Working together across privilege

Eden Womensday 2021: "No matter how, we have to keep ourself strong" by The bridge radio

Waiting Across Privileges / exhibited in Kunsthal C in Stockholm 2022

Here you will listen to an excerpt of an interview with scholar and activist Vanessa Thompsen, where she talks about the concept of Intersectionality (Kimberly Crenshaw) and Intersectionality of Struggles (Angela Davis). Listen to the full program here: https://soundcloud.com/bridgeradio/intersectionality-of-struggles-with-vanessa-thompson Vanessa Thompson is Dr. des at Göethe University at the institute of sociology (Frankfurt)and was one of the persons in a panel at Bandung du Nord in Paris in beginning of May 2018. The panel was called “Effects of racism on oppressed femininities and masculinities: how to articulate them and fight against them together?” Some of the reporters from the Bridge Radio where there and we felt the need and urgency to continue this talk in our activism groups to transmit it to people who where not able to attend the conference.

Recording of a discussion in The Bridge Radio during a dinner where the members reflect over the care that takes place within The Bridge Radio. In the conversation, the collective think about how their own care needs change over time and what happens when those involved in the collective age and require more care. The sound and installation exhibited 2022 in Kalmar Kunstmuseum, SE.

Here you will listen to a speech by Siroos Azizi Zadeh the father of the family who forcefully by the Danish state was separated from his wife, when she and two of their children were attempted to be deported to Iran. The family is still separated and Ghadam detained in Ellebæk prison. About the demonstration on the 2nd of April: "On April 2nd 2022, we call to the streets everyone who want to stand up against Denmark's differential and discriminatory approach to refugees. Racism and oppression has been allowed to be passed as laws for far too long. And now the hypocrisy has become clearer than ever." Read more about the demonstration here: https://www.facebook.com/events/541407163916846?ref=newsfeed

18th of May 2021 The Syrian community in Denmark started af 14 days long sit-in protest in front of the Danish parliament. They are resisting and protesting the decision of sending Syrian refugees back to Damaskus and are advokating for a more human refugee agenda in Denmark. Listen to their demands and join them the weeks to come.

“It is a shame for a democratic place like Denmark to have a place like this, with people like us - Who cannot live, but are not dead.” 21st of October 2020 the families living in deportation center Avnstrup in Denmark invited activists and supporters to join the first protest against the endless rules in the deportation regime in Denmark. They are fighting for a normal live outside the camps in the normal society.

Deportation camps are systemic racism! In this program we speak to the spokeswoman of Black Lives Matter in Denmark, Bwalya Sørensen and our friends from Sjælsmark about the state racism in connection to asylum camps and deportation camps in Denmark and the daily experiences of racism from staff in the camps.

In the agreement with the leftwing parties last summer, the new government in Denmark promised to get the children out of Sjælsmark. All families have during the summer holidays been moved to Center Avnstrup in the woods outside of Roskilde. Though the center has no fences or military exercises in the area - a new set of rules are applied for the adults living with their families in these corridors. You have to check in with the staff two times a day. In the morning and in the afternoon. Making it nearly impossible for adults to manage to go into town to visit friends and families because the center is located in a remoted area. If they do not check in it can be seen as a criminal offence. This center can very easily incriminate a large group of refugees only for not checking in electronically two times a day. The rules are meant to keep people in the center and are limiting their freedom of movement severely.

We can’t breath. In the aftermath of the brutal police killing of George Floyd by the american police we urge you to listen to your fellow beings in your community who is being subjected to racism! Listen and acknowledge their experiences instead of doubting it! Racism exits very much in Denmark and Europe. Especially in relation to the asylum system. 
In this program three black people living in deportation center Sjælsmark are discussing racism with a fellow activist from Copenhagen.

In this program we talk about the effects when refugees and asyluum seekers are moved around endlessly between camps in Denmark. The families living in Sjælsmark are suppose to move to center Avnstrup after the summer. This means all single people living in Avnstrup are now being moved to Sjælsmark. In this program we invited two of the people who have recently moved into Sjælsmark from center Avnstrup. One of our guests has been moving around 8 camps in the 3 years he has been applying for asylum in Denmark! “It is a kind of way of playing games on the refugees. You start all over again and again and again.”

