Economics of Protests and body smell because of vegan food
At the G8 Camp, I ate vegan food for a few days. I noticed that body smell changes rapidly. Vegan food does something to bodies. Don’t underestimate the power of body smell for forming political coalitions. I wonder if G8 protesters and G8 politicians could talk to each other given their different food consumption, digestion and body smell.
Back to G8 cuisine: The kitchens at the G8 Camps are a very interesting institution. You can go there, eat as much as you want and pay as little as you wish. How does that work? Well, the food and the dish-washing is done by volunteers, there is no working schedule, just voluntary commitment. When people are needed for a certain task, someone will shout across the camp and people will flock to the kitchen. Not everybody joins in, but most do. This gets the work done quite efficiently, as I could observe.
Afterwards I wondered much about the finances of the G8 camp. For a camp of a couple thousand people you need water, sanitary equipment, tents, kitchens, food. Surely a lot of this infrastructure is donated or paid by NGOs, but not all of it. Who pays for the G8 camp?
At each meal, there are a few volunteers going around with a small bag and asking for voluntary contributions. A fair contribution was indicated as 3.50 Euros, given that the food was organic food. But as I overheard from talking to some of the campers, this was still seen as too much.
I wonder whether the Camp organizers make the “expected price” a little bit higher because they know that most of the Campers won’t pay the full price? I always gave a little bit more because I saw a lof of other people not paying the “expected price” and I don’t think it’s fair if people preparing such a camp end up with a big debt.
Apparently, this has happened though. As the German Ostsee-Zeitung writes, the protest organizers have a debt of about 70.000 Euro, with already 15.000 Euro lacking in funding from the kitchen. According to the Netzeitung, the organizers are contacting Bono and other prominent G8 protesters to help with their expenses.
The blogger Christian states:
If Attac and others can not run their kitchens economically, I am very skeptical about their ideas concerning the World Economy.
There are a few misconceptions in this statement and I want to address them here because they are maybe prominent misconceptions in the G8 debate.
Firstly, Attac did not organize the G8 camps. A large coalition of very different groups organized the G8 camp. I guess that Attac as an organization had very little impact on the running of the G8 camp, maybe some individuals from the Attac Network.
Secondly, running a G8 camp is a complex issue: nobody can be sure about the amount of participants and the needed ressources, even though there are quite some experiences in organizing G8 camps. I wonder if private companies or law firms would be better at running such camps efficiently? Apparently not, given the example of the so-called Bützow Camp, organized by André Harder. The camp was heavily supported by the Youth Wings of the German Unions:
The Camp is the only one in size, infrastructure, sleeping places and possibilities for undisturbed debate, said Miriam Muhns of the Berlin section of German Union Youth.
This was heavily criticized by the G8 protesters, they criticized the “commercialization” of the Camp with 10 Euros per day for a sleeping fee, T-Shirt-Sales, a shower fee of 1 Euro and a working crew to clean the bathrooms:
“In Bützow the Camp is a commercial area that has been fenced and prepared in cooperation with the police. With 30km distance to Heiligendamm, it is not acceptable for G8 protesters”, says Marcus Steinhagen from the Gipfelsoli Infogroup.
Most preparations against the G8 adhere to the principle of self-organziation. All participants share the work load of cooking, cleaning, decision making, and disseminating information.
Self-organization plays no role in the Bützow-Camp. It is no surprise that many people oppose the Bützow Camp.
The G8 camp in Bützow was not a financial success. Apparently, the organizers expected 15.000 participants but only had 1.500 participants stay there.
The other self-organized camps were a financial success. With about 200.000 Euros overall income, the kitchen deficit can be covered, state the organizers. Only the BlockG8 group announced a loss of about 20.000 Euros due to the blockades that were longer than expected and needed more ressources.
Maybe this proves the point that the G8 protesters can run protests economically?
Thirdly and lastly, even if they didn’t have such economic fortune, their arguments on world economics are a a completely different issue. You don’t have to be a painter to have an opinion about arts, you don’t have to be a musician to have an opinion about music, you don’t have to run a prospering business to have an opinion about world economics. Such ad hominem arguments never lead to a fruitful debate.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the G8 Camps were filled with a certain type of people. People who are much more eager to participate in group activities and who think that it is their responsibility to invest own ressources into common goals. Whether this works for a society as a whole is a completely different question.
Juli 15th, 2007 at 12:11
while browsing through photobucket, I found an “article” that may be relevant to the thoughts presented here. It urges the need to hold up the American virtues of truthfulness and freedom. More talks not only in relation to G8 (Heiligendamm) but also in everyone’s daily life are suggested.
http://s198.photobucket.com/albums/aa151/greyerZer/?action=view¤t=greyerZer1.jpg