Switzerland - Four Organizers

Interview Details

• Region: Europe
• Language: English
• Interviewee: Group interview in Bern, Switzerland with Detti, Yvonne, Sandra, Steven
• Interviewer: Olivier de Marcellus
• Date: December 2021
• PGA Affiliation:
• Bio: Group interview in Bern, Switzerland with Detti, Yvonne, Sandra, Steven
• Audio File: PGA bern2.WAV
• Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/li8elv8ec03brpu6aqqhd/PGA-Europe-Berne-x4.docx?rlkey=88ginwsi7ojx5dpgeuitq3q7c&dl=0

Transcript

Olivier: [00:00:01] That was the blocking of the G8 summit in Evian in 2003, remember?

Yvonne: (Yvonne)[00:00:05] It’s now recording, right?

Olivier: [00:00:12] Yeah. But yeah, that was the answer to the question of what was the last thing. At the end of PGA, this was one of the last things that was – not officially, but the blocking was essentially promoted by PGA people from all Europe. After there were other summits and blockades with participation of PGA people, such as the G8 at Gleneagles, Scotland in 2005 with the Wombles, who were inspired by PGA, or Heilegendam in 2007, but in the context of larger coalitions with ATTAC Germany for example.

Detti: [00:00:31] It just faded. It was never dissolved officially, right?

Olivier: [00:00:34] Not officially, no.

Steven: But you have been at the G8 in Hamburg, right?

Yvonne: Yeah, we were.

Steven: When was this?

Yvonne: It was just after your birthday, Detti.

Detti: Yes, I was 50.

Sandra: So it was in 2017.

Yvonne: Exactly.

Sandra: But the question was how PGA started, wasn’t it?

Yvonne: And how we got involved.

Olivier: In the questionnaire we mention several things: like the hallmarks, the manifesto, the caravans, direct action of different kinds, decentralized global action and summits, the conveners, the viral horizontal aspect, the circulation of activists and the forms of the struggle, that might remind us of the different aspects of PGA. The idea is to remind ourselves of the different aspects and then yes: How did you get involved?

Sandra: [00:01:53] Didn’t it’s start have to do with the “Intergalactical” meeting of the Zapatistas in Spain? Were you there?

Olivier: Mm hmm. Yes. That was the first moment, when Swamy (Nanjundaswamy leader of the Karnataka State farmers movement the KRRS) and Sergio convened a meeting at the end of the intergalactic and proposed to a certain number of organizations to stay afterwards for two or three days to discuss the proposition.

Detti: [00:02:29] And it was about WTO, which was founded around that time. And this new global system that came out of the GATT agreement.

Olivier: [00:02:47] And Geneva in 98 was their second Ministerial conference, I think they just had one before we started.

Yvonne: [00:02:54] Yeah, it was founded in 95. Yeah. I think in Bern, concerning this group, as far as I remember, none of us were either in the jungle, in Chiapas, or at the intergalactic meeting in Spain, the second intergalactic meeting. But there were other people from Bern there.

Sandra: Yes, there was Benny and others.

Yvonne: And they came home. There was a group founded to continue that struggle here. And I don’t know about all of you, but I think we got involved definitely before at the first march in Davos. I mean, also to do with the Zapatistas, when their uprising had been massacred. We went to Davos for the first time and we realized what was going on there because we went because Zedillo was there, the Mexican president, and it was to protest against him, against the massacre he had organized against the Zapatistas.

Sandra: [00:04:12] There was the big uprising in 1994 of the Zapatistas, on January 1st.

Yvonne: [00:04:15] Yes. But after they were massacred. I mean, there was the uprising and then the military coming in, massive amounts of people being killed.

Olivier: [00:04:29] That was Davos 97 then?

Yvonne: [00:04:35] No, That was in January 94. That was the very first time we went there, because the Mexican president was in Davos and we went there to protest against this.

Olivier: Okay, I didn’t know about it.

Detti: [00:04:48] The World Economic Forum was happening for several years, but it wasn’t this big public event. There was this European management forum before, but it was low level. There were all these presidents and all these high-level meetings, but it wasn’t a media event. There were small articles, perhaps: this person came, this person is coming. It wasn’t a real public thing. And we went there …

Yvonne: [00:05:24] … and we realized who else was there and what they were doing and what it meant in a way. And we didn’t go there the year after, I think

Detti: [00:05:35] And there were hardly any cops then. There was only the Kantonspolizei Graubünden. We didn’t announce our coming. But anyway, it wasn’t that public then.

Olivier: [00:05:51] So there was a demo already it in 94.

Detti: Yes. A small one.

Olivier: So it was also started by the Zapatistas, like all the rest, in fact.

Sandra: Mhm.

Olivier: I didn’t know anything about that. But then there was nothing until 1998? Did you go back in the other years or not?

Yvonne: [00:06:11] I think in 1997 was the next demo.

Detti: [00:06:15] No, I don’t think so. I think it was before this Geneva WTO thing that was in May 98, and we had the Indian guests and we said … I’m not sure.

Yvonne: [00:06:29] No, we had one before we had the Indian guests. I remember us organizing in a very informal way. There was no flyer, there was no leaflet, nothing. We were just sort of like telling each other: will you come to Davos? We will be there and we will gather very informally. We will gather or we’ll just stand around like tourists. And only when the banner is there there will be a demo, and the cops were totally surprised, they were behind us. I’m not sure if that was in 97 and we managed to walk to the Congress Center and some came as ski tourists, some with a sledge or whatever. And it was good fun. We arrived at the Congress center with the cops behind us and we had the snipers suddenly in front of us who were just like: What would we do here?

all: [00:07:16] laughing

Yvonne: [00:07:21] So we saw that storming the Congress center wasn’t really an option.

Olivier: I didn’t know anything of that.

Yvonne: [00:07:27] That was in 97, wasn’t it?

Detti: I don’t remember.

Olivier: [00:07:36] I know it wasn’t in 98, because then I was there with the Indians.

Yvonne: Yes, that was when it was minus 20 degrees.

Sandra: [00:07:48] And then 1999, it was already quite big. So it must be 97.

Yvonne: [00:07:51] Yeah, definitely.

Olivier: [00:07:56] So you got involved through Benny, basically?

Sandra: [00:08:00] Yes. He came back from this Zapatista Intergalactical meeting in in Spain, and he said: Well, there seems to be a thing called WTO, and we should do something about it.

Olivier: [00:08:21] (Laughing) I don’t remember now everybody who was in that meeting afterwards. There were about 40 people. He must have come to that meeting, too.

Yvonne: Which one?

Olivier: The one, the first one in Spain.

Sandra: In Barcelona, yes, he came back from Barcelona.

Olivier: [00:08:41] It all ended up … They were crazy. The Zapatista committee in Spain, they had organized decentralised meetings in Barcelona, Madrid,… in the Basque Country and maybe in Valencia, there where several. And then they all came together and took a special train to El Indiano which is in Andalucia in the south. And that was where in the last days, in a big reunion everybody was together. And then we did the PGA meeting after that. So Benny talked about the WTO when being back, he must have been in that little meeting, too.

Yvonne: [00:09:26] He probably was.

Sandra: [00:09:28] But I don’t remember whether he said something about the PGA idea, but definitely about the WTO.

Detti: [00:09:41] Yeah, and then Sergio came to Bern and …

Olivier: Yes, Sergio started touring. Yeah, that’s right. I got visited by him, Sergio, even before. Just before the encuentro, he was already coming around. You know, he said, it won’t be much work. You just have to rent a few halls and we’ll take care of the rest.

(Everybody laughing)

Yvonne: [00:10:14] Well, for me, actually, I remember having heard about the meeting in Spain, this decentralized meeting as a continuation of the meeting in Chiapas. But the first time I heard about PGA was really in Geneva at the founding event. And yeah, and it was fantastic because there was lots of people around. I remember Reclaim the Streets, for example, very inspiring. It was just like hearing about the struggles in different places and what they did. And it was just like getting food, like inspiration, you know, to do things here, whatever. It felt like just really exciting in a way. For me, at least, it was just like: wow, fantastic! We have to do those things, too, and well, there was just loads of different ideas and hearing about what they did, how they did it. And it was just, yeah, just really, really exciting and inspiring.

Olivier: [00:11:26] Before the encuentro I’d never heard of, no one had ever heard of, Reclaim the Streets in Switzerland. It was just like another continent. You know, they came explaining all their things, tripods and tunnels and street parties, and everybody wanted to do a Street party!

Yvonne: [00:11:44] Yeah, there were those subversive street parties basically.

Olivier: [00:11:52] But you all got involved in the same way, more or less? You all more or less caught up with Benny’s proposal?

Sandra: [00:12:02] We were there, we made a group, no?.

Detti: [00:12:04] We had a group already.

Olivier: [00:12:08] You had a group with Zapatista, a Zapatista support group?

Detti: [00:12:12] There was the Chiapas group, but I wasn’t in there.

Yvonne: [00:12:15] Neither was I.

Detti: [00:12:16] I think we had another group, perhaps about this World Economic Forum, as you said we were there in 97. I don’t remember. But I remember we had a group where this proposal was made.

Yvonne: [00:12:31] I remember at some stage there was a meeting called by the Chiapas group, but I can’t recall their name. There was a group after who had been formed about a different thing, and there was a big meeting. I don’t know how we were invited, whether we had another group or whatever, but then we came together. It was in the Sous le Pont. We were sitting there and talked about what was to be done. And we formed a group out of that and it was sort of an assembly. And there were two groups coming out of that. I’m not sure if that was like that we started working on the caravan from then.

Sandra: [00:13:14] Not yet, I think. That was after the Ministerial Conference of the WTO.

Olivier: [00:13:18] The proposition of the caravan came afterwards.

Yvonne: [00:13:22] So I can’t really remember exactly.

Detti: I think we did have a group already.

Sandra: [00:13:26] There was us and the Chiapas group, I think.

Yvonne: [00:13:28] I think there was a group working on the World Economic Forum …

Sandra: That was us, I think.

Yvonne: Probably. (laughing) We did. Yeah, it was probably us. Yeah, and we definitely did do some work on the World Economic Forum. I remember I didn’t organize it at the time, but I did go there and we were disguised as tourists and it was so fun because we were standing there at, you know, at the bottom of Parsennbahn and we recognized each other and it was just like: oh. But we didn’t talk to each other because we pretended to be tourists independently there from each other. And suddenly there was a banner and we were a demo and it was just fun. And I think it must have been in ‘97 because in 1998 was with the Indian friends.

Olivier: [00:14:41] Mm hmm. Do you still see Benny?

Detti: [00:14:46] Hardly. He’s a bit … very … skeptical about the corona virus … not active, bit … Hmm.

Olivier: [00:15:07] I should have contacted him, too. I remember him especially coming with an incredible sound system for May 98.

Olivier: [00:15:24] I still have the poster of … the one you made inviting to a Street Party in Geneva, you know, with very suggestive kinds of explosive colors, you know, like something’s going to happen, you know? Yeah.

Yvonne: [00:15:44] Yeah, that was May 98. That was fun, too.

Detti: [00:15:51] But in February, there was the official founding of PGA in Geneva. I was there but I wasn’t involved in the preparation. That was mostly …

Olivier: [00:16:03] You were there and you were there, too?

Yvonne: [00:16:07] Yeah. I wasn’t involved in the preparation, either. But I went there, I participated and I came back thrilled.

Sandra: Me too. You?

Steven: [00:16:16] No, I wasn’t there.

Detti: [00:16:23] But you were involved in the preparations and in contact with all the people that were invited.

Olivier: [00:16:28] Yeah. By that time Sergio had me working full time. (everybody laughing) He had come to see me before the Encuentro. It was Monica Vargas, one of our local Zapatista group, who had met him in a Zapatista meeting in Austria, and had given him my address.

Olivier: [00:16:36] My girlfriend always was saying that I was getting into too many things. So I was hesitating if I should get involved with this guy … But this time Vivian said: Oh, it doesn’t look like too much work. It sounds nice. Why don’t you do it?

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [00:17:00] But the founding conference of PGA in February of 98 was amazing. There were about 300 delegates from the world over, in particular all these incredible Indians, Medha Patkar for example, for me she was like a goddess. You know, the way she would speak and wave her hands with incredible grace, and everybody: wow, what is this, huh?

Sandra (showing a picture): Here is she, Media Patkar.

Yvonne: [00:17:31] Ah, in February, that’s that’s …

Sandra: [00:17:33] That’s Swamy, no?

