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now the upcoming talk is "The Mission of the MV Louise Michel". Feminism will be
antiracist or it won't be. Search and rescue is not standing for...SAR is not
standing for search and rescue, as going by the Louise Michelle 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. Hannah: Hello. Thanks a lot for the invitation
to have a slot at the CCC 2020. Although we have almost no time to...for
preparation. 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 6 crew on boards. And here in the
room are Leona, Anouk, Yakob, Lorence 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 and talk about mostly
sexist boundaries. Leona: So, yes, 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 Banksy writing an email to Pia Klemp, 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 brought then to Burriana in Spain. And, turned from a French navy boat
into...a pink disaster. *laughs* Is now again in Burriana, Spain. We left for our first
mission on the 5th...of the 18th of August. Went to the central Mediterranean
Sea in front of the Libyan coast. And we 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 or we were expecting this. So we aren't detained, but the ship is
blocked. And now after the first mission, a group of people decided to keep the ship
to get the ship ready again for the next mission. And that's basically what we are
working on right now. Like getting a new registration, because Louise Michel was
registered as a so-called pleasure craft, as a motor yacht, which was no problem at
all, because it's obviously a pleasure craft and the motor yacht. So as long as
authorities...well...they didn't know that we were supposed to do a 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 harbour,
doing shipyard time. That means preparing the ship, working on problems, fixing
stuff that needs to be fixed on the ship, which is quite a lot. And yeah, 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...let's call it like this...that
needs to be fixed. Many stones are...they are put in our way. And yeah, that's what
we're working on right now. H: In the short description was
already said, that we don't understand SAR, that normally stands for search and
rescue. That we understand this SAR as solidarity and resistance. That
means...all of what we are trying to say with this, is that we are not standing our
activism or our acting not as a humanitarian thing, but as political. And
this is inspired by the central critique, that humanitarian work, which is just to
say this kind of short. The other medal or the other side of the same medal. So
humanitarian work tries to milder what capitalism, patriarchy or racism do to and
with the world. And so, it makes the shit that's going on looking better. But it's
making invisible what all these structures of power cause. So this is racism,
this is death. This is...they make the structures of inequality and power
invisible. L: And this is kind of what also our
project is about, not only going to sea saving lives, because the - obviously -
the EU is not willing or...mean they are definitely...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, the main part of
our project is definitely to put some effort in changing the whole system,
because as Hannah already said, like 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. Like there wouldn't be so many people drowning at
sea. And this is that, what we mainly understand, what we should do...like,
bringing effort in changing the system. H: And that also means, that our actions
have to be followed by the adults and they have to be reflected. We have to reflect
on what we are doing and not get caught by this stupid game, all this disgusting
game, that is played by national states, by the European Union, or by all those
authorities, who are trying to force us to work on stupid registrations. So what the
main situation is, 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 in the world. Borders at all
are killing and causing death and torture and suffering. And the borders are
imaginary lines. Or boundaries are imaginary lines, that have been set up at
some point. And so it makes the people believe, that there is something, that has
to be protected...by the national borders or the borders of states are not the only
borders we are struggling with. And there are also borders between, or boundaries that
we have to cross, like gender, like racism, like capitalism, like
inequality...Maybe I can hand over. L: Like what Hannah already said, like the
boundaries not only exist between countries and states or even continents,
but also between human beings, between people. And this is something we are also
seeing like 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 between people. And the reason
for that, or the reasons for those boundaries, I think...you said them
already, are mostly gender, are the color 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, not we are not only
trying to fight the borders between countries and helping, or we're 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 teached us to live within. So, we are also trying
to...as I said, 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, they get...you can feel them, you can't see them, but you
can feel them. H: And this is maybe something that we can
say as one of our main understanding. So, we don't see, when we talk about
migration or when we talk about people on the move, so, migration is everything.
It's also migration, when I move from Berlin to Spain, because I think I like
the beautiful, all the warm weather more. This is also migration, there's nothing
like this. L: And I mean, the weather is quite nice.
We are in Spain right now and it's just wonderful to be here. *laughs*
H: But this is also migration. Migration is also when you move from the landscape
or from land side to the city. But it's not framed as migration. And I think
there...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. So, 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, that we should stand for. And so then the people always say like, OK,
there is e.g. an institution like Frontex, that is a policing, 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. We expect that these people
controlling borders will say to someone, who wants to cross it: "Oh, you're not
allowed". And they expect, that the opposite will say: "Ahja, 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. *laughing* L: You were talking about the moment that
people cross borders without having the permission to cross them.
