A G8 evaluation at the PGA meeting in Hamburg

G8 2007 - Germany | Peoples' Global Action

reposted from email, 12 June 2007: As the 10th of june meeting in hamburg took place with around 20 people, we announced for all participants to send the G8 evaluation around, so here it is:

the meeting started with a introduction-round of present people and several people where especially present to discuss about the G8 summit, so this was the first bigger debate on the meeting, which took place in four small groups and a plenary later.

after this there was a meeting of some activist who had common interest in ecological topics and parallel a meeting about the pga structure and process.

in this mail we will just sum up the part about the G8 evaluation.

there were people present from belarus, finnland, bulgaria, spain and germany.

the small groups mentioned following points:

1st group:
- more transparency on all areas: infrastructure and actions
- more tolerance and solidarity between the different groups
- better information flow between the camps and actions taking place
- a neutral press contact only telling facts about different actions (block G8 and attac were to dominating)
- badly moderated (and too long?) meetings, people were dominating
- good things about the infrastructure: public kitchen, medics and security, toilets and showers (all at reddelich)
- false dennonciations
- too much tourism at camp rostock and too much alcohol

2nd group:
difficult to understand infos ("cc" etc)
- little decentralised action
- block G8 hierarchial
- good place to learn / grow on a personal level
- was it successfull?
- absolute confrontation or nothing (not in between)
- difficult to find action
- the press "showing both sides" (not only "violent protestors" - writing about police repression)
- task oriented ("do,do, produce") forgetting personal interaction "living the world we want to create"
- the press focusing on counter summit (success!)
- difficult to understand whats going on unless you "know people" (the organizers)
- media total violence (black bloc) OR clowns - noting in between not looking for the reasons behind the different protests
- making access to the summit more difficult helps us. allow us to grow / organize in different ways. making us stronger
- demonstrators more "powerful" than police because of ideology and solidarity, "ideological" interaction missing, not only action (what do we want?) (why do we fight?)
- G8 an opportunity to unite and act together in spite of differences

3rd group:

- media (critical, commmercial, BILD)

- communication on camps, in movement:
* after a certain point there was no more communication on the camps / lack of concept ? or overcrowded / with 5000 people not possible?
* positive sign was that people not concepts were making blockades possible
* technical limit of consensus (more than 300 people not possible) so there should be delegates with obligatory mandate and camp assambleas
* lack of information for people who were blocating, whether the other blockades were still existing or not - nearly no communication with the camps in that situation
* the delegate system was planned but did not work out that good
* communicate more radical actions was missing, people spent their whole day for getting infos and did not get them
* there was one impression that the delegate-system was functioning for 2-3 days and than broke down completely, the queer barrio worked because of barrio-identity but most barrios not, so communication failed
* the "advertising" with the loudspeakers at the end instead of communication was a result
* people found their way by accident to activities

- tools for promoting alternatives

- a movement which is integrative, not exclusive:
* some people were consuming spectacle
* was it a festival or moving forward activities?
* consuming / living on the camps and nothing else (some people)
* for libertarian society we do not need to promote / we can accept lazy people
* did we succeed to get people into the movement? answer: consumers no but maybe some from the blockades, and some of the non-activist were activated (also from the internationals)

- there is a need to communicate and coordinate public leaflet-distribution and contact to non-activist local people

- people from ex-sovietunion prepared for over a year for G8 but at the moment they arrived in rostock they had no idea what actions and activities to do
- there were less activities because people were local overcrowded with infrastructure, so activists from the libertarian / dissent were not enough prepared
- there was not enough information from dissent, local people seemed all tired and contact persons were overcrowded
- sometimes the people at the infopoints were not interested in answering questions they heard very often and there was sometimes a unmotivated and unfriendly athmosphere
- the people ready for radical actions did not find ways how to communicated, there was no open discussion about it, a fear of civil cops and afraid to talk
- a main point: the fear produced by the state was functioning
- effective communication should be divided: one side open actions to discuss public and other hand hidden things has to be prepared befor camps not at camps, otherwise they would not function because of public / cops
- camps were not arranged for radical / militant actions it seemed there was no wish from organisers for that
- there were people up for radical actions but communication failed
- making barrios on different topics /e.g. enviromentalism) would be great, because such kind of facilitation works

4th group:
- block G8 was successfull but dissentnetwork not
- it was difficult to take part in decentralised blockades for foreigners and even germans (afraid of repression, difficult to get information about blockades, only few experiences in rural areas)
- good for networking and practical experiences of anarchy
- no radical positions, just people throwing stones
- there must be a discussion about militant street-fighting
- networking must go on (look for different themes)

After the four groups came together we discussed:

There was a “total” block G8 everywhere and about the radical there were only throwing stones in the media. The “living anarchy” and networking at the camps and convergence centers was nice experience, it was great that so many people came together with similair ideas. But the communication was not that good and also the media did not find ways to get in touch with dissent-positions, there was a kind of “fence” between the activists and media.

Media image of black block was nearly all. We have to catch media, but media gateway group and campinski press group tried to involve dissent. Some people said about the domination of block G8 that they just did what they said befor they want to do, so there was not the problem at block G8 but at the not functioning of the decentral concept. But what was still strange was that block G8 announced “their” blockades with non-black clothes and other groups made also similair concept-blockades.

It was mentioned that it is important that there was no consensus about that black clothes topic at block G8. And decentralised actions failed mostly, the need for anarchist / leftradical action planning / communication was not filled. The barrio / camp structure: communication as it worked in the queer barrio should have worked everywhere --> a wish for more structure.

The material blockades did not function so much but Wiechmannsdorf made some burning wires and the naked block was also existing. Also the rebel clowns made successful actions. The communication in Wiechmannsdorf seemed to be much better than in other camps, the worst was in Rostock camp where there were no barrios at all.

At the Rostock camp all was much more splitted. There was often no willing of interaction of the spectres. Also it was too action focused and some just made full time technics and kitchen. It was almost impossible to make actions and workshops.

In the convergence centers were workshops and at the 3rd of june at the camps but later not at all. The interaction not only action and better facilitation is needed. There were actions and demonstrations but no process. It is important to see what is going to happen in the future? Smaller camps?

Conflicts between groups, how to handle? How to show the media different, various kinds of actions? The radical left “alternative summit” was missing. It was difficult how to communicate a message to people not belonging to the inner circle.

We have to take care not to reproduce the attitudes and roles in big groups and not to make hierarchial decisions, speed, look for strategies about actions. We have to look for new strategies beyond mass blockades and decentral actions. It is not enough for anticapitalists to concentrate on a G8, we need more organised and continuing networking, this would solve a lot of the mentioned problems.

That’s it so far, just a rough overview what was discussed about the G8 at the pga meeting at the rote flora at the 10th of june 2007.

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