Olivier: [00:17:35] Yeah.

Yvonne: Yeah. That was the press conference.

Olivier: [00:18:00] Yes. And the last day of the conference, we improvised a demo, too. We hadn’t really said we’re going to do that. But there was so much enthusiasm that at the last assembly someone said “Let’s march to the WTO now!”

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [00:18:11] And so we ended up in front of the WTO. The cops had a line of barricades, but they weren’t very many, taken by surprise you know, and there were all these amazing people, like these Indian and Bengali women in beautiful saris trying to get over the barriers. And the police thinking: what the hell is this?

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [00:18:35] And there was a Maori woman, I remember. She was much bigger than me, much larger, you know, and she was leaning over the barrier, right over a policeman, sticking out her tongue the way the Maori do. The little cop must have been thinking, oh my God, what is this? We were very we were really fired up by that meeting. I think everybody was. It was so many amazing people coming together.

Steven: [00:19:06] Yeah. Mm hmm.

Olivier: [00:19:16] Where do we go from here?

Sandra: [00:19:17] Then then there was the big demo in May, ten thousand?

Olivier: [00:19:21] Something like that? Yeah, eight or ten thousand. And you know, then three days of other demos and riots. More than three hundred people arrested, some of them several times in a row. They would be arrested and released and re-arrested because they were arresting people on the street like that.

Yvonne: [00:19:50] Wasn’t that when the cops stormed the campsite?

Detti: [00:19:56] That was at the beginning.

Olivier: Yeah, the first night.

Sandra: [00:21:06] Yeah, a friend of ours who was with us had his 50th birthday. And so there were lots of fireworks for him.

Yvonne: [00:21:18] Yes, that was very close to the WTO.

Stephen: It was his 40th birthday.

Sandra: Oh, yes, his 40th.

Olivier: [00:21:28] Who is that?

Sandra: [00:21:31] Andreas.

Yvonne: [00:21:35] And it was great because we’re dancing there on this roundabout. And then suddenly the fireworks and it was just like, it was just a party.

Sandra: [00:22:14] Exactly.

Steven: [00:22:19] I remember huge palm leaves they were waving. It was near where they broke the car and before the train station.

Detti: [00:23:04] Place des 24 cantons.

Olivier: [00:20:04] Yes, we were supposed to do the party in front of WTO, but when it started to get dark, Benny came to say, people don’t feel OK to do the Street Party here because we’re going to be a kind of isolated in this place, there aren’t many people and we feel the cops might give us problems here. We prefer to go into town and do it in the center. So we went back dancing with this huge sound system on a tractor and started the party there. That was a disastrous mistake to go back to the center on a Saturday night. And there some squatters staged a sort of happening. They had been pushing an old car all through the demo and then they started to demolish it with sledge hammers. It was supposed to be a happening, but I think many people didn’t realize that. They thought, oh, we’re supposed to break cars. It was like a signal, people started breaking stuff all around. At that point Benny told me that they didn’t have any insurance on the speaker system, which was worth thirty thousand francs. So we have to leave! So we left with the tractor and the speaker system, but then everybody followed the sound system, with some trashing store windows all the way and the police following behind Olivier.

Olivier: [00:23:14] So we all ended up on the Plaine de Plain-palais, where the caravan of tractors from Germany and Switzerland were parked. And then the police reacted so stupidly, they attacked everybody. And they had a helicopter with a huge searchlight to light up the scene and attracted all sorts of people. After someone told me that they had thought everything was over. They’d gone home to a suburb, to Meyrin. But when they saw the light from the helicopter they realised, oh, there’s something going on and came back into town. On a Saturday night, everybody was looking for action in Geneva. So the cops were calling in people from all over the city, and the riot went on till four in the morning.

Olivier: [00:24:02] That was an amazing, amazing three days.

Steven: [00:24:05] Yeah. But also the ongoing discussions about violence etcetera, I can remember all this, and the gathering on Sunday. I think we will never come to a point with all that. Yeah. I mean, as I heard from Hamburg, there were a lot of very good actions. But what was in the media? What really came through was the fight between police and the “black bloc”.

Detti: But it’s not that it reproduces itself every time. At least in Switzerland, this climate movement from the youth was strictly pacifistic, so far.

Yvonne: [00:25:36] I think even in Hamburg. I don’t totally agree with you because the opening demo was actually sort of like mocking itself of the whole discourse about violence, like calling the Black Bloc. But the Black Bloc was in fact a real huge, inflated black block. So it was actually fun and people weren’t violent. There were loads of people. And finally, the cops attacked it because undercover cops refused to take off their masks. So it was in that sense, agent provocateurs legitimating violence of the cops against that opening demo to split it from the very start.

Detti: [00:26:32] Yes, I agree, but it was set up differently than what I said before, the climate movement in Switzerland or elsewhere, because there it never a game with «we can be militant». And in Hamburg, this opening demo was exactly the autonomous that were very militant, not militaristic but very militant, announcing this demonstration is going to be wild. So it was easier for the cops to attack this than it would be to attack the climate movement, who are youth that just want to have a safe world. It’s different. Different tactics. Yeah. I’m not sure how to …

Yvonne: [00:27:49] What I was saying was more like that they were successful in creating a public discourse, saying that the demos in Hamburg were violent …

Detti: … or in Geneva …

Yvonne: Yes, or in Geneva. But I think in Hamburg it was on a different scale because I talked to loads of people, even people in Hamburg who weren’t there, people who hadn’t participated at the demo, and they told me how violent the demos were. We had participated and the violence I had seen was from the cops. So it was just like a perspective that was a hundred percent the opposite. Whereas I think in Geneva as well as in Genova, we were loads and a part of the public opinion was on our side. In Hamburg, we had no one on our side.

Detti: Except in Hamburg.

Yvonne: Except in Hamburg itself, but internationally and also newspapers in Hamburg just all portrayed the demos as violent and even camps had been evacuated violently previously. The camps had been totally pacifist, but they had been evacuated and then it was also under the pretext that those people had been violent or possibly violent. So I think that’s something that changed in how they managed to successfully dominate public discourse. It was more that what I wanted to say, but you’re totally right. Strategies and tactics also differ.

Olivier: [00:29:41] What year was that the G20?

Yvonne: [00:29:44] Just five years ago, [2017]

Detti: [00:29:53] Hamburg has a big political scene, so they managed to make a big thing out of it. But it was one time and it wasn’t like in other towns where there was a big fight after that within the movement. So that was good, but still there wasn’t much that really continued.

Sandra: [00:30:45] Coming back to the strategies, there have been different strategies, like the decentralized blockades to prevent the G20 people to arrive at their meeting in the morning, early, early in the morning. And these were also strategies or means of action developed a long time ago and still being used. And there was a lot of this also in Hamburg.

Olivier: [00:31:22] But did you manage to talk about it? The PGA tradition was exactly with the blockades, right?

Yvonne: [00:31:32] Absolutely. That’s also what we did against the WEF in 2004, publicly organizing the blockade without saying where it would be.

Sandra: [00:31:51] These blockades included the autobahn.

Yvonne: [00:31:55] Yeah, it was on a motorway. And it was fun.

Detti: [00:32:01] But we were not enough.

Yvonne: [00:32:02] We weren’t enough. In Hamburg, we were loads more. And we managed to block some of the participants. But finally, there was no coverage about this whatsoever, including one of the groups that was heavily criminalized after being attacked by the cops. Which, again, didn’t have to do with the tactics of that particular group. I mean, coming back to what you said before, they weren’t doing anything differently from our group, but they were attacked and physically loads of people injured and they were criminalized on top for allegedly attacking the police. Even if all footage, videos, photos showed the exact opposite. Even the footage of the cops themselves showed the opposite, but it was the activists who got jail and fines.

Olivier: [00:33:20] I guess it depends a lot on the general political context, too, if that works or not, Now the climate movement has such a positive image and reputation all through society, that is really amazing. If we want a scientific expert, we have all we want. If we ask for lawyers, we have 10 free lawyers. You know, people are throwing money at us, you know, foundations that contact us and say, it’s great what you do. Do you need some money? So that is what makes it much more difficult to … There haven’t been any big things of violence against property. But even if there were…. I mean, it’s a small thing, but we had a demonstration where we put in red hands on the Credit Suisse, you know, and the rest of the demonstration hadn’t really been planned in that way, but the rest of the demonstration assumed it perfectly and we even got acquitted on the first trial. The issue really is that light material damage can be accepted in that context, whereas in another context, obviously, not at all.

Yvonne: [00:34:56] You’re right, it has also to do with the image and what you said before to the image of the climate movement. Climate youth is explicitly non-violent and at times militant but non-violent, you know, and this is like the image they managed to create from the very, very beginning on. So it’s much more difficult to create a different image as it happens often from the cops, authorities or whatever. Whereas when it’s about the autonomous movement, that has been portrayed as being violent, whatever, for over a period of time, it’s much easier.

Detti: For decades.

Yvonne: For decades, yes, and it’s much easier to continue with that discourse and be successful with it.

Detti: [00:36:00] The Holcim occupation was a bit different. They tried to build up an image of bad terrorists, but they …

Olivier: [00:36:19] There were some people throwing some stones at the cops. So there was a little bit of, you know, a kind of PGA situation with that. But you that’s exactly what I mean. They got acquitted now. And the prosecutor is now attacking a socialist deputy, because the deputy said he was completely crazy. That’s really funny.

Yvonne: [00:37:07] You said before that, what accompanied PGA from the very beginning on was the question of violence. And it’s true. That’s something that’s been there all the time. But what I find interesting, too, is that it was always different in an international context than in the just Western European context, because I’m seeing that still today when I’m talking to our friends, comrades in countries where they’re having uprisings, they might have may have stormed Parliament, where the cops shoot at them, at demos or whatever, violence is seen and read in a totally different way. Violence is what’s imposed on them. It’s WTO politics. It’s free trade politics that makes them starve, that creates unemployment, that creates misery. That’s the violence experienced by them in everyday life. And it’s not some graffiti or some stone being thrown at violent cops that’s seen as violence. It’s really what they experience every day being starved to death, being flooded or whatever, you know, all these forms of violence they experience. And I think when we talk about violence in Swiss or a Western European context, it’s about what should we do with people throwing stones at the demo? It’s very much internal, whereas of strategies, which is important, too, is how can we create a powerful movement without being divided, without dividing ourselves? And also giving our message or presenting our message in a public discourse, getting it across. I think that’s important here. But when we’re talking about violence in the Global South, we’re talking about different forms of violence they experience every day, and WTO politics, free trade politics is very central in that, also impunity of transnational companies, whatever. You know, the whole story. And I think we should keep that in mind.

Olivier: [00:39:52] You know, the question of (non)violence went through the whole history of PGA, but PGA did start as Swamys proposition of bringing disciplined Gandhian nonviolence to the West. For them non-violence is towards life and people, but can include damage to material. That was not a problem, you know. But in the second PGA convention in Bolivia that was put in question in the hallmarks.

Yvonne: [00:40:18] I remember.

Olivier: [00:40:19] It was Evo Morales, who criticized the principle of always being nonviolent. He said, if we exclude all kinds of violence, it means we’re breaking, we’re denouncing a whole tradition of resistance in Latin America, including guerrilla warfare and whatever. In a completely politically incorrect way, he said that it’s like we were taking the balls off the movement. (laughing)

Sandra: Wouldn’t be a bad thing, maybe. (laughing)

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: Yeah, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. And then finally that hallmark was changed by replacing ’nonviolence’ with ’maximizing respect for human life’, something like that. To say that, you know, we want to be as nonviolent as possible, which I think was a pretty good change, really.

Yvonne: [00:41:39] It was actually interesting because we do have different concepts of what is violent and what isn’t. And the Indian friends coming from Gandhian tradition, as in Gandhian times, don’t see fields of GMO cotton being burnt as violence, you know, but violence against human beings is. So they have a different concept of what is the definition of violence than in Western European spheres or in Latin America or whatever. So it really was the issue in Cochabamba: getting those different contexts and ideas together and trying to find a way to say, how can we act and agree with each other. It was also about not discrediting other forms of struggles of movements that were participating at the meeting.

Stephen: [00:42:56] Yeah, no, the only thing I wanted to say is that when I think about our young climate activists now, they are also discussing, should we have other alternative forms of actions more ’violent’? Yeah, they shall have this discussion, for sure, and as I think, some kind of destruction of material has a long tradition. But yeah, you have to be aware how media is reacting and when you use this kind of activity in what context, they really have to be very careful about this, when they discuss these things.

