[Gipfelsoli Newsletter] May 4th, Heiligendamm

[International Newsletter]

May 4th, Heiligendamm

- Legal Team (EA)
- Make Capitalism History
- Migration-Related Activities during the Anti-G8 Mobilisation in Germany
- Germany tries to please all its G8 party guests

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Legal Team (EA)

Hi. This is the homepage of the legal team (= "Ermittlungsausschuss" (short:EA))
in Germany.
... but what is a Legal Team (EA)?

Many of you might have heard about a Legal Team (EA) when on demonstrations or
political actions. But what exactly is a Legal Team (EA) and what is it there
for?

The team working as EA (short for the German term "Ermittlungsausschuss" =
enquiry committee/ legal team) collects general information on assaults and
arrests as well as the names and birthdates of persons who have been arrested.
The EA stays in contact with lawyers and makes sure that persons who have been
arrested get legal help as soon as necessary.
The EA-team also tries to find out where activists have been taken to (e.g.
which police-stations or temporary prison cells) and helps to accelerate the
process of release.
The EA-team also supports activists on a more psychological level: to know that
the situation at the police station or temporary cell is known "outside" and
that people are there to support them is a comfort for most arrested activists
(as well as maybe their friends or parents) while at the same time it has a
controlling effect on the police.

[http://ermittlungsausschuss.eu]


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Make Capitalism History
Or: broaden the mobilisation against the G8 summit | Call to Action by the
Interventionist Left

June 2007. A never ending procession of demonstrators from all over the world,
protesting against the summit of the G8 states, snakes through the streets of
Rostock. Tens of thousands greet the heads of government as soon as they arrive
on the airport's runway and blockade the opulent conference location of
Heiligendamm. Over and over again the smooth conduct of the meeting is
threatened, as the summit's logistical support is disrupted by creative
actions. In the public's eye are not the statements of the powerful, but the
multiplicity of protests and resistance. 'Delegitimise the G8' is no longer a
mere demand, it is what is actually happening on the streets, at the fences, in
the debates in the camps and the countersummit - it is what is globally being
recognised as the result of a series of preparatory Rostock Action Conferences.
For over a year, social movements, trade unions, campaigns of engaged
Christians, different Non-Governmental Organisations, alterglobalists, the
parties of the parliamentary and the networks of the radical left had prepared
for this. Their common stance, their political will not to be separated in
spite of their differences, rendered both the media's disinformation and the
police's repression useless.

Our chance to make Rostock into such an event is based on the protests in
Seattle, Prague, Genoa and Florence. This possibility is also a practical
result of the debates in Social Fora, of the alterglobalist and radical left in
Germany, in Europe, and around the world. In it, that which has been fought out
in countless local struggles, here and everywhere on the planet is coming
together. If we use this opportunity, it will take us far beyond Heiligendamm
and Rostock, far beyond every anti-G8 campaign.

The delegitimation of the G8 is only one step in the emergence of a global
movement against neoliberal, globalised capitalist domination. The
Interventionist Left sees itself as part of this emergence. We come from
different generations and different milieus of the undogmatic radical left, are
active in antifascist organisations, in different social movements and political
campaigns, work individually - yet in a coordinated manner - in trade unions,
social associations and alternative projects. We met in the emergence of
anti-neoliberal and alterglobalist struggles.

For a radical intervention in social realities

For the last few years, wherever the G8, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the coordinating bodies of
NATO and the EU have met, the new resistance movement's caravan is already
there, ready for a determined fight against the world's neoliberal managers.
For while these meetings claim to be the legitimate representation of the
"civilised world" they are organising the continuation of a destructive process
in which - one example - every second someone in the world dies of malnutrition.
They talk of freedom, peace and justice, of democracy and the boundless
competition of the market as the necessary preconditions for happiness and
prosperity for all. All the while the global army of the "superfluous" keeps
growing, with every new social cutback the need for militarily securing the
free flow of commodities and profits grows stronger, war becomes a global
domestic policy, human rights are suspended in the name of human rights and
torture once again becomes acceptable.

However, it is only our job to delegitimate the G8 because they have managed to
acquire legitimacy in spite of all this. When the G8 promise to create and
secure world order, they win approval, amongst other reasons, because millions
around the world are in fact threatened by insecurity. When the G8 free up
market based competition and the division of labour for happiness and
prosperity from all its fetters, again they win approval because the
competition for survival is an everyday reality for millions everywhere and has
often been the strategy to secure one's own - however measly - existence.

