2007-08-17
Hello, since its last meeting, the camp working group had thought a bit about how to continue protest and resistance. This is what came out of it:
Proposal for a cross-spectral big strategy congress in Autumn/Winter 2007
Like no other event in the recent past the actions before and during the summit in Heiligendamm will whirl around the strategic coordinates ofour struggles for a different society. At least for the parts of this movement that are acting in Germany there is no way to avoid new evaluations and analysis about how to develop sustainable protest. Before the summit the mass run to the fence and the bypassing of a strongly armed police phalanx with mainly unconventional and peaceful methods were judged as skeptical as the possibility to use mass militancy or to use it at a threat potential in the balancing of powers.
We will have to critically evaluate in how far this Mix of forms of protest and resistance
As CampAG we do not want and we can answer these questions as a collective, but during our work one aspect has been of special importance to us:
The categorical insistence on the cross-spectral character of the camps and thus the protests, not bringing into line or purely instrumentalizing the respectively other spectrums for strategical reasons, but to be open to diversity, to acknowledge this character as a form necessary at the moment and as a strength. We want to see in this character a means of transmission to realize and newly develop the social forces against the existing conditions in the future as well. Therefore we think it essential for the next struggles to have a joint assessment of the G8 protests and to decide about the direction to take now together.
At the moment there are discussions going on in many modules and spectrums, analyzing the events of Heiligendamm and developing a strategy from it for the left and radical left movement. As far as it is known Attac is meeting right now on its summer academy and the IL at the river Mosel, the dissent network will meet in September and from the 18th to the 21st of October the [german] Social Forum will take place in Cottbus.
Of all these and other local and internal meetings we have expectations: We hope that first proposals will be resulting from the assessment process in the respective spectrums by autumn – which strategic elements shall form the basis of our struggle in 2008 and 2009, for example.
If strategic proposals and results of analysis will be thrown into debate by the different spectrums – relating to our questions or answering others – we would really like to do our share and support the debate infra structurally. Which means that we propose to have a very huge cross-spectral meeting of debate, strategy and network for some days in the end of autumn or the beginning of winter 2007. First talk about rooms for a congress like that are already under way in Berlin, if Berlin would be a desirable place for that congress. We want to be significantly involved in the setting up of the congress, contentwise as well as organizationaly. We got positive feedback from a lot of participants of the camps, and we believe to have collected quite some reputation to guarantee the cross-spectral character in the preparation of such a meeting.
As the preparation of a congress like that has to start early, we ask the different spectrums for a quick feedback on the proposal announced here. Part of this feedback should be if you think that a weekend will be enough or if we should give ourselves more time, using extended weekends or winter holidays.
greetings full of expectations from the CampAG