This speech was made during the demonstration by black lives matter Denmark in Copenhagen. Sunday the 7th of June 2020

This speech was made during the demonstration by black lives matter Denmark in Copenhagen. Sunday the 7th of June 2020

The Bridge Radio is collecting testimonies, conducting interviews and producing online programs with our friends and allies in the rest of Europe during the corona crisis. In this edition we are hearing testimonies from women* living in asylum and detention camps in Germany and Denmark, sharing experiences, information, demands and possibilities of actions to make awareness about the rights of women* living in these camps.

The Bridge Radio is collecting testimonies, conducting interviews and producing online programs with our friends and allies in the rest of Europe during the corona crisis. In this edition we are hearing testimonies of what is going on in the detention camps Sjælsmark and Kærshovedgaard in Denmark and talking about the limitations and posiblities of organizing resistance against the new Home Travel Agency the Danish Integration Ministry announced this week.

"Our Movement Is Loud" is an experimental radioplay in 4 channels, and was made as part of the "Choreographies Of The Social" Exhibition in Stockholm in 2019. Our Movement Is Loud produced collectively by people with and without Danish citizenship. They are linked to each other through their experience of the asylum system in Denmark. The audio installation consists of different perspectives, positions and voices that coincide in a story about the fight against expulsion. These interwoven stories take place in an imaginary scenario and are told by activists working inside and outside the asylum camps.

Speech by Baba - Mohamed Hirabe by The bridge radio

The Bridge Radio is collecting testimonies, conducting interviews and producing online programs with our friends and allies in the rest of Europe during the corona crisis. This week we talked with our friends in Germany from the collective Lampedusa Hamborg and Seed of Solidarity from Berlin to compare the situtation of the Danish asylum and detention camps with the life of migrants in Germany.

A resident of the Danish detention center Kærshovedgaard in Jylland is explaining the situation during the coronavirus and calling for solidarity! Listen to his statement in Danish and support the fight to close these detention centers! Let us make this corona situation an opportunity to release all migrants from detention and grant them equal rights of citizens with access to healthcare, the job market and education!

An english speaking ally of the working collective of street vendors in Barcelona explains the situation and the new ways of organizing work among street vendors in Barcelona during the corona crisis.

The Bridge Radio is collecting testimonies, conducting interviews and producing programs with our friends and allies in the rest of Europe during the corona crisis. This week we talked with undocumented migrants living in Amsterdam and the organization City Rights Amsterdam about the issues of living in the city as an undocumented migrant during the corona outbreak. They need permanent shelter all day as fast as possible in order to protect themselves and prevent the spread of the virus among each other.

“I WOULD STAY HOME IF I HAD ONE” 

Migrants living in the streets of Amsterdam are asking for proper housing to keep safe from the corona-virus outbreak.
 “We are sleeping 90 people together in the evening in a winter shelter, but in the morning we are kicked out. 
We dont have anywhere to go, we have no money even to buy things to protect ourselves from the corona virus. 
We are afraid to go out also. All the places we are used to go to are closed. We don’t even have a place to go to toilet.”

The organization Amsterdam City Rights are trying their best to find housing for homeless migrants in the city to be safe during the corona outbreak

'Let's United an fight this Corona Virus' - this is a message from an inhabitant in the Deporation Camp Sjælsmark in Denmark. We hear about the conditions in the camp - lack of access to hygiene articles and lack of possibility of taking safety measures. 'You rejected us. You have closed my border. You shattered away my life. You put me in jail.' - Isolation and the restrictions of mobility, which is something many experience these days, is an everyday reality for people in Sjælsmark. Right now, people in Sjælsmark, Kærshovedgård and Ellebæk are in a situation without the possibility to follow the general safety information given under COVID-19. The Bridge Radio is gathering statements and experiences from the asyluum and detention camps around Europe during the Corona virus outbreak.

