With just 2 days to go until the 31st Earth First! summer gathering begins in Pembrokeshire, here’s a sneak peek of some of the sessions to look forward to!
Are we doing it all wrong? An exploration into prefigurative politics, vanguardism and making change in a complex dynamic system.
This will be a talk and open discussion that explores the theories of making change particularly emergence, realism, prefigurative politics those that champion it and its critics who propose more traditional leftist strategies for making change. It will explore some historical events and other resistance movements that used these strategies and discuss the benefits and draw backs of each.
It will also explore our own hearts and minds in why we make the decisions we do, our motivations and maybe how and why things look the way they do on the environmental left and left more generally. The aim is to have the audience participating with their own knowledge lived experience of activism and living in a system we don’t want to be a part of to have a rich discussion where hopefully we all go away having learned something even if all the ideas of the host are total nonsense.
Campaigns Round-up
A series short (15–20min) presentations from various campaign groups and what they’re about. Come along to find out what campaign are currently active, what they’re fighting for/against and how to get involved!
If you have a campaign or group you’d like to talk about, please let someone on the welcome desk know and will fit you in.
Climbing for Beginners
Learn how to safely access trees and high structures. In this beginner-friendly workshop we’ll show you how to ascend and descend a rope. All equipment is provided.
NOTE: Climbing is an inherently hazardous activity. Please do not attend if you are not in a calm headspace or are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Ages 16+ only.
Conflict and Community Care
An open discussion around conflict and community care, facilitated by the Starling collective. What even is transformative justice, and what about when someone’s really being a dick? How do we deal with conflict, and how do we wish we dealt with conflict? What does community care look like? We have lots of thoughts and no concrete answers; let’s build collective care collectively.
Connecting conversations across EF!s
At many previous EF! gatherings, we’ve had strategy sessions to think about the current and future of EF! as a movement. At the last winter moot, we spoke about the strategies and resources we can build to support radical action, and ecological direct action in defense of the earth as a necessarily central focus. We wanted to provide a space to pick up these threads, catch up with each other, and think about what comes next. All welcome, even if you’ve never been to EF! before, or missed the winter moot.
Danga
EF! winter moot: in city near you?
Gwersyll Greddfu / Climate Camp Cymru
Dychwelodd Gwersyll Greddfu Cymru llynedd am y tro cyntaf ers 15 mlynedd. Dyn ni’n gweithio gydag ymgyrchoedd lleol i godi gwydnwch ac i sefyll yn erbyn datblygiadau sydd dim yn gynaliadwy. Mae’r sgwrs yma yn gyfle da i ddysgu mwy am y gwaith dyn ni wedi bod yn gwneud, i fyfyrio ar y gwersyll y llynedd, ac i fod yn rhan o’r tîm sy’n trefnu ein gwersyll nesaf.
Climate Camp returned to Cymru last year for the first time in 15 years. We work with local campaigns to build resilience and stand against unsustainable developments. This talk is a good chance learn more about the work we’ve been doing, reflect on last year, and get involved with our upcoming camp.
How to Love Your Bike
A hands-on workshop on cleaning your bike, looking after your chain, and diagnosing mechanical problems. Bring your bike if you’ve got on with you or listen in to the workshop if you don’t.
It takes a village…
Discussion on raising children. What challenges face those caring for children in our movements and beyond? How do we act collectively to support each other through these? Do we need to change some of the ways we organise to be more inclusive of people who care for children? Circle discussion facilitated by Starlings.
Kill the Cop in Your Pocket — Smartphones and Activism
There is no way to completely secure-proof your smartphone against your adversaries, but we can make it more difficult to them. Let’s talk security and privacy, when to leave your phone at home and what we can do to make sure that if you need your smartphone, you’re keeping yourself and your friends safe.
Tech security is community self defence!
Know Your Rights
Green and Black Cross’s ‘Know Your Rights’ workshop aims to give you the knowledge to combat repressive police tactics commonly used against protesters. Police officers often rely on the lack of legal understanding of those participating in protest. This interactive session will give you the tools to take action more confidently. We will cover our Key Messages, police tactics and the role of private security, stop and search, what happens when you’re arrested, laws commonly used against protesters, and a new section about proscription & the terrorism act. There is also space to ask questions. Please note that this workshop is only relevant to England & Wales as the law is different elsewhere.
Practical First Aid for Protests and Direct Action
Going through the basics of first aid with a focus on direct action. Come and learn how to protect and care for your comrades against the violent forces of fascists and the state; including splinting broken bones, treating pepper spray and interacting with the emergency services. No previous experience required.
