PUSHBACK Talks

Radically Legal: Berlin Takes Back the Law - with Joanna Kusiak

• Joanna Kusiak • Season 8 • Episode 2

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This week, we welcome back friend of the show Dr. Joanna Kusiak to discuss her new book, "Radically Legal" and Berlin's ongoing efforts to keep housing affordable through innovative legal approaches.

We explore the often-overlooked role of emotion in the creation and interpretation of law, challenging the notion that legal systems operate purely on cold logic. Joanna reveals how the hopes, frustrations, and determination of ordinary citizens have shaped Berlin's housing policies.

Listen in as Fredrik, Leilani, and Joanna discuss the perseverance required in long-term activism and how legal frameworks can be powerful tools for social change when wielded by engaged communities.

Read Joanna's book, Radically Legal, for free.

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Kirsten McRae:

In the heart of Berlin, a battle rages on. It's a fight for homes, for communities, for the very soul of a city. But more than that, it's a testament to the enduring spirit of pushing back our guest today, Dr Joanna kusiak, stands at the forefront of a movement that has shaken the foundations of housing law in Germany's capital, armed with a forgotten clause in the Constitution and an unwavering determination, she and her fellow activists have challenged the might of multibillion dollar corporations in a fight to reclaim 240,000 homes for the people. But victory, as they've learned, is rarely the end of the struggle. Despite winning a democratic referendum, the people of Berlin find themselves pushing back once again, this time against a government that seems all too willing to disregard the will of its citizens. In her book, radically legal, Joanna reveals a truth often overlooked in the cold halls of power, that law is not just a matter of dusty tomes and arcane arguments. It is a living, breathing thing shaped by the hopes, fears and grief of those it affects. This is a story that reminds us that pushing back is not a single act but a lifelong commitment. It's a journey that demands we adapt, that we find new tools and new strengths as the challenges before us shift and evolve, from grassroots activism to legal innovation, from public referendums to the reinterpretation of centuries old laws, the form of resistance may change, but its essence remains constant. Join us as we explore how a deep dive into legal theory became a powerful tool for social change, and how the emotions that drive us, our anger, our hope, our love for our communities, can reshape the very laws that govern our societies.

Fredrik Gertten:

I'm Fredrik Gertten, and I'm the filmmaker,

Leilani Farha:

and I'm Leilani Farha and I'm the advocate,

Fredrik Gertten:

and this is pushback talks, and we are in season eight. Crazy, isn't it? Season Eight, and we all started during the pandemic, when we were out touring with the film push, where there is a main star of the of that film, and that's you, Leilani, but we met in London a very well renowned academic, Saskia Sassen. You met her, and she gave her She asked you a question. Let's listen to that such assassin question to Leilani in London a few years ago.

Videoclip:

You have human rights obligations, and you can't let these investors and the financial system run amok on its own. I say, Wow, human rights. Every single person has a bunch of rights. And then I have a question for you, and that is, are you a legal scholar on human rights? That's right, you have the instrumentality that is the law, exactly because what I see is those with power, boy, can they deploy the law in ways that work for them. Stuff is happening, you know?

Fredrik Gertten:

Yeah, Leilani, remember that stuff is happening.

Leilani Farha:

I remember it stuff is happening exactly.

Fredrik Gertten:

And I mean your profession, you are a lawyer, and human rights is your specialty and and I know the big change when we did push, and I could feel that the activists and the politicians around the world started to use human rights in the language, which is kind of very Cool, that your work kind of changed something big time. But I know you're now engaged, very engaged in what happens in Gaza and Palestine, where we have human rights law, you know, being abused, and we have international courts saying that is what is happening. Might be genocide, and it's, you know, and, and when I meet people say, yeah, man, human rights law, who cares? You know, is that a hopeless job you have? Or, or is law important?

Leilani Farha:

Well, yes. I mean, I think also a lot of young people are feeling like the law is especially human rights. Law is completely irrelevant. I've heard academics, who are, you know, engaged with young people all the time. Professors saying that young people are really rejecting the structures, the law, the UN itself. I guess that's not my opinion, because I think what we're witnessing in Gaza is an example of what happens when you don't have the implementation of law and the rule of law. So the question is, how can we make it for me, it's like, I'm not going to abandon the law. Yeah, but how do we make it effective, and how do we actually get it to be implemented? And

Fredrik Gertten:

this is leads us up to our guest of this episode, and this is like an old favorite of ours, Joanna Kuck, who is a Cambridge academic but lives in Berlin and also an activist in the big housing Battle of Berlin. Hi, Joanna, nice to see you again.