On this international womens day we celebrate and discuss the issues of migrating women, trans and queer people and their fight for basic rights and freedom in camps and in their everyday life. Listen and learn about the daily fights of women in the asylum system and how they celebrate womens day.

Now with the coronavirus many people across Europe and beyond are placed in isolation. However for many people this is an everyday reality. People in the asylum camp and migrant detentions centers, have been stuck for many years without neither the freedom to move nor to stay. The Bridge Radio are collect statements, experiences and demands from different people in the asylum camps across Europe which we will publish as a radio program. With this current caranteen, it is a further isolation and precarization. Due to duety of registration and other types measures in migrant detention facilities, people are stuck in places without adecuate safety precaustion, this includes living in spaces with more persons than what is currently being recommended by several European States as safety measure. It is a double isolation often without equal access to health care and rights. Our demands as the Bridge Radio Collective are: Decent and proper housing for all - not refugee and detention camps! Equal and free access to healthcare and hygiene! No forced relocation! /// Stay safe so we can stay dangerous together!

This sound piece is an edited version of a longer four channel sound installation we set up in front of the parliament in Stockholm, Sweden in august 2019 as a part of the festival: "Choreographies of the Social. This chapter deals with the issues and violence of the danish asylum camps and deportation. Our Movements are Loud - 2. Chapter, "Life and resistance in the asylum camps" The sound piece is the 2nd chapter of the Bridge Radio's radio-play 'Our Movements are Loud' which was produced collectively by different people, with and without Danish citizenship, connected with each other through their experience of the Danish asylum system. In our practice the process of working collectively across privileges is both a tool and a theme. The radio play consists of various perspectives, positions and voices that converge towards a narrative of struggles against deportation. These interwoven stories, told by activists operating from within and without the asylum camps, take place within an imaginary scenario. In our work we target the racist structures we experience within Fortress Europe. By focusing on life in the asylum camps – the real-life materialization of aforementioned structures – we reveal how segregation between people with and without European citizenship, with and without rights and privileges, is constructed and maintained. Through the play we want to make visible the daily fight of people being subjected to these policies and think how to build collective strategies to disrupt and break these oppressive structures, without centering on whiteness. The stories in the radio play are based on real events that have taken place in asylum camps, airplanes and in larger protests that The Bridge Radio and its network has participated. And we use both reportage, poetry and real life experiences in our work. The process of creating the radio play started with a workshop in writing and drama for radio with writer Athena Farrokhzad, director Saga Gärde and sound designer Arash Pandi. Contributors: Texts and voices: Laila, Serafin, Cedric, Barly, Kirstine, Arash, Nanna, Arendse, Shakira, Fayeza, Henri, Karima, Nanna, Kathrine and Allan. Sound recordings from the Bridge Radio Archive: Quotes by Audre Lorde, Toussaint L’Ouverture, Nicholas De Genova and Bertolt Brecht. Radio drama workshop: Athena Farrokhzad and Saga Gärde. Recordings and editing: The Bridge Radio. Sound design: Arash Pandi.

Saturday the 30th of November activists from the four Danish deportation camps came together with activists with Danish citizenship in Copenhagen to demand that the new government close all the deportation camps in Denmark and stop imprisonment of refugees. The Danish centers Avnstrup, Sjælsmark, Ellebæk, and Kærshovedgaard are all in fact pressuring people inhumanely in order to make them leave Denmark. In this program we invited activist Shakira from Sjælsmark, Narges and Daniel from Kærshovedgaard and activist from Copenhagen Jonas Eika in the studio after the protest to discuss the situation in the camps and develop ideas for how to better organize between the camps. You will also listen to some of the speeches during the protest. Listen and stay tuned

The Bridge Radio is now a part of the 2nd floor in Folkets Hus, Nørrebro together with 25 groups practicing activism and resistance against racial structures, patriarchy and capitalism. In this program we are sending live from the opening of the space that took place Friday the 15th of november 2019. Listen to some of the groups that are part of organizing together in the 2nd floor and listen to the visions of this new space. The Bridge Radio also activist from Folkets Hus - including one that took part in occupying the house almost 50 years ago - to get a sense of how the house has changed.