Reclaiming Identity
“It’s time to be brutally honest about something that’s been happening on the left: we have absorbed the tenets of liberal identity politics. We have nurtured a culture that’s deeply individualistic, where to be seen as a victim, to be able to claim a marginalised identity position, gives you social capital.”
This quote from Ash Sarkar’s Minority Rule paints a picture of how liberal identity politics have infiltrated our movements. Race, class, gender and other aspects of identity are central to radical politics. However, discourses around identity have become dominated by a liberal framing. Critical discussion is subdued due to a culture of conformity. Important insights or concepts, such as ‘lived experience’, are twisted and uncritically applied, eventually becoming unchallengeable dogmas to be wielded against each other. Ultimately a liberal approach to identity undermines solidarity, and moves us away from rather than towards revolutionary change.
The workshop will address some challenging and complex issues, and so we ask that those attending come with a commitment to constructive, critical discussion among comrades.
If you’d like to do a bit of prep before the workshop, read over the 1st chapter of Minority Rule. It’s fairly short and works well for a reading group.
Resisting green capitalism in Barroso and beyond
True mobsters do not get their hands dirty, they are protected by a state structure in a pact of high-risk investments to maintain a colonial extractivist system. Their intrusive machinery ravages mountains into craters, clear-cuts forests into deserts and contaminates pure, wild waters. In Barroso, in the north of the Iberian peninsula, machines have invaded private and common lands, proposing an open-pit lithium mining project — despite the population of this territory resisting for the past seven years.
This conversation on ways of resisting extractivism, refusing sacrifice zones locally and globally, and celebrating us as an alternative to extractivist violence is brought by Disgraça — an anarchist social centre currently in the process of collectively buying the space that has been actively supporting the struggle in Barroso.
Stencils as a Direct Action Tool
Stencil graffiti has been used by activists and resistance movements for decades dating back to WWII, From The White Rose painting anti-nazi slogans in Germany to Argentinian students painting stencils against the military dictatorship during the late 1970s and early 1980s. We will discuss the advantages of typographic and iconic stencils as a direct action tool and how to design, cut and paint them alongside other graffiti techniques
Solidarity in a time of Genocide
Readings from radical Palestinian women and how to support the International Solidarity Movement in the West Bank
As we gather at Earth First, Israel’s genocide in Gaza is ongoing and escalating. Meanwhile, in the West Bank Israeli settlers are using violence and intimidation to forcibly displace entire rural communities and the Israeli army has displaced hundreds of thousands in the northern cities of Jenin and Tulkarem.
The first half of this workshop will hear several readings from “Everything we thought was Beautiful” a new compilation of interviews with radical Palestinian women put together by UK writers cooperative Shoal Collective. Their words include impassioned calls for solidarity.
In the second part of the workshop we will hear first hand accounts from volunteers with the Palestinian-led International Solidarity Movement (palsolidarity.org), who are providing an international Solidarity presence in communities facing settler violence in the Jordan Valley, All Khalil (Hebron) and Masafer Yatta. Find out how you can join our work in Palestine or support from the UK.
Feel free to join for either Part 1, Part 2 or both
Taking Back Birth
Thinking about birthing one day, or supporting someone doing so? The anarchist slogan “everything you have been told is wrong” may well apply! We’ll cover some basic but vital information and answer
questions. If you are a birth worker or had a baby yourself your input is welcomed. If you would like to talk through a challenging experience, please ask for some one-to-one time.
The Current Goings-On at Brithdir Mawr
Join members of Brithdir Mawr in a Q&A on the current goings-on and conflict with our landlord. Hear about the history, the state of play, and predictions of the future. Hear how you could help, and say what you think about it all.
Tour of Brithdir Mawr
Visible Mending
Bring your clothes that need repairs. there will be some materials for visible mending, decorative embroidery and patching. bring your embroidery threads, hoops and needles! We will repair our garments and talk about how we can repair our planet.
What is the Problem with ‘Wellness’?
As our hosts are being evicted to make way for a retreat centre, it is time for a conversation on ‘wellness’.
This discussion, convened by the Starling collective, is a first step into examining issues like: What does ‘wellness’ mean and symbolise in modern society, and in our communities? How can we be ‘well’ in the midst of the meta-crises, and is ‘wellness’ even something to strive for? How has ‘being well’ come to be located solely in the individual, and how can we shift to collective wellbeing? And what are the historical links between wellness, social darwinism, eugenics and the far right?
Working with our Enemies: Critical Solidarity in the War in Ukraine
Drawing from experience of working alongside the military in Ukraine, we will explore questions of how anarchists can participate in struggles where we find ourselves working alongside our enemies. The workshop will try to challenge our ideological purity and ask how critical solidarity can be used in struggles, both global and closer to home.