Joanna Kusiak:

Hello. Lovely to see you and hear you. You're in

Fredrik Gertten:

some very cool Berlin cafe I can see Yes,

Joanna Kusiak:

yes, you literally caught me on the go, so I was actually walking for Urban's face, as I heard from you, but maybe that's precisely the right place from to engage with the law.

Fredrik Gertten:

Yeah, Joanna, I mean, you've just released a book which I found really fascinating, radical legal. And it tells it's a very personal story and a fun story, because it's also a story about you and your daughter. It's also a story about how, I mean, brought up in Poland and with professors who were, once upon a time, a part of the solidarnos movement that changed Poland a lot, and then you moved to Berlin and to study the movements, but then you became an activist. I mean, it's like, seems like you, it's been some intense years.

Joanna Kusiak:

Nice way of recapping my life further. Thank you.

Fredrik Gertten:

But, but it's, I mean, Berlin has been so in the lead in this struggle, in this global struggle, struggle for the for the right to housing and and, and I know Berlin, Leilani, you've been a lot to Berlin, also trying to to talk with the movements and give advice and so on. Why is Berlin so important for you. Oh,

Leilani Farha:

I mean, and Joanna's book radically legal really brings home why Berlin is so important. There's a huge movement in Berlin for a change to the way in which housing is being used by investors, they're deploying the law. I mean, it's like the perfect coming together of and it provides hope for me as a human rights advocate focused on housing and trying to change the system, and for, more importantly, for other movements in Spain, in North America, people are looking people suffering on the ground, are looking to Berlin and the movement that Joanna so beautifully. I mean, just congrats. Huge congratulations on your book. It's just an amazing book. You bring to life what it is that's happened in Berlin, and and, and the energy, the anger and the energy that that made it possible to challenge the system. So for me, Berlin is like the, yeah, it's, it's the it's the hope, but it's also a model, yeah. Well, thank

Joanna Kusiak:

you, if I may respond to it. And if I were to have my own free sense about why Berlin is important beyond Berlin, I would say that this is because Berlin takes itself seriously as a city. And you see, we started this conversation from from a wing that I'm here in a nice cafe. And of course, Berlin is known for this side right, the cafes, the hipsters, the vibrant culture. And it's very easy to dismiss it, it's all fun and games. But I think the unique thing about Berlin is it it really takes seriously this promise of a city as a place of freedom, of diversity and of the possibility for everyone to realize their own potential and to take it seriously means precisely like swiftly moving from fun and games at the cafes and bars towards courthouses and when it comes to defend this freedom, Berliners very have a long tradition of mobilizing themselves in many Democratic ways, both in terms of building popular movement, both movements of protests and the movements of transformation. And in a way, I think there's nothing more dangerous to a regatta system than people who take its promises seriously.

Fredrik Gertten:

Joanna, we met in Berlin in 2019 the same day when this referendum, we got the results together, and it was a huge victory. Can you tell us about that struggle? Very short recap of it?

Joanna Kusiak:

Oh, absolutely. I do remember the evening when we met Fredrik. We all remember it quite vividly. So it was September 2021, the day of the general election and of our referendum. And the proposition of the referendum is to expropriate and socialize. Socialization is important because the proper legal term 240,000 apartments that belong to stock listed corporations, the shareholders of which are Blackrock blackstones, like the usual suspects of financial capitalism now to slow down and explain all this awkward legal terms so socialization, the German word for it is fegesellschaftrong. I on is a unique legal attempt that has its own article or its own clause in the German constitution, and that allows to deprivatize certain kind of resources, to transfer certain kind of crucial resources, such as land or natural resources or means of production, from from public, from private to public ownership, but only under the proviso this, this would also be democratically managed. This is important to highlight, because we're not talking nationalization here. This is something very different. It's, it's democratically owned Commons. So the idea is both public ownership and distributed participatory democratic management. And the history of this clause is very, very interesting because, I mean, dates back to the German revolution, and then it was picked up to the via constitution of the Weimar Republic. And then in 1949 as the new Constitution was written, this was, of course, very particular time, because Germany just emerged out of the darkness of Nazism. And one of the objectives that the legislators have, I mean, throughout the whole Constitution, was how to make sure that no kind of power can be misused again to destroy democracy. And when I say no kind of power that indeed specifically include economic power, I mean, there was a

Fredrik Gertten:

that's the experience from the Nazis, that the business elites were supporting the Nazi coup against the German then democracy, which is kind of almost what you we see happening today. If you look at the US with Trump and so we see the big business supporting almost like a coup against democracy and and and you with all this right wing movements in Germany now you can also see that this misuse of economic power is also creating a divide in a society. So it's, it's very interesting that you're highlighting this little article or this very important article. Sorry, continue.