Reinventing the left

If we want to challenge, subvert, and ultimately destroy the legitimacy of the
G8, then we have to find other answers to the global insecurity of survival,
other answers to the everyday compulsion to compete. Answers different not only
from those of neoliberal discourse, but also from those of the historic left and
the historic social movements. For the chain of "humanitarian interventions" and
the confusion, disorientation and the not infrequently openly reactionary
character of resistance against the imperial(ist) war prove beyond a doubt that
international solidarity - the be all and end all of every emancipatory
initiative - can today no longer simply be understood as the unity of the left
in the North with the insurgents in the South.

At the same time, "local" resistance against everyday exploitation and exclusion
can no longer be grounded only in the identity, fundamental to the workers'
movement, of a "universal class position" of exploitation. Neither is the
appeal to the differential experience of patriarchal or racist domination that
guided the New Social Movements sufficient. Such appeals are at the very least
rendered impossible by the fundamental uncertainty of daily survival and the
individualising fragmentation of social connections.

Of course, this is not because today there is no exploitation based on class, or
patriarchal and racist domination. Rather, this is the case because the
exploited classes have been dissolved into a highly differentiated hierarchy of
precarisation - and "difference" and "subjectivity" have become discursive
weapons in the arsenal of the neoliberal commando. Class is determined by class
struggle. It is the task of the left to identify the existing conditions for a
potential collective emergence, and to articulate them as a political project.
To want to delegitimate capital's domination, neoliberalism, and therefore the
G8, under current conditions thus primarily and ultimately implies at the same
time to reinvent the left and the social movements.

Movement of Movements

The mobilisation against the G8 summit in Heiligendamm can draw on experiences
that were gained in Seattle, Genoa and Florence, but also Caracas, La Paz, and
most recently in Oaxaca. These experiences are the foundation of initiatives
that resist systematic disenfranchisement through the globalisation of social,
cultural, economic and political rights as global civil rights, beginning with
the crucial rights to freedom of movement and freedom to remain.

These initiatives in turn link to the resistances against the military
fortification of the metropolises and the imperal(ist) war of world order, as
well as with those against the daily intensification of exploitation and labour
regimes. Everywhere these struggles cross paths, the claim is made - of course
not without contradictions and sometimes tortuous conflicts - that life is not
for sale, a claim that becomes materially concrete for example in an
unconditional basic income for all, but which more generally challenges the
increasing becoming-capitalist of life and the compulsion to wage labour.

The claim that life is not for sale entails the demand for a reversal of the
material and resource flows from North to South, that in a first step require
the unconditional cancellation of all the debts of the global South and
reparation payments for colonial and imperialist exploitation. The
radicalisation, extension and development of all these initiatives ultimately
has to and will pose the "old" questions of power and property once more, they
will pose themselves as world-historical questions and thus return to our
present the question of a break with the system of private property coded along
lines of class, gender, race, and imperial(ist) power.

For the world is still nothing more than that which the history of social
struggles will make of it. Liberated life can only be experienced within the
horizon of the overcoming of all relations of domination.

The common

We can only grasp this opportunity in common, and as our common opportunity. We
take this "we" to go beyond the groups and projects within the network of the
Interventionist Left. "We" also doesn't just refer to the different milieus of
the extraparliamentary and parliamentary left. "We" refers to that which, since
Seattle, has been called the "movement of movements". "We" refers to a global
constellation of emancipatory politics that extends beyond the left, as well as
the older and newer social movements. There is an international potential to
resist the domination of capital, together. This possibility and necessity to
organise for resistance and in this invent what is common will today become
different and more than that which used to be called "coalition" or " block".
Neither is there today an industrial proletariat that - in the conception of
the workers' parties - was the only class that could effectively fight capital,
nor are the movements "antechamber" or "mass process" of a left that would be
their vanguard; neither do the movements in their multiplicity and spontaneity
replace that, which differentiates itself from them as the "left", nor do the
quarrels between different ways of being left disappear. Still, this process
aims neither at some ultimate unity, nor a final split. For a coming left the
communication of initiatives and struggles will not be means to an end beyond
itself, but a means that is itself an end for the construction of the
collective, the common. However, this will only be possible through the
practically tested play of diversity, in the showing of solidarity and open
constellation of ones differences and in the decisive intervention in the
relations of society, that is, of domination.

