News → No Nation Truck

Second Update from Ventimiglia

19. May 2025

The amazing NNT truck is leaving Ventimiglia to support in other places.

We wanna continue our work here and need your help to do so. We already got a new van, but we need help to fill it.

The following items can be brought DURING MAY to one of our donation stations:
– power strips
– phone chargers (mostly USB-C, some micro USB, few apple)
– cutting boards
– knifes (butter but also sharp ones)
– forks
– small and big spoons
– plates (deep, lightweight, durable, NOTHING breakable)
– reusable plastic cups
– smartphones
– headlamps
– coffee & tee cans
– big bialetti

#### BERLIN ####

where? Potse, Columbiadamm 10, 12101 Berlin // when? Tuesday 18-21, Wednesday 19-21 and Sunday 17-20 a clock.

where? Fischladen, Rigaerstr. 83, 10247 Berlin // when? Wednesday to Sunday 19-21:30 a clock.

#### LUDWIGSBURG (STUTTGART) ####

where? DemoZ, Wilhemstraße 45, 71638 Ludwigsburg when? Wednesday 19:30-22:30 a clock.

#### LEIPZIG #####

Please contact us to arrange a drop-off.

#### YOUR TOWN??? ####

We are looking for additional donation places. Located somewhere between Berlin and Ventimiglia, Italy.

Please contact us directly, if you can donate any of the items below. If you live on the way we might be able to pick them up directly at your place.
– 1 – 2 car batteries
– 2 pavillions
– beer benches and tables
– gas cooker (suitable to cook coffee)
– mobile wifi router

First Update from Ventimiglia

19. April 2025

Since our arrival here our main focus has been in distribution of goods, electricity and a space to hangout to people bordered under the bridge in Ventimiglia, Italy. Because of racist politics, but also racist attitudes of the residents here, there is no free access to electricity or wifi – which becomes an even more essential thing for people who are mostly far away from their families and loved ones.

We also observed that offering people a free space to hang out was very welcomed, especially in times where third spaces are dying almost everywhere and become even more inaccessible for so many because of rising racist and classist ideologies.

To continue our work your donation is highly appreciated

Senlima e.V.
GLS Bank, Bochum
Verwendungszweck: „No Nation Truck Off Piste“
IBAN: DE 05 4306 0967 1162 9120 00
BIC: GENODEM1GLS

Off-piste in Italy

25. March 2025

As announced, the truck is now back in action. Our Telegram subscribers are already familiar with them: the Off-Pisté Collective has been using the truck around Ventimiglia on the French-Italian border for their support work in the region since the end of February. The possibilities of the mobile infrastructure are fully used: generating solar power, charging mobile devices with the charging station and cooking hot meals. In addition, the collective was able to bring back many donations from Berlin, for example in the form of rainproof clothing and first aid equipment. Many thanks to everyone who gave their helping hand!

Since 2015 during the start of the european border crisis, ventimiglia as a bordercity has been a place of transit but also a point where people get pushbacked to. Pushbacks are violent and oftentimes illegal and th epeople that are bordered into this territory face harsh conditions, police brutality and racist hostility.

The pushbacks happen both locally but also from further points in central Europe. The people getting pushbacked are facing inhumane treatment. In Ventimiglia they get boxed into a container box jail at the border of the city and are usually made to be there for hours and in worst case days without sufficient warmth or nourishment or space. After incarceration people are not given maps or directions and are just released somewhere in the middle of a mountain road far from the cities.

In the city of Ventimiglia there is also a makeshift self-iniated camp for people on the move who either are continuously pushbacked or seeking asylum. Despite the fact that the state should offer accomodation to people in the asylum procedure, it often does not for many many many months and people are left to the very hostile conditions of living on the streets, and are not only subject to homelessness but also police persecution and the criminalization of homelessness and paperlessness. Here refugees are often not legally allowed to work and so are subject to financial poverty or instability, without stable access to physical or mental health services and facing unnerving concerns and uncertainity about the future of their lifes which is being determined by their legal status, which is decided by the same border complex who violates their basic right to life.

Off-pisté collective seeks to act in solidarity and mutual aid with the people who experience bordered repression. This border has damaged many lives. It has killed and continues to kill. The border is a violation of safety, dignity and human rights.

NNT starts building again

4. February 2025

#fuckAFD second strongest party? In parliament they talk about “permanent border controls”, “rejections”, “ deportation detention” and “influx limitation law”? This only encourages us to focus more on what we are best at: We build, we tidy up, we do repairs and MOT/TÜV so the truck will be ready. Everything seems to point to this: There will soon be something new here – and until then, we’re already feeding the algorithm.

