From Anarkistan
by Nader Tif
Translated from Persian
July 31, 2023

The international gathering of anarchists was held from July 19 to 23, 2023 in the city of Saint-Imiér, Switzerland. In these five days, 412 meetings with different topics were held in 12 places of the city. What you have in front of you is a report about this international gathering, which will briefly address some of its meetings. In addition to political and theoretical discussions, during this gathering, a permanent book exhibition was held with the presence of 100 different tables. Among other cultural activities of this gathering, it should be noted that 48 music concerts, 11 theater shows, 36 films, 7 photo exhibitions, etc.

Organization and budgeting

The 150th anniversary of the "anti-authoritarian international": what do we know about it?

The Saint-Imiér gathering was supposed to be held in 2022, exactly on the 150th anniversary of the anti-authoritarian international, but the Covid crisis delayed its holding by a year, so it can be said that the organization of this international event began more than two years ago. There were about 60 people in the organizing group. And of course, apart from this group, two other groups were independently in charge of order service and administration of the bookfair. These groups, which had an international composition, according to what is customary in the decisions of anarchists, carried out the organization with the consensus of opinions, and if there was a controversial and controversial issue, they would spend the necessary time to discuss it or remove the issue from the agenda. Of course, in practice, there were disturbances in the order service and book exhibition groups, which made the mechanism of both face problems.

The organizers of the rally had also agreed with the city authorities that uniformed police forces would not be present in the city during the rally and avoid checking the identification documents of the participants. During the gathering, there was no particular problem in the order of the city, except that among several thousand participants, a few people who do not understand self-imposed order and anarchist responsibility crossed the train tracks, which caused a complete stop of their movement until ten o'clock in the morning, Monday, July 24. It was said that the Swiss Railways demanded a heavy fine of sixty thousand francs. The organizers also activated some anarchist lawyers to resolve the issue through negotiation.

The places that the organizing group had for discussions, bookfairs, concerts, cinemas, theaters and exhibitions were all public and under the administration of Saint-Imiér municipality. But for all these places, rent was paid and they were not free.

The total budget of the gathering was estimated at 276,200 Swiss francs. Since anarchists never accept government aid or sources other than their own organization, several anarchist organizations already contributed part of the budget, for example the French-speaking Anarchist Federation (including about a hundred groups in Belgium, France and Switzerland) provided the gathering with €15,000. The other part of the budget had to be provided during the rally. Although the major part of the budget, i.e. the amount of 120,000 Swiss francs, was allocated to the food and restaurants of the gathering, but in this part, the anarchists did not ignore their other custom and used "free prices" in the restaurants during the gathering. Free price means that each person pays as much as he can or does not pay at all.

A first aid tent, a nursery, a family campsite, several temporary bars in the city and several parking lots and a permanent information center were among the other facilities that the organizers considered.

It all started in a building at number 2 rue Francillon Saint-Imiér where the first anti-authoritarian congress was held.

Number of participants

It is not easy to estimate the number of participants due to the dispersion of discussion places and other gatherings, especially cultural gatherings, in five days, especially since not everyone was present every five days and there was a lot of commuting. However, the number of participants can be roughly estimated from the number of dishes distributed in the main restaurant. The restaurant staff gave more than 4,500 plates of food to people for Friday night dinner. However, this number is not an adequate representation of the number of participants, as it was decided that all meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, would be vegetarian or vegan. Therefore, those who wanted to eat meat dishes at least sometimes went to the normal stores in the city. One of the reasons it was decided that the meals would be vegetarian only was that meat in the meals tripled the cost and, since "free fare" was common, it increased the risk of not being able to meet the budget. The restaurant team, which consisted of at least one hundred people, was responsible for cooking the bread, and every day between 600 and 1000 kilos of bread were baked just for the restaurant. It can be said that at least 6,000 people participated in the event in five days.

A report of several sessions of this event

An international anarchist group called Abolish Frontex held a meeting that was well received by at least three hundred people. This group, which includes activists from different countries such as Belgium, Poland, Spain, etc., exposed the crimes of the European border police against immigrants and asylum seekers by showing slides and presenting documents, as well as explaining their actions.

According to this group, since 1993, 52,760 migrants and asylum seekers have lost their lives at the borders of Europe or at sea. The European Union plans to increase its border police budget to 5.6 billion euros from 2022 to 2027. The agents of Frontex (the European Union's external border protection agency) now include 1,500 people, and more than 10,000 more are expected to be added to them by 2027.

The discussion of the Iranian people's struggle against the religious-capitalist dictatorship of the Islamic Republic was held on July 21 in the city theater in French. In this meeting, the speaker presented a history of 120 years of struggle of the Iranian people in the framework of the constitutional revolution and the 1357 revolution, etc., and highlighted the deep historical connection between kings and mullahs in the defeat of Iranian revolutions and the continuation of tyranny and inequality. The main discussion was on the struggles of the last year and the revolutionary movement "Women, Life, Freedom" and the great role of women and some ethnic groups living in the geography of Iran, especially Kurdistan and Baluchistan. The speaker said that the Jinnah revolution is the most important event after the constitutional revolution. The meeting continued with questions and answers and comments from some of the attendees. One of the French attendees believed that the Jinnah revolution is the most important international issue today and even more important than Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Three geography professors from three universities in France, Switzerland and Italy presented a very interesting discussion entitled Anarchy and Geography. The main theme of this meeting was the connection between lands and cultures with society. All three criticized what is now called écologie and said they preferred to speak of mésologie, or the interaction of nature and man. With a quote from Elisée Reclus who said: "Geographic maps lie", they discussed the misuse of geography by governments for their sinister political purposes and said that their principles are cooperation, decentralization, federalism and communalism, geography without borders and criticism of maps. Geography is two-dimensional. The names of these university professors were: Patrick Mender from the University of Freiburg, Switzerland, Federico Ferretti from the University of Bologna, Italy, and Philippe Pelletier from the University of Lyon II, France.

Anarcho-syndicalist workers had an active presence in the Saint-Imiér gathering and in its book exhibition. The title of one of the discussions presented by them in Zaf Building was "Unions and Revolution". The workers who presented the discussion tried to answer the following questions: What is the place of trade unions in a revolutionary perspective? What are the contradictions of syndicalism? How can unions play a role as institutionalized interventionists in the radical change of the current order?

Anarchists since the Paris Commune have attached great importance to educational sciences in general and the role of children's education. An anarchist professor of pedagogy at the University of Nanterre in France, Augus Lenoir, recalled the role of Jules Andreu. He was a supporter of the views of Pius-Joseph Proudhon and addressed the issues of children's education in the Paris Commune.

Lenoir said that anarchists say that pedagogy [education] and class struggle lead to fundamental changes in society. He also emphasized that it is education that allows the working class to understand the reasons for their plight and then take action to change the world. Og Lenovar formulated the difference between authoritarian pedagogy and libertarian pedagogy as follows: the basis of the first is "must be" and the basis of the second is "can be."

[For more photos, see original article link above.]

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