Joanna Kusiak:

Yeah. You know, it's all about democratic checks and balances, right? I mean, it should be, actually, it should be simple. It shouldn't be that simple. That surprising that any kind of power can be used for a good purpose or can be misused, right? I mean, like the political power can be used to, you know, to make a democratic community, or it can be used to turn a community into authoritarianism, right? Economic power can be used to distribute goods and resources to the people, or can be used to extract value and take it away from the people and and that's that's has always been the case. But the innovation of German constitution is indeed that this misuse potential misuse of economic power has has its counterpart in this clause that allows people to curb this economic power, because it's a, you know, certain kinds of checks and balance as standard of liberal democracy, right? That you know that we have a separation of the of the courts from from the government and so on and so on. So we have this division of power into three and but the unique added value and the real innovation, in this sense, the legal and political innovation that arose of the German cronholm gazettes, the Constitution written in 1949 was a clear recognition that economic power belongs to power as All the other powers, and therefore we need to watch and be a watchdog for this power as well. I mean something that the age of global cooperation again shouldn't be a surprise either.

Fredrik Gertten:

It's kind of amazing. Leilani, this clause written in 1949 that is now you can be used. And I really love the idea and the story that you tell in your book, that the activists found this never used part of the Constitution. Say, Oh, hey, this is a way we can we can fight back. And that's much, very close to your way of seeing how you can use law, isn't it? Leilani,

Leilani Farha:

i. It is. I mean, the story is unbelievable to me, like the idea that there sits this constitutional provision never having been used such a powerful provision. I'm not a constitutional scholar. I don't know constitutions from around the world. I know a few constitutions. I've never come across an article like that that foresees, or, well, foresaw, actually, the abuse of economic power, and tried to deal with it through a demo, a principle of democracy. I mean, it's, it's pretty wild. And then this story you tell Joanna of I think, you say that you're at home breastfeeding your daughter, and you're falling asleep, et cetera, and you miss some kind of a party or an event where a bunch of people were saying, We should start, we should use this provision, and the idea of, I mean, it's throughout your book, and it seems to be throughout the actual campaign for this socialization, this interplay between Having fun and partying and joyfulness and then anger and fighting and using the law. I just loved, I loved that story. So I mean, the idea of using this unused article to protect people, just it's, it's, it's amazing. I can't say that I've used I've done that in my work, because I've never come across a legal principle that hadn't already been used. But

Fredrik Gertten:

then you build a movement around this, and the movement's name is basically, get named after the biggest housing company who owns 240,000 apartments in Germany. And you said, and the movement says, We should, we should bring those, those apartments, back to to this kind of new body, and then there was this referendum, and over 60% of the Berliners voted yes. And now, then, where are we? What is happening now? Because it's this is like, it's four years ago now. So what is happening? What is cooking?

Joanna Kusiak:

