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Camping, Discussing And Action

campareno | 14.08.2006 07:20 | Globalisation

10 days of camping close to Heiligendamm in North East Germany, the little town
where the next G8 summit will take place, are over. More than 100 workshops were
announced in advance, in the end it were probably more, not to count all the spontanous
meetings and discussions. A quick overview on the discussions.

Althought not as divers as planned originally, the camp brought
people who have not done anything together for quite a while.
Conflict were to be espected but they turned up as milder as some had feared.

Of course the discussion about the conflict/war in middle east
came up again. The question at what point support for palestinansean liberty becomes
pure hate against Israel and open anti-semitism split up the left years ago.
On the background of therecent war in Libanon, it was obvious that this would become an issue again.
However, althought discussions were emotional, no group left the camp or told others
to leave and the majority of people did not count itself to one of the extrem positions
in the discussion, a developement some people see as step forward.

Migration and Energy

It is not decided yet if this will be an action day or one big demonstration (or both)
and a wider alliance will be build to get a broad support the claim for freedom of movement.
The fight against detention centres, deportation and the inhuman treatment of refugees
in europe is a very important local struggle in the area, where many refugees and asylumseekers
life in barracks in the middle of the countryside. German law does not allow those
people to leave this district (a law called "residenzpflicht") without specific (and almost never granted)
permission. The fight against these laws and the right to freely move and organise at least within
germany is a central fight of many selforganised refugee groups.
For 2007 the European Union plans a massive extension of the Schengen
Information System (SIS) to control migrants and refugees in Europe.

Energy and the exploitation of the worldwide resources seem to be one issue discussed
by the G8 meeting next year. In Germany Energy policy was always connected with the struggle
against nuclear energy, and with the use of direct action as a form of resistance.

Direct Action

In this context, many people see the expected nuclear transport to the German Gorleben
(scheduled for November 11th) as a start into 6 month of direct action against the G8.
The blockades, the interaction with locals in resistance and the subversion against
police tactics seem to be a recipe for the G8 blockades next year.

Almost everbody agreed that blockading the g8 by direct action is the way to go.
Not only anarchist and autonomous group but also people from more NGO like
organisations like attac germany basically agreed that the G8 has to be rejected
completely and should not happen at all.

A group is calling for a mass blockade with civil disobidience, while others prefer
decentralised actions of smaller groups. However, both strategies did not seem to
contradict each other.

International Networking

The camp saw the first actual international meeting during the mobilisation against
the g8 2007. People from several eastern european countries, from the UK as well
as from Italy and many more places in the world gathered at the camp. This was a great
help for the mobilisation because all the internal discussions inside the German
movement seemed rather unimportant in international context.

An international working group will provide information for those who want to come
to Germany next year in as many languages as possible, a newsletter in english
should be published frequently to update people about the mobilisation - internationally -
not only in Germany.

I had the impression that the camp definitely gave many people motivation to go on,
see some light beyond the everlasting repetition of discussions inside the German left.

campareno