Open letter on the living conditions in the Eisenhüttenstadt initial reception center

6. May 2024

For more than half a year, collectives and individuals have been meeting with residents of the initial reception center in Eisenhüttenstadt every two weeks. During the winter, it became clear that the living conditions in the accommodation are unacceptable. More and more people reported poor access to clothing, unacceptable food, a lack of transparency and legal advice. But also of abuse of power and racism on the part of the facility’s staff. This is why this letter was written at the end of March, addressed to the management of the facility and the Central Foreigners’ Registration Office as an offer to talk.

Instead of responding to the willingness to engage in dialog, a ban on visits was imposed on all people in the initial reception – with a few special exceptions.

Furthermore, in an interview in the local press, the head of the facility publicly denies all the points made in the letter: “There has not been one incident with a racist background in the last five years” – that is an incredible distortion of reality.

We remain open to discussion and will not let a visiting ban stop us from reporting on the conditions in the facility.

Banning all residents from visiting in response to publicizing the living conditions in the shelter is an illegitimate collective punishment and a further attack on the dignity of the residents! As collectives that support people on the run, as neighbors and individuals, we demand: The visit ban is unacceptable and must be lifted immediately!

You can read the full letter from Eisenhüttenstadt here:

Open Letter Version 1 – all languages

NNT goes Eisenhüttenstadt

9. December 2023

Barefoot and in flip-flops, a few men stood in front of our truck last week at freezing temperatures and in light snow when we drove to Eisenhüttenstadt for the first time. News quickly spread in the camp, where more than 1000 people are currently waiting for an asylum decision, and more and more people came out into the cold. At times, there were more than 50 people who mainly wanted to get into conversation.

There is little chance of entertainment here, they say, and no contact with the neighborhood or residents at all. We took the No Nation Truck to “Hütte” to find out what kind of support is needed, as we kept receiving reports of problems there. In conversation over warm tea, people told us about various problems in the camp:

No money: many are still waiting weeks, sometimes months, after entering the country for their first money, which they are actually entitled to from their first day in the camp. This restricts their already poor mobility even more, as people cannot even buy a bus ticket to get out of the camp.

Not enough clothes: The clothing storage room in the camp seems to exist, but is not accessible. Opening hours are unclear and poorly accessible, the room is poorly stocked. Many people have had no winter clothes for weeks and go outside in slippers or T-shirts even in the snow.

Isolated: The camp is located on the outskirts of Eisenhüttenstadt. There are no neighborhood centers or contact points that can be reached on foot. Many refugees search in vain for German courses and friendly contacts in the area.

Poor information situation: Independent legal advice in the camp is offered by an association that does a great job, but is very understaffed. Many people lack basic knowledge about the German asylum system, Dublin EU procedures and their rights. There are no workshops or notices in the camp to counteract this situation.

In general, communication in the camp between social workers and residents seems to be reduced to the bare minimum. Whether the food is halal, how to get clothes, where to find psychological help or what steps to take after arrival – there does not seem to be any information material in the residents’ languages and the staff apparently only speak the bare minimum with the refugees.

We have the impression that a lot is missing in Eisenhüttenstadt and that some things need to change. We do not intend to take over the tasks of the state here. Together with allied collectives such as the No Border Assembly, Women in Exile, the frach collective and Küfa groups, we want to create a space in the coming weeks where people can network effectively and support each other so that pressure can be put on the institution.

Living and arriving in Eisenhüttenstadt is inhumane and must become better!

Right to come, right to go, right to stay.

Next: German-Polish Border

28. November 2023

The No Nation Truck’s next destination is the German-Polish border, as the situation is getting worse here too. While Germany has so far paid other countries to do the “dirty work” of migration control in order to wash its own hands in innocence, at least from the outside, the open violence against illegalized immigrants is also increasing on our own doorstep.

We are currently monitoring developments on the German-Polish border with a watchful eye.

The corridor of the Balkan route has changed and now ends for many in Germany. This has led to increased border security on the German side of the border. Additionally, driven by concerns about the high election results of the AfD next year, the democratic parties are hunting for voters on the far right. This leads to a mix of blind actionism and false illusory solutions: more police controls, more police checkpoints, a noticeably increased presence in cities near the border, further tightening of the law. This growing pressure to present results leads to illegal pushbacks and risky highway chases with tragic accidents. Most recently, the press reported on police raids, sometimes involving a large contingent of 200 police officers to arrest a single person.