Before the summit, after the summit

A global alternative to the global governance of capital, patriarchy and racism
is a matter of a common, that is, internally multiple and diverse counterpower
in movement. To intervene into such a movement from the radical left is not a
question of rhetoric, but of the practical connection of struggles with the aim
of radicalising them. We believe that within the mobilisation against the G8
summit, activists from the protests against welfare cutbacks, the environmental
and peace movements, the left trade unions and human rights groups, of
self-organised migrants and alterglobalist networks, as well as the different
currents of the left should all begin communicating about this. This is what
our intervention is about, as an intervention whose tendency it is to blast
open the system and which therefore is a radical left one. The extent to which
this will succeed depends first of all on the relations of solidarity amongst
participants to one another, on the transparency of debate, the reliability of
agreements, and the mutual acceptance of and respect for different forms of
action and expression.

But, and this is no contradiction, it also depends on that which is at its
origin: the rejection of the G8, of neoliberalism, of the global rule of
capital in a mass refusal and rebellion in the streets of Rostock and in front
of the fences in Heiligendamm that is communicated globally. That is why we
will take part in all the demonstrations, days of action and counter
activities. That is why we want to turn the arrival of the eight heads of state
and government into their disaster. That is why we are involved with Block G8,
in which many groups from different traditions of protest and resistance have
come together to effectively blockade the meeting of the G8 with thousands of
people, in a show of solidarity and an action of a common: Ya Basta! Enough is
Enough! That is why we are calling for the creation, in all cities and regions,
of local coalitions and networks across political milieus, that can connect the
local conflicts to the global struggles: the everyday of a different
globalisation, of the other world that already shines through in our struggles.
Join the winning side!

Interventionist Left


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Migration-Related Activities during the Anti-G8 Mobilisation in Germany

Here is an overview of the migration-related activities that wil take place
before and during the g8 summit in Heiligendamm (northeastern Germany) in the
period from Saturday the 19th of May until Friday the 8th of June 2007.
Migration is one of the main issues of the counter mobilisation with a special
'Migration' action day on Monday the 4th of June. This article does only give
an overview of the (planned) activities. For more details and up-to date
information please refer to the links given in the article.
1. Activities in the leading up to the G8 summit / within the next weeks
2. An overview about the general anti-G8-choreography in the week of June and
the migration-related focal points
3. The migration-related networking-meeting and "cross-over"-events on 3rd of
June and our participation in the alternative summit
4. The migration-related action-day on 4th of June and the big evening event at
the same day
Activities in the leading up to the G8 summit / within the next weeks

Particular importance will be given to the caravan/NoLager-tour, which will
start at 19th of May in Neuburg/Bavaria and which will stop in various cities
(Neuburg, Nürnberg, Jena, Freienbessingen, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Dortmund,
Büren, Bramsche, Bremen, Oldenburg, Hamburg, Horst, Schwerin, Berlin, Rostock),
before it arrives in Rostock for the big demonstration on 2nd of June. Find more
detailled informations at :: thecaravan.org
Additionally should be mentioned, that this caravan/NoLager-tour will "unite"
with the western part of Euromarch on 28th of May in Oldenburg. These marches
against precariousness will take place between 26th of May and 2nd of June, and
they move from 3 directions to Rostock in order to join the big demonstration
too. Find more informations and the call also in english, french, russian at ::
euromarsch2007.labournet.de.
An overview about the general anti-G8-choreography in the week of June and the
migration-related topics
The above choreography, offers a structured overview about the whole action-week
in June. The actionweek will start with a hopefully huge demonstration on 2nd of
June in Rostock. You will find the call for this demonstration :: here, and it
includes also some of our main migration-related demands. At 3rd of June a
demonstration and a rally will happen about "global agriculture", moreover - as
on the evening before - a concert and more cultural events are under
preparation. Beside this the 3rd of June (sunday) should be used for
networking-meetings and further discussion-events (find more below at item 3).
Concerning 4th of June, the migration-related action-day, find more at item 4.
At 5th of June - with a main reference against militarisation and war- the
blockades will start around the small airport in Rostock-Laage, which is also
used as military base. At this airport the arrival of the presidents is
expected in the afternoon of this tuesday! At the same evening the alternative
summit will start and continues until 7th of June.
Mass-blockades as well as flexible, decentralized blockades can be expected in
the early morning of 6th of June around Heiligendamm (the place of the summit).
And on 7th of June the blockades will be combined with demonstrations, which
should lead to the fences of the red zone. So far a rough overview and you can
find more detailled informations mainly on these two websites: ::
www.heiligendamm2007.de and :: gipfelsoli.org.
The migration-related networking-meeting and "cross-over"-events on 3rd of June
and our participation in the alternative summit

