Die Voices of the Balduintreppe wurden auf Wunsch der interviewten Personen neu eingesprochen.

A: […] [L]ife in St. Pauli is not an easy one. Because of, you know, what we’ve been through with the police and if we are in St. Pauli your life is in risk because anytime you can be caught and send to prison, you know, so and the police can control you any time especially when you have something with you and you know what we do… We stand on the street to deal not foranything but to survive, to fight for survive. So, if we are in St. Pauli you can expect any day  you might be sent to prison. If I meet somebody on the street and ask me about life in St. Pauli, actually I would tell the person then: Life in St. Pauli as a Black man is not easy because there are a lot of racist control going on and too much of civil police and police in uniform and anytime you can be caught by doing something illegal because this is how we live, that’s the
ghetto we are living in…

B: […] [T]he condition that we’re living is very depressed […] because very less chance for Black people, very very less chance. We are not allowed to work, and we left our country to survive and we left our country because of the horrible condition that we are. We expected that when we came here, we can be able to develop our life and do something different but from the view we see that there is no chance and that put us to the street. […]

C: […] [P]eople that are standing here, it’s not our wish to standing here, to selling. We can’t continue for this thing, I don’t know, for ten years or, I don’t know… So, they want a future also. […]. I have worked here, in Rödingsmarkt here. I go to my social. They said: „You are not allowed to work here.“ Three times I‘ve work here, but they don’t allow me to work. So, howto do? I cannot stay in my village. I will get crazy. So, that‘s why sometimes I come here to stand, so, I find a little bit money for myself and my family. […]

A: […] [B]eing in the street of St. Pauli, you know, maybe people tag you as a criminal or, you know, a big criminal while in the sense we are not big criminals because, you know, we just fight to survive, you know. […] You know, we came to Germany, for myself as example, the time when I newly came I really pursuit my social people to help me to integrate myself like I asked them to learn some skills, maybe Ausbildung if possible, but what they told me was: You know, I have asylum in other European country before Germany and that’s Italy. So, I could not be allowed to work here or to learn some skills here. That’s Dublin. I have to go back to Italy to integrate myself there, but I know what I have suffered in Italy […]. So, for this case they 1don’t allow me to go to school. They were pursuing me, they were threating me to deport me
back to Italy, threating me to deport me back to my country. So, for this case I don’t have any other option but to involve myself in something that is illegal why it’s not even my wish. I am oung, I am strong, I can learn anything, I can put any work to even a work for 400€ per month. I can do it, I am healthy, I am very young. I am seeing old ladies, old men working early in the morning – in Germany here. Why? Why not me? I am very young. This is not a good idea for me to come, to stand in front of people’s houses. People are passing by, picturing you, videoing you, telling you criminal, calling you names, papers are being looked about… This is a politic! And I don’t think, you know, at this age of us we deserve to be treated like this, you know. […] [I]f the politicians can give us chance, you know, to […] deliver our problems to them I think it would be helpful because we are all very, very young people, you know. 30, 31, you know, the old one are 32, 33. Some are 25, 19, 18. You know, this is not our wish. We are not animals. We are human beings with five common sense. We have thinkings, you know. We want to plan our future, we want to develop, we want to be something else in the future. We want this society to appreciate us. Anywhere we go they value us, not where we are… the situation where we are. When people are looking at us, you know, degrading us, looking at you, Black as a criminal. You know, so, this are the kind of issues [lacht], you know, we are facing every day in our life.
We don’t know when there will be a solution, to be honest. […]

C: Standing here, always… So, you’re running the police or civil police, lot of violence. Sometimes we don‘t like it at all. When some people see people are standing here and think, maybe this guy decide to stand here, but no, not like that. This is not our wish to stand here, you know…. [Pause] The police sometimes, they write something, they say: „These Black guys, they are criminals, they are bad peoples.“ […] But they are good, you know. So, because of lack of job or some people they don‘t have good asylum, they don’t have any paper, they don’t have anywhere to go, so, they come here to stand. Some peoples were in the jail, more than four times in the jail, two times in the jail… They don‘t have anywhere to go, and they come here again. So, if you are afraid here, always police violence, you don‘t come here, you go another way, or somewhere else. People are going prison – always, always prison. They are coming out, they come here again. Because there is no other way. […]