Detti: The question is: what action isolates you and what gives you more power and understanding for the urgency of the situation?

Stephen: Yes, absolutely.

Yvonne: [00:44:49] It’s basically about: how can we mobilize further? How can we get people to join?

Detti: [00:45:00] What was the reason why PGA declined? Or our movement going to Davos declined at some point?.

Yvonne: [00:45:16] It’s the same question, I think, concerning our movement. At the end of the day, in Switzerland, the World Economic Forum, we didn’t have a common answer to what we were confronted with. The way we were divided at the end of the day was successful, and we didn’t have a common answer and drew smaller and smaller from year to year.

Olivier: [00:45:49] Were you really divided?

Yvonne: [00:45:50] 2003 was when we managed to be really big. It was a big alliance. Trade unions were with us, even people from the Green Party, whatever. It wasn’t just like some autonomous youth from whatever, you know, like from some squats. We were loads. And we managed to block the road for some time you know, for a moment.

Sandra: [00:46:22] Together with the unions.

Yvonne: [00:46:23] Exactly, the trade unions were part of it. So for a short moment, we were loud, we were strong. We had the special train from Geneva to Davos. You know, it was just like, wow, we were loads. But in the same year we got divided and we never managed to get the same strength again.

Olivier: [00:46:45] You were divided over what, over the question of violence?

Yvonne: Yes.

Stephen: Yes, this is one point.

Sandra: [00:46:54] Strategies.

Yvonne: [00:46:56] Yeah, strategies. Or how would you define it? How would you say did the movement decline?

(Silence, then all speaking at the same time)

Olivier: [00:47:07] I asked the question. So let me ask you.

Yvonne: [00:47:15] I guess we’re five people, there’s probably five answers or maybe 10, and there’s loads of different aspects to it. I just get one. It’s not the only one.

Stephen: [00:47:26] Okay, I’ll give you another one. In my opinion, in the PGA hallmarks we weren’t concrete enough, they were large in the formulation. And it could be that the movement was weakened because we weren’t able to put forward more concrete demands. Here I have written against capitalism, this is not enough. And we were a movement that cared about global forms of exploitation, but we were not able to propose a global form of regulation, or we didn’t want to. And with this lack of concrete demands, maybe we were became less strong in time.

Olivier: [00:49:15] This is true, I looked through a paper that was answering questions in 2006 , something like that, about PGA, and I saw that we were saying basically No to WTO, No to all forms of international regulation. And that solutions should be local, which is true. But it’s true that now, for instance, we’re trying to push, in the climate movement for regulating finance, because we know, if we don’t manage to push through laws that they can no longer finance fossil fuels, they’re going to continue to do it. And it’s, you know, it’s like reformist. But it’s hopefully in a radical perspective: we have to control credit democratically and not let banks do it.

Stephen: I completely agree.

Olivier: So we are proposing something on a global level. So I guess there is a change there.

Detti: [00:50:28] Yeah. For a movement that’s on the streets and movements on wave, of course it’s easier if you can agree on a demand that you can work for. It’s easier than to say, okay, we don’t want that, we don’t want that at the time. And then you risk injuries if you participate. It’s difficult to have people coming. And in the Davos movement we had some division within – or maybe it was a fight over the leadership, I don’t know – after 2003. We were attacked for our position in the movement. I would say, another reason was … I mean, it wasn’t just our thing in Switzerland or PGA, it was this Social Forum that came up and was really big at the time. For me the highest point was the situation in Genoa, where there were really a lot of people and we were in a flow, and then came September 11. That wasn’t an answer to the … For me, it would have been logical to say, okay, we mobilize against this new war in Afghanistan and so on, but there wasn’t a connection. And then this whole military of Daesh are coming. It changed the going off and it’s been sort of the weakness of the movement. In Italy, they were so strong before Genoa and then everything went down.

Olivier: [00:53:05] That’s a whole new subject, but I would like to know more about Davos particularly. You were saying you were divided after 2005 and it went down. What was the reason? From Geneva, I just saw that there was more and more repression. I had the impression simply that you were basically just pushed back militarily and, you know, first in Davos, then in Zurich and then in Bern, they weren’t allowing anything, you know? But maybe that’s simplifying in the sense that you’re saying that there were alliances with the unions or with the Greens that broke up. But they broke up over what? Because of this repression or because of your response to it, or what? Because that’s a really important kind of question. The climate movement now has a possibility of putting all these people, at least officially, behind us. And tomorrow we could have the same kind of situation of, you know, of massive repression. So I’m really interested in knowing what went wrong.

Sandra: [00:54:20] I think the repression was one thing, but it could be exerted only against one part of the movement. We were larger than that. The repression wouldn’t have been enough. They had to isolate one part of the movement to ??exert?? the repression, and to integrate, try to integrate the other part – which they succeeded in doing. They succeeded by establishing this Open Forum at Davos, saying that they’re inviting the civil society and artists and critics and journalists.

Yvonne: [00:55:22] They opened up to the media, invited them personally as allies.

Sandra: [00:55:28] So from their perspective, it’s dividing us into those who can be integrated and the rest: isolate them to hit them down. And from our perspective, it’s our division. So we shouldn’t have played this game, but we did actually. We played their game. Because in 2003, it was also the first time they made this control; they said, you can go up to Davos, but each person is controlled by identity. And our division started there already a little bit because some of the Green Party thought that this was not such a problem, while the rest thought that this was really a problem, that we should all get through without control. So there it started already a little bit, and on the other side, one part of our movement, like the Aufbau, who didn’t really like large alliances because they had their straight ideas and they wanted to be the leaders, in my view. And that made also one aspect of the division.

Olivier: [00:57:19] The Aufbau refused to …

Sandra: They were attacking us who were interested in having a broad alliance.

Olivier: [00:57:39] But you were a little the central organization of the Davos movement, right?

Sandra: [00:57:47] The Anti-WTO Coordination, yes. We were in Berne, there was a group in Geneva, in Lausanne, in Ticino …

Olivier: Yeah. So how could Aufbau be a problem? I mean …

Yvonne: [00:58:02] It’s about protagonism. I mean, when we had demos and had consensus, it was always so difficult to actually have a consensus how we would act at the demo. Some people would not stick to it and would call the rest a mistake, whatever, you know. So that was a problem.

Olivier: [00:58:31] They did want the confrontation?

Yvonne: [00:58:32] With the police? Yeah. But I think that was one sort of a division and the other one is what you said before. And I think that was a strategy of official levels like from police authorities together with the WEF etc.: co-opt, integrate as much as you can, and the rest are called violent.

Sandra: They had this guy, Peter Arbenz, who worked out a paper on this strategy.

Yvonne: On the playground of the World Economic Forum and people who could be integrated, co-opted in a certain way and the ones who would remain on the streets would be called like prone to violence.

Detti: They called these ones ’gewaltorientiert’, oriented towards violence.

Yvonne: [00:59:31] And it’s just like how they … and it’s a discourse. And they were successful in that way. And that’s what I meant before, we didn’t have a common answer as a broad movement to that strategy, because some got integrated or co-opted whatever you want to call it. And we decided to have, as PGA, a confrontative attitude towards these politics. But we were sort of isolated and also at certain points of the demos criminalized for being on the streets. Do you remember when people arrived at Berne were being picked up at a station for wearing a hoodie, whatever? ’They might want to demonstrate.’ The same police director said recently when neo-Nazis demonstrated in Berne, oh, we couldn’t do anything because you can’t arrest people preventatively, OK, you can’t. You did, though, and you did massively. Like in one year. I think it was in 2005, six hundred and eighty people or whatever arrested as prevention. I can’t remember the figure exactly, but loads, and then building up provisional jails for custody, you know. And it’s something we didn’t really … And it’s what you said previously, too: some people who had been arrested for wanting to participate at a demo, not even being able to participate at a demo, they might not have come a second time, because they were traumatized because they were afraid, whatever. And we didn’t manage to mobilize anymore, our demos became smaller and smaller, and it was just becoming more difficult.

Olivier: [01:01:46] I remember the last participation from Geneva. It was a special train, not a totally special, you know, part of a train was reserved. And when they arrived in Bern, they were all arrested as they stepped off the train and taken to an underground parking lot outside of Bern and kept in the cold for I don’t know how many hours without being able to piss and then put back on a train. It wasn’t very motivating , no one was tempted to do that again, you know?

Yvonne: Yeah, exactly.

Olivier: And maybe that was the point where … I don’t know … There’s a point where the movement should really stop and think, you know: do we continue in the same direction or do we do something to change the situation, because you and I have a feeling that we are just angry more and more and divided more and more?

Steven: [01:02:48] But weren’t the blockades in 2004? So after 2003, we did find a common form of action, it was the blockade.

Yvonne: [01:03:03] But we were not as big as an alliance.

Sandra: [01:03:07] No, we were not an alliance anymore, at all, we were just people, quite a lot of people. There were the people from Ticino, for example, and the people were mostly organized locally by the local anti-WTO groups. And we did different decentralized blockades. And this was quite great.

Olivier: [01:03:40] Was this the year Clinton was there? I remember being on a turnpike when Clinton’s caravan went by.

Detti: [01:03:49] No, I think that was after.

Yvonne: [01:03:52] I can’t remember.

Detti: [01:03:54] That was when I had got shot with this plastic bullet (Detti was specifically aimed at and lost an eye), that was shot before we made these blockades. I didn’t participate, I was doing some back office, because I couldn’t go.

Olivier: Which year?

Yvonne: [01:04:16] 2004? Yes, it was January 2004. We did the blockades, which were successful, at least the motorway blockade. In general, there wasn’t that many and not that successful, but it was a good action. And then there was the Landquart thing afterwards, the demo in Chur. Because lots of people actually wanted a demo, wanted to go to a demo. And there had been called a local demo in Chur and loads of people from all over the country went to Chur.

Olivier: [01:04:52] And they stopped the train in Landquart.

Yvonne: [01:04:54] Yeah, on the way back. Yeah, that’s then. There was like a thousand and seventy people arrested or whatever, beaten out of the train. That was on the way back. Yeah.

Detti: [01:05:04] Yeah, after the demo.

Yvonne: [01:05:07] From then on, it was clear we can’t organize big demos in the Grisons (the canton where Davos is located). That’s over. And then we tried to organize a demo in Bern the next year, and it was basically banned as a demo, and we called it off and called for …

Olivier: [01:05:27] When was that?

Yvonne: That was in 2005.

Olivier: That was the one where the rest of the people are coming up.

Yvonne: [01:05:32] Yeah, that’s probably that year.

Sandra: [01:05:35] We called for No Demo, for a No demo.

Yvonne: [01:05:38] Yeah, for civil disobedience all over the city, activities, things happening …

Sandra: … which worked really, really well.

Yvonne: [01:05:50] Apart from all the people being arrested previously to any activities.

Sandra: [01:06:04] And then we tried to repeat the same thing more or less in 2006 …

Yvonne: … and we lost.

Detti: [01:06:11] The police didn’t play the game that time. Because when we did it in 2005, the police occupied the town themselves. They arrested the people from Geneva, they were everywhere. And so it was easy to not make a demonstration, but sort of to play with them, and no one came to go shopping at all. And then a year later, the police were still there, but they didn’t show themselves. There were the shoppers all over the town and some crazy people who did some stuff.

Steven: [01:06:58] From the work.

Sandra: [01:07:03] Hmm. Yeah, then I think. We thought, OK, we have tried so many different strategies. We had tried everything, and we didn’t have any more ideas how to fight against.

Olivier: [01:07:24] 2005 was the last year?

Sandra: [01:07:26] 2006 was the attempt to repeat 2005.

Olivier: [01:07:28] And it didn’t work.

Sandra: [01:07:31] Yeah. And then other local groups, or maybe they were organized in other towns, organized some demos in different small towns, also against the WEF . For instance in Burgdorf, in Langenthal, and they went by train from town to town to make small demos. That was another attempt or another form.

Olivier: [01:08:07] You weren’t involved in that?

Sandra: Not really.

Yvonne: [01:08:12] I think we as a group sort of gave up mobilizing, because we realized that we were getting smaller and smaller and we had tried many times, but were probably also bit like frustrated and didn’t have the great idea of how to get out of these dynamics. And I think it’s really, yeah, we were lacking ideas of like how to confront that strategy in a way that we could, that the movement could grow bigger again. So we got just smaller and smaller, and that’s not what we wanted either. We didn’t want to end up like in some square in Bern, surrounded by cops in full gear. It was just no fun. It was no … it was no use, basically also. So we were discussing it a lot, but we didn’t have the great idea at the time.