What is cooking? It's three years ago, and we're working I mean, I think one of the one thing that I find amazing about Berlin's initiative, Deutsche von and Koh and dagen, which means expropriate Deutsche von en and CO and Deutsche von is the name of one of those several big corporations is its persistence. And just speaking to what you just said, Leilani, the persistence that comes from the refusal to Sebastian cronholm politics, from laws, from from emotional life of a human being. And I think you know, we have a way of pretending that I wish, I mean, I think especially actually, the liberal side has loved this illusion that politics is or should be, all rational, and it never was. And to be honest, it never should be. And coming back to where the article 15 came from, why this constitution is so innovative, well, I mean, to be honest, because of grief, because it's always easier to value what we've lost. And by all means, in 1949 the Germans really knew very well, what does it mean to lose democracy, to lose human rights, to lose dignity, and from there come this creative force. I mean, there's this question that was asked again and again, how can we make sure this will never happen again? And this is a creativity that arises from pain and from grief, I mean, and that's, that's part of it. And the same, if you look, look at history, I mean, all political progressive change for the better has the component of anger. Because in order, in order to want to change something, you need to realize that the way things are is not just, and of course, that makes you angry. Now, the alchemy of the movement is to address and name and embrace this anger, but then to transform it into joyful action. Because as important as anger is, anger is never enough, because it's also it's a very burning emotion, right? It's a reaction. It's, in the end, reactive emotion. So you need to transform it into something constructive, but you definitely need to name it and embrace it. And again, if we look at the rise of right wing populism nowadays, I mean, of course, it's an effect of the fact that the liberal mainstream refuses to acknowledge and see people being angry for what the system has done to them. And if no one addresses this anger, then it gets captured by right wing mobilization. It's been like that in the Nazi Germany. Me, and we can observe it in many, unfortunately, in many, many different contexts. And therefore, I think that the importance of this mobilization in Berlin goes far beyond the housing market as much as I think house housing market is super important because it provides, in a way, a new model of making popular politics that is honest to the emotion, that doesn't misuse the emotion in order to cynically manipulate them and redirect them towards the weakest, be the migrants, the refugees. Name it, right? But just really does the hard work of working with it, and it is a hard work, and for that, you need the anger, but you also need the joy. You're not going to get hard work done if you don't give yourself also this moment of celebrating what we are actually fighting for, because what we are fighting for is freedom and joy of being able to realize yourself in the city, to become who you want to be together with others, not individualistically, but together.

Fredrik Gertten:

I like that part of your writing. Also, when you says that emotions are an integral part of our rationality. I mean, we, we have the right to be emotional, because that's also, it's also about life. But Joanna just quickly back to because it's, I understand that you win, then starts a long process. So where is this process now, at the moment, just to understand it,

Joanna Kusiak:

yeah, all the emotion distracted we have caused from the process, yes. So what's happening now is we keep working. And a year ago, the second anniversary of the referendum, where it was very clear that the government is not intending to implement the democratic decision of its own people. The movement announced a crowdfunding campaign, and we crowdfunded, I think, around 100,000 euros, and ordered a legal firm, a very renowned firm, professional legal firm specialized in public law, to write a legislation for us that we're going to put towards a second referendum so and at the moment, the firm is working on this legislation. Of course, it is better to err on the side of caution, and it needs to take as long as it needs to take, because the worst possible result would be to have this some sort of formal mistake in this legislation and that the referendum, let's say, has a positive results, but the whole thing falls through. I mean, that's, that's I write about this a lot, right? Like law thrives of this technicalities, and in a way, it is like a logical quest how to make sure that it all aligns with legal technicalities. And for that purpose, I mean the movement has its own version of the legislation proposition, which we wrote already during the first campaign. And of course, it becomes the basis. But to err on the side of caution, we work with very professional lawyers who will write this legislation for us. And then, in a way, the whole game starts anew. We start collecting signatures. And just as you enjoyed celebrating the first referendum, we invite you up front to the second election evening, Fredrik and Leilani. Let's hope we're going to win again. And then if we win the legislative referendum, then it would be automatically implemented. So as a as a short explanation, I mean, in Berlin law that two kinds of referenda possible. One is this legislative referendum, which we will be organizing now, and the other referendum basically always cover. It's more of a political referendum. I mean, it shows that there is a very clear support for certain cause. But it would have been job of the government to legislate it, which, in a way, it's logical, because it's generally the job of the government to provide legislation. But of course, the downside of it is that if the government resists and refuses, there is no legal way of forcing it. If someone does want to do it, then they wouldn't want to do it. Now the funny like in between development was that after the mayor of Berlin that was elected to the same day that the referendum happened, Francesca giffey, who is no longer mayor, but she was very clear that she doesn't want to do it, and she starts at a commission that would investigate the legal possibilities if it would be legally viable. And it was very clear it's a delay move, and that there, in a way, she's hoping that the Commission says it's not possible. The setup of the commission was so that they, you know, there on their side shows very conservative lawyers, and yet the commission very clearly, after months and months of perceiving. Produce a report that clearly confirms that our proposition is legally viable.

