“I had just arrived. We had barely had time to exchange a few words and drink our first cup of tea,” Olga recalled. This was her first time at a meeting of The Dolls, a support group for trans women/trans femmes at the Kreuzberg LGBTQ+ community centre Casa Kuà.
Within moments, “armed officers from the criminal police announced that we were being detained until further notice. They said they were going to check whether we were trading prescription-free hormones, check our records, verify our IDs, search us, search the entire venue for evidence, and document our presence at the meeting – warning that if we tried to leave, we would be arrested.”
HEIST is a worker-owned online magazine, founded by writers and editors who after years working across Berlin's media landscape believed something essential was missing.
Anyone living here has felt a growing gap between the city as it actually is and the version being served up by mainstream outlets. We experienced that disconnect firsthand. We saw political censorship shape coverage decisions and felt the weight of billionaire ownership land directly on our work. It reached a point where we could either keep going along with it, or try to build something better.
That's why we created HEIST.
And look at you: scrolling, clicking, squinting at blurred text just to get a little further. If you'll go to that much effort to read HEIST, you can surely give us one email. That's the whole price, and the rest of the story is right behind it.
Real journalism costs money. We commission the hard-hitting, well-reported, long-form work everyone wants to read but nobody seems to publish anymore.
The future of this city is still in the balance. We intend to be part of that struggle. We hope that you'll join us.