Opening event

The sunday (3rd of June) will start with a big opening event from 10 a.m. to 1
p.m. It will be organised as a debate "about perspectives in and beyond
Europe". A first input will be presented by a german unionist, followed by
critical comments and remarks from other social movements (anti-war-network,
precarity-network ...). And Lucille Daumas from attac in Marocco and very much
involved in the activities against the externalisation of EU-migration-control
to North-Africa, will represent the migration-related networks on this podium.
The debate should work as a "cross-over" event, leading together the various
social movements, and in the same time it should introduce into the respective
networking meetings and forums, which will follow at sunday afternoon.
Migration-related networking meeting

The migration-related networking meeting will start at 2 p.m., probably in a
school in Rostock, which is already now used as convergence center. We want to
start with a very brief plenary (maximum for one hour until 3 p.m.), where we
want to present the respective workshops and the aims and expectations of this
networking meeting. Our main interest is to meet in really "horizontal
discussions" with very brief inputs (and not long presentations!), with a main
focus on common discussions in a hopefully transnational composition. Until now
about 10 migration-related workshops are under preparation, for example:
legalisation; racist police violence; "lager" and border-regime; deportations
and readmission programs; precariousness and migration; remittances and
development ... Various groups or persons took the responsibilities to
coordinate and prepare the respective topics. The main intention at least in
some of the workshops is to overcome a mere information-exchange, rather to
discuss about transnational campaigns and concrete interventions. Of course
more time is needed in such a perspective, so these workshops will be organised
as double slots until the evening.
And we just think for a final common plenary about transnational campaigns and
communication in the evening of the sunday, where we want to bring together the
concrete results of some of the workshops. We want to stress again, that we see
this meeting in the continuation of transnational gatherings during last two
years in the frame of european and world social forums, the conference in Rabat
and the action-day at 7th of October 2006. So the workshops should offer first
of all the opportunity to strengthen and to deepen the networking processes by
identifying focal campaigns on a transnational level.
Alternative summit

Additionally the option is given to continue a few workshops in the frame of the
alternative summit. This counter-conference will start on the evening of 5th of
June, and Madjiguene Cisse, a famous former sans papier activist in France and
engaged in women-projects in Senegal now, will be a main speaker in the opening
plenary. Moreover a so-called "middle-podium" (8 bigger events about various
topics during wednesday, 6th of June, are planned) is under preparation, which
will focus to the structural background of flight and migration in Africa and
East-Europe. Some guests from various African and East-European countries will
take part in it.
The migration-related action-day on 4th of June and the big evening event at the
same day

For 4th of June, day of migration, we plan decentralized activities in the
morning, first of all a siege or blockade of the local foreign office in
Rostock (where just in moment - as an example- a lot of deportations toter
mobilisation with a special 'Migration' action day on Monday the 4th of June.
This article does only give an overview of the (planned) activities. Togo are
organized). Secondly a remembrance-action will take place in Lichtenhagen, a
quarter of Rostock, where 15 years ago one of the most significant racist
pogrom took place. And simultaneously at the main public place in the inner
city of Rostock we want to be present with exhibitions, information-stands,
street-theater and installations (of border-fences and walls for example).
At 1 p.m. we want to start our main demonstration! Starting point will be the
local refugee-camp in Rostock, and then we will march with as much people and
as loud and colourful as possible to the inner city. The demonstration will end
in a manifestation with a concert on another public place.
For the evening a big discussion-event is proposed, under the title: freedom of
movement against global apartheid! Migration-related activists from different
continents should be brought into a common talk.

