 Hello and welcome dear creatures to our first set of talks and now a quick info about the translation. Der nun folgende Vortrag wird ins deutsche Übersetzung. Ihr findet die Übersetzung im Menü eures Videoplayers oder auf der Webseite unter dem Videoplayer im Tab Formats. Cette Konferenz sera traduit in français. Vous trouvez cette translation dans le menu de votre lecteur-video, ou alors sur le site Web en dessous de lecteur-video dans le langen Formats. And exploring the virtual event such as RC3 is difficult. So please help us out. Drop the herald news show hints or interesting stuff under the email address newsshow at rc3.world or go to the blog newsshow.rc3world. And we have a Q&A section for this talk, the mission of the MV Louise Michel. There is the possibility to ask questions. And when you want to leave us a question, use the IRC Channel, which is also linked below. Or go to Twitter or the Fediverse using the hashtag rc31, that is RC number three letter O letter N letter E. RC three one. And now the upcoming talk is the mission of the MV Louise Michel. Feminism will be anti-racist or it won't be. Search and Rescue is not standing for SRSAR, is not standing for Search and Rescue as going by the Louise Michel Crew. It also stands for Solidarity and Resistance. The talk will be about the mission of the rescue vessel Louise Michel and why smashing borders won't work without smashing the patriarchy and the other way around. The talk is given by a small group of people who run together with many others. The high speed lifeboat MV Louise Michel, which patrols the Mediterranean. And now let's go live to the bridge of the Louise Michel. The stage is yours. Hello, thanks a lot for the invitation to have a slot at the CCC 2020. Although we had almost no time to prepare for preparation, we are, but we are anyway happy to sit here today and give you a small impact about what the Louise Michel Project is or can be. So there is much more than could be said in 40 minutes. So hello everyone. We are sitting on the bridge of the lovely Louise Michel. At the moment we have a six crew on board. And here in the room are Leona, Anouk, Jakob, Loros and me. I'm Hannah. And we will give you a short introduction about what the project has been done in the last 12 to 14 months. And then we will try to make a slight switch und talk about mostly sexist Boundaries. So yeah, as maybe many of you already heard, this ship is a search and rescue ship and was bought nearly one year ago. It all started with Anouk writing an e-mail offering a ship. And then after a few discussions the ship was bought and a group of a few people put many work, many effort in it to prepare a former Navy, French Navy ship into a search and rescue vessel. The preparation when nearly all of them were done in France and the ship was bought them to Burjana in Spain and turned from a French Navy boat into a pink disaster and is now again in Burjana, Spain. We left for our first mission on the 18th of August when to the Central Mediterranean Sea in front of the Libyan coast and were involved of rescuing almost 300 people and after returning to Spain the ship didn't get detained or didn't get seized what we kindly were expecting this. So we were not detained but the ship was blocked and now after the first mission a group of people decided to keep the ship to get the ship ready again for our next mission and that's basically what we are working on right now like a new registration because Louis-Michel was registered as a so-called pleasure craft as a motor yard which was no problem at all because it's obviously a pleasure craft and a motor yard so as long as authorities didn't know that we were supposed to do search and rescue it was no problem at all but after they found out that we are doing search and rescue we lost our registration and are now working on getting a new one to be able to sail again and yeah so we are now in Haber doing shipyard time that means preparing the ship on problems, fixing stuff that needs to be fixed on the ship which is quite a lot and also doing a lot of paperwork because as many of you also may know search and rescue is very political and there are many political issues that need to be fixed many stones are put in our way and yeah, that's what we are working on right now In the short description was already said that we don't understand S-A-R that normally stands for search and rescue that we understand this S-A-R as solidarity and resistance that means what we are trying to say with this is that we are understanding our activism or our acting not as a humanitarian thing but as political and this is inspired by the central critic that humanitarian work which is just to say this kind of in short the other metal or the other side of the same metal humanitarian work tries to milder what capitalism, patriarchy or racism do to and with the world and it makes the shit that's going on looking better but it's it's making invisible what all these structures of power cause see this is racism, this is death this is yeah they make the structures of inequality and power invisible and this is kind of what also our project is about not only going to see saving lives because the obviously the EU is not willing they would be able to do it but they are not willing to save lives or to stop people from drowning so we are definitely, this is part of our project but part of our project or the main part of our project is definitely to put some effort in changing the whole system because as Hannah already said capitalism and definitely racism they cause the death that we can see at our borders especially in the Mediterranean Sea so without capitalism without racism and also without the patriarchy there would be not such a problem there wouldn't be so many people drowning at sea and this is what we mainly understand what we should do putting effort in changing the system and that also means that our actions have to be followed by the doubts and have to be reflected so we have to reflect on what we are doing and not get caught by this stupid game or this disgusting game that is played by national states, by the European Union or by all the authorities who are trying to force us to work on secret registrations for us and also for all other rescue ships is that we are blocked that we are hindered that the European Union stopped all their rescue programs they had the Central Mediterranean is still the most deadly border in the world but it's not the only deadly border and the world borders at all and causing death and torture and suffering and borders are imaginary lines or boundaries are imaginary lines that have been set up at some point and it makes the people believe that there is something that has to be protected but it's the national borders the borders of states are not the only borders we are struggling with and there are also borders between our boundaries that we have to cross like gender, like racism, like capitalism like inequality maybe I can hand over like what Hannah already said the boundaries not only exist between countries states or even continents but also between human beings between people and this is something we also seen a lot on ships all of us worked on different kind of ships and we've seen a lot of borders a lot of boundaries whether they were quite visible or most of them were more invisible the reasons for those boundaries are mostly gender the colour of the skin of people the level of education people have and all this stuff is causing boundaries between people and borders between people and we as a political project we are not only trying to fight the borders and helping we are trying to put effort in helping people across those borders between countries but also helping people and forcing not only forcing but challenging ourselves to cross those borders that society teaches us to live within so we are also trying to help people but also challenging ourselves to cross those borders that exists in our head and that are very invisible from time to time but when you work as a crew you can feel them and this is maybe something we can say as one of our main understandings so we don't see when we talk about migration or when we talk about people on the move from Berlin to Spain because I think they are like the beautiful or the warm weather more this is also migration and I mean the weather is quite nice we are in Spain right now and it's just wonderful to be here but this is also migration it's also when you move from the landscape or from the landside to the city but it's not framed as migration I think it's always a difficulty to go somewhere else and people who are crossing the borders of the European Union we don't understand this as fleeing people who need our urgent help and support but we understand this movement there's a kind of challenging borders because I don't accept these imaginary lines that they were told that they are not allowed to cross freedom of movement is a basic right of human beings and should be like this and this is something we should stand for and so then the people always say like okay there is an institution like Frontex that is a policy military organization and in 2011 they were told to accept a new rule that means they are not allowed to do pushbacks because they do pushbacks but what else do we expect so we have someone who is controlling borders and we expect that these people controlling borders will say to someone who wants to cross it oh you are not allowed and they expect that the opposite will say ah yeah cool, I will go home again that's not how it works and this leads to a situation of violence because as soon as this border is not accepted and someone crosses anyway it will have an effect and that's what we are facing at the moment and at the very moment where sorry I need a second, I lost my point we were talking about the moment that people cross borders without having the permission to cross them yeah but they lost it, it's just gone so maybe I can jump in until Hannah finds her point and I think her point was pretty good so I would love her to get back to that but when we were preparing this talk we also talked about who was even able to draw the lines as borders for example Frontex is protecting the border between for example African states and but there are so many other borders and we figured out in our heads that it's always the most powerful position who is able to draw those lines as borders and when it comes to borders or boundaries between people that it's also again the most powerful position that is drawing this line and this should be should be changed so it should not be these powerful persons deciding where the boundaries or the borders are and who is allowed to live within which border for example this man decides this is the border between a male and a female person who is deciding this, this is just stupid and same for borders between countries like European states deciding so this is the line and I am a European person so I am allowed to live within this line and all of you should just fag off and stay outside and you can just put this into many many different situations I think Borders are a matter of distinction and it separates people from each other so while they are saying because you are a male and this is a female or because you are white and it's black and it's your passport and maybe you don't even have a passport and we we are mostly talking in our crew about gender borders about and this is something that makes sense we understand a ship as as a place or as a space of hierarchy of patriarchy so it brings bad luck when you have a woman on board that's the story that's told and we had this talk also yesterday that we have a funny fireball that you can throw into the fire when there is a fire and it will explode and there is a picture on it and you see a male who is throwing it like very nice and slightly into a fire he is definitely the hero of the situation as it is and there is also a pictogram of a woman and she is putting this ball from the top into burning oil very nicely she is smiling and this stands for something that we are facing we are not just males and a space like a ship we notice every day that we are in the wrong place we notice that it's a different when you go alone through a part we have all these visible things that we can talk about so when you have a male chief engineer you can say this is a powerful position but there are so many things that you can't see really so there are these visible boundaries but also invisible boundaries so we were also talking about what is changing when you have for example cis men coming on board the ship what does this create how feelings change and how behaviour also changes and what does it make with the whole crew all of you also have situations in mind when you were only for example cis female or flint persons in a project or in a room and how this was how you were working together how you were living together and as soon as cis men is entering the room the project how this is changing and this is also about boundaries between people I think and it's challenging us a lot so we always when we try to crew mostly flint people so we try to turn the usual what is a normal fatailung the usual normal fatailung sorry for the english speaking presence I have no idea so usually these rooms are structured that if you have women on board or flint people on board that you have one or two and the rest are cis men and we try maybe also saying that on many many ships the flint person is doing the crew care or for NGO ships it's the guest care positions like many medical departments are made of we can say of women and guest care and crew care are mostly female positions but when it comes to engineers or captain or officer positions this is mainly cis men positions and that was what I was about to say so we are doing crewing for the ship and we try to crew mostly flint persons and that also means that we can open the doors or that we are kind of the door keepers and we can open the doors for for those people who usually have a much more difficult to enter such a project or to enter such positions that they can take over when they are entering Luis Michel but of course that's the story about being exclusive and we are we are struggling a lot with the fact that we are still working in a surrounding that is super oscillating dominated so always for people who take over power for like которweb che ehm we are having a wide range of cis men who offer their support but on unfl 여러� side there's no-one Und das ist etwas, was wirklich ein Problem ist, und es dauert so viel Zeit, um mit der Situation zu verabschieden, weil wir wirklich wollen, dass wir diese Idee haben, um eine Art, wie möglich ein Kind zu sein, eine Art save space zu haben. Und weil wir erfahren, dass der Surrounding und der Klima auf dem Schiff, wenn man einen Flintkruh hat. So, es gibt mehr Raum, die man für Betrug geben kann, weil die Leute kommen und sagen, wenn sie sich nicht selbst betrug, um etwas zu tun, oder wenn sie nicht etwas zufrieden sind, das ist viel mehr Gespräche, das ist viel mehr reflektiv. Es ist super leicht zu handeln über Jobs, wenn man ein Klima hat, das nicht zu wissen lässt. Weil es ist ein Schiff, und wenn es rausgeht, und es ist ein Problem, dass niemand sagt, oh, ich habe einen Fehler gemacht, aber vielleicht habe ich einfach etwas zu tun. Nein, nein, nein, nein, nein, nicht zu tun. Und dann ist es wichtig, dass jemand kommt und sagt, ich weiß nicht, wie man es tun kann. Und vielleicht ist das, oder das ist zumindest etwas, was wir seit dem letzten Monat gesehen haben, wenn wir zusammen arbeiten, auf diesem Schiff als neue Crew, und mit vielen verschiedenen Leuten, die aus verschiedenen Ländern, aus verschiedenen Environments, oder zumindest ist es meine Erfahrung, ich weiß nicht, was es mit dir geht, dass es viele times, es war, oder es waren Frauen, die für Hilfe fragten, oder es war weniger self-confident und versucht, double checken, wenn es auf der anderen Seite war, wenn es herrscht, dass man immer mehr als self-confident war, und vielleicht ist es für Riesen, dass es total okay ist, aber ich denke, das ist so, wie wir auf die Welt gewohnt haben, wie wir uns educiert haben, und wie die Gesellschaft uns beitragen, wie wir sind, wie Frauen immer mehr oder weniger self-confident sind, als Männer sind. Und das ist etwas, was wir versucht, von diesem Schiff, self-confident, as the men are, as the men trying to go, trying to be. Maybe we should come to an end. I think now we are the point where we can talk like a lot more about all these little lines that we are crossing every day. And it's not just about detourning and taking care of the end room. We can take, talk about a lot about the end room, because our chief engineer has to stay off. So he's not here. We can't say a lot about him. But I think for all kinds of political action, the main thing is that we have to stay. And maybe sometimes we also have to improve it. The enmity with the circumstances and by keeping the friendship to the world or with the world. And so we are trying to create a kind of an open space by never accepting any fucking kind of water that is dropping or crossing our ways. So we are, we have to reflect. We have to force ourselves to step about this or to crossing sports, to step over it and to not getting lost or desperate or frustrated. And this is what we can be so we can create a space where even when we are blocked and it always feels kind of senseless to get the second part sitting around. Don't know what you are doing, because why we are sitting here and everyone is talking about this lovely pink little ship that tries to challenge European bodies. We are in the end, we have to say we are blocked. But somehow we also have to deal with this frustration and we have to go on. So there is no possibility to say like, OK, they forbid us to do this. So we can't accept that. But at the same time, we have the same time, we always have to challenge ourselves. And we always have to support ourselves. And we have to we have to understand ourselves as part of a social movement. And this is why we really appreciate to get some questions. From the audience to get some something more than this limited space. We are living in here. Yeah, maybe as a conclusion, we can say that we are not only fighting or dreaming of a world without borders between countries, but also for a world. Oh, we have this vision of a world without borders between humans and in any kind. In any way. Thank you. That is that is a nice thing of the talk. Thanks, thanks so much for for telling us all that. And I can relate the virtual applause you're getting from the audiences. You can sadly cannot hear that. But I am sure that there's a massive feeling of gratitude and thank you from all of those who are watching. And I've got some questions for you from the audience. And if we've still got some minutes left. So when you have an additional question, use the IRC link below the video or use Twitter or the Fediverse using the hashtag hash R C three one in letters. So hashtag R C number three letters O N E. Then our signal angel will put that down in the pad. So I can ask the question and the first question coming into you for you is, have you had any direct confrontation or other experience with Frontex officers or boats? Maybe I can answer the question. So yes, definitely. Yes, when you go in to the Central Mediterranean Sea and when you go, yeah, in front of the coast of Libya, for example, you can basically nearly every day see Frontex airplanes crossing, like searching for boats, searching for NGOs. What the hell are they doing there? And yeah, so it's from what I experienced during the missions. I went on. It was mainly airplanes that were searching for. For example, boats in distress or people on the move and giving this information. Unfortunately, not to NGOships, for example, or informing coastguards in the way like, OK, those people need help. But informing, for example, the so called Libyan Coast Guard to go there to push the people back. That's definitely one of the main experience I made with Frontex, like organizing illegal pushbacks. OK, so most of of it was plain sightings and not direct contact with personnel or ships in touch and distance. Ja. OK, so the next question is more of a technical side. I think the core of the question was about how to great situations, but I trying to read that to read that out. I think some something is lost in the translation. I hope you see what that means, but take it in a good manned spirit. How do you define a maritime emergency dash or slash ship wreckage? Do you already take action for a dingy with a working motor and rescue them? Or is it only about situations where people's life is crucially endangered? Where is there some guideline that you can? Yes. Oh, great. What's happened total? Ask us a question. Was? Yes. No, we can see. No, I think it's not our Internet. I think it's just the audience. It's good. I just saw the chat explode with all the technical stuff. I have so many good questions. I would like to ask. But yeah, technicalities are the great dictator. And we are allowed to go for four minutes over. Right? I'm preparing to go four minutes over. OK, good. When we're ever be back. Give me a go and then I start. So second question. Maybe something is lost in the Trans translation, but take it in a good spirit. This is about technicalities. How do you define a maritime emergency slash ship wreckage? Do you already take action for a dingy with a working motor and rescue them? Or is it only about situations where people's life is crucially endangered? As soon as you enter the Central Mediterranean Sea and try to make it from E.g. Libya to Italy with a dingy with a small engine, even if it's working, it's a disastrous case. Yeah, OK. Yeah. And to be honest, it's not only if the engine is broken down or if there's already water coming in, but those dingies are normally super crowded. And you never know about the weather coming up because me personally, I always have this idea of the beautiful central Mediterranean Sea with nice weather and no waste at all. But that's definitely not the case. So. Yeah, I think it's not always about this super dramatic scenes. But as Hannah said, as soon as you enter those boats, this is not a good idea. And and it's it's quite a distance and it will take several days to get there, right? So it is it is not a pleasure cruise or something. No, I would not say so, not in general. OK, next question. Is the crew also trying to overcome hierarchies on board? Means are they trying to find structures that work without classical captain's ETC? Yes, yes. And then I'm sorry, go ahead. So there is there is a legal side of the things and when the ship is on the sea and one is operating the person who is responsible is always a captain. So the person who is facing all the legal consequences are those in powerful positions. And this is something that we have to keep in mind. But for all decisions that are made on the ship, it's not up to the captain or the Louis Louisette, who is the coordination on a mission or to. The few powerful positions we have. The decisions get made by all. And we are trying to keep it as flat as possible. And of course, everyone's allowed also to say. His or her opinion, his or her opinion, and it's going to be acknowledged. But we have to be honest about that. We have to challenge ourselves to to make this running to work like with this flat hierarchy. We, yeah, we are on it. We are far from perfect, but we are trying to improve ourselves every day. Good. OK. From again from the nice people of the Signal Angel Crowd have written me down another question. Have there been other attempts to sabotage your work except the legal challenges of the ship license? Maybe attempts to distract you from complicated work. Maybe even algorithmic driven behavior recognition or something. This is a more of a technical question. Yeah. I think I didn't really got the question. But to be honest, this legal, this legal side of the things is quite effective. So there was once a question if we can't just leave as a pirate ship without a flag. Without a flag. And if we do so, that's an invitation for all forced power of all, what is it? Armed forces to enter our ship. And this is quite effective. And I think the main problem is with all kinds of repression. And that's how police work also works. Is that it is not just trying to block you or to sanction you. But it's also about destroying structures. And this is what we have to work on and all the structures we are organizing to not let them destroy our networks, our connections, our relations and everything else. OK, so this legal action works really, really well. So I've given some context for this. Do you think that you're constantly surveyed by others so that they can throw sticks into the spinning wheels? We definitely have to keep this in mind. Like all the time we would not talk about very sensitive stuff. Or we are trying really hard to protect our data. And yeah, so. But I mean, we are not sure about this, but we have to keep this in mind. Oh, we're keeping this in mind. And there's another question about the hierarchy on board. A more specific. What decision making processes do you use on board? Do you want to give us some insight on that? Yes, of course. We do have we are organized with a small crew, like a car crew who's coordinating and is also kind of decision making. This is sometimes a problem, but the ship always works independently of this crew or this car crew and the crew, who's involved is organizing themselves so they can organize themselves as having a very structured day, like every day morning meetings or try to find other ways to, at the moment, the situation with the current crew is that we have our construction sites that we are working on, but everyone is free to organize themselves. So if they want to work up to 11 in the evening, they are more than welcome, but we will stop them at some point because we don't want, we have an anti-burnout policy. So then they also have to start later. So, no, we don't have, we don't really have a plan, but we are trying to give the communication to those or the organization to those who are doing it. That means the ship organizes itself and the car crew is trying to care about the organizational side of the things, that means caring about money, about registrations ... The legal aspect is ... The legal aspect, but at least we are always giving a big thing, or a big part of our responsibilities that we have as a car crew at the moment. Leon and me are part of the car crew and the other ship crew is doing their own organization together with us. For information for the studio, I'm planning to go four minutes over and I'm already one over, so there's room for two more questions. After having rescued people, do you social distance them because of their unknown health status? This is a corona-related one. Yeah, lovely, I'm so happy to talk about this. Aren't we all? Yeah, great, finally. So, yeah, after the rescue, we tried to wear masks and to hand over masks to our guests. And for sure the guests, it was mandatory for them to quarantine when they came on land in Italy. And we tried to make everything possible to keep the guests healthy, like protecting them from our possible infection, but also trying to protect the crew from getting infected. So, this is a small boat, we have to be realistic. It's not possible to social distance, like two meters, there's no way. But we do everything possible to protect us and protect other people. And I think we have to add to this that this corona thing is used from the authorities to stop us. Because they say it's not possible, at some NGOships, to keep the social distance, to ban the pandemic. And to be honest, when you look at the situation on the Mediterranean Sea, when you have a question about drowning or spreading corona, I would prefer spreading corona. Yeah, so we think corona should not be an excuse to close harbors or to block ships. Because as you all know, treat first what kills first and drowning kills you first. And corona is quite a bad thing and very serious. But it should not be an excuse to close our borders. Yeah. And follow up on that. How do you set in your talk that Louise Michel is a safe space? Do you advertise or announce this in any way when you rescue somebody? Do you have a standard procedure where you say, listen, this is a little bit different as other ships or something like that? Or how do you approach those? You are rescuing and inform them about that. I think it's not the first step. But how do you do this kind of information? I would just say first that we are not a safe space, but we are trying to get as close as possible. And the rest I have to hand over to Leona. We are definitely talking to our guests about this, telling them that we are living all on the very close, on a very small space and that, yeah, this is a safe space so there's no place for racism or any kind of discrimination, weapons, drugs whatsoever. So this is definitely a topic. And it works at least what I experienced. It wasn't a problem at all. So there was a huge respect from the people on the move and from the crew among each other. That was great to see. So our time is up. Thank you so much for coming to us live from the boat, Louis Michel. It was a pleasure. And now it is my great pleasure to hand over to the Herald News Show, which will be live from Bielefeld Heideblümchen. And see you in the next talk. Bye. Thank you. Bye.