Detti: [01:09:15] And there was another groups that we were not very close to who started doing stuff, making every year a demonstration in Berne. So we participated, but it was …

Olivier: [01:09:31] There was still a demonstration?

Detti: [01:09:36] Yes, there was demonstrations with maybe a thousand people and sometimes perhaps 2000.

Olivier: [01:09:43] The Trotskyist groups were also organizing stuff, basically in Zurich, every year or so, I think, they still do.

Sandra: [01:09:52] Yeah, but it’s a conference, a discussion.

Olivier: [01:09:55] Like a conference, ah, yeah, we went there in 1998 with Swamy, and we went to their thing.

Yvonne: [01:10:06] «The Other Davos».

Olivier: [01:10:07] Yes. «The Other Davos», yeah.

Sandra: [01:10:10] I remember we still did some theater stuff in Davos.

Yvonne: [01:10:15] Yes, we did. We actually dressed up as rich people and did some whatever stuff and we were detained, too.

Sandra: [01:10:28] We had a camp in a small hut in the woods to practice.

Olivier: [01:10:34] In what year?

Sandra: [01:10:38] I can’t remember. 2007, maybe?

Yvonne: [01:10:41] Maybe, I just remember being up there. We were doing some … It was like kind of a performance on the streets and we were detained. After even starting and after the demo, we were let go. I mean, it was sort of like … It’s just an anecdote because we we’re sort of dressed up, and the idea was like to actually walk through the town with briefcases and blood coming out of the briefcase. So we did that and some cops spotted us, and they thought that they had just been able to prevent, you know, a paint attack. So this was like … well, no, that wasn’t the idea. It wasn’t actually for that purpose that we got red paint. But when, you know, it came out of the briefcase, it was blood.

Olivier: Did you manage to explain?

Yvonne: [01:11:51] No, because we insisted on speaking in English and sort of acting as rich people being in Davos, even in the cop shop. So we didn’t want to explain anything. We just thought, you know, whatever.

Olivier: [01:12:08] Yeah.

Olivier: [01:12:08] Well, of course, demonstrations and campaigns are always very cyclical, right? Like everything in nature. I realize now that living things or the stock exchange, everything goes up and down like this, you know, cycles of predators and prey or whatever. We know that political campaigns also finally end, and then they’ll start up again sometime. But there’s always a moment, like … And now I spent a lot of time in the climate movement trying to tell people, you know, your movement is amazingly successful. Because all these young people, you know, after two years, when they haven’t actually changed the entire world economy, they think: oh, we failed. It’s not working. What should we do? And some of them want to stop, and some say, we should be blowing up things, you know, and someone else says, we should launch an initiative … But, you know, I’ve never seen a movement that got has had so much effect in so little time since 68. I mean, they actually, you know, it doesn’t mean much, maybe, but just getting all this “green wave” of people elected – it’s maybe not important that they should be elected, but it’s really important that so many people should have voted for them. You know, I mean, they really, … the youth climate movement has had an amazing effect. But now a lot of them are really totally like you were in 2007. They would think: oh, it didn’t work. What do we do? You know?

Detti: [01:13:55] Yeah. And then we had the whole corona situation. The «Winter Hike» to Davos in January 2020 we helped organize was part of that movement, and the feeling was, okay, we’ve got started, we’re going somewhere - and then this virus came. And there was the occupation of the square in front of the Parliament, that was quite amazing, as well.

Olivier: [01:14:34] The Rise Up.

Detti: [01:14:35] Yes. In Zurich the bank occupation was more difficult. The Rise Up was in 2021 and Zurich was last year, in 2022. But now it depends what continues now, this year – who is still ready to go to action, young people joining.

Yvonne: [01:15:01] Coming back to PGA and our movement, in general I also think it’s very difficult to keep up a movement over time, like focusing on mobilizations. I mean, just keep up that mobilizing power. It’s very difficult to keep that up over time. And it’s sort of also, I mean, those have its reasons why it declined, which we mentioned or some of which we mentioned. But I think it’s also natural that people drop out or get tired because there is no immediate success or whatever, or they might have kids or they might have a new job or whatever. It’d be great if new people came in and it could keep up, which it can. Or also like, I mean, the Global Action days. At the beginning they were fantastic because it was great to see that it was not just us in Geneva demonstrating, but it was people all over the world in many cities and towns and places, whatever. And feeling part of a global movement was fantastic, but that’s also something you can’t keep up over time. And some movements went on to building up alternatives, a bit like what our friends in Latin America call ’From protest to Alternatives’, De la protesta a la propuesta, like building up alternatives, basically, you know, sort of like from just being ’anti’ to building up, you know, which is sort of like more of a positive approach as just against capitalism. Of course, we are against capitalism. But we are building up alternatives. And that’s the way they look and we’re part of it, and we’re gathering people to build up similar things in other places. For example, looking at the MST or whatever, or the NTST or Via Campesina, like loads of farmers movements, so I think, it’s not just that the power of the protests got lost, it also went into concrete projects, into building alternatives on a local level. And I think it’s also a bit of a natural process that you can’t keep up that ’anti’, you know, the energy to protest against. And I think it’s actually quite good to build up alternatives. But keeping them also linked, keeping a network, learning from each other, being inspired by each other is still, like, absolutely vital.

Detti: [01:18:20] But the alternatives are … when there is not a movement that goes in the street, it’s less visible. And of course, it’s important to show that there actually is an alternative to the capitalist system. But as long as it’s still there, it kills all the alternatives.

Sandra: [01:18:49] Yeah, and the alternatives become part of it.

Detti: [01:18:57] Yeah, inevitably.

Yvonne: [01:18:59] Yeah, but I’m now thinking of, for example … I know what you mean. That’s sort of like when you create your little island, but inside a capitalist system and sort of like being comfortable in there. I was thinking more of struggles like MST in a fascist system right now, fighting against fascism and building up alternatives. They’re not comfortably, you know, sort of like living in their little islands. They’re struggling every day and they’re also struggling because due to the pandemic, hunger has risen enormously in Brazil. And it’s also like their struggle against fascism, against hunger, building up alternatives, creating seeds, creating food. You know, it’s not, they’re not conforming within the capitalist system. So, I mean, loads of movements aren’t. Some alternatives might be, but it’s not in general that alternatives are a lot of, you know, being … I wouldn’t agree totally. Some are, but loads are still struggling. And I agree with what you said , they have to be visible, too, and we have to make them visible because otherwise it’s becoming what you’re saying, that it’s, yeah, that they become little islands within the capitalist system and coexist.

Olivier: [01:20:35] But even the small alternatives. I think you shouldn’t go too far in that in that kind of logic of saying, it’s just part of the system. Do you remember Massimo, Massimo DeAngelis? He was one of the people who was a sort of “secretary” to the conveners who wrote the manifesto in February 1998. He’s a crazy Italian from the Italian autonomous marxist movement. And he developed a thing, (he’s an economist) which I think is really interesting. He says, you can’t say automatically that people of alternatives that are using the market are in a capitalistic logic. Capitalism is using capital to produce goods for the market to get a plus value, to produce a profit. But there are people who produce goods and sell on the market just to gain enough money in order to be able to live and produce again. But they aren’t in the business to make a profit. So even if they are using the market in a predominantly capitalist society, they are not in a capitalist logic. And I think it’s really important. For example, so many of the people that I knew in PGA or in the squats have gone into agriculture, often community supported agriculture which all the same uses money, but is organizing people and production with totally different objectives. And it’s a really existing thing, which, I mean, is not as visible as a demo, but it’ has a small but real effect on how Geneva society thinks of itself. It’s not invisible at all, and they’re not living in a capitalist logic.

Steven: [01:22:40] Actually, the Public sector isn’t in a capitalistic logic either.

Olivier: [01:22:43] Exactly, at least it shouldn’t be. I mean, that’s what they’re trying to do the last 50 years of neoliberalism: to force it into a capitalist logic, either privatizing it or running it according to monetary criteria, like forcing hospitals to run on budgets that undermine the health of the employees and the patients. But it does resist, as you say, the public sector. It’s like Massimo says: the public sector is a perverted commons, relatively perverted, because despite neoliberalism and it’s hierarchical structure, health or education are still partly universal rights, commons all the same. Amd nowadays many radicals try to defend it, whereas, in the old days, they would have said that it was just a sort of trap of social democracy.

Hmm. But you before I pushed the discussion back to Davos, you had started a discussion about PGA and Genoa and how the general PGA thing declined, why it declined.

Detti: [01:24:13] Yeah, that was the question. I wanted to hear it from you, because I have some ideas, but I cannot really … I wasn’t so close to this whole PGA process. I guess it was mostly, at least in Europe, that the movements declined and were less people. But the whole Social Forum thing was much bigger, perhaps more popular to go to. There maybe wasn’t enough energy to have both structures.

Olivier: [01:25:06] Certainly when the Social Forum started it was seen by PGA as competition, and in a measure a way of mainstreaming and taming the movement. There’s no doubt about it. Remember how they actually had this very hyped telephone exchange between the World Social Forum and Davos? While we were in the snow blocking the road to Davos and saying we refuse to talk to them, the great leaders of the World Social Forum were having a long distance call with them !

Yvonne: When was that, in 2004?

Detti: Or 2003.

Olivier: It was the first year of the World Social Forum, I think. It was really at the beginning. So the Social Forum was certainly a problem for organizing PGA internationally, especially as they had massive funding and collaboration with local authorites to organize on a different scale. But I think there were other problems.

Stephen: I read what you have written in your text, ‘Auroras of the Zapatistas’.

Olivier: Oh, you have it?

Sandra: You’ve sent it.

Olivier: [01:26:13] Have you printed it?

Detti: [01:26:14] I have the book.

Stephen: [01:26:19] You wrote: the weakest point of PGA was its organization. This is not really surprising since it was not supposed to be one.

(everybody laughing)

Detti: [01:26:39] Yeah, all the discussion about informal hierarchies.

Olivier: Yeah, and then the support group and …

Stephen: Yeah. So would more organization have been helpful?

Olivier: [01:27:14] (to Yvonne): What do you think? You were in the support group, too.

Yvonne: Was I?

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: Yeah, de facto you were, as you were one of the persons who was traveling around Latin America afterwards and making a lot of contacts and communication.

Yvonne: [01:27:33] That’s right. But I did not travel on behalf of PGA or whatever.

Olivier: [01:27:40] Naturally. Remember the principle: ‘NO ONE speaks in the name of PGA’!

(everybody laughing)

Yvonne: [01:27:43] Well, what I’m saying is like I was with the Zapatistas for years and went to Cochabamba and stayed on in Latin America anyway, because that’s what I was doing. So I did a bit of networking there, too, but I didn’t … it wasn’t on behalf of PGA or I didn’t feel it was. I never knew that I was in the support group.

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [01:28:12] Well, most people in it didn’t, you know? But I think there were several different reasons why it declined. In the South, there were some groups like the Indians who were always saying we should continue with PGA, and also the Bolivian leaders and other Latino comrades, but in fact, WTO was no longer really the priority for them. What was much more of a priority was, particularly, the Free Trade of Americas (FTAA) negotiations, that level of international organizing. Or taking power nationally, because the Bolivian and the Ecuadorian movements actually took power and had a whole different set of problems… So, I think that there developed a lack of strong motivation on the part of the latino organisations. Not with the Asians. The Asians, particularly the Indians and Indonesians were really interested in continuing, but they weren’t really ready to take the initiative. Maybe if Swamy hadn’t died, he could have continued organizing pushing for it. But also in a way, as a network against WTO, PGA was a victim of its success. It had done its job, because afterwards the WTO negotiations were blocked - are still blocked - in a good measure because of PGA, particularly by India under the pressure of the Indian movements united through the PGA process. So the transnationals resorted to hundreds of bilateral free trade agreements because they couldn’t push through on a general level. Which was like a half victory for us, although bilateral agreements are even harder to block. I think that was among the reasons that PGA slowed down.

Yvonne: [01:30:08] Well, I agree with that. Also, like in terms of network. By the way, I actually worked on this whole mobilization against the ALCA/FTAA. What PGA had achieved in terms of networking was absolutely useful to block the FTAA, because it was a continental thing. And it was absolutely important. But also, then, talking to friends, they preferred to either organize more internally, like such as in Bolivia, where it was about changing the country, or for the farmer’s movements to organize much more within Via Campesina. And it was just like, yeah, just sort of fading out because… Well, yeah.