[ 03. May 2007 ]

[http://no-racism.net/article/2072/]


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Germany tries to please all its G8 party guests

Germany is taking no risks with security at its summit of the G8 rich nations on
the Baltic coast next month. In a move that trumps even the tough measures of
previous summits, it has built a 12km security fence to surround the luxury
Heiligendamm hotel where the eight leaders will meet. In addition, in Germany's
biggest such operation in 60 years, 16,000 police and 1,100 soldiers will be
ready to fend off threats by militant protesters.
Yet listen for a moment to Bernd Pfaffenbach, Chancellor Angela Merkel's
"sherpa", or personal envoy, in the G8 preparations, and one wonders why the
effort is necessary.
"Our policy agenda [for the meeting] provides very few opportunities for
non-government organisations to criticise us," he boasts. He reels off
proposals to boost business investment and Aids prevention in Africa, and to
help slow the pace of climate change, and praises his "constructive dialogue"
with non-governmental organisations pushing environmental, development and
other messages.
Such contrasting perspectives reflect the scale of the challenge facing both
governments and NGOs ahead of the June 6-8 summit, as they grapple with what
has become an important relationship in international policymaking, but one
that is also often ambiguous and politically charged.
Martin Kirk of Save the Children, the UK charity, says: "We have made a
difference in the past by putting our views to the G8 states but we have to be
careful not to be blinded by the glare of the G8's self-importance."
The event at which hewas speaking, a two-day "G8-NGO dialogue" conference last
week in Bonn between 300 NGO delegates and the eight G8 special envoys, showed
how farthe relationship has come.
"Anti-globalisation" used to be the rallying cry against the G8, peaking at the
2001 summit in Genoa, Italy, where clashes led to the death of a demonstrator.
In contrast, the NGOs gathered in Bonn talked little about anti-globalisation
and condemned the threat of violence from far-left groups against this year's
event - threats that partly triggered the fence-building.
But that does not mean they were going soft in their demands or playing down
their achievements, say activists. Martin Khor, veteran leader of the Third
World Network, a Malaysian NGO, says the choice in recent years of the G8 as a
high-profile target for concerted pressure by civil society had paid off,
noting that African aid and debt relief had become a "regular fixture of G8
summits".
Jürgen Maier, chairman of the Bonn event, says: "The same may now occur with
climate change." Equally, the relationship forces some less open governments -
such as Russia last year and Japan in 2008 - to listen to NGO arguments even if
they largely ignore the advice.
Yet dialogue in itself should not replace results, says Odour Ong'wen of
Seatini, a Kenyan economic rights NGO. "The rich world promised 35 years ago to
increase aid to 0.7 per centof GDP and still has not delivered."
Aid was due to increase sharply after the UK's Gleneagles summit in 2005 but it
in fact fell last year. Reinhard Hermle of Oxfam Germany, the development
group, says: "The G8 has to act if its legitimacy is not to be undermined."
Despite such criticism, Mr Pfaffenbach and his co-sherpas acknowledged that
engagement with NGOs has its benefits. Adding more emotive issues to the G8's
traditionally dry economic agenda adds to the elite club's legitimacy.
Indeed, Ms Merkel's decision to revise her original plan to focus only on world
economics occurred partly because NGOs had successfully turned climate and
Africa into mainstream G8 agenda items, officials admit.
NGO pressure can sometimes help governments by creating public readiness to
accept change - and is often good for politicians' popularity ratings. Ms
Merkel's recent decisions to pose with Bono, the rock star turned activist, and
to propose extra help for female Aids victims in Africa fit this mould, NGOs
argue.
Yet given such influence, campaign groups also need to be aware of the pitfalls
of their power, says Mr Kirk. There is a danger that, encouraged by NGOs, the
G8 will "overstretch" to tackle detailed issues beyond their remit. On
healthcare in developing countries, for instance, the G8 should "stick to
shaping the international framework for care delivery, rather than tinker with
provision systems in individual countries".
Peter Ritchie, a climate expert at London's Chatham House think-tank who has
followed G8-NGO consultations, says NGOs can bring change but they must be
clear about their own and the governments' objectives.
"Ultimately, NGOs are rarely pushing governments towards decisions they don't
want to take," he adds.
Background

Top priorities at the Heiligendamm G8 summit on June 6-8 are the world economy,
Africa and climate change. Non-governmental groups hope to attract 100,000
people to a protest rally in nearby Rostock on June 2. Rock stars including
Bono, Seeed and Herbert Grönemeyer are playing at a campaign concert for more
aid to Africa in Rostock on June 7. Militant activists are planning sit-down
protests during the G8, aimed at blocking roads leading to Heiligendamm.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/009ba47a-f928-11db-a940-000b5df10621.html]