Reporters from The Bridge Radio went to Departure Center Avnstrup to talk we people staying there about the current conditions and the relation between the Deportation Camps in Denmark to better understand the functions of the Danish Deportation Regime. Center Avnstrup is placed in the building of a former hospital 20 km from Roskilde and has been running as an asylum center for many years but was in 2018 changed to a Departure Center for people who have had their asylum case rejected. This was part of the Financial Budget by the former Government and Dansk Folkeparti with the intention of creating efficiency and the possibility of sanctioning those who do not collaborate with the police according to their standards. Red Cross, who run the center, explains that people who collaborate with the police about their deportation will stay be in Avnstrup during this process while those who do not collaborate with the police about their deportation will be transferred to the deportation centers Sjælsmark, Kærshovedgaard or Ellebæk. At our visit we wanted to ask what this collaboration actually is and what the difference is between the centers. We talked with people about their personal situation and the unclear demands of 'collaboration with the police'. Listen and share.

Center Sandvad is an asylum camp north of Vejle in Jylland, where families with children seeking asylum live. The Bridge Radio visited friends in the Sandvad camp in July and did this short reportage. Hear Eden who lives in the camp show us around and explain about life in the camp, and hear interviews with other people living there.

"Det er fuldstændig forkert at de har sagt at folk vil gerne blive i Sjælsmark" (...) "If we stay in Sjælsmark we feel that every second we are in jail" (...) "Jeg tror de har sagt det, fordi de har et job her og får gode penge." - The residents of deportation center Sjælsmark answer back! This wednesday an employee of Sjælsmark from Kriminalforsorgen was in national media talking on behalf of the residents - saying that the families and children don't want to move out of Sjælsmark. It is lazy and shows a racist bias of the danish media to let an employee from Kriminalforsorgen who is afraid of losing his job spread lies and talk on behalf of people in the way it was done this week! The families want to leave Sjælsmark and the few children who are in danish school would like to stay in these classes and move somewhere where they can continue their education.

In conversation with Nicholas De Genova - about the border spectacle by The bridge radio

Institutional Racism & Racist Bias in Media - with Bwalya Sørensen, Black Lives Matter DK by The bridge radio

We as a black communities in the west and beyond, have very often expressed our violent experience with the western powers over it's violent policies, social exclusions and state racism towards black or brown minorities, indigenous people and the current refugees/ migrants in Europe. On this program we will be talking to Tom, who is a member of the initiative seeking justice for brother oury jalloh. First the bridge radio collective is sending out our condolences and solidarity to the family of William Tonou-Mbobda and his family. William lost his life in the hands of the security guards of UKA hospital institution in Germany. We use this occasion of pain and tragedy in our community to remember those our sisters and brothers this western discriminatory and racist institutions in this society have killed violently or silently, at the hands of western police officers, the judicial system, the prison system, the refugee detention camps etc. As we remember William Tonou-Mbobda, who the hospital institution has blamed for his violent death, we also remember those the western institutions has forced to take their own life and blamed them for it. People who their names are not being mentioned or remembered in any manner. We call out the danish institutions and individuals working on a daily basis in the danish refugees and migrants detention camps, those who work within the Western institutions that makes it possible for the danish/ European systemic racial discrimination laws and policies practically possible to take a humane moral approch in their daily duties. Here at the bridge radio, we intend to educate the common western citizens of their institutions. To show that western law and practices does not only hurt and kill back/ brown bodies, but it also hurts, kills and dehumanizes the western citizens directly.

In this second edition of Bridge Radio serie Knowledge is Not White, we spoke with Tara and Ahmed about their experience in the educational system and the exclusion of their knowledge. This program was broadcasted live the 1st of March 2019.

