Caravan Diary: Thursday, July 5    <->

The day started off with a general discussion of mass protests: representatives from Ya Basta spoke about the planned G8 protests in Genova and the preparations underway by the Genova Social Forum, a coalition representing 700 NGOs in Italy. We discussed border crossings into Italy and compared experiences from Salzburg and Gothenburg. Some were frustrated that the discussion was more theoretical than practical, so we broke up into smaller working groups: media, trans-alpine border-crossing networks, planners for a large border demonstration and planners for smaller local actions. There was some confusion as to whether we were here to close a border or to open it! A local woman shared her experiences about how the border area had changed over the past 20 years: from a social center for different nationalities to a divided and militarized zone. She described trafficking of humans across borders as being generally controlled by organized groups with the cooperation of the police. Another comrade mentioned that a couple of months ago, an Iranian man was shot in the attempt to cross the border: this brings up memories of the iron curtain. The media group organized to create an internet-video documentary and various flyers; the theater group decided to do a travelling carnaval action door-to-door through the local villages. Someone telephoned from the NoBorder network in Poland to say that the Polish BorderCamp has started well with already over 100 people; from Tarifa, over 300 people have already assembled, but some trouble is possible. Preparations are underway for the simultaneous border actions connected by the internet between camps. The surrounding area has been decorated with NoBorder posters. The day finished off with movies from protests at Melbourne, Llubljana and Prague. Spirits are high, and we are all learning the techniques of leaderless decision-making.

Here is one of the proposed flyer texts the media team came up with:
"Are you tired of changing currency just to go to the grocery store? Are you tired of passport checks just to get a cup of coffee? Do you miss being able to socialize freely with family and friends of 4 different nationalities? Do you really want police and military occupying your streets and lives? Do you really want Slovenia to become the gatekeeper of 'fortress Europe,' forcibly shutting out Europe's 'undesireables' on the basis of an artificial line drawn in the dirt? What do borders mean to you? We're here to talk about how they affect our daily lives. Come and share your experiences. Free food and beer."

Sloveniji primankuje takih ljudi, ki bi bili sposobni mobilizirat obco mnozico, nesamo tisto ze pripravljeno na protestiranje znotraj in celo zunaj njenih "meja". Dokler se sirsa javnost ne bo usmerila takim smernicam, kot so nase, prave revolucije nikoli ne bo_ za spremembo le-te pa so potrebni posamezni subjekti, ki delujejo neodvisno od centralne ideologije. Preobrazba okolja delovanja je mozna samo z delovanjem samim...