Olivier: [01:31:18] It was also a little … Because PGA was a little bit seen as the opposition within Via Campesina organized by Swamy, against the European leaders. Because the Europeans had the money, so basically they were running Via Campesina, and on a less radical line than Swamy, whose slogan was simply “Trash WTO!”. I’m simplifying, but this was a little bit the situation. In fact, the secretariat of Via Campesina was supposed to go from one place to another and at one point it was supposed to go to India, but the Europeans blocked that and sent it to Honduras with … what’s his name? The guy from Via Campesina … because they didn’t want Swamy to have that power.

Yvonne: Ah, Alegria.

Olivier: Yeah, Alegria, Rafael Alegria, exactly. Because Swamy was really on the thing of saying No to WTO, whereas Via Campesina was saying agriculture should go out of WTO and into the United Nations. There were differences of that kind. Without speaking of the mobilization tactics or whatever. But I think that to a certain extent, Via Campesina, like ATTAC and other NGOs, finally became more radical, more on his positions.

Yvonne: [01:32:45] Yeah. Also due to the fact that movements in Latin America took over, I mean, MST, for example, is heavily involved, and due to their positions Via Campesina also changed their positions. Like with those movements having a stronger position within the movement or within the coordination.

Olivier: [01:33:10] Or even the network from Brussels to where? Brussels to whatever.

Yvonne: [01:33:18] Wasn’t it Seattle? Seattle to Brussels?

Olivier: [01:33:23] Yeah, From Seattle to Brussels, which is like basically NGOs who were also involved with WTO. They also bit by bit radicalized their positions. So, you know, they weren’t saying they were against free trade at the beginning, when PGA was first active. And now they do, you know, in fact I’ve worked with them in Geneva for several years. That hasn’t been anything for a few years, but up until 2010 or 2012. And Monica, for example became the -. just stopped being - the person of TNI that organizes the network against, what is it called again, against transnational impunity?

Yvonne: Stop Corporate Impunity.

Olivier: [01:34:29] Stop Corporate Impunity, which basically has an anti-capitalist position because of the whole process before. So in a sense, PGA had won the argument, but it wasn’t the only one anymore. So it was no longer as unique and useful on an international level, as it was at the time when it was the only network that was openly anti-capitalist, and radically against free trade.

Yvonne: [01:34:52] And it’s interesting when you’re saying Stop Corporate Impunity, because that’s sort of like more or less of an anti-capitalist attitude, whereas they have also this treaty alliance that would be the NGO version of what to do, you know, on a global treaty, on corporate responsibility or whatever. But that’d be sort of like the NGO aspect, whereas like Stop Corporate Impunity would be sort of like more of a radical network of grassroots movements; whereas the treaty alliance would be more of a bit of a NGO lobby organization.

Olivier: [01:35:37] Yeah. So they come every year to the U.N. for this treaty on corporate responsibility, but they say, well, you know, we say it’s an important place to be and it would be good if this thing went through, but they don’t believe that that’s how the solution is going to appear, it’s just one sphere of struggle. We have to be at the United Nations, we have to try and push this through like the Via Campesina did for the rights of farmers. It doesn’t solve the problem, but it’s a useful tool, you know, whereas, apart from that, they are a network of solidarity between, you know, between all these different grassroots movements around the world. So in a way, they’re doing part of the job that PGA should have been able to do, which it never could do because it was no organization, it didn’t have any money.

(everybody laughing)

Detti: [01:36:38] So it was a useful tool for the time and it had successes and brought people and organizations together and that work continued.

Olivier: [01:36:58] Yeah I think there was a continuity through that.

Detti: [01:37:01] There wasn’t really a need to continue.

Olivier: [01:37:03] There was an ideological continuity of all the people, people who continue to do things and in different ways, different places. But it actually went on quite long, at least in the North. Often people think the anti-globalization movement was stopped by 2001, but it wasn’t really, in the sense that after there was 2003 in Geneva and Lausanne, and then there was Gleneagles. That were also things basically organized by PGA inspired groups. And then again there was Heiligendamm. Someone reminded me the other day that apparently the German police had made a report before Heiligendamm, saying that they knew that this was a dangerous organization because it had adopted the PGA hallmarks.

(everybody laughing)

Sandra: [01:38:06] … meaning that it’s NOT an organization.

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: Yeah, they said we know this shit is not good.

Olivier: [01:38:28] For me, the last thing that happened – that was not really PGA, but the last thing was in 2009. Heiligendamm was in 2007? Yeah. Like that, I think. I didn’t go to Heiligendamm.

Detti: [01:38:51] I was there.

Olivier: You were there?

Detti: [01:38:56] It was nice, at the Ostsee, with the nice beach they have there.

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: And it worked quite well, the demonstration, the mobilization?

Sandra: They had this five fingers strategy.

Detti: [01:38:59] Yes, that was good. I think it was the first day of the conference. That was really powerful and worked well. It was symbolic, but with blockades from different sides. It was in summer, it was hot. And there were the things in Rostock itself, that were big demos.

Olivier: [01:39:31] Was there a problem of Black Bloc or violence or repression?

Detti: [01:39:38] Yes, there were police problems, yes. There was this big concert of big bands in Germany that were playing at the port. And it was absurd because there was this music playing, party, and at the same time, the police always coming into it, surrounding people, hitting them and then going again –

Steven: [01:40:09] During the concert?

Detti: [01:40:16] Yeah, it was really strange. You couldn’t really get what was going on and the go back, then try to push them back … But at least, they don’t have this tear gas and all that stuff in Germany. They didn’t use it, at least. So it was some kind of weird dance.

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [01:40:54] In Gleneagles the blockade strategy of PGA was … I thought it could never work there because with the Gleneagles the summit was in a luxury hotel at least 20 kilometers from Glasgow, where the camp was. And these crazy English people, they got up at 4:00 in the morning and walked all night through the woods – and blockaded it all the same.

(Everybody laughing)

Olivier: [01:41:29] They were really good.

Stephen: [01:41:32] Was this a G8 summit?

Olivier: G8, yes.

Detti: In Heiligendamm the camp was good as well. There was several camps, I think, but one big one, and it was super organized.

Olivier: [01:41:47] Yes, there were those camps which is something also which I guess started with PGA, these camps, no? Self-organized camps like that. I remember, the one in Gleneagles was just amazing. That was so, so beautifully organized, people doing the food. And I mean, there was a huge tent with tools. If you needed a saw or whatever to set up your stuff … But all kinds of tools, nice tools. And you just went and took it and brought it back. Someone had thought of bringing that huge bunch of tools for setting up the camp. And there were obviously two or three beautiful kitchens. I guess the kitchens it was the Dutch who started it.

Yvonne: [01:42:56] Rampenplan.

Yvonne: [01:42:59] That was their name, they were inspired by Rantanplan.

Yvonne: [01:43:08] They accompanied us four years, they were great.

Detti: [01:43:13] Yeah. And after that they started similar projects at a lot of places.

Olivier: [01:43:18] I went to the a mass climate action of Ende Gelende a couple of years ago, and there was Rantanplan making food. And I said, oh, you know, that’s great, I remember Rantanplan making food for us in 1999 for the Caravan. But these guys weren’t even born in 1999. They looked at me like I was a ghost.

Yvonne: [01:43:46] It was the first time we met them, in 1998, when they made food for the caravan.

Olivier: In 1999.

Sandra: [01:43:55] The caravan was in 1999.

Olivier: [01:43:57] That was when we met them, yeah. Yeah. But those are things also now that have become kind of standard for the movement, right?

Sandra: [01:44:10] And there are many kitchen collectives.

Olivier: [01:44:14] Many kitchen collectives and people who really, even locally, know really well how to make food.

Detti: [01:44:20] Even in Lichtenstein. They’re great.

Olivier: Yeah?

Detti: Yes, they made the hike to Davos, everything.

Sandra: [01:44:31] Well, they are the Swiss kitchen quality. They were here in Berne, too. When you were coming for the Rise Up occupation.

Little pause.

Olivier: [01:45:05] Yeah, there’s a lot of practices that maybe didn’t start with PGA but were developed with PGA, like that, and organizing in network, by networks. So all that stuff. With other stuff. What aspects of PGA worked for your organization or movement, for your region? What didn’t work?

Sandra: [01:45:52] I think for us in Berne, this Caravan thing, this “Totally crazy project” (300 Indian farmers demonstrating across Europe in 11 buses for a month) was enormously important for our movement afterwards, even if that didn’t have anything to do with PGA anymore, afterwards.

Olivier: [01:46:11] In Davos, you mean?

Sandra: [01:46:14] Yes, it didn’t really have a close connection to PGA, it was just our mobilization. But if we hadn’t had … For instance, we were obliged to make contacts with small farmers in Switzerland, we were obliged to make contacts with the trade unions, with NGOs, and to broaden or … to build our alliance for 2003 against the WEF. It was crucial for this.

Olivier: [01:46:51] It changed your practice, in fact.

Sandra: [01:46:52] Yes, and making contacts with people we didn’t have any before.

Olivier: Mm hmm.

Yvonne: [01:47:01] That’s true. It was really like in terms of networking. It was interesting because we’ve worked towards this project, which the idea that it was within PGA what we wanted to achieve as a movement against EU politics, whatever, you know. But I think the achievement for us was really that we started networking, which you could build up on later on. Mm hmm.

Olivier: [01:47:42] Because it wasn’t like the organizing for a summit just with activists, but …

Yvonne: [01:47:52] That’s it. It wasn’t just activists also. Also the fact that we had to raise 60000 francs to contribute … We couldn’t do it ourselves, we had to talk to NGOs. We had to talk to the trade unions. We had to talk to loads of different people. We created this presentation of the caravan, sort of, and we wanted to create an alliance to be able to raise the money to organize accommodation for the farmers because we wanted to accommodate them with local farmers here.

Sandra: [01:48:25] 250 participants came here with the Caravan.

Yvonne: [01:48:28] It was loads.

Sandra: [01:48:31] Yeah, it was half only that stayed in Switzerland. But yeah, we had to accommodate 250 people.

Olivier: [01:48:37] And you managed to lodge them all within farms or not?

Yvonne: Yes.

Detti: [01:48:41] Yeah?

Yvonne: [01:48:42] And what we didn’t think of at the time was that it was so complicated because we needed a translation for … there was loads of different groups coming from different states speaking different languages that had to be translated. So I mean, logistically, it was such a madness.

Olivier: It was a madness.

Yvonne: But still, we had in mind that we didn’t want to accommodate them in big gym halls or whatever, but actually to bring them … to get them in touch with local farmers, with small farmers, building on alternatives in Switzerland.

Sandra: That’s what they wanted, also.

Yvonne: Yeah. Yeah. And we tried to do that here. And what we only realized after is that they didn’t … For them, it wasn’t small farmers, because small farmers in Switzerland are big farmers in India. So they didn’t realize that what we showed them were alternatives until they saw the giant farms in Germany. And they realized that these had been the small farms!

At the time, I remember one situation where they were shown a little, you know, like a power station created by some farmers somewhere. And they were saying: we have power stations, too, they’re much bigger! But not realizing that this was actually an alternative to the big power stations.

(everybody laughing)

Yvonne: [01:50:10] It was at times just difficult to translate things to them. And we didn’t realize either what it meant for them to see what they saw here, because for us, it was just like our small farmers building up alternatives, whatever.

Olivier: [01:50:31] Hmm. We weren’t that good in Geneva. But we had them all, we had 350, and basically lodged them in squats and a little bit in a civil defense thing. But yeah, we went and visited some farms, but we didn’t try to lodge them there. I didn’t realize you’ve managed to do that. That was really good!

Yvonne: [01:51:02] It was loads of work. Really. We were some more people in our group.

Sandra: Hm?

Yvonne: We were some more people.

Sandra: We were five or six.

Yvonne: And Stephen, you were doing loads of work with the farmers, organizing accommodation and stuff?

Stephen: [01:51:21] Yes, I did some of it. In Schwarzenburg, perhaps.

Sandra: You went to people in canton of Fribourg … didn’t you come there to visit them?

Detti: [01:51:25] I was in the Jura, somewhere.

Olivier: [01:51:47] But how did that work? Because there are not many farmers from Uniterre. They’re aren’t organized as small farmers there.

Sandra: [01:51:58] But they know each other. And they organize.

Olivier: [01:52:01] And you just went and started talking about this and they were interested? That’s amazing.