In this program, we will focus on the production of knowledge and question the hierarchies of who can produce recognizable knowledge in our society and whose knowledge are acknowledged? You will hear a converstation with rapper and activist Melz (London), activist Camilo (Hamburg) about decolonising of knowledge and finally you will hear an interview with the funder of the Silent University (a solidarty based knowledge exchange platform by refugees, asylum seekers and migrants) Ahmet Ögüt. In the the last few years, a lot of western academies have spoken and written lots about the refugees and migrants current crisis in europe. Many of the western academies are assumed to have the necessary insight knowledge and educational background to write their own true version of history of indigenous people, minority groups and currently the refugee and migrant crisis. The theories of western academics, through public education and that of the mainstream media, have played a big role in setting the standards, in shaping public policies and opinion. They are framing the public current understanding on who are identified and qualified as a refugees and those who are economic migrants. Our work at The Bridge Radio is to continue to create the media space to challenge and deconstruct the public perception and stereotype which views refugees, migrants, minority groups and indigenous people as illiteracy, uneducated to the european standard and unknowledgeable. In the Bridge Radio we want to question and break this. Here more of Melz music on soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/melz-artist Check out this TED talk with Melz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeKHOTDwZxU and read an article they wrote on decolonising the academy https://medium.com/@melz.artist/decolonising-the-academy-a-movement-without-borders-7a25c071db6e?fbclid=IwAR3Tu1kl-dJ_-Vfv8NBf7aCpVylH1vtFJKlQwsflfr6pC3GzV_hmxKpK5Zo For more on the Silent University: http://thesilentuniversity.org/ https://www.facebook.com/TheSilentUniversity/ *image from the Silent University wagon during the We'll come United - United Against Racism - Parade in Hamburg 2018

Demonstration in front of UN in Copenhagen, December 18. 2018.

Demonstration in front of Danish Immigration Service, Copenhagen. November 27. 2018

This is an interview with We Are Here (Wij Zijn Hier - Amsterdam), made during the We'll Come United Parade the 29th of September 2018. In the interview we talk about their many years of self-organised struggle and organisation. Follow them through: https://www.facebook.com/WijZijnHier/?fref=pb&hc_location=profile_browser

This project took place in Brazil in August 2018. This program was finalised in December 2018.

#1 Demonstration: Support the children in Sjælsmark at Bertel Thorvaldsens Plads in Copenhagen. The first demonstration in a series of demonstrations where people living in Sjælsmark Deportation Camp are mobilised to protest against the inhumane asylum system they are forced to live in.

Tuesday 20th of November people from Sjælsmark are going to protest at the danish parliament. For the rights of children, for the rights to a life outside of the deportation camp. They invite you to stand with them.

These last days, residents of Sjælsmark deportation camp have boycotted school, kindergarten, the cafeteria and meldepligt. Here you can hear why. Sjælsmark is an old military building turned into deportation camp for rejected asylum seekers in the beginning of 2015. The camp is part of the government's "motivational measures", which intend to motivate rejected asylum seekers to leave Denmark, by placing them under unbearable conditions. Several times, residents of Sjælsmark have organised to protest these conditions, and demanded the closing of the camps and opening of their cases.

This is in an interview with Salah and Abimbola from the Silent University in Hamburg, made during the We'll Come United Parade the 29th of September 2018. In the interview we talk about their project and politics of knowledge.

In June, the Bridge Radio had the chance to talk to David Otieno from Kenyan Peasants League and Mateus Costa Santos from La Via Campesina Southern and Eastern Africa about the struggle for food sovereignty

What you are about to hear is an interview with activists Napoli and La Toya who is part of the migrant struggle in Hamburg and Berlin, recorded during the 'Let Fear Go Tour' during their visits in Aalborg, Denmark. The Bridge Radio has asked the two activist about the position of migrant women in the migrant struggle - both about being in the asylum camp and being an activist. They will be sharing analysis, experiences and advice.

