(en) Report from the Mediterranean anarchist gathering -
27-29 march 2015. Tunis.
On the 27th, 28th and 29th of march, a gathering was held in Tunis in order to create a
Mediterranean anarchist network. It was co-organize by the Commun Libertaire (host of the
event), the French Anarchist Federation and the International Anarchist Federation. ----
Organisations involved: ---- Alternative Libertaire (AL France), ---- Anarchist Black
Cross (ABC Biélorussie), ---- Anarchist Black Cross (ABC Dresde), ---- Association «
Victoire pour la femme rurale » Victory for the rural woman (Tunisie), ---- Confédération
Générale du Travail (CGT Espagne), ---- Confédération Nationale du Travail / Association
Internationale des Travailleurs (CNT/AIT Espagne), ---- Confédération Nationale du Travail
- Vignoles (CNT-Vignoles France), ---- Fédération Anarchiste (FA France), ---- Federazione
Anarchica Italiana (FAI Italie), ---- Federazione Anarchica Siciliana (FAS Sicile),
Fédération des Forces Émancipatrices (FFE, Tunisie),
Internationale des Fédérations Anarchistes (IFA)
Kurdistan Anarchists Forum (KAF Londres),
Le Commun Libertaire (Tunisie),
And other individuals from : the feminist collective “La collective 34” (France), Freie
Arbeiter_innen Union Bern (FAU Suisse), Coordination des Groupes Anarchistes (CGA France),
Gemeinschaft für Ethik, Tierbefreiung und Umwelt Potsdam (Get On, Allemagne), SENEC Algérie,
No Borders, Longo Maï, and more from different anarchists / antispecists / feminists /
squats / ZAD.
Friday 27 march :
Inscriptions and presentations of the participants.
Projection of the movie « Wim Tchib » by Med Ben Marzouk et Nabil Chamekh.
Saturday 28 march :
Presentation of the gathering by a member of the « Commun Libertaire »
Reading of the gathering opening text. (file attached)
Presentation of the jobless-graduated people's struggle (organized in the UDC, “Union des
Diplômés Chômeurs”), currently in hunger strike for several weeks, some of them at
health-risk.
(file attached)
Presentation of the social situation in Tunisia by a member of the UDC
Reminder on the 2010-2011 struggles, focusing on the importance of the media coverage. We
need an alternative self-organized media network to spread our ideas.
Ben Ali left but the system didn't changed. Elections didn't changed anything. Right wing
still in power (switching between religious and liberal). What shall we do today as
anarchists? How to involve the jobless-graduated people and encourage them to organize
themselves?
We also need to raise awareness within women from rural areas and inner regions. We have to
question ourselves as anarchist activists and change our ways of thinking and acting
because we
live in harsh conditions that implies a good self-organization. There is also the problem
of the left-
apart youth in the post revolution Tunisia where the social issue hasn't been solved yet;
and where
the police repression in the social movements still occurring today (arrests for 2011's
events)
Islamist political parties, after Ben Ali's fall, started to recruit within
revolutionaries activists, taking
away young people from the street. We should have talked to them. In order to counter-attack
electoral structures, national struggle networks emerged to gather and give a common
speech. Thus
in 2011 appeared a struggle network of 500 people, then the Disobey movement until 2013, and
today the Commun Libertaire.
Presentation of the association “Victoire de la femme rurale” - Victory for the rural woman by
the coordinator
The association was born from a UDC's movement of women and men in 2011. It focuses on the
unstable economic and social issues of women living in poor rural areas of Sidi Bouzid
(strategic
region during the revolution process). The associations denounces issues related to
transport (long
distance between home and work, extreme conditions, sexual harassment...) and the weight
of the
bad distribution of the tasks in and out their home (economic, domestic...). Men flee
rural areas for
cities and the tourist industry. No medical support. Women depreciate themselves because
of social
and religious constraint. The goal of the organization is to support women's empowerment
through
permanence, trainings, meetings, cultural activities ans self-organized projects.
Presentation of the situation in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan) by a kurdish compa from the KAF
(Kurdistan Anarchist Forum)
Summary of the general oppressive situation in the Syrian Kurdistan by the El Assad's regime
(green belt, the whole industrialization being left apart, held in poverty, cultural
assimilation...) with
the ambiguous support from PKK and PYD (« no peace no war »). This atmosphere created a real
anti-state feeling. The inclusion of women's movement in the struggle contributed to the
liberation
of Kobané; thus allowing a potential construction of a self-organized society. We can't
talk about an
anarchist revolution, is is more a political social struggle attempting to self-organize.