Kirsten McRae:

You are listening to pushback talks. Have an idea for the show. Send us a message. You can reach us at info@maketheshift.com, or film@wgfilm.com now back to the show. You

Fredrik Gertten:

say something in your in your book that Leilani told me before, that's like, very interesting people make rights meaningful, and that's why, in a democracy, law cannot be left only to lawyers. I like that kind of conclusion, that the law is that important, so don't leave it to lawyers. We have to, kind of used the law as a tool ourselves, and we did an episode here, actually about South Africa. Why South Africa was so active in the International Court of Justice regarding Palestine, because they used the courts as a battleground in the fight against apartheid. So there is a deep tradition of using law as a tool in a struggle. I just take it out to the wider global scape again. Push the film that features Leilani talks very much about financial crisis in 2008 which then led to, in the end, to this kind of financialization of homes all around the world, the black stones. Blackstone entered into the game in 2012 and became suddenly the biggest landlord on the planet. It kind of shifted really quick, and in your book, you have a very sweet story about the apartment you live in Berlin. You lived there for 18 years, and you've been in court several times against your landlord, but then you also make a differentiation between the private owner and the public health company. Can you tell us about that experience and that conclusion? Of

Joanna Kusiak:

course, yes. So I mean, that's one way in which I became politicized to the politics of housing markets in Berlin in particular was from my own legal struggles. Because, yeah, when I first, when I first came to Berlin from from Warsaw, I was also amazed by the freedom that the well functioning housing market allowed me and other peoples and individuals to really take risks and go for what we want in our life, right, rather than worrying about taking mortgage credit and not being able to find an apartment at all. And then at some, some point it tipped, and it starts getting tighter and tighter and yes, on the individual level. I mean, when the gentrification started properly in Berlin, our landlord, I mean, back then, I was sharing my apartment with other students. He tried to get rid of us, basically, in many different ways. And it turns out that actually it's not that easy. I mean, we were dutifully paying rents. We're not damaging any apartment. We were perfect tenants in this respect. And it turned out that actually tenant rights. It's very interesting moment. I mean, it's I can imagine, especially the Anglo American world. It's very counterintuitive, but the German Constitutional Court decided that tenant rights are actually property rights, which means, as a tenant, I also have property rights to my apartment. Now, property rights is something different in ownership, in the Civil Code. I mean, of course, in terms of simple ownership, the apartment belongs to my landlord. He can sell it and get full money of it. I cannot sell it right, but my use rights as a tenant are property rights in that they realize the human right to property, because the human right to property is not about speculating of something on the financial market, it is about having this stable base that allows freedom, right? I mean, that's that's the liberal not just German Kantian, because if you look at the writings of John log, it's actually very similar. I mean, the whole idea why in the western world the notion of property became so important was not because it made people wealthy, but it was because, in this basic sense, if you have a stable base for living, it becomes a base for your freedom. And that was the original purpose of property that is actually misappropriated by this financial speculation. So in a in a counter intuitive way from today's perspective, but in a philosophically very coherent way. Our movement is actually not against properties, for property, but against speculation.

Fredrik Gertten:

And you're against the misuse of economic power, which is in your constitution, which is kind of very interesting, but you also put the difference between a private owner and a public health company, because what we've seen is that the public health companies, this anonymous money just that flows in and takes over, which is the separation between a tenant and the owner is, like, it's, you know this, it's bigger than ever. Yes,

Joanna Kusiak:

yes, yes. I mean yes, because they have completely different purposes. So the I'm confessed that the London, my landlord is actually a human being and a corporation is not. I mean, that's one subtle difference, which is good to start. But the other difference is that you know a regular landlord, a person who, let's say, own two buildings, operates on the housing market as a tenant on his client effectively, right? And there is a certain symbiosis. We. Between us, because he needs me, because I pay rent, right, and I need him because he provides me housing. Now, a stock listed Corporation actually appears to operate on the housing market, but in reality, operates on the financial market. The clients of them are not tenants, but shareholders. And the shareholders do not need housing. They need to yield return on capital, and that means that no matter what the dynamic of the housing market is, this dynamic would be completely subordinated to the purposes of the financial market. And yes, I mean, Berlin is growing, and there's already demographic tension. I mean, since there's not enough housing in Berlin, and we're not denying it, but this is only an extra fewer but even if there were enough apartments. I mean, the corporate landlords are known to try to save on maintenance costs and keep raising the rents, because that's the only reliable way to make sure that their shareholders get more and more profit. And in in this way. I mean, the buildings that were built to house people attend to this debt storages of someone else's capital. And when I say someone else's again, often these are also not people. I mean, the shareholders of corporations are often and other corporations, and most of them are registered somewhere very, very far away from Berlin. I mean, in fact, Deutsche von and von oven. None of the large shareholders are based in Berlin or even in Germany. I mean, they are the blackrocks, the blackstones, the Norwegian pension fund, and so on and so on. So the value that is being collectively produced in the city is being extracted and scattered somewhere in remote places, and the people of Berlin have nothing of

Fredrik Gertten:

it. Leilani, this sounds like the story we've been working on. It seems like Joanna are on the same page, or we are on the same page as Joanna, and we can turn it around many times, but I think we have an understanding of something.