In this program, we will be talking about deportation and detention, specifically around two deportation camps in Denmark called Kæsrhovedgård and Sjælsmark. We are very happy to bring an interview with Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan, were we will talk about post-colonial critic of the human rights, selective memory politics, the right to have rights and the deportation camps. First in the program, you will be hearing an interview with one of the researchers of the report 'Stop killing us slowly' Annika Lndberg and Shakira, one of the recidents in Sjælsmark, one of the two deportation camps in Denmark. The occasion for today's program is the launch of a report today the 7th of september 2018, called ‘Stop Killing Us Slowly - a research report on the motivational enhancement measures and the criminalization of rejected asylum seekers in Denmark’ - written by researchers and activist who are part of the Copenhagen-based group, freedom of movements. Prof. Dr. Nikita Dhawan is an Indian academic and Professor of Political Science (Political Theory and Gender Studies) at the University of Innsbruck. From 2009 to 2016, she was Director of the Frankfurt Research Center for Postcolonial Studies at the University of Frankfurt. Her central research areas centre around Transnational Feminism, Global Justice, Human Rights, Democracy and Decolonization.

In this 3. program about the externalisation of EU border policies, we will be bringing you an interview with research at Stop Wapenhandel, Mark Akkerman. We will talk about the companies who profit from the policy of externalisation, how some achieve double-gain of the so-called refugee crises and come to establish themselves as counciling experts in EU. In second part of the program, we will talk with Reduan an activist in Ceuta, one of the Spanish enclaves on the African mainland with border to Morocco. As part of the externalisation policies of the EU, Morocco has what is called 'advanced status partnership' with Europe since 2001 which gives political advantages in trade and political affairs. The European Union accounts for more than half of Morocco’s trade and EU provides morocco with billions of Euro in aid for security and development. The border between Morocco and Spain is one of the most fortified borders of the EU and one that has served as a laboratory for EU’s policies of externalization proving inspiration for the EU-Turkey agreement for example. Redaun is part of watchthemed (an online mapping platform to monitor the deaths and violations of migrants' rights at the maritime borders of the EU) and Alarm phone (a hotline for people’s boat in distress, pushing authorities to carry out rescue missions). He also does media work around the situation in the Spanish colonies. We have asked him about his work in Ceuta and how he sees the situation there. Thanks to Daniel Cariola for the translation. Links to research by Mark Akkerman:' - Expanding the Fortress, https://www.tni.org/en/publication/expanding-the-fortress - How the security industry reaps the rewards of E.U. migration control https://www.tni.org/en/article/how-the-security-industry-reaps-the-rewards-of-eu-migration-control

This is an interview with Bino an activist and radio producers from We are Born Free Empowerment Radio based in Berlin. He has been part of a long protest of migrants and refugees in Germany, starting with a 600 km protest march from different camps to Berlin and a tent occupation in Orianienplatz, Berlin. One key demand of the struggle was to abolish the recidents pflicht (mandatory recidensy), a ban on people seeking asylum to stay within the administrative district where their asylum case is being considered. We have asked Bino about the power of radio, about how their protest in Berlin started and his experience of resistance. This interview was made and recorded by reporters from the bridge radio during the international conference of migrants and refugees in Hamburg 2016.

In this program you will hear an interview with Martin Lemberg-Pedersen assistant professor at Aalborg University in Copenhagen about the EU politics of externalisation of borders, it's post-colonial connections and who profits. We will bring an interview with activist and critical journalist Ibrahim Diallo from Air Info and Saraha FM in Agadez, Niger about how he see the impacts of EU's externalisation policies in Agedez and the activism he does to counteract these policies. We are lucky to have Ali from Lampedusa in Hamburg to translate English/French and come with his comments based on his activist experience.

In this program we will talk about some of the stereotypes against migrant women subjected to violence in Denmark. Our two guests Laila Vetterlain and Therese Christensen are working for equality for migrant women in the women crisis center Danner and are involved in the new initiative MOVE (Migration Obstacles Violence Equality). We will listen to testemonies of violence in the communities to have a talk about strategies to break violence structures.