These developments raise a number of questions: How many people are in fact coming right now? And where are they coming from and why? Who benefits if we close our eyes and borders?

It is important to move away from the narrative that migration is a threat.

Migration is increasingly framed as a security problem by the countries of the so-called Global North and, as a result, racist images of migrants are reinforced. This is done, for example, by claiming that migrants bring more patriarchal attitudes to Germany and thus become a danger to “the German woman” (see the racist reporting on New Year’s Eve in Cologne). Currently, migrants are once again being turned into importers of anti-Semitism. But Simin Jawabreh already wrote very accurately about this in “Analyse & Kritik” (translated from German):

“It is astonishing that political representatives of this country, in which an industrial mass murder of six million Jews was carried out, dare to claim that anti-Semitism is something that comes from outside. There is no question that anti-Semitism is deadly and therefore threatening. However, if politicians were actually concerned with combating anti-Semitism, the last few years in this country would have looked different: When corona deniers marched through German cities with Reich flags and chanted “Juden-Presse”, when one right-wing extremist chat group after another was uncovered in the police force or when a politician like Hubert Aiwanger was rewarded with considerable gains in votes for having distributed anti-Semitic leaflets in his youth. Not to mention the fact that Nazis were elevated to offices for the protection of the constitution and that the wealth of a number of large German companies is based on Jewish forced labor.”

And it is not enough that migrants are labeled as a threat. At the same time, the experiences of people on the move are ignored and it is forgotten that we are talking about the lives of individuals, not numbers. This point has been repeated over and over again by civil society actors for years, but it cannot be said often enough: behind every number is a human life and for every person who drowns in the Mediterranean, there is a family mourning their loss. With the flood of information that comes at us daily via the media, we tend to forget this and become numb.

There has always been migration and there always will be.

There are currently around 110 million people on the move worldwide. The militarization of borders in the EU does not stop anyone from seeking a better life, but only worsens the situation of people on the move and makes safe travel more difficult. But as long as there are people, there will be migration and we need to move away from seeing it as a threat.

We see the propaganda against migrants in Germany, we see the shift to the far right and we see the democratic parties fishing on the right edge for voters. We are therefore networking more and more with the people living along the German-Polish border inside and outside the camps, we read the police tickers and local newspapers, we visit the border crossings and places more often and we know that others are already doing or planning to do the same. We want to know what is going on and we are looking to join forces to campaign for legal migration channels, empathetic media reporting and against right-wing hate speech – not just in Doberlug-Kirchain, not just in Eisenhüttenstadt, but everywhere.

More actions will follow! Together for the protection of people, not borders!

Support in Eisenhüttenstadt needed

24. November 2023

📣 Support in Eisenhüttenstadt needed, 1.12., 14.00 📣

More than 1,000 people live in ‘Erstaufnahmelager’ on the outskirts of Eisenhüttenstadt. Living conditions there are difficult; we know of months-long waiting for legal advice, winter clothes and financial support. The result; People can hardly leave the cramped accommodation, are isolated and have little contact with people outside the camp. We want to change that. Every two weeks, the No Nation Truck is on site with various collectives to create a space for exchange, advice and simply a relaxed get-together. The first appointment;

Friday, December 1st, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m

We are still looking for: Basic legal advice, translation for Arabic, Farsi. People who want to simply be present on site, listen and support people with making tea etc.

Do you want to join? Do you have any great information material about the German asylum system? A Küfa collective? Etc? Then write to us at: nonationtruck@riseup.net

Baltic Scouting Report

30. September 2023

After parts of the nonationtruck collective already visited support structures in the Basque Country at the Spanish-French border to scout possible locations for the truck, another group headed to the Lithuanian-Belarusian border to meet with refugee support structures on the ground. We want to share here some info about this border area and introduce a group that is active there to give a short overview.

Context:
In the late summer of 2021, another refugee route developed through Belarus to Western Europe. At that time and in the months that followed, many people used this escape route, most of which passed through the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
In 2021, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko for the first time deliberately relaxed general travel restrictions for some countries in South; and East Asia and some African countries.
He suspended border controls with the EU. Several thousands of people took the chance to enter the country and went to the uncontrolled borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia. With the relaxations, Lukashenko tried to put pressure on the EU due to the sanctions imposed by the EU on Belarus.
However, people on the move, were pushed back into Belarus at the Polish border and not allowed back into the country by Belarus. Thus, they were trapped between the country borders. People were systematically and violently prevented from continuing their journey as they passed the border. Poland blocked parts of its border with Belarus with a fence five and a half meters high. Many people remained in the border woods for months without any support.
This instrumentalization of refugees as a means of exerting pressure for state interests is absolutely unacceptable.