Sandra: [01:52:10] In every region, we had just one or two persons to talk to.

Olivier: [01:52:17] And they found other people and … That’s cool! Also, what I didn’t realize at the time was that Swamy had several objectives with that thing. One was just bringing the theme around to Europe and, you know, helping us organize and whatever or forcing us to organize (laughing), but it was also to unify the Indian movement. I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought, you know, this unity already existed. Do you remember Yudhvir Singh? He was one of the farmer leaders from BKU, from the North.

Yvonne: [01:53:17] No, I don’t.

Olivier: [01:53:20] He came often to Geneva for several years with the Via Campesina to negotiate around the treaty on farmers’ rights. So he often stayed with me, and I saw him again in India, and he always said to me, you have no idea how important the Caravan was to unify the farmers movement in India because, you know, it’s a continent. It’s like you’re having farmers from Naples and from Stockholm, who meet and, you know, with 15 different languages and it’s like you put all the farmers of Europe in a caravan together and made them move around, right? And he said that it was really very decisive for the movement as a national farmers movement, which I didn’t realize at all at the time. They were uniting through that experience. Now you see, did you see the amazing struggle they did this year?

Yvonne: [01:54:23] Absolutely. I was thinking it would be interesting to hear from them if this is connected, like the huge mobilizations they did against the farmers laws and how they managed to coordinate those mobilizations? If this is linked somehow to how they managed to coordinate through the caravan?

Olivier: [01:54:46] Yeah. Well, I think they had not really been organized nationally before PGA and the Caravan , but since they have continued doing stuff together, and some of the same leaders like Yudhvir Singh and Chukki Nandjundaswamy, Swamy’s daughter, and the other one … I don’t know whether he was with the caravan, but yes, I think so, the son of Tikaït. Tickaït was the other big leader, of the BKU in the North, like Swamy with the KRRS in the south. When I went to India a few years ago, I visited Yudhvir and he proposed that I go on a tour with with Tikaït’s son because it’s more of, you know, more or less dynasties, you know, like the son had taken over as leader of the BKU organization and he took me with him on a mobilizing tour in the north of India, visiting the different villages. And for them, it was, you know, PGA was definitely a reference. It’s the same people. So it’s a continuation of that movement, of that organization. And this year, they just did the biggest demonstration in human history. 250 million people on the same day.

Yvonne: And over months they blockaded …

Olivier: They blockaded Delhi for more than a year, camped on all the roads entering Delhi, tens of thousands of them.

Yvonne: [01:56:29] To have agrarian laws repealed that would destroy their livelihood.

Olivier: [01:56:37] And they finally won, they finally had the laws repealed. It’s amazing. And what was new too is the link with city movements, because when I went to India the other times I was surprised how little links there were between the farmers and the trade union movement in the cities. Basically there were apparently none. You know, there was a huge national strike in the cities while I was there and Chukki didn’t even talk or know about it. But this time, they managed to get the unions. In that huge mobilization there were also the unions, the city unions, because basically the city organisations saw that this was the chance to stop Modi’s thing. You know, if the farmers were broken, then Modi would have no real opposition …, he could do anything, basically. So they also mobilized.

Yvonne: [01:57:42] But which was interesting is not only that, I think also vice versa, vice versa, too, like the farmers speaking out against the draconian laws such as the UAPA, that these are sort of like it’s called like, uh, a prevention of terrorism law. And like, yeah, it’s called UAPA, and it’s used to criminalize social activists and political opponents of Modi, basically. And loads of activists, also friends of mine are incarcerated under UAPA. And what was interesting is also that the farmers movement spoke out against UAPA or the use of UAPA against activists and, you know, like the whole issue of criminalization of demos, protests, etcetera, that are treated as terrorism under Modi, basically. So it was not just like the trade unions supporting the farmers, but also the farmers supporting other movements. It’s especially people who are criminalized who support the Dalit movement, the Adivasi movement, women’s rights and who oppose Modi politics.

Olivier: [02:00:30] Yeah, it was huge. They said there was a rally, where they said there were a million people. So how do you have a million people hear anything? I guess they were just camping out, basically!

Yvonne: But at the same time, it’s sort of … that’s nothing. Because they are used to do protests with a million people. It’s just other dimensions.

Olivier: They never … I remember Hyderabad, in 1980, they said they were 50’000? We thought that was already totally out of this world. But a million, that’s just crazy.

Yvonne: Absolutely.

Olivier: No, but I think that their movements have become … It was also KRRS, which was the most progressive movement, which has, as you say, had the farmers movement be interested in the women’s movement, women’s rights whereas others were basically caste movements, defending farmers rights, but not really interested in much else. The last time I went to India, there was a meeting of the farmers leaders from the different states and there were just a few, four or five young people and young women who were there and who were obviously fed up with the paternalistic, patriarchal system. Starting to speak up a little bit, you know. And the old people, the leaders, they were also really upset, really anxious at the time because they were saying that the young people didn’t want to stay on the farms and they were all dreaming of, you know, looking at the internet and, you know, going into the city and becoming IT specialists or something, you know? And they really worried about the future. So maybe they started listening a bit.

Olivier: Maybe the caravan educated some a little bit, although many of them were sort of stunned. Like these leader who were being given orders by the bus coordinator, who was like a 20 year old punk woman with, you know, amazing colored hair and you know, dressed in a very surprising and for them totally indecent way, telling these old bearded patriarchs: hurry up, get on the bus, we’re late!

(laughing)

Yvonne: [02:03:14] Yeah. And I remember, we were surprised seeing that some of the groups, some of the movement had quite a hierarchical pattern. And to realize that some patriarchs had their subordinates doing tea for them or whatever, you know. We were just like: … oh, what?

(Little pause, Detti bringing Tirami-su and making tea)

Yvonne: [02:05:21-8] I’m sure we didn’t understand, at the time of the caravan, lots of the past issues of the Indian friends and the Indian movements. We didn’t.

Olivier: It’s very different from state to state. Different organizations.

Yvonne: And it’s such a complicated issue.

Olivier: [02:06:21-9] Did any of you come to the debriefing in Ticino after the caravan?

Yvonne: I was at a meeting in Ticino but I’m not sure if that was the debriefing. In Molino?

Olivier: Yeah.

Yvonne: I think I was.

Olivier: [02:06:53-5] It was kind of violent. With respect to Sergio, in particular. Because … We certainly weren’t expecting a lot of things we saw in the caravan. Especially the fact there were people who weren’t farmers, but actually thought they were… This is because in India, if you’re a farming family, you are a farmer. Even if it’s your brother who is taking care of the farm and you become a lawyer or a teacher. Like Yudhvir Singh, he’s been organizing for the movement for 20 years, always living off his brothers who work in the city, who pay for him to do full time activism, basically, and they all consider themselves farmers. So when they are of a farming family, they come back in the summer, they come home and help, you know, but… And so a lot of people who were in the caravan … I don’t know if you had the same reactions here, but some of the Germans … of the European activists they were expecting nothing but poor Indian farmers and were surprised when some Indians would say, Oh, I’m a lawyer myself. And they really gave Sergio a hard time. …? ? And everybody was exhausted and stressed, having made such huge efforts.

Sandra: Was this an international meeting, the debriefing?

Olivier: A debriefing of the European network who had organized it.

Sandra: I don’t think I was there.

Yvonne: I don’t think I was there either. I was at some other meeting with international participants in the Molino. Was it with Amerigo? No, Naka Mandinga?

Olivier: Ah, Naka? No, that was later.

Yvonne: It was later, yes.

Sandra: [02:10:24] What do you think generally about the role of Europeans within the PGA? Because I discovered some notes I made at the PGA conference in Bangalore, and I had prepared a speech, which I didn’t dare to give. I will read it now, I wrote:

’This conference and the whole PGA Process is being dominated by people who are not representing big movements. More important: We from Europe/Canada/USA do not fight existential struggle, it’s not the peoples’ struggle, it’s a struggle of quite privileged people. We have the right to be here, but we have no right to dominate this process, to dominate PGA. We have to take a step back, have exchange with the other people, but really be careful about leading the process. There has really to be an urgent and radical change in this process. Otherwise we reproduce the same structures as are existing in the whole economic order we are struggling against. So those who are neither directly affected nor representing many people, take a step back!!!!!’

So I didn’t say anything, but apparently it seemed important to me at that moment. Because I remember the Germans very at the center of all this, leading the discussions and the whole process and stuff. So I wonder how you see this.

Olivier: [02:12:42] I remember I always wanted to make videos … ask all the different movements to make a video of one of their meetings, so we could put them together and show how different the meeting cultures are. We talked about this sometimes in the Convenors meetings. The Maori, for instance, they said, oh, in our meetings, when somebody talks, they sometimes talk for a long while, and the only thing you can do is make a kind of noise. It means Right on! you know, like, Uuhh, hmm! And then there’s a big silence and then somebody else … And the Italians have a very different way of doing it, everyone talking at once! Yeah. And the Germans who were hand signalling blocks and all this stuff. So the Indians were asking: What are you doing?

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [02:14:04] In Bangalore, it was kind of … At one point there was a woman, there was someone who started talking about rights of lesbians. And one of the old Indian leaders who was like a nice old teddy bear, a really nice old guy, who didn’t understand at all what she was talking about. When he finally understood, he had a heart attack! Because he probably had never even heard of lesbians before, and the whole thing was just too much for him.

Yvonne: [02:15:14] I wasn’t at international meetings until (or just more European meetings, right, when it was about planning the caravan). The first for me was in Cochabamba, actually. But I remember also at the European meetings that there were some people who tended to dominate the discussions a lot. So when I hear what you wrote there, I say you were probably totally right.

Olivier: [02:15:58] You should have said.

Yvonne: [02:16:00] Yes, you should have, of course. Because it’s like about a colonial attitude.

Olivier: [02:16:09] Unconscious colonial attitude.

Yvonne: Yeah.

Sandra: [02:16:13] And the day before, on the first day, there was a huge thing because the Nepalese people they came … thirty nine of them came and they were from three organizations. And then when they arrived, they learned that only five per organization were allowed. And so some of them were sent home.

Olivier: [02:16:45] It made a huge thing, I’ve forgotten about that. There was a real tension between the Nepalese and the Indians because they took it as a kind of colonial attitude of the Indians. So they really felt really mad.

Yvonne: [02:17:06] Whereas in Cochabamba, the meeting was like, I think it was about a month after 9/11?

Olivier: Two weeks.

Yvonne: [02:17:14] two weeks after?

Olivier: [02:17:17] Yes. All the airplanes were empty.

Yvonne: [02:17:19] And so some people weren’t allowed in, and that was huge problems. There were several people who were stopped in Bolivia or they were even stopped from changing planes somewhere else. And it wasn’t even about the US or on U.S. territory. It was the U.S. saying, these are terrorists because they’re activists and they’re not allowed to participate. I think even Evo had a problem at a time. It was very tense.

Sandra: Was he in Bolivia already?

Olivier: [02:18:00] Evo Morales was organizing the conference as leader of the Cocolero farmers movement – so for the Americans a drug dealer. And he was one of the only political leaders at the time who said, that basically the Americans had it coming to them. That they shouldn’t be surprised that sooner or later war would come back to the States. And that he regretted the civilian deaths, just as he regretted the thousands killed by the American coup in Chile on the 11th of September 1973… He was the only one who said such things. And so the American ambassador said that the United States would never forget what he had said and basically tried to block the entire conference as terrorist. There was also a bus that came from Colombia through Peru and Ecuador, which was a disaster because Sergio had basically planned the route with me looking at a tiny map of the Andes in my kitchen and thought that it could be done in so many days, which in fact was impossible. So basically, they were already totally stressed and late doing this journey, and when they got to the frontier and they were refused entry-.

Yvonne: [02:19:08] And some didn’t have a visa or they couldn’t get a visa. Yeah. And they were blocked at the border.

Olivier: They couldn’t pay the visa. There’s an amount to pay.

Yvonne: [02:19:21] And then also, after the conference ended, we all traveled to the Chapare region, the cocaleros’ region. And our demo there with the people was the start of a blockade that lasted for weeks. So it was basically … And this was Evo who had organized that. He had been the main organizer of the PGA Conference and sort of using – not in a negative way, but also using the power of the PGA Conference to bring all the people there to strengthen the Cocalero movement and which was then the start of a really strong mobilization that also caused the death of several people, there were several people killed by the police or military, I can’t remember.

Olivier: [02:20:14] But you stayed on then.

