For the first time this year, different movements and initiatives will design parts of the climate camp. The Nyéléni movement, the Interventionistische Linke (Interventionist Left) and Bikekitchen Wien will each design one so-called barrio. The barrios work like neighbourhoods inside the whole climate camp and provide their own program. Find out more below.
Nyéléni BarrioBarrio der interventionistischen Linken Bikekitchen Barrio
Nyéléni goes Climate Camp
Making good, healthy and locally adapted food accessible for all people – this is the vision of the movement for food sovereignty. This seemingly easy goal presents a huge challenge for our society: millions of people suffer from hunger and malnutrition and are thus forced to live on unhealthy foods that are produced through the exploitation of people and nature.
Our food system, which currently connected globally, industrialized in most places and far too closely aligned with the interests of big companies is contributing massively to climate change and exploiting people. At the same time, it is precisely agriculture that is hit especially early and seriously by the effects of climate change. The way our food is produced and distributed, by whom and under which social, political and ecological conditions has to be conceived as a part of the broad movement for a good, just environmental and climate policy and vice versa!
This year, the spring meeting of the Nyéléni Austria Forum for food sovereignty will be taking place as part of the Climate Camp. We want to connect and exchange with other eco-social movements on all relevant common issues:
We want to stand up against our environment being destroyed and people in other parts of the world being denied their right to food and a good life. We are fed up with our rural farming being pressured by market constraints and all people who produce food in harmony with humans, animals and nature being barely able to prevail over industry and corporations.
Food sovereignty counters the acute crises of our times with a vision of a small-scale, sustainable and diverse agriculture that puts a focus on those producing, processing and distributing food and lets them codecide, how we want to feed ourselves in the future. For this we will travel to the Climate Camp!
Wednesday, 30th May, 4-6 pm
How to start a Hokollektiv
A workshop with stories from a Hofkollektiv in Southern Burgenland, with a discussion and exchange of experiences.
How did we find a farm and set up a direct credit?
What is great about direct credits?
Why did we even buy land, although we also like to occupy?
What is great about solidarity economy?
Everyone interested is welcome; if necessary the workshop can also be held in English
By Anneke Engel
Thursday 31st May, 10 am – noon
Breaking the power of corporations, empowering people
In August 2001, the Ugandan army displaced 2000 people from four villages, because the government had leased their land to the Kaweri coffee plantation. Kaweri is a subsidiary company of the Neumann Kaffee Gruppe in Hamburg. Up until the now, the displaced have not been compensated. Yet, they are demanding their rights. The workshop will show by means of this example how governments and corporations are complicit in human rights violations, which measures actors are taking to defend themselves and which political processes are supporting their struggles.
By Carla Weinzierl and Melanie Ossberger
Thursday 31st May 4 – 8 pm
Changing the world – steps towards a changing society
The aim of this workshop is to work out the numerous aspects of a changing society. A changing society refers to all actors from civil society, economy, administration, education, research, politics etc that are questioning the current organization and structures of society and proposing alternatives for a socio-ecological transformation that redefine justice and sustainability; for example, climate justice and food sovereignty. An Austrian process to rethink the role of higher education institutions is taking shape under the slogan „Die Welt verändern lernen“ (“Learning to change the world”). It concerns research and education or rather learning as a whole.
There will be s short introduction into the process that started on 27th April at a symposium with the support of the Austrian Students’ Union and Austrian Students’ Union at BOKU. After an open discussion, synergies from existing networking processes and training programs (seminars, camps..) will be discussed and how future activities, e.g. on the topic of climate justice can be work stronger together in one direction. More information to come soon!
By David Steinwender
Friday 1st June, 10 am – noon
Food Literacy – exchange of experience about food sovereignty in everyday life
Food literacy is an idea of knowledge dissemination on how food sovereignty can be transmitted as a political project and not as a question of lifestyle for those who can afford it. It is about understanding the political interrelations and empowering people to act from their concrete situation, without a moralist forefinger and beyond appealing to a responsible consumption or a healthy nutrition.
In the framework of the workshop, an exchange of experiences about various approaches and practical experience will be conducted and mapped, on how especially people outside our own “bubble”, the own societal range or usual customers can be reached and empowered.
By David Steinwender
Friday 1st June, 4 pm – 6 pm
Farm- and village-excursion by Maria Vogt – food sovereignty and regional development on site
(maximum of 25-30 participants)
This year’s Climate Camp takes place on the pasture of the biological farm of the Vogt family. We want to seize the chance and concretely answer questions concerning self-determined food production and agricultural development on the ground, in the Weinviertel region, on an excursion to the farm, field and village. The walking tour will address various focal points on several levels:
– Regional planning and regional developments in agriculture
– Areas of concern like land consumption by industry and road construction, climate change, growth and disappearance of farms and the nitrate pollution of ground water
– As a contrast, possible solutions: organic farms, regional marketing, energy from wind and biomass
With this knowledge we want to jointly develop further visions and ideas, as well as design actions for the Climate Games on the week-end.
Saturday 2nd June
Development and performance of the Climate Games actions with the whole Climate Camp. Meetings in small groups built on ideas collected over the course of the previous three days.
Barrio of the Interventionist Left
From outside the Interventionist Left (IL) is perceived mostly as a collaboration of leftist groups and activists that has proven its ability to mobilize towards and organize supra-regional campaigns like Dresden Nazifrei (Dresden without Nazis), Costor Schottern, Blockupy or Ende Gelände. We are known for using the radicalizing effect of resistance and self-empowerment through self-organized disobedient mass actions.
However, the project of the Interventionist Left is driven and held together by a common strategic agreement that becomes clear in the term that lends itself to the name of the intervention:
We want a radical Left that is self-confident and able to speak up, intervenes in political struggles and is able to act also outside of its subcultures, neighborhoods and spaces. We want a radical Left fighting radically against patriarchy, racism and capitalism as a whole, while all along seeking to build new alliances, deepening disruptions and taking up chances, preferring to make mistakes and learning from them, instead of losing itself in the cynicism of criticism alone. We want a radical Left oriented towards the revolutionary rupture with the national and global capitalism, the power of the bourgeois state and all forms of oppression, deprivation of rights and discrimination. In short: we want a new, radical societal Left that fights for political hegemony and organizes a countervailing power.
Saturday 2nd June
10 am – noon
Legal aid workshop – more info to come
2 – 4 pm
Digital self-defence: encrypted communication and encrypting devices: more info to come
4 – 6 pm
Crash course: Campaigning
What different types of campaigns are there? What defines a good goal? How can I estimate strengths and weaknesses better? How does change by social movements even work? Which roles are there in large movements and which role do we have in there?
In this crash course on campaigning we will present methods and models to learn to think and implement a big change one step at a time. The methods presented are no guarantee for success in political work. However, they have often proved to increase the chances of success and avoid frustration.
Workshop in German language. By and with Sandra Stern and Rainer Hackauf from the Bureau für Selbstorganisierung (www.selbstorganisierung.at)
Bikekitchen Barrio
The bikekitchen is a bike and metal workshops, a space for events, a kitchen, a network.
It is a collective of activists with different space of maneuvre, for all of them, the bike is a common political vision.
The bikekitchen is a solidarity space for self-help related to bikes. It is a space for exchange of experiences, competences and broken bicycle items and we’re speaking up against any form of discrimination.
The bikekitchen opposes the totalitarian rule of the cars. www.bikekitchen.net