Leilani Farha:

I think your excuse me, I think your book really demonstrates so lovely the the difference between the individual, private landlord versus the publicly held company. Just I mean, even in even though you end up fighting your landlord through legal means, there's a relationship there, and that is not the way it works when corporation that's publicly held owns your building. You say this, and I want our listeners to hear it. You say, although corporate landlords operate within the Berlin housing system, structurally, they belong to a completely different system, the global financial system, and that, to me, just really clarifies exactly what's going on. They look like they're part of the housing system, but really they are part of something quite other. And I also liked in your book, the way you use the built environment to show that, you know, the beautiful old Bauhaus architecture that was, that was, you know, apartments that were built for living, and the new way that these actors build when they build, because they don't All build, they're often just purchasing. But when they build, what are they doing? They're maximizing dollars per square meter. And so you get these ugly boxes to live in that don't have any of that sense of like, this is meant for life. You know? I think that's something that doesn't get talked about a lot, about the way in which, when these corporate actors are saying, Oh, we're going to solve the housing crisis, there's a deficit of units we're going to build. What are they building? And what do we lose when they start building?

Fredrik Gertten:

You know that what is happening now in Sweden, the kind of the lobby group of the business world, they're proposing to build apartments without kitchens, because it's kind of expensive to build a kitchen. And then they the guy says, You can buy so many restaurant lunches for that cost of a kitchen. It's really arrogant, as the builder would then put money to the tenant to go to restaurants, of course not, but it's this is how arrogant they're becoming. They're really they have the good self confidence right now, the bastards. So sorry, the language I said, bastards, I could say much worse words than that. You know, I can. Yeah, but, but, but, I, what I like with your with your work and the Berlin work, is this kind of idea of radical politics as a way of deepening the democracy and also renewing the rule of law, the rule of law, which is like and a lot of. Yes, I mean, a lot of left wing movements would say, Fuck the system, you know, fuck the law. But you actually say, save the system by with the law, you know, or change it, you know, it's like, it's kind of, you're in some way. You're not announced, you're not outsiders, you're insiders, which is kind of, I guess, sometimes problematic in Berlin, where you have a lot of people who define themselves as totally system, outside the system.

Joanna Kusiak:

Well, yeah, but this, I mean, you know, life is full of paradoxes. And to be honest, I think it's really not, not either or. And I think what I like about the movement, again, it is both anti systemic and process them at the same time. Because what does it mean? I mean, I mean, I agree the system does not need to be destroyed. The system is being destroyed by these financial speculations, and it needs to be saved. However, the way that the system operates now is by privileging the financial interests over human interests, and that parts of the system does need to be questioned and destroyed only not by, you know, not by violence, but by the by the legal violence. I mean, you know, again, I quote Benjamin. I mean, law is a means of violence too. It's one of the means of violence, right? I mean, the Benjamin speaks of the mythical violence of the law because it doesn't occur through, through physical violence, but as a way of enforcing things. By all means,

Fredrik Gertten:

this is an inspirational chat. We have Leilani, because I think what the Berlin experience gives us is some hope and new directions. And I think that's really inspiring, because a lot of people out there are, you know, struggling in the dark, in someone and maybe, of course, maybe the German constitution have some extra clauses that are opens up something. But I think we all have constitutions that we could use and laws, because we opened this podcast with a quote from Saska Sassen, who said that, you know, gee, the people with power, they have more lawyers than us, and that's how they've been able to round models and protection systems built in our societies. I mean, Sweden is a country with a lot of protection for tenants and for workers and so on, but we can, I can see that it's they found the loopholes and around you know what I mean? When the lawmakers were writing the law, they didn't know. They couldn't see these loopholes, but these lawyers, they do, and they find ways to trash the law. So it's also about closing down these loopholes and giving the law back to the initial meaning that how it was written. Can you say it like that? Leilani, you know, I'm not a lawyer, no,

Leilani Farha:

but I like what you said, because I think especially right at the end, I think if you write legislation from a place that isn't completely observant and understanding of a movement like dwe that we're talking about, then you end up with legislation that will have loopholes. And it's not about closing loopholes, it's about writing legislation that is from the right place at the outset, because they will always find loopholes. If we just try to plug this one and we plug this one, and then they'll find another one, because there it. When law is of the system and the system is corrupt and not of the people, then we're always going to be we're always going to end up with imperfect law. But when law is written from the right place, and that's what I think Joanna is saying they're trying to do right now. They they wrote the first draft of the legislation, and that's being used as a basis for the lawyers now to move forward with it. It will be better law than if it's just written by the people who are part of a system that that's working for them?