Yvonne: [02:20:15] I stayed on with Louca. We traveled to some other regions in Bolivia to meet people. Yeah, right.

Olivier: [02:20:30] There were also people stopped at the airport. They wouldn’t let them in, or arrested them after. There was all kinds of things going on.

Yvonne: [02:20:40] Yeah.

Olivier: [02:20:44] On the main square of Cochabamba, there was a kind of permanent party going on with a huge banner saying: “Ya los Yankees no están invincibles!” So they were celebrating, because for them, the attack in New York was the greatest thing that ever happened. You can imagine that the American ambassador thought this was kind of bad taste…

Olivier: [02:21:20-6] But in the conference we also had that the problems in the organization of the meetings. Because it was mostly Europeans and North Americans, who would end up organizing, although the first thing was always that we were trying to make the other people take over. But they wouldn’t do it. No doubt the whole international aspect was too much for them. We couldn’t convince them. There was one guy who was particularly critical at one point of the fact that it was the gringos who organized, and I had lunch with him and said: Look, tomorrow, take over the thing! You moderate tomorrow! And he said Ok. But the next day, he didn’t want to do it. So it was, you know, it’s also this kind of, because maybe they’re not used to organizing things that way.

Sandra: No, they don’t organize this way.

Steven: [02:22:27] Exactly.

Sandra: [02:22:32] And after the conference, I went to the Narmada valley, and in the village of Medha Patkar, and I saw a PGA conference, but for real, with people who were talking about their struggles, their problems and their solutions, with people from Benghal, from Thailand, from many places, who are struggling also against dams and having an exchange, and it was totally different from this manner of having a conference or debate.

Olivier: [02:23:15] With a subject or whatever.

Sandra: [02:23:17] And I was thinking, this is the real PGA conference, really of people who are really struggling and fighting. And talking and organizing in their manner, not in our European meeting style.

Detti: [02:23:44] And what was the difference? I didn’t understand.

Yvonne: [02:23:48] Participation.

Detti: Yeah, but what was the difference of the setting?

Olivier: [02:23:53] I would say, probably that there was a fixed subject of discussion. You know, in Cochabamba, there was always an order of the day, right? We were supposed to talk about this or that subject. And in the middle of the discussion, someone would arrive, because a lot of people came from far away and arrived in the middle. So they had just arrived and they would put up their hand and say, you know, Oh, I come from such and such a movement in such and such and such a region, people or whatever. And there we have such and such problems, and like a first very long, you know, like a courtesy thing of being happy to be here and starting to tell their story, starting with their abuelos and how they have been colonized. And which had absolutely nothing to do – in the Europeans’s eyes – with the subject, you know. And then the person moderating would try to come back to the subject, and then somebody else would come in. And so it created a tension. Of course, there were good things that were done, all the same. We managed to change one of the hallmarks, for example. So apparently there was a moment where there was some kind of decisive discussions going on, but …

Time, taking time to let things develop is a big factor, but we are usually in such a hurry. We have internalized so much capitalist “efficiency”. The Proceso de Comunidades Negros (PCN) told me that their national meetings take a week, whereas the much more culturally complicated PGA conferences could never be more than 3 or 4 days.

Yvonne: [02:25:44] Yeah, I think I remember what you’re saying, and it’s also like it might have been organized too heavily by a European group in a European way, with points to discuss that much time for it. Whereas the need of loads of participants was, first of all, to present their struggle and to hear of other people’s struggles, not to talk about hallmarks. I remember that I spent quite a bit of time outside talking to people about their struggles. And this was the most inspiring part, actually, because it was like to listen to them, to their way of struggling, of organizing, of organizing together as communities, as trade unions, as whatever. And not about ’should we use that wording or another wording, which was far from them. But then again, it was…

Olivier: [02:26:58] Although that discussion of the non-violence hallmark was brought in by Evo. It wasn’t the Europeans’.

Yvonne: [02:27:01] Yeah, yeah. I mean, it’s just the way we talk. Of course, it was important, because they felt like delegitimized. But then to say, we have like two hours to talk about that, that’s not their way of talking about things, because they need to present how they struggle to say how they feel delegitimized when this kind of wording is used or whatever. But then again, also in the years after, I spent loads of time at meetings, also of Latin American meetings, and even then I felt, at some stage, for example, the farmers and landless meetings taking place in Ecuador, with Ecuadorians and loads of other Latin Americans. And there I felt at that time that the Colombians would dominate a lot, but it’s sort of because it’s their way of speaking. They have their political education, whatever, you know, by their organization, and they’d be like … very articulate.

Steven: [02:28:16] The Colombians.

Yvonne: [02:28:18] The Colombians. Whereas the Ecuadorian Highland Farmers, indigenous people, they would not present themselves. You know, it’s also a bit of a cultural thing within Latin America, or people like from the Lowlands would take far more space than people indigenous people from the Sierra. You know, it’s all also within that context. At times, it felt like nearly a bit ashamed of other people taking too much room whereas the hosts wouldn’t be listened to in the same way or whatever. Do you know what I mean? It’s also… I don’t want to say that that it wasn’t the case. Europeans do take a lot of room, but also within the Latin American context, this can also happen.

Olivier: [02:29:09] Yes, intercultural problems even among them. Hmm. You know, the Colombian Proceso de Comunidades Negros (PCN), they have a way of talking Spanish which is so complicated and so eloquent and so poetic … They are the only ones I don’t understand what they’re saying because it’s … I understand each word and the phrase, but even when it’s written, you have to really …

Sandra: It’s poetry.

Olivier: [02:29:36] Like Naka, they have this amazing culture of Spanish language which they’ve developed, which is, you know, really kind of what do you call that? You know, flowery speech, you know?

Steven: [02:29:54] Absolutely.

Olivier: [02:29:59] And I guess, others, you know, I don’t speak Spanish well, but as you say, Ecuadorians or other people must think: who are these people?

Yvonne: [02:30:06] It’s also a difference between the Highlands, the Lowlands, the coastal region, indigenous, non-indigenous, black communities, you know, and then Caribbean communities that are just far louder.

Stephen: The Caribbean communities?

Yvonne: [02:30:35] Yeah, they’re just far louder, and they’re more expressive, whereas people from the Highlands, indigenous people would be very quiet.

Stephen: [02:31:15-4] I think, these intercultural differences which make that somebody speaks up or doesn’t speak up …

Olivier: And how, in what language …

Stephen: Yeah … This is not only a PGA problem, but when I think about our movement in Switzerland, we don’t have intercultural differences in the way that they build hierarchies, but we have got inter-class differences. As we are sitting here as sons and daughters of upper class people …

Yvonne: [02:32:37-3] Workers … please

Sandra: Lower middle class …

Stephen: Okay … there are exceptions.

Detti: But we are all well educated.

Stephen: Yeah.

Olivier: [02:33:11-9] Even with the educated people … we have a problem as activists in groups … Our way of talking and our way of understanding the world which makes it really difficult to expand, to talk even to other educated people. You have somehow to be initiated into the activist way of seeing the world. When I meet somebody and try to talk, to explain to somebody who isn’t at all politicized, I always think: how do I start this thing? If they say something which is a bit stupid in my opinion, I don’t know what to say, because I’m used to talking with people who are more or less politically, relatively on the same general playing field. So as you’re saying, that’s a problem.

Stephen: [02:34:33-4] Yeah. Perhaps the problem is that we are not enough aware about the privileges we have. The movement of the Gilets Jaunes made me think a lot about this topic.

Olivier: A lot of activists reacted badly to the Gilets Jaunes movement, thinking it was kind of populist and blabla bla. There was another part that did take it seriously, but …

Stephen: Yeah. And I don’t know if we have had in Europe such a bottom-up movement like the Gilets Jaunes.

Olivier: In Switzerland, you mean?

Stephen: Yeah.

Sandra: Bottom-up … Is it enough to be bottom-up? The anti-vaccination and corona skeptics were also bottom-up …

Stephen: [02:36:12] Yeah. But I think, for the climate movement it is very important to be aware of this contradiction because when you are formulating demands, you have to be aware that it’s not the same thing for you, for instance, to renounce having a car as it is for people that live somewhere outside in France, not connected to public transports … And it’s also quite simple for us to renounce on materialistic things. Because, yeah, I think from my point: although, until now I never needed the money of my parents, I always knew that for me, money is not a problem. This is a complete different point of departure when you are being an activist.

Olivier: [02:37:55] Or risking arrest.

Stephen: [02:37:58] Or risking arrest. Or also putting energy into a movement which is for good ideas and good ideals, but yeah, actually you have to work a hundred percent because you will never have enough. I can see now how it is for people that are living on the old age pension and supplementary benefits. if you only have these two piles of materials support when you are old, it’s not that funny. And so it’s really difficult to find forms of organizing people where normal people, working people can engage, too. Don’t do you think? Sometimes I was near to paint a big banner and hanging it out of the Social Centre of the Reitschule, saying: Engage if you can!

Olivier: [02:40:02] As you can.

Detti: [02:40:11] That’s what one of the problems of our forms of structures and organization. It needs a lot of engagement, a lot of time, a lot of energy to be involved. And if you don’t have that, there is no space for you.

Stephen: Yeah, that’s what I wanted to say. But I have no proposal how you can resolve this problem. Because, yeah … Now, the only thing is that we as privileged people have to be aware that it is not for everybody. Do they have the possibility to engage like we do?

Olivier: [02:41:20] Maybe if you are really conscious of that, you should really look for forms of organization where there is room for people who have very little time or, you know, not the same equipment, cultural equipment or whatever, you know, have different ways of being involved. But an even more difficult question is the question you were posing before, of how people see things, you know, and that means that you have to actually spend a lot more time just listening to people, and that’s also enormously time consuming. So as soon as you want to mobilize for something in a month or in two months, after a while, you say, okay, yeah, that’s great, but now we have to get into a, you know, an efficient (capitalist) mode of functioning – a well disciplined capitalist workers mind. You know, how do you organize a demonstration efficiently? That was also a problem with PGA. That was why the conveners committee didn’t really work as expected. It was because there are also hierarchical structures and most of the southern organizations would only send the leader, and the leader only had three days, you know, and when he went back, he had no days to think about PGA, basically. And we several times tried to say, okay, we try and meet not three or four days, but for 10 days, for two weeks, and we really have time to develop. But they couldn’t do that because, you know, they might have a massacre at home if they were gone for 10 days. And they also didn’t dare … didn’t think it possible to send a junior person who could have more time, whereas we were sending only junior persons basically, like you or me. Or I mean, people, you know, who had no particular responsibility. And so only young people from the Europe were traveling around Asia and South America, making the links, because, you know, they could take the time. I spent quite a bit of time trying to trying to tell the organizations, find a young person from your group who speaks English or Spanish, or a language with which they can go and visit another one. You know, we tried to organize these horizontal South-South exchanges. And it just didn’t work with … I don’t think they trusted a young person to come back with something interesting. I don’t know what. It just didn’t work. And so we were finding people like Yvonne who traveled around, or Sergio or Pablo, Pablo Kala, you know who I mean? He spent years going to Bangladesh, particularly, and helping the movements there. But so, finally, the support group was basically Europeans, and they were basically doing the organizing that the conveners should be doing. Well, it wasn’t politically very important organizing in the sense that we were basically doing the logistics, raising money for tickets, etc. But still it was kind of strange.

Sandra: [02:45:46-8] The Zapatistas are a bit different for this, they are taking time and are traveling and let young people speak. They did it back then, and they did it now again.

Olivier: [02:50:39] Yeah, And they imposed their system, in the Chiapas Encuentro, too, they moderated endlessly long long debates, just listening and saying nothing. Only Marco, at the end, had some beautiful speech, but basically, they were always three masked Zapatistas sitting there, listening. Just listening.

Sandra: [02:46:31-6] That’s how they took ten years before they started the revolution.

Olivier: Did they come to Berne now, with the new tour?

Yvonne: They did.

Sandra: Yeah.

Olivier: [02:46:47-0] And as you were saying, they were sending grassroots people.

Stephen: Have you been to an exchange with them?

Sandra: Just one. I went to Basel and to an event here in Berne. But I wasn’t very close.

Yvonne: I was at one in Zurich.

Olivier: Did they talk? In Geneva, one afternoon, they talked a little bit.

Sandra: [02:47:29-0] It was good here, because their questions and what they wanted to see was a networking between groups that are normally not working together. But they asked: What are we doing? With whom could we work together and why don’t we work together. They were very inspiring questions.

