trigger warning: we’re using direct quotes, including offensive words, because we think it’s important to document the behavior of this person to a full extend.

We are a group of members of the „vegan pizza collective – La Stella Nera“ in Berlin, united by the goal of sharing the history and our experience in this collective, but above all to publicly denounce the process of appropriation and transformation of a self-organized, vegan, horizontal and collective structure into a capitalist company, vertical and hierarchical, by an individual member.
Over the past years this individual has demonstrated behavior that is in direct conflict with the principles and agreements established by the collective.

The „vegan pizza collective La Stella Nera“ was founded in 2016 with the vision of creating an alternative to the capitalist market economy through self-organized and consensus-based internal management, while adhering to the principles of veganism as a political choice. All workers were to share equal responsibilities, receive equal pay per hour and contribute to decision-making processes to maintain a non-hierarchical structure. Our principles were established in form of a statute with internal regulations of the structure, conflict regulation and how the end of the collective should be handled:
The end of the collective ends would have to be decided with consensus and all resources and profits would have to be donated to social projects or used to develop or support another collective.

We do not want „our slice of the cake“, we are putting our foot down in the name of the principles we tried to realize and put into practice with hard work, dedication and sacrifices. Slowly over the years these principles have been dismantled and disregarded with manipulative strategies, aggressive, authoritarian, abusive and discriminatory behavior of one person that is now left as the official owner of the restaurant, including the capital that was created by the work of all the members and the investment put in by the founding members and other collectives.

This statement is made with the intent to analyze our shared experience, document and challenge the unacceptable behavior of that one member. We stand for transparency, cooperation, and mutual respect, and we urge the necessary steps to be taken to uphold these values moving forward.

In the following we will go deeper into the behavior of that person and what lead to the change.

There was no consensus about the termination of the collective, on multiple occasions it was offered to close the restaurant together or hand over the project to a new group, even attempts of active members to take over the legal responsibilities were obstructed by the person in question, even though he repeatedly said he wanted to leave the restaurant.
In the beginning of this year this person unilaterally decided to change the structure, working conditions, salaries and has fired multiple people who opposed his decisions or he deemed to be „not on his side“. He is therefore abolishing all kinds of collectivist principles and even the most basic worker’s rights.

Up until this point there was no communication to the public about the structural change of this company, meaning he is profiting from the guests who are coming there believing they are supporting a collective.
This person is systematically using slogans of the animal liberation and left movement without actually reflecting about his sexist, racist, classist, ableist and capitalist positions and actions.
He is trying to undermine his hostile behavior by keeping a leftist facade, while not acting coherently within these values, acting from a white savior perspective, and therefore hurting the movement.
His decision includes keeping the name „La Stella Nera“, all recipes and dishes that were developed by other members and continues to use the symbol of the black star.

Since the founding of the collective that person was involved in the legal and bureaucratic tasks of the company, especially regarding finances. This work was always shared with other members but over the years became more and more in-transparent, putting him in a power position until we arrived at the point where he was the only legal owner. Even though, in the last years, other members offered to take on responsibilities or different tasks he repeatedly claimed that he was the only one who could do it and others were „too stupid to understand“. When other members were involved in these tasks they had to do it his way and in his time frame, if they didn’t work how he wanted he used this as a reason to further exclude the collective members from the internal works and financial status of the restaurant.
There was no transparency about this person’s salary and his working hours, while all other members were documenting exactly when and how much they were working.
When criticized or even just asked questions about his responsibilities he reacted aggressively, using mental health issues as an excuse to avoid accountability.
He continuously tried to pit us against each other, using triangulation tactics, fostering paranoia, scapegoating, creating internal enemies and lying about why and how people left the collective.
He expected other members to work beyond reasonable limits, dismissing their contributions to the running of the restaurant completely, while repeatedly claiming „I’m doing everything by myself“, „nobody is doing anything here“ and „they are all idiots“.
Over a period of time, he refused to participate in plenary, even telling other people participating that it’s stupid and useless. Instead he picked out individual members he deemed worthy to discuss topics that should’ve been brought to plenary and took decisions without consensus. This practice went on, even after being opposed multiple times by other members.
He undermined the statute, claiming it wasn’t valid without consensus on multiple occasions.
When a mediation process was started to deal with the inner conflicts of the collective he participated reluctantly, ridiculed the whole idea and showed little contribution to the process.

He abused his right of the veto without giving proper explanations, in one instance to stop the hiring process of one applicant that he deemed „too politically correct“ without having any actual personal contact to that person. In another instance he claimed one colleague was not part of the collective, despite that colleague being present in plenary, taking over bureaucratic tasks and responsibilities and genuinely being interested in being part of the collective, which led to fewer members and more stress on the remaining crew.