Group:
In response to the inhumane pushback policy of the Schengen border crisis, the Sienos Grupė (Instagram @sienosgrupe) was founded. The group supports people on the run by providing direct humanitarian aid as well as legal advice in Lithuania. For this purpose, they are on call 24 h by means of an “alarmphone”.

During our meeting we talked among other things about the current shift of the route from Lithuania to Latvia. As well as about the stronger repressions at the Latvian border for members of the Sienos Grupė. We were told about the recent event when the supporters were threatened with a weapon by the border police.
Nevertheless, the group does not want to be hindered in its work and is expanding its support on the Latvian border.

After our meeting we decided not to go to this border with the truck. We see the networking with the people on the ground as essential, e.g. to compare state tactics but also to develop defense strategies. We see a well-connected noborder network as necessary to keep up to date with developments at the borders.

No Nation Truck at Anti Deportation Camp!

28. June 2023

No Nation Truck at Anti Deportation Camp!

From the 1st to the 6th of June the “Stop Deportation! Protest-Camp” https://abschiebezentrumverhindern.noblogs.org/camp-2023/ took place at Schönefeld, close to the BER airport, where a new detention and deportation Centre is supposed to be build.

The Camp was organized by “Initiative Abschiebezentrum BER verhindern” and was supported by many groups and Individuals! (for instance: Abolish Frontex, Afg Activist Collective, Afrique-Europe-Interact, Alarmphone Sahara, Anti-CRA Paris & Nantes, Asmara’s World, Barnim für alle, Bleiberecht statt Chancenfalle, Bridges over Borders, Bündnis gegen Abschiebehaft, Bürger*innenasyl Barnim, Climate Antirepression Team, Copwatch Frankfurt, Getting the Voice Out, Hum Hain Pakistan, Ihr seid keine Sicherheit!, International Women* Space, Jugendliche ohne Grenzen, KOP Berlin, KuB, Migrantifa Berlin, No Border Assembly, No Lager Osnabrück, No Name Kitchen, O-Platz, PiA Darmstadt, Refugees 4 Refugees, Refugee Community Bitterfeld, Refugees Emancipation, Refugee Law Clinic, Schlafplatzorga, Skills for Action, Soli-Asyl Potsdam, Theater X, Tubman Network, UK Action Group, Welcome United, Women in Exile, Xenion, Zusammenleben Willkommen)

Instead of the expected 500 people, more than 2000 people were showing up to organize, inform themselves, join the many panels, discussions, workshops and the rest of the program and to form and strengthen alliances to fight the inhumane conditions within Europe, its Borders and beyond!

Our collective/ Our Truck also participated and we were present with the Truck to contribute to the Infrastructure of the Camp with the Wifi that we usually use at the borders with the help from https://www.janga.la/ , an extra kitchen, some sleeping spaces, a charging station for electronic devices, some space to use for the media group and we spontaneously were hosting the amazing “Wearebornfree Empowerment Radio”(https://wer.oplatz.net/) who were sending life from the truck to everyone that could not make it to the Camp: http://reboot.fm/2016/01/10/we-are-born-free-empowerment-radio/

On Monday a strong and powerful Demo with around 600 people was rallying the streets of Schönefeld and clearly showed the refusal of accepting this disgusting and corrupt plans! The Speakers were all BiPoC and personally affected by border regimes. They were sharing their experiences through very moving and powerful speeches! One of the many valuable messages was: “The Deportation centre will be stopped!”

In our eyes the camp was stunningly good organized and it was very impressive to see how so much infrastructure, logistics and program was realized by all the participating activists! It feels like this camp has strengthened the movement and gave more perspective and motivation to many people we have talked to.

We are very happy to have been there and look forward for upcoming cooperation’s and actions!

Shortly after a independent group of activists squatted a building at the future construction site of the Deportation Centre! Check it out here: https://twitter.com/schoenbesetzen

At this point we would like to promote the Campaign to #DumpHarder and be as annoying to this Investor that is making maaany Millions with the suffering and imprisonment of people! Here is a little Action guide https://dumpharder.neocities.org/

Here is some visual impressions from the camp from the Leftvision collective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zp_2jH8E-o

Get Active and organised!

We are here, and we will fight! Freedom of movement is everybody’s right!