In Person Activism

As composting enthusiasts who want to build a project around compost, we had been intrigued about the waste ever since the council had announced their new bio waste collection program and advertised everywhere for people in town to collect and deliver theirs. They handed out buckets, a few containers appeared in two neighbourhoods, and it had something to do with the sustainable development goals.

But no composting facility anywhere in the council, so we asked around and finally got hold of the right person. Found out the waste is carried a hundred kilometers away to a huge central facility, once a week.

Now we need to find out if they let us do better than that?

We want anarchy. We want freedom and autonomy for everyone, without domination. We want the overthrow of the existing order. We want social revolution.

This hasn’t changed since the last ACAT gathering. Among other topics, the following was discussed last year: Whether intermediary/specific struggles are still a valid proposal under current conditions and/or if we would need them now more than ever; faced with dystopian conditions, in what way we can intervene in social struggles (and whether we want to); the recuperation of anti-authoritarian struggles by authoritarians (based on the experience of the Appelist takeover on the ZAD in Nantes, France); the digital enclosure and its discontents (based on the case of the comrade Boris in France and the struggle there against the global expansion of the digital open-air prison); the history of the insurrectionary method; war; and patriarchy in its techno-industrial form.

This year we will come together again, to meet each other face to face without screens. In big and small groups, with new faces and old acquaintances, and friends. With the experience from last year, we have decided to limit discussions to three thematic days, with only two prepared discussions each day. (Spontaneous discussions can be proposed and started again all the time).

The themes will be:

• International Solidarity
• Extractivism
• War

The meeting will take place in the Hambacher Forest. Days of discussion will be Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Arrival days are Wednesday the 29th and Thursday the 30th and departure day is Monday the 3rd of June.

Bring your distros!

There will be food provided. Tents, sleeping bags, and mats have to be brought. Please write us if you don’t want to sleep in a tent, there will be alternatives (which don’t include climbing), but this options will be provided first and foremost to people who need them to be able to participate in the gathering.

For contacting us or if you have any other questions:

acat [äd] supernormal.net find pgp-key here

A detailed program, as well an explanation for how to get there and other info will be published here at the beginning of May

All anarchists, wild hearts, free spirits, subversives, and rebels who recognize themselves in this invitation are welcome.

Nevertheless – and with the experience from last year – we want to add a small disclaimer, for those who should maybe think about if they really want to come:

• People who expect moderated discussions, talking lists, and other social-cybernetic modalities. You can associate yourself under such conditions for small group discussions if you want to do this, but most discussions won’t be like this.

• People who expect an awareness team for a discussion weekend. There won’t be any.

• People who expect partying and drug consumption. There are many possibilities for this all the time, a discussion gathering in a forest is maybe not the space for this.

• People who, when it comes to the question of war, endorse anarchists joining the ranks of (proto-)state formations or want to (morally) pressure anarchists to take the side of this or that state (or even fight for them), please stay away from this gathering.

https://acat.noblogs.org/

In this case I operate on the assumption car drivers are inherently good people. So when I am cycling in the middle of the lane (when the lane is too narrow for safe sharing), and they are behind me hitting their horn, I give them the benefit of the doubt as to whether they are being a malicious prick.

So I stop the bicycle, get off look around, check my pockets, and if their window is open I ask “did I drop something?” Because surely they would not use their horn to demand that I move to the side so they can pass me unsafely. Surely they are kindly signalling to me that my backpack is open, or that something fell from my bicycle.

Every single time, I never manage to discover that anything was lost or out of place.. but I continue to give drivers the benefit of the doubt every time.

https://www.greenkayak.org/

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

Solarcamp Freiburg: Lerne deinen Beitrag zur Energiewende zu leisten
https://solarcamp-freiburg.de/was-ist-das-solarcamp/
@inperson

Der Klimaschutz stockt – es fehlen die Hände für die Energiewende. Das müssen wir ändern! Das @solarcamp_freiburg bietet für 50 Menschen die Möglichkeit, ins Klimahandwerk reinzuschnuppern.

Die Bewerbungen für Sommer 2024 sind noch offen. Es kann zwischen zwei Zeiträumen gewählt werden. 29.07.-02.08. / 05.08.-09.08 und 05.08.-09.08. / 12.08.-16.08.

I was thinking a lot about how design patterns are useful solutions to certain classes of problems. I went spelunking online and found this from a Wikipedia page lol. Hope it proves helpful for community activists!

A great breakdown of concrete actions, sorted by time commitment (all the way from 5 minutes up to "I want to go to Italy and train with Al Gore").

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8560856

This seems like a great technology to build resiliency and redundancy in a community, especially for places where cell service is spotty, or in the odd event where normal lines of communication are blocked.

The LoRa boards can be easily powered with a small solar panel for continuous use, and if put in a high enough place with a good antenna, they can have a surprisingly long range!

In addition to being genuinely useful, they also seem like they'd be a lot of fun to experiment and play around with, printing cool 3D cases for them, or designing a better antenna or repeater setup.

If and of you already have experience with LoRa, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts! :D

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/4687232

I’ve boycotted Coca-Cola & Pepsi products for over a decade. All the non-alcoholic drinks at my workplace cafeteria were Coke products. Even the orange juice (Minute Maid is Coke).

So I complained… saying directly¹ to the outsourced catering company that Coke is contrary to local values and that we should have at least one ethical option, while at the same time stressing that bringing in Pepsi products would not solve the problem. I said I’m currently limited to water, beer, and wine. And obviously when I choose tap water they make nothing on that then they have to wash my glass.

They replied to say they’ve decided to bring in more drink options. Couple weeks later they had Arizona iced tea and various coconut water kinds with aloe vera. And I noticed lots of people buying them. There’s still the problem of plastic waste from the containers but getting some people off Coke was a bigger stride to make IMO.

Coke’s wrong-doings are only fractionally environmental, but I wanted to mention it here because the story demonstrates how a simple 1-person action can sometimes scale beyond just one individual. AFAIK, I was the only one to complain about the Coke monopoly.

Note that only the few colleagues I mentioned this to know it was boycott-driven. People buying non-Coke drinks were simply taking what they wanted with no idea that an anti-Coke boycott action lead to more options. The ease of it is notable. I did not have to undertake the big effort of rallying a crowd.

1. indeed I took the liberty to contact the catering company directly, bypassing my employer who actually had the contract with the catering company. It caused no issue. I guess it was clear enough that I was just an employee and not acting on behalf of the employer.

So I decided to share these with my neighbours! 😊

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/8354304

Karrot is a free and open-source tool for grassroots initiatives and groups of people that want to coordinate face-to-face activities on a local, autonomous and voluntary basis.

It is designed in ways to enable community-building and support a more transparent, democratic and participatory governance of your group.

Archived Version

Anti-apartheid price tags for supermarket shelves for products covered by the BDS boycott.