Olivier: Good questions. In Geneva, it was taken over a little bit too much by some very kind of hard line anarchists… They didn’t really reach out a lot. I thought this was a pity. It was certainly not the Zapatistas’ intention, but … And did they talk publicly at all?

Yvonne: They did in Basel, didn’t they?

Sandra: Yeah, a little bit. There was a demo also in Basel.

Olivier: [02:49:07-9] When they came to Geneva, the people who were organizing said that the Zapatistas didn’t want to do anything public. And in part, because they weren’t happy how this demo in Basel went. I don’t know. But at the same time, I think the people who were organizing didn’t really want to make a big thing, a public thing anyhow, so I don’t know to what extent that was their interpretation or to what extent it was really the Zapatistas who had taken that position. There was an afternoon where they said they wanted to hear the representatives, one or two people from the different organizations, so I went to that, and I heard them there. But that wasn’t a public meeting of any kind.

Yvonne: [02:50:04-0] In Zurich, it wasn’t public either. It was sort of like a meeting where some people from different organizations or groups were invited.

Olivier: Yeah. That was the same thing.

(short pause)

Oliver: [02:50:30] Okay, do we want to go on with this? Do you have other things to say? Let’s see if there are any questions. Yeah. The last question is: How do you think PGA affected other movements on networks? We have talked about a lot of it. What didn’t we ask that is important and hasn’t been covered? What questions or issues are still on your mind?

Yvonne: [02:51:44] But maybe to question number seven: how did your experience with PGA affect your own activism networks? I think some parts of it were said at the beginning, that it was inspiring just to learn about other movements and their ways. And I think, up to now some connections still work. I’m still in touch with some friends personally or with the movements in general of PGA network, in my work and at my working place, Solifonds. Which is great because it’s still there. The network is still somehow there or connections are still there, which is fantastic. Or sometimes you just meet someone who’s been involved in that, in the same thing 20 years ago or whatever. And this amazing, just to meet friends again. Or maybe it’s not the people, but the movement that still exists or a movement that came up afterwards but has its roots there or whatever. So I think it’s still around. It’s not just history. I think it does have its … it does exist today, even if it’s not there as PGA network, but connections are still there. I don’t know what it is for you.

Olivier: [02:53:50] It certainly is for me, because I was also more involved personally. It also gave me a great address list when I still wasn’t so conscious about traveling by airplane. Now it would be a problem going to India and Latin America. I still have good contacts with Chukki and Luca. You remember Luca? From the Ya Basta! movement in Milan? You know, he married Swamy’s daughter. That was one of the results of PGA.

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [02:54:45-9] He fell in love with Swamy’s daughter and has now been living there for the last ten years or so.

Stephen: In India?

Olivier: [02:54:55-9] Yeah. And they are particularly working on the agro ecology project Amrita Bhoomi. Swamy had managed to put together 70 hectares, which is huge in India, of land to make a kind of alternative farming and training center in Karnataka. And so they are particularly working with that. She is in the leadership of KRRS in general, but they are working on that a lot. There’s a lot of agroecology developing in India.

Sandra: [02:55:48-0] Doesn’t one state of India function totally agroecologically?

Olivier: There are a couple of states that officially introduced it into the agricultural university.

Sandra: No, but the whole production in one state?

Olivier: [02:56:09-0] No, but they want to do it. And in Karnataka it has been growing a lot, there are so many farmers. In the last ten years Chukki told me that 50’000 farmers have started doing agroecology, that’s great. But there are probably 50’000’000 farmers in the state…

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [ 02:56:28-1] But it’s growing. We visited one of these farms. It was amazing, fantastic. They call it ’zero budget natural farming’. It’s a special thing developed in India. Zero budget because they buy nothing. They don’t have to buy seeds, they don’t have to buy pesticides, they don’t have to buy chemical fertilizer. And instead of doing one or two crops, they do a mix of fifteen or twenty, so they say even if the market crop doesn’t work, we can eat and go on to the next year. If in two or three years the crop didn’t come through, they would put it aside. So it’s growing pretty fast, and some states are encouraging it now … Even Modi says encouraging things about it … which is sort of strange, as he is passing laws to open up India to industrial farming.

Yvonne: [02:58:16-6] I wouldn’t believe him a word.

Olivier: I wouldn’t believe him a word either. But it shows how popular the idea is getting in India.

Olivier: And Naka? Did you have any news about Naka Mandinga?

Yvonne: [02:58:31-4] No, a few years ago. The last time he was here, on tour with the Proceso de Comunidades Negros.

Olivier: [02:58:45-7] Just now he’s had to leave the country because they were trying to kill him all the time. He had to go to Brazil. They started saying that he wanted to come here. But Ines said it would be crazy to come here. He would go crazy here. We could find money to help if necessary to go to Venezuela or Brazil, wherever there are afro communities and where he could fit in and do something useful, whatever, but here he would just dry up. So finally he did go to Brazil. The situation on the Pacific coast in Colombia is terrible. They kill people all the time.

Yvonne: [02:59:35.4] The situation in all Colombia is terrible, it’s not just the coast.

Olivier: [02:59:47.8] The problem of the Pacific is that the narcotic’s trade. It has been more and less limited on the Atlantic and Caribbean coast, so it’s now all going up by the Pacific, by Buenaventura. So Buanaventura has been taken over totally by narcotics gangs, plus there is the FARC and the ELN. The re-FARC who have taken up arms again, but who want to kill the local community leaders who want to stop planting coca… plus the narcotics gangs, plus the military, plus the paramilitary. So you don’t know how the people survive. They just killed two of his nephews. That’s how it happens. They look for Naka, they don’t find him, so they kill some of his family. So that’s … imagine living like that. Anyhow, right now he is out of the country. He survives. And Carlos Rosero is running for senator. The first ones who were in PGA from the beginning were Livia, Carlos and Naka.

Yvonne: [03:01:19.4] And he is running for senator? With Pacte Historico? (was elected since this interview).

Olivier: Yeah. Apparently there’s a quota, a certain number of senators who have to be from the afro and the indigenous communities. So I’m still in contact with them, with Dave in Canada, from the Postal workers, with a few people like that. And with these people who are doing a PGA oral history, who were in the Direct Action Network in 1998. I think you’re right, either through personal links or just about the development of struggles, the networking continues with or without the same people or the same names, but the thing continues, in fact.

Detti: [03:02:52.3] What is this history project? I never quite understood this.

Olivier: It’s what you just did.

(everybody laughing)

Olivier: [03:03:03.5] It is mostly the work of Lesley Wood, who was in the DAN (Direct Action Network) in New York at the time, and now is in a university in Toronto, and a guy called Michael Reinsborough who is in Great Britain somewhere …

Yvonne: He was in Cochabamba, too.

Olivier: Anyhow, they started a few years ago, at least three years ago, they wrote me saying it would be good to do this project before we all die or totally lost our memory. Also trying to do it with the idea to be useful for the movements today. I think what we were discussing today was really good, because we were constantly trying to think what it meant for the climate movements or whatever.

Detti: In what form will it be?

Olivier: [03:04:27.3] There’s a certain number of … basically the main objective is just to have these interviews on a website. They wanted to do the website in a few weeks. And it has been going on for three or four years. Things are going slowly.

Yvonne: So what are you going to do with that?

Olivier: Now there’s beautiful software that can translate that into written. Did you know that? I think you have to re-read it to test it. One was done with xxx, I don’t know if you remember, she was a Canada. But basically, you can transcribe automatically.

Anyhow. I’m gonna have it transcribed it, and then send it back to you for comments and corrections, or for whatever you want to add or whatever. And I have to ask you also if you are okay to be named or if you want to be anonymous.

Then it will be linked to the PGA website, which still exists, strangely. They kept it working. And maybe someone will have the energy to read this all and write something about it … Anyhow, it will be there for people interested, especially for young people who could be interested in our history. I Think it’s a good idea, because the memory of the movements is so short. It’s amazing. Activists in Geneva now never heard of the mammoth demonstrations in Geneva and Lausanne blocking all the roads to the G8 in 2003. 80’000 people, days of riots again, but only the right wing politicians seem to remember it.

Yvonne: Of course, if they were ten years old …

Olivier: Some weren’t even born then. If nobody talks about it, it’s normal that they never heard about it. And then they start to talk about should we be going to do more violent stuff or not or, you know, what people already talked about a step before.

Detti: [03:08:45.2] (reading from a website) The last actions on the website of PGA is in 2008.

Yvonne: What is it?

Detti: In November. Vigil and direct action to close the SOA Fort Benning in Georgia.

Olivier: Ah, there were people of PGA. Great. They’re still very active. They’re amazing. It’s basically a religious group. It must be forty years, older than PGA. I guess they started in … When did they kill the Jesuits in Salvador?

Detti: 1980.

Olivier: I think they started then. They’ve been doing demonstrations since then every year. I didn’t know that they consider themselves close to PGA, but that’s common (laughing).

Stephen: [03:10:28.8] are you talking about this catholic movement in the USA?

Sandra: Are they allowed in PGA if they are religious?

Detti: It was just a demonstration, it didn’t say that they are part of PGA. Maybe somebody put it there, and they don’t know.

Sandra: And there was this Caravan from Geneva to Copenhagen, in 2009.

Olivier: [03:11:13.5] Yeah. Because there was a WTO summit in Geneva two weeks before the COP, to which a lot of PGA people from the South were coming. (That was the occasion for the last sort of riot in Geneva because some very radical and stupid people set fire to some cars along the route and provoked a massive police intervention to stop the demo.) Anyhow, we organised two buses of delegates that went on different routes through France and Germany to Copenhagen doing demos and meetings along the way. That was for me the transition from PGA and anti-globalization to the climate movement, because in the run-up to the COP there was a whole discussion including a number of ex-PGA people. Before the COP15, what should we do about the COP15. And there were a lot of people inspired by PGA who were saying, you know, should we block it? But it was kind of difficult to explain why you should block it - a thing which is supposedly going to do something about the climate. We can’t just block it. And we couldn’t just encourage them or make demands, because we knew they were not going to be encourageable. They were not going to do anything. So finally, there was an official organization and demo, and there was the Never trust a COP, which was more like a slightly Black Bloc, a more confrontational thing. And then the organization that we proposed, which decided, we must try to go in, in Swamy style: we must enter the conference the last day in a non-violent way and declare a new, another peoples’ program. And there were actually people inside, NGOs inside, who agreed to try to … to come out and join us when we were trying to go in. And obviously we all got beaten up by these huge Danish policemen. (They’re all about this much taller than me, like Vikings or Aryans or something.) But we had a nice conference, a nice popular assembly in the middle of all this, in the middle of the teargas, and the decision was that we had all to go home and organize assemblies and work and develop, at last have a grassroots base, because really, in PGA or in the anti-globalization movement, we never had a base in the North. Southern organizations had a real local practice, but we would just go home and wait for the next summit, basically. So after the COP 15 we all went home and tried to organize stuff locally.

Sandra: [03:14:05] Then you started Alternatiba.

Olivier: [03:14:08] Exactly. Yeah, it was the same year. Alternative started in the Basque Country. The idea was to organize, at the same time, a kind of festival of alternatives. Of any kind agricultural or housing or energy, whatever, anything that is conceived of as a solution for the climate problem. And at the same time, there is a sister organization, which is called Action non-violente Cop21, which does civil disobedience, and we started doing civil disobedience in Geneva with BreakFree. They did that first in one city in the Basque Country, and they called on people to organize similar ones everywhere. I guess there were about 100 organized in France, in different states, and we organized one in Geneva.

Sandra: And it’s really big. It’s still big now.

Olivier: [03:15:38] Yeah. We don’t have much contact with Alternatiba in France anymore because for one thing, they’re a little bit … not institutionalized, but a little bit rigid kind of organization, and aside the problems are different in Switzerland. You know, they organized basically around French climate politics. So we do stuff in Geneva, around Credit Suisse and UBS, you know, we don’t really have much reason to be in contact. But it’s exactly what you were saying before. It’s a response, we said we have to do at the same time, alternatives and and political action, civil disobedience. And they’ve done some fantastic stuff. We went to a thing that they did just after the COP, about Total Petrol, they organized a conference in the city of Pau, a world conference on deep sea petrol exploration. And the Basque Alternatiba managed to get about 500 people there and totally destroyed their conference, they were there for three days and occupied and whatever. It was a really beautifully organized. They’re very good organizers, the Basques. Yeah.

Olivier: [03:17:20] Good people. Yeah. Should we stop this, huh? Yeah, yeah.