On numerous occasions this person, being the legal owner, threatened to close the restaurant „immediately“, putting all workers in insecure positions, but especially those that were in the process of applying for working visas, and therefore relying on a stable working contract.

After most members left the collective, new people hired were not informed about any of the conflicts or the status of the collective, he neither communicated to them that they could be forming a new group that would take over the project.

Generally he was excessively trying to control peoples opinion about him and other people, projecting his own insecurities and feelings on others, weaponizing different forms of discrimination to protect himself from consequences or for his personal advantage, while using discriminatory behavior against others.

This person showed, over time and in many occasions, violent behavior and problems with regulating emotional outbursts: Throwing and kicking things around, throwing glasses in the sink to break them, yelling and using derogatory language.
This became especially problematic when it was directed towards coworkers. When they didn’t follow his orders, asked too many questions or simply because he believed they were „stupid“, beneath him or otherwise not worthy of respectful treatment. Once he threw a metal box with full force into the trash bin next to a colleague, shouting „don’t discuss with me!“.
Especially during plenaries, when we disagreed with this person, or confronted him about not respecting parts of the statute, he got defensive and aggressive: He was yelling at others, punching the table, abruptly getting up and leaving the Plenum, once even while shouting: „Fuck you“ and „I hate you all“. There was no apology after any of these instances, on the contrary: He claimed he was not feeling safe, that we would be aggressive, targeting him and therefore his behavior was justified.

In addition to all the contradictions stated above this person has shown continuous demeaning and discriminatory behavior towards others to uphold his authority and maintain his power position: Telling people they’re „stupid/retarded“ in front of their colleagues and customers, claiming he could do everything by himself and devaluing the hard work and time that has been put by others to develop techniques and recipes.

Weaponizing antisemitism: He is accusing multiple members of antisemitism (also continuously calling them nazis & fascists), simply because they were showing solidarity with Palestine.
He challenged two customers at the entrance of the restaurant asking them to take off their Kufiyas, claiming that they are a symbol of antisemitism, not taking into account his privileged position. Afterwards he argued that he assumed they were wearing the Kufiyas because they are a gay couple that had to hide their queerness in Neukölln. After a discussion in Plenum, he reluctantly agreed to not do this anymore but continued to antagonize all colleagues who spoke up about this.
He is dividing and stereotyping people, colleagues and customers, into groups by geographical provenance.

He favored the hiring of women while subjecting them to poor treatment, making sexist remarks, objectifying and sexualizing them.
He admitted that he hired women because they were „hot“, saying he couldn’t have an objective perception of them because he thought they were „so beautiful“ and saying „I love seeing beautiful women walking around in the restaurant“. When they didn’t behave like he wanted them to or challenged his behavior he wanted to kick them out.
He continuously made comments about peoples bodies during working shifts together.
Before the beginning of one Plenum he sat down right in front of one person saying: „can you cover that cleavage, I can’t concentrate seeing this“, in front of multiple coworkers.

This person was continuously making fun of mental health issues, didn’t respect people’s personal limits and sick leaves, pressuring people with disabilities, saying „people like that cannot work here/in gastronomy“. He spoke disrespectfully about multiple people in front of them and behind their back, saying that he „can’t watch them working“ and how slow they are.
He repeatedly used the word „retarded“ as an insult, after being confronted about it saying „I’m using it because it’s supposed to hurt“.

This person, coming from educated middle class background, has shown little regard for the working class, ridiculing the financial needs of colleagues by stating they should simply have some savings instead of relying on the punctual payment of their salary, saying people are uneducated because they don’t hold a university degree and saying “they are greedy and will do anything for money”.

In the last two years, many members have left the restaurant due to his mistreatment of colleagues and once again, a white german, puts himself – in perfect colonialist style – above a collective with a migrant majority, destroying it’s principles and ideals, hoarding all resources and harvesting the fruits of the labour of immigrants, women and non-binary people, people of color and the working class to satisfy his own individual interests.

There have been many management mistakes within the collective: The lack of worker’s rights for its members, self-exploitation in an unrestrained pace of work, disregard for internal principles, lack of federation with other working collectives and, at some stages, even rejection of any political perspective.

We expect the statute to be respected: that all capital is used to support a collective structure, new or existing, and workers rights are respected.

Over the years, pitted against each other and too caught up in the harsh rhythm of restaurant work and conflict fatigue we did not have the ability or the lucidity to stop this process, although attempts by some of us to unmask the dynamics were not lacking. What was certainly lacking was our unity as workers. Unity we found again after years, against the real common enemy:
Those who sold their souls to capital!