Germany. Economics, not a god, ultimately ended the relationship but no word on Leonid and Erich’s amorous connections.

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