20.10.2023 | SHIELD & SHINE | NO NORMALIZATION OF EXTREME RIGHT-WING POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC PARLIAMENTS!
The new declaration "Shield & Shine" of DIE VIELEN can still be signed in order to resolutely confront the growing right-wing extremism together.
The bbk berlin is part of the movement DIE VIELEN and supports the new campaign Shield & Shine:
“Art creates a space to change the world.” This is the first sentence of the joint declaration of DIE VIELEN (THE MANY). With this truth in mind, DIE VIELEN are issuing an urgent call once more to make the world shine brightly for pluralism and democracy. Let’s make a stand together against right-wing extremism! It is high time that we take action once again. Survey results are indicating: the extremist right-wing party AfD is receiving more and more support with its nationalistic and hate-driven agenda throughout the nation and in multiple states. Right-wing extremists want to eradicate democracy. Not on our watch!
NEVER AGAIN can theaters, operas and orchestras, museums, literary institutions and cultural centers or movie theaters and media do their work in the service of anti-democrats and fascists. NOW is the time for us to rise up against this contempt for humanity and the destruction of our democratic culture. We are calling on the 5,000 arts and culture institutions that signed the declaration of DIE VIELEN: Shield & Shine! Let’s raise thousands of democratic shields in all of the federal states!
Let’s plan new campaigns – locally, regionally and throughout the entire nation! With banners, choirs and shields, we will resolutely and visibly take to the streets to protect democracy and the rights for minorities anchored within it. We will realize days of action and a major demonstration in 2025. Until then, the signatory cultural institutions, groups and members of DIE VIELEN will go on demonstrative and performative shield walks. Let’s talk about the risks to democracy, about violence we have experienced and the necessary solidarity.
We are going to act now together so that exclusion, contempt and hate do not take root in our government: we will go from the stage, the studio, the library, the cultural center, the music club and the offices to the streets, our shields, banners and protest signs in hand, and appeal a million times to the community of DIE VIELEN.
DIE VIELEN is inviting ensembles, unions, collectives and curatorial teams, orchestras, stage hands, audience members, art associations, opera houses, lobbying associations, interest groups, sociocultural centers and all VIELEN to join us. The cultural institutions can provide the framework for this. Let’s take the time to create a community! Let’s form alliances between institutions in regions with a high number of right-wing extremist voters and those with a low number of right-wing extremist voters and mutually support each other. We have to use the spaces and resources that are available to us right now and assume responsibility.
A simple shield will bring us together. Under this shield, we will create a small space to change the world. We want to invite people whom we do not know yet to join us for part of the way under a protective shield. In conversation, we will expand our perspectives, our empathy, our understanding and, just as much, our clarity against every form of discrimination. We do not experience the threat that comes from right-wing ideologies with a contempt for human beings equally, but they threaten us all! Tolerance of intolerance is not democracy!
With MANY shields, artistic assemblies and actions, we want to shield democracy from anti-democrats and protect as well as further develop our future as an open, plural society. Together, we will debate about the challenge as to how the democracies can finally leave the nationalistic age behind them and what conditions can be created to ensure the co-determination of all inhabitants. We are many, every single one of us! With many small shields, we can build one big protective shield for the freedom of THE MANY!
The arts remain the province of THE MANY!
AS CO-INITIATORS, THE CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS, GROUPS AND ASSOCIATIONS COMMIT THEMSELVES TO:
- Organizing local, regional or interstate shield walks.
- Issuing regional calls to action and realizing these together with a variety of members of the local communities.
- Conducting conversations with the goal of providing information about the threats to democracy through right-wing extremism.
- Conducting debates regarding opportunities for the further development of a democracy of a global, plural society.
- Creating time and space within their own institution, cultural institutions or group for the preparation and realization of actions and discourse.
- Establishing sponsorships to regions with a high number of right-wing extremist voters.
- Participating within the decentralized days of action in September 2025 and in the central Shield & Shine! event.
- Motivating others to take part in demonstrations through the country as well as organizing them.
Please send the name of the institution, group, association, first name and last name of the contact person and contact email address to: mail@dievielen.de
The signing associations, initiatives, art and cultural institutions commit themselves to create space for discourse and to carry out actions especially in regions with right-wing extremist voters. In September 2025, decentralized action days will take place, in which the signatories will participate and call for central Shield & Shine! - demonstrations nationwide and will participate in shaping them: