 And that's why I changed to German. Please do not dig around on the campground. In the following talk, we talk about how we dig down the lawn of the Reichstag, so I want to welcome the speaker. He is not from the centre of the political beauty and political organisation. Digging around on the lawn of the Reichstag and other goals of political companies. Welcome to the talk. The perspective is for civil disobedience. I'm not from the centre for political beauty, as has been said. I have dealt for years in theory and practice with communication, and civil disobedience, and I think both forms of action, whether separate or in combination, are powerful tools for political protest. This will not be so much about communication, but about civil disobedience. Civil disobedience, that's perhaps the first thing we think of are people like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, or the good old sitting blockade. But there's more that can be done. Civil disobedience is a very large range of action forms. You can have lots of fun with that. And what I think is rather important, we can free ourselves from the lethargy and powerlessness that we feel and empower ourselves and get something done politically. So what then is civil disobedience at all? First of all, some theoretical background. What exactly is it? The word is first read from Henry David Thorough. He has been one of the four thinkers of civil disobedience and lived in the 19th century, and he wrote about the obligation to civil disobedience. That was one of his works. Thorough has two axioms. First, the authority of the government is based on the agreement of those that are governed. And second, justice is more important than individual laws and every individual can judge whether laws are just. And from that follows for him, if the law is set up in a way that it necessarily makes you on the wrong side of the law, then break the law. If it necessarily puts you on the wrong side of the law, break it. This is a shortened version of what Thorough wrote. It's not just about breaking laws. Civil disobedience is not about breaking laws only. In recent theory, this has become much broader. Obligations, orders, rules, norms, conventions can all be broken during civil disobedience. And what's important here is it's not a simple fuck you. Not about a single fuck you, a simple fuck you, but it's more like a balancing process between different rules, your own rules, and those from the law. And this kind of civil disobedience, there are three points that are important about this to make up the core of it. Foremost, it's reasons of conscience to put something that's wrong right. My reasons of conscience and the moral and the law are above the laws of the land and the orders. And to then transgress the law is the decision of conscience to put things right. You have to do this consciously and you have to accept that through breaking the law you can actually face penalties. And in that there is a power of civil disobedience because you consciously break rules or laws for political and moral reasons. And the third point is non-violence. You see Wolfgang Tierser, president of the German parliament at a time, blockading a Nazi demonstration. Now this is a non-violent breach of a law, not in the sense that it's never directed against the dignity of this human being. Civil disobedience excludes violence against human beings. And according to Gandhi, non-violence has moral as well as fact-factual reasons, tactical reasons. So civil disobedience is always in a kind of tension between legitimacy and illegality. Therefore actions of civil disobedience always have to legitimize themselves. You have people that will say you're breaking the law, you're legal, you're doing something that's forbidden. This will always happen if you are engaging in civil disobedience. And this becomes a negotiation process within society and a peaceful sitting blockade against Nazis or something is now widely accepted or almost accepted in society, at least appreciated as something that's part of it. It used to be quite different in the 60s and 70s and these things can change. And next to the practice you therefore always need explanations, communication of what you do. And this negotiation process in Germany in the 80s when it was about nuclear weapons, renowned intellectuals took part in these blockades and there was a huge debate about legality and legitimacy of civil disobedience and Habermas, one of those intellectuals, declared civil disobedience as legitimate but within certain rules, within certain frameworks. And it has to be public, it has to be pre-announced, it has to be symbolic and has to be calculable by the police. This excludes certain things which is why I would like to suggest an expanded sense of civil disobedience that also includes actions that go beyond a symbolic meaning, covered, unannounced actions that the state or the opponent cannot foresee. This has to include actions by communication guerrilla, things that may disobey rules of classical process or use them in an unexpected way and actions that go against non-state players like companies. And this is about expanding the repertoire of protest and develop the instrument of civil disobedience further. In the following part I will talk about different cases of civil disobedience that extend the area of civil disobedience or make the form of civil disobedience stronger and show it more clearly and show what's possible with it. So what Habermas did not include was whistleblowing, that if the surveillance state gets more and more important, democratic control has to be important and so whistleblowing is part of civil disobedience because the reasons are moral and it is known and it is not violence. So we have to make sure that whistleblowing is normal, that they don't have to do civil disobedience but are covered by law. However if journalists publish documents it's not civil disobedience but they're right and we just defended that and if the government would have succeeded we would have a problem with that, if we would have to fight against the constitution of Germany with the... And thank you therefore that you supported nextspolitik.org in the recent weeks. That is a combination of civil disobedience and also the law of freedom of press. So there's another way to get to informations and there we also have a problem with breaking of the rules about getting informations. In this case the hacking team who someone anonymous made these moral decisions that they wanted to publish the information about this company with the 400 gigabyte of data. And the interesting thing is that a non-communicated decision about the civil disobedience and the people who look at this data and communicate with the public. So it shows that this organization works against human rights. So we have whistleblowing and cleanup for the public city. Hacking for companies and governmental organizations that are against basic rights can be called whistleblowing. It is an important communication role. They just explained forms of civil disobedience are quite strict but it doesn't have always to be strict. For example there was a group up against the wall that was called up against the wall motherfucker that were active in the US and they made a nice situations and maybe they made one of the best ones. It was the mill in and they went into and they destroyed stuff. They made it dirty. They gave away the, and they put cats there. And in the end a lot of people had to be taken down from out of the... Then there was King Mob, a British group, shown here. They went into a department store in London dressed up as father Christmases and distributed toys to children and police came and children had to give them back and father Christmases figures were arrested. And these two actions are about breaking rules and questioning conventions and they use the means of confusion and camouflage to break what people are used to. And camouflage and fake is also what the next action is about. The space hijackers, the communication career in London that unfortunately very sadly have dissolved. One of their nicest actions among many great ones is the tank stunt at the G20 protests in London. The space hijackers for £2,000 bought this old tank or armored vehicle painted in blue and during the protests as fake police people went to the Royal Bank of Scotland and offered help to the police people against those evil rioters and the police declined and arrested those hijackers and charged them with impersonating police officers. In 2011, two years later, the charges were dropped and the nicest thing of this action was immediately after the arrest the police confiscated the vehicle and didn't know that the motor had to be kept running for the brakes to work and the hijackers then watched police people with that vehicle damaging buildings and then roads because they couldn't brake anymore. So fun with protest and questioning authority to get put together gives you embarrassing the police and to get to something more serious now we get to the action called the dead are coming. On a Monday in June, the Centre for Political Beauty started their action called the dead are coming. Perhaps wait for the next Congress whether they'll be talking about this and this action can be seen as the prime example how with a lot of morals and some political background and an action that really breaks moral conventions in a week you can win 7,000 people for civil disobedience. Basically this action was about making people aware of the 23,000 dead at the European borders and making these visible and this action was to have several levels first of all burying refugees in Germany and then putting up a memorial at the Chancellor's office breaking up the soil that was all announced and they were going to start work for this monument. The action began on a Monday on the Tuesday the first refugee was buried the group had exhumed bodies of refugees in Sicily with the agreement of their relatives brought them to Germany and of course there's always a huge provocation involved if you deal with corpses and dead people but this opened up a space for a debate about the deaths that are taking place and of course brought a lot of attention to the demo that was going to take place on the Saturday the march of the resolved. Now what happened during the week was suddenly someone at the Oranienplatz in Berlin someone put up a grave this was no one involved connected to the centre for political beauty and this went viral in hundreds of European cities people started to dig up grave mounds on public space in public grounds and few hashtags and tumble blog raising visibility of these things is all that's needed and due to all these graves that had been put up throughout Europe and mostly Germany there was civil disobedience that seemed legitimate and this happened in cities, in parks, in front of town halls of course there was a problem putting up that memorial with diggers and hammers and all that that was not going to happen there was a talk with the authorities and all kinds of authorities got involved when things get more dangerous, more authorities get involved now this actually involved 12 authorities the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Health Authority of central Berlin everyone was very concerned and on the Friday, one day before the march of the determined police forbade the use of diggers and carrying of corpses and the centre reacted with this text without any irony we ask you for the following do not go in masses carrying coffins at the Chancellor's office in no case organise yourselves and so on and this is then what happened 7000 people joined the march of the determined went to the parliament where fences had been put up around the parliament and suddenly somehow the fence didn't hold anymore and these 7000 people then flooded the lawn in front of parliament in a very determined way they were not running, they were slow it really was a very beautiful act of civil disobedience everyone was entering this lawn and right at the centre of power and between the Chancellor's office and parliament graves were being dug up well, not dug up, created grave mounds were being created and the police, even for an hour the police with all their determination were not able to prevent this they were being pushed back all the time but 91 people were arrested in the end as many as in the first of May riots often take place in Berlin the largest action of civil disobedience in Berlin for the last few years and it really put the spirit of disobedience into the heart of the capital all kinds of hipster hippies hacker left radicals theatre people, a nice mixture and that's one of the strengths of civil disobedience that you have a very broad range of actors not just one group and then it gets much more difficult to prevent this so you have this rare combination of action art and mass civil disobedience leading to something like political poetry and creating an arena for this very important topic also from the refugee topic migration topic there was an action that kind of got covered up in the whole treason affair but the pen collective which always do very funny and good actions put up a high profile campaign a very stylish kind of campaign classic call to break laws calling on people to use the holidays and pick up refugees and get them across the border with a very well done video looked very professional showing how helping refugees can work the nice thing about this campaign was first it set a contrast to all those racist rights that took place in the country against asylum homes it argued in a strictly moral way but gave concrete advice on how to get through the borders if you're carrying a refugee as a passenger it collected money for legal assistance to those people that would get caught and this image of the bad the evil traffickers that is always being transported is now contrasted with the image of the good citizen that helps a refugee and even though this wasn't very legal the mass media was communicating this in evil at an evil range and the far right wing FPO in Austria was fuming about calling for the smuggling of asylum seekers this can't be done the FPO was very much against this and then right wing conspiracy theorists read the who is entry for that domain and found the Einrand Institute and immediately thought this is a US based conspiracy and US NGO great if things like that happen you really have done everything right a well-made PR company that works with the call for civil disobedience towards the mass not only to the left alternative but towards the mass that languages and nationalities are very important and also from the same organization there was a following very nice communication group action where the artists put up a wrong press conference of the fake press conference in the main office of Wattenfell and it appeared to be quite easy you only need an institute an iPad with mails that say I am allowed to do a press conference here and immediately everybody believes it and in this case they believe that Wattenfell was part of the good ones because the message was that we'll stay in eastern Germany and rearrange realign their business completely to renewable energies and in this case Wattenfell had to disannounce that and say we are not a part of the good but in the end everybody knew they will never sue because that way they will be in public again and again you can do those things if you are in a moral higher place than the companies who are afraid about that but being against the rules can also be quite low key but still have quite a big effect in this case they impersonated someone so next to the we go return from communication gorilla and go to the massive in this case they removed the gravel from the trail tracks to those that the trains can't run anymore train tracks used by the nuclear waste transports they called about that month in advance and one of the effects that happened was that a large debate happened about that about the form of protest and big papers published about the subject and they talk about whether that's ok so even if you just announce civil disobedience debates about political subjects can be put on the agenda and you can use them and cause demonstrations with that it's a great tool to put up political discussions some important people supported it in Wendland later 7000 people were part of it the police was concentrated very much on those that removed the gravel which was the most important one not only the removing of gravel was important but also the usage of passive weapons is not allowed so you mustn't protect yourself against the gas the train gas so in this case it was we don't work against humans except of very few special cases everybody accepted that so part of the thing that removing the gravel was they did not work well against removing of gravel but the important thing was that everybody talked about it and it arrived in the mainstream this term for removing of gravel was word of the year and it was also used in different protest in this case the removal of the gravel shows what's all possible civil disobedience so wide discussion was feasible another thing which was quite it's quite a time back is how you can play against the police that is much more important in this case it was about block G8 in Dam where many people wanted to block the streets towards the center and in front of them there were a lot of policemen soldiers who stand against them and despite the military action the blockades were successful you have to imagine this the police was on every street there were military helicopters and everywhere were police and with the tear gas and despite that demonstrations were active and part of that was the five finger tactic the five finger tactic is quite easy unfortunately it works in open country and not in this town and they do this in the five finger tactic the protestants turned into several fingers and in a long line they walked towards the street that has to be blocked and in the open country in this process with 7000 policemen you can't defend a road so the police will always look at the first finger first and some of the others will go through and even if the police arrives you can split again so there was a situation where 100 policemen came and the fingers split and the police did not know whether to go to the right or to the left so the tactic of police can be circumvented like that and if you circumvent police like that you will also gain victory about the image of the the work of the images in this case peaceful people walked through fields and color and flower fields but on the other hand the police started with helicopters storm against them so in this case if we do massive civil disobedience and a well thought out tactic we will or might have successes important on this example is that political action without the parliament usually nothing happens after a demonstration but after an act of civil disobedience you probably have small aim you succeeded so you mustn't during while they dig grave and after they came home they were quite happy and there was a lot of power and you take the people with you and they talk about it and small successes are also good now let's move on to what else is possible but this is not a call to copy what's coming you all know about the throwing of tarts and as a kind of action as a form of action this man from Belgium invented this and he called it his main aim to to tart as many self-obsessed and unjust people as he put it now this involves a cream tart with a soft base not with frozen cherries or something and this is then pressed or thrown onto the target now here is an example against Bill Gates in 1989 in Germany throwing the tart unfortunately is not well accepted and is judged as violent and this was seen when Theodor Zoguttenberg controversial politician was subjected to a tart in Belgium and Holland this is quite different now the strength of throwing tarts is in the viral spread of the images that are being produced a well known tart throw in Amsterdam said in a talk recently media can't resist it always works this is naked protest this is something you just do and it will get into the media surely but as tarts are not that popular here in Germany there is another creamy kind of development and this is glitter bombing throwing glitter onto someone and spreading the political message that way this starts in the US and mostly used in the fight against homophobic politicians here is an example Newt Gingrich but you can of course extend it to other topics for example Mario Draghi the head of the European Central Bank see how scared he looks there in the corner this is what happened recently as a protest against the treating of Greece treatment of Greece you could think it's further and use and choose politicians that transgress basic laws basic rights or companies that sell espionage software or tools the important thing about glittering is that you have to document it yourself or make sure that enough media is present to ensure that enough pictures are created and this is much more easily accepted than throwing tarts it's much harder to turn this into a crime a criminal charge use the kind of terrorism or course making it harder to be breathed in and that will then be even more safe against criminal prosecution but please don't do it another thing in Germany we celebrate people that in the January of 1989 1990 sorry January 1990 stormed the Stasi offices this was a few months after the wall fell and in view of the current scandals of surveillance it might actually be justified to face secret services make them face civil disobedience to fire the debate about their legitimacy as long as the only consequence of Snowden is that data retention is introduced and secret service budgets are being increased we have to ask ourselves oh we're having no pictures here some problems with the pictures have you ever squatted a secret service we have to ask ourselves which mosaic pieces in the fight for civil rights are still there and civil disobedience surely is one of those and that brings us back to the question what civil disobedience is good for emancipative self-empowerment says this slide it's good because it is self-empowerment when Rosa Parks in 1955 sat down in a bus in the south refusing to free her space for a white person and got arrested this was one of the starting points of the civil rights movements in the US and subsequently this movement succeeded in democratic removing segregation in the US so disobedience sets a sign and can have an effect to motivate others to join and civil disobedience is participative and it's solidarity you have to be able to rely on each other and in most actions of civil disobedience you can see the tenderness of solidarity sitting down in a blockade with unknown people or being helped by people if you have tear gas or spray thrown into your eyes because you have to stand together and working the law together and in a world in which we are told every day we have to extend a hand in solidarity and this is very fitting and we could see this in the last few weeks the good old platitude something is a weapon love I guess is a weapon and there are more reasons you can celebrate small successes if your opponents block a lawn you can't demonstrate you can't demonstrate close to parliament and suddenly still despite the presence of the police someone succeeds in doing exactly that you can set a sign against the dying in the Mediterranean that the government takes for granted or accepts and this is really very empowering and if you have ever taken part you will never forget the experience but it protests of all kind strengthens the immunity of the democratic society and it's a form that can change the world for the better and of course having fun with protests should not be neglected these are people protesting against huge rents as they go for a viewing of a property that is to be rented out you can temporarily take possession of something if you want to change the world it has to make fun you have to be able to dance the truth of civil disobedience is you can forge new alliances and particularly civil disobedience is a chance for forming broad alliances because you agree to a consensus of action and because you have to stick together for it to work these alliances tend to be stronger than others and they are not something arbitrary the punk with the grandmother and the left radical and the democrat go together the stronger the social movement is and the harder it is to attack it and you can create public publicity that way calling for civil disobedience winning prominent celebrities will give you publicity even months before the event this is a well known German English TV personality and it extends democracy it is a chance to really develop democracy it democratizes institutions it further radicalizes and extends it even against the state and that's how I want to close thank you very much and don't forget dare more civil disobedience here thank you for listening your translators were Sebastian and Sebastian we haven't defined a hashtag for your feedback but I hope you've been able to follow us and you've enjoyed the translations I guess I'll call for the hashtag cccampen if you want to write something on Twitter most of that thanks a lot for this talk we have a lot of time left for questions the microphones are to the left and right in the aisles someone is at the microphone I can't see is there anyone there ok please start left microphone please hello yes first of all thank you very much for your presentation I really liked it another addition I thought about that the FIFA boss was thrown at with money which I also like quite a bit which was fitting I have a question now have feeling that in the recent years or maybe the last year the civil disobedience grew or was more public gained more public do you think the same I don't really have the impression that it's grown a lot there have been a few good campaigns that have been so strong that they may create the impression but I think that in the last few years there was a development that started at the G8 summit in Heilingen Dam in northeastern Germany and the large alliance that now blockades Nazi demos and this really got into the heart of society and was transported and that was thanks to this alliance that was created there and that made it simpler and easier for people to take parts and not say this is so dangerous I'm going to break the law I can't do it so quite a lot has been done to make civil disobedience easier and this could be extended could be taken further how do you see about collecting biometric data when you protest if I protest in say Berlin in October if I protest against I would like to go there would I have to put up my mask or change my eyebrows because they would collect my biometric data through the videos and I'm registered immediately well wearing a mask at the demo is difficult because there is actually a prohibition against concealing yourself you'd have to use large eyeglasses or something now the thing at the Reichstag at the parliament for one thing the action itself with all those photos and filming of course creates its own publicity public awareness and reaches a lot of the public but you have to be aware that all pictures in the net are then used by police to tell people you have been there you've been causing damage and you'll be so this is both you know thank you yes so there's not much you can do and then this could be a reason for you being pulled out of demos would you imagine that going to Berlin they really are going to collect the car registrations on the Autobahn well you have a mobile with you but let's say that the t-tip demo is not going to be something that will be extremely in the focus it's an officially planned demo it's going to be large it's not that dangerous I think and we all have a mobile with us so the authorities will know where you are and as in Dresden they've just pulled all the data of everyone that was in that cell of course it's good to protect yourself we could all not take our mob us but then we would have no pictures okay thank you we have time for more questions I have two short questions in my life first of all I would like to know what is your own connection with the subject have you participated in such uncommon protest actions in civil disobedience if you might give an example or two the other question is you also mentioned the naked protests and you always think about fame which is also a cool idea because the media can't resist there as well but you always have the feeling that for the fame it is not in a well naked protests are great in the 1960s throughout they have worked famine I think is a difficult case in a way because I don't know this is kind of place with the pictures that the media would like to have but there is a well justified criticism from a feminist point of view but I think nakedness in general works go somewhere naked call the press storm Nazi pubs naked works and media can't resist of course I don't think this is going to be to wear out particularly in a rural setting more than in cities can you also talk about your personal background yes of course civil disobedience is not oh fuck it's illegal yeah sure it's a really good experience because there is a different kind of power that you experience compared to a walking demo and it challenges the state but not in a simplistic kind of way in but intelligently and well founded and that's what I like and the whole feeling recently someone wrote that it's a mixture of of kissing snogging and showing the finger it gets kind of hectic the police wants to attack you but at the same time people help each other it's an incredibly exciting situation I really like it thank you I really like the idea with Secret Service a couple of years ago they were the idea of with all the transparent actions to have a day of the open door at the BND or with the Secret Service within Germany or but the problem is that they are all in not in Berlin maybe we'll go there somewhere another thing is the December where they celebrate the 75th birthday so let's go to Cologne everywhere and so but on the other hand the BND in Berlin is going to open soon yeah I think an open day is always a good motto but it will take a large alliance to approach this this would have to be mass several disobedience well planned and November is almost too short I would say but of course these people are not going away another question continuing with the previous I noticed that the examples you had in your talk the Congress took not a part except of whistleblowing so data protection data security surveillance and also thinking about it I only remember one case where it started with the NSA a student in Wiesbaden started walks towards the NSA point and it was quite funny how the government reacted to it and the US security services if I have if the subject here have not managed to mobilize what is the reason and could we change it well the fact that we don't manage to get a mass protest against surveillance and that this topic of basic rights and freedoms has been around for such a long time it's difficult perhaps we should try and use civil disobedience to get the debate going again it's never scaled that well but you know the annual walking demo is not the concept that will carry this forward we'll have to rethink it is important that people get together and have a large event but we'll have to think about new ways otherwise it won't work is the subject maybe not has it doesn't have enough moral point is there not enough indignation indignation against it because nobody everybody says hey I don't have anything to hide instead of with well maybe it's not tangible enough people don't feel it individually it's so far away or this metadata people think tend to think it doesn't affect them we need more example where say a 19 year old person girl is not allowed to enter the US because police have read their facebook chats so what's missing are these concrete tangible examples you don't have the neighbor that drills into your home and puts a microphone there instead it's very abstract it's not very easy to communicate and the examples are missing and then of course technically it has to be explained the way it works and then the NSA is so far away what do they want from me so that's the difficulty for this movement to get more protests onto the streets another question once you start from the quite comfortable protest in Germany the more well known activism forms of the recent years were the Maidan protests in the Ukraine what could we take that from the forms of civil disobedience or say another stab well there is this debate about civil disobedience only working in mature democracies because where you can assess the consequences and if you then look at the Arab revolutions or the Maidan protests in Ukraine they all use the means of non-violence because that is the strongest the opponent the state in this case is then attacking peaceful people and this clearly shows you as the victor and violence deters people and prevents large alliances which is why the large alliances against authoritarian systems are those that are building on non-violence and you can then argue of course methods of disobedience are being used but if this fits into the concept of civil disobedience I'm not so sure I cannot put up this beautiful colourful protest that is being shot at water or tear gas something that you can't handle but they are not going to shoot me with ammunition and this is where things get different and there are some certain limits to civil disobedience in that