Foreign
capitalists investors are trying to support the reconstruction of Kobané according to
their own
model, starting to get the power away from the people. Therefore we do need a true
international
solidarity to support the revolutionary process. Support can be in many different ways:
financial,
material, or sharing skills and knowledge. Importance in developing auto-medias : free radios,
internet website...
Reading of a solidarity release to the hunger-strikers' struggle from the UDC initiated by the
CNT-Vignoles France (file attached) and proposition of collective signatures.
Questions and answers following several interventions and presentations.
Reading of the plead to create a Mediterranean anarchist network from LSM (Egypt), AIT
Discussion around the identity, the aims, the tools, the working topics of the network. (see
below)
Sunday 29 march :
Following of the discussion on the Mediterranean anarchist (and social struggle) network
1. Working principles of the network
- Who are we? What are our priorities? Why this network?
- Who is involved? (revolutionary people in general, self-organized, or anarchists only)
- How should we get involved: individually or in organisation?
- How does the network really work? How should we take a decision? (vote, mandates)
- How to set up information spreading tools and working methods, which one?
- Where to have the next meetings for it to be accessible to everyone? (visa, transports...)
- What kind of network ? > For some of us we are in an anarchist meeting, therefore it
needs to be
an anarchist network. For others, it needs to be a network open to revolutionary and
self-organized
people.
- Focusing on the Mediterranean peculiarity (colonial past and neocolonialism: tourism,
outsourcing...)
- Being aware of the participation of the Northern Mediterranean people within the network
(who
can easily attend the meetings, access means...)
2. Propositions for the network's concrete actions
- To fight within social movements to avoid recuperation / retrieval by capitalism,
neoliberalism,
political parties, nationalism, religious fundamentalism, etc.
- Giving an anarchist / revolutionary perspective in the already existing social struggles
- Regular meetings of the network and support to specific struggles for 6 months / 1 year
- Support to cooperatives
- Creation of social centers
- Mutual invitations on struggles
- Support to existing self-organized initiatives even if they didn't consider themselves
as anarchists
- Development of financial solidarity campaigns (crowfunding)
- Development of free welcoming spaces
- Development of common spaces for meetings
- Participation to international action days
- Spreading local informations
- Financial, material and logistic mutual help
- Welcoming in case of repression (asylum)
- Trainings, technical courses (opensource...), knowledge and skills sharing
3. Campaigns and working thematics
- repression
- migrations
- war / militarism
- media and information spreading
- women struggles / feminism
- nationalist and religious fascism
- universities (student migrations and shredding of the public system in the advanced
education)
- trade unionism and social struggles
- animal liberation
4. Tools to develop
- Newspaper in several languages, sharing spaces in our papers and radios
- Working platform between our organizations and struggles (emails list)
- Mesh network (spreading information network without internet).
- Creating and developing Wikipedia pages
- Developing our activities on internet and in social networks.
- Creating online library data center.
- Developing numeric security
- Decentralized currency
In conclusion, many discussions didn't finish on concrete decisions. Everything is still there
to be defined. We already reveal the whole diversity of the anarchist movement within this
gathering. There could never be a monolithic point of view. There is a diversity in
anarchists' activism. We are in a working process that needs to be carried on.
Various infos and closing of the meeting :
Presentation of 4 campaigns currently in process:
- MUOS, American military base in Sicily
- Choucha, refugee camp left without a status in the Tunisian desert
- The three bridge campaign by the Greek anarchist movement coordination
- Tunisian campaign around anti-terrorist police response from the Tunisian government
after the
Bardo's museum attacks
Proposition of a release following the heads of governments protest against the Bardo's
museum attacks (release attached)
Various proposals :
- Creating a working group on migrations issues (No Borders)
- Working on war issues, for example the No MUOS struggle in Sicily (file attached)
- Working on the repression issues with the ABC Belarus
- Working on solidarity with Kurdistan
- Organizing next network meeting in Turkey
- To meet as Mediterranean anarchist network during the gathering initiated but the Greek
communist-anarchist group in Athene in October 2015, in connection with the three-bridges
campaign.