Joanna Kusiak:

Yeah, I think, I think that's one thing I'm trying to say, is also to undo this division between the law and the people. I mean, in the end, the law is an important means of democracy, and democracy, presumably, is a system that gives power to the people, and therefore law is also something that belongs to the people. And a beautiful thing about dwe is, again, it doesn't only reclaim apartments, it also reclaims the law as something that we use to to realize freedom and democracy. You know when one of the metaphor I'm working with is this Jungian notion of shadow and of what we suppress. Because, again, the liberal notion of the rule of law is always that there's absolutely no that the ideal law is the way. There's absolutely no politics in the law. That this is completely not true. There is no such thing as I mean to start with, I mean, the legislation is written by people. It's written. In certain periods with certain people in power. So of course, each written law has its own political history, and then there is a politics of how this law is being interpreted and how this law is being enforced, and that's on each of this moment, I mean, changes the law. So the idea is not to pretend that the law must be perfectly apolitical. It's more to make this politics transparent, because if it's not transparent, if we pretend that there's no politics of the law, then ends up being only the politics of the powerful that discretely impacts the law, whereas it should be the politics of everyone. I mean, it should be democracy. I mean democracy means power to the people, and if we stick to this, this means that also the legal debate needs to be conducted in collaboration between legal experts and the general public. Wow.

Fredrik Gertten:

So this is like a shout out to all legal students and to all lawyers around the world and to all activists, unite and and check the law and try to make it work for for the people. I think that's it's interesting. Leilani, you, you, you might have many friends out there. I think you already have, but, I mean, there's more, and you also join up. So we will put up your your book, because it's on Cambridge press, and it can be read for free, yes,

Joanna Kusiak:

so my book is Commons too, just like the housing wouldn't be, and anyone can access it

Fredrik Gertten:

for me. So we will put it up in the info of this podcast so you can, you can read. We can also put up a link to your movement so people can read more, because I think you also have English information, don't you Yes, because you're so Berlin is such an international city, which is loved and not loved. But anyway, friends, I think you we are all running your way to new tasks in life because we are busy people. But wow, I'm really happy that we could make this Thank you, Joanna, for taking part in pushback talks, and Leilani always, the love is in the air. It's far from Malmo to Ottawa, but it's we always meet which which I like a lot we do. And good luck with your works and and for you the listeners of pushback talks, please rate us. Tell your friends. Tweet about us if you're still on Twitter or in your other social media. So tell your friends about it and subscribe to the podcast, because that's also a way of supporting it. Leilani, any final words,

Leilani Farha:

yeah, I want to, I want to shout out to our listeners to read Joanna's book, because we didn't talk too much about it. But it also is instructive about movements, and we are in a moment in history where movements are happening everywhere. People are on the streets everywhere with their anger, and Joanna's book is instructive. So Oh, and one other thing, if you want to support our podcast, because we have zero funding for it, you can go to patreon.com and look for pushback talks and give us a euro or two that'll help. Right? Fredrik,

Fredrik Gertten:

yeah, and you can watch my film breaking social, which is also about movements breaking social. Go to the website, breakingsocial.com, and you can find a way to watch the film. Because there was somebody of our listeners who asked if we're going to show the film in Canada, which might happen, but it's but you can see it online already now, so go and watch it. Ciao, and enjoy this the late the late summer. Thank

Leilani Farha:

you. Yes. Thanks. Joanna, bye. Fredrik, thank

Joanna Kusiak:

you so much. Have a lovely day. Bye, bye, bye.

Kirsten McRae:

Push back talks is produced by WG film, to support the podcast, become a patron by going to patreon.com/pushback talks, follow us on social media at make underscore the shift and push underscore the film, or check out our websites. maketheshift.org. pushthefilm.com, or breakingsocialfilm.com