H: Yeah, but I lost it. It's just gone. L: *laughs* 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. Like, for example, Frontex is
"protecting" the border between, for example, African states and European
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, powerful position that is drawing this line. And
this 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,
like...for example, cis man decides this is the border between a male and a female
person, who's deciding this. This is just stupid and same for borders between
countries like European states is deciding, so this is the line and I'm a
European person, so I'm allowed to live within this line and all of you should
just fuck off and stay outside. And you can just put this into many, many
different situations, I think. H: Borders are a matter of distinction and
it separates people from each other. So, while it is saying you are different than
me? Because you are male and this is a female or because you are white and black
and that's your passport and that's your passport. And maybe you don't even have a
passport. And we are mostly talking in our crew about gendered borders, about - and
this is something that makes sense, when we are understands a ship as a place or as
a space of hierarchy, of patriarchy. That is, so it brings bad luck, when you have
a woman on board. That's the story that's told. And we have this talk also
yesterday, that we have a funny fireball, that you can throw into the fire, when
there is a fire and then will explode. And there's a picture on it and you see a male
who is throwing, like, very nice and slightly into a fire.
L: He's definitely the hero of the situation.
H: As it is. And there's also a pictogram of a woman. And she's putting this ball
from the top into burning oil. L: Very nicely.
H: Very nicely and she's smiling. And this stands for something, that we are facing,
when we, as not cis males, enter a space, like a ship. We notice so every day, that
we are kind of in the wrong place. We notice that it's a different, when you go
alone through a port. We have all these visible things, that we can talk about.
So, when you have a male chief engineer, it's a male chief engineer and you can say this
is a powerful position. But there are so many things, that you can't see that clearly.
L: Yeah. So they are these visible
boundaries, but also like 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, like what feelings change and how feelings change and how
behavior also changes? And what does it make with the whole crew? Maybe all of
you also have situations in mind, when you were only, for example, cis females 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 man is entering the
room, the project, how this is changing. And this is also about boundaries between
people, I think. H: And it's challenging us a lot. So,
always, when we try to crew mostly FLINT people. So, we try to turn the
usual...what is a Normalverteilung (German, Gaussian Distribution)?
L: The usual Normalverteilung (German), sorry for the English speaking
persons. *laughs*. *L: I've no idea*. H: 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 of cis men. And we try... L: And, maybe also saying, that on many,
many ships, the FLINT person is doing the crew care, or the, for NGO ships, it's
the guest care positions. Like many medical departments are made of, we can
say it, like of women and guest care and crew care is, like are mostly female
positions. But when it comes to engineers or captain or officer positions, this is
mainly cis male position. *unintelligible*
H: And that was what I was about to say. So, we are doing crewing for the ship and we
try to crew mostly FLINTs persons. And, that also means, that we can open the doors.
Although we are kind of the door keepers and we can open the doors for those
people, who usually have it much more difficult to enter such a project or to
enter such positions, that they can take over, when they are entering Louise
Michel. But of course, that's the story about being exclusive. And we have, we are
struggling a lot with the fact, that we are still working in a surrounding, that
is super masculine dominated. So, always when we are looking for people, who can
take over the powerful positions, like being a captain, an officer, a chief
engineer. We are having a wide range of cis men, who offer their support. But on
the other side, there's no one. And this is something that is
really a problem. And it takes us much time to deal with the
situation, because we really want to stick to this idea of creating a kind
of, as possible as that could be, a kind of safe space. And, because we experienced,
that the surrounding and the climate on the ship, is definitely another one, when
you have a most FLINT crew. So, there is more space you can give for trust, because
people come and say, when they don't trust themselves to do something, or when they
don't feel comfortable with something, there is much more talking, there is much
more reflecting. It's super easy to hand over jobs, when you have a climate that
allows not to know. When you have a climate, that allows you to be weak,
because this is a ship and when it goes out and there's a problem, that no one
said like: "Hoho, I made a mistake, but maybe I just cover it with something."
L: No, no, no, don't do it. H: Don't do it. And then it's important,
that someone comes and says: "I don't know how to do it." And...
L: Maybe this is at least, what we have seen during the last month, when we were
working together on this ship as a new crew and with many different people coming
from different countries, from different environments. That - or at least it's my
experience, I don't know what about you? That it was many
times, it were women asking for help or being less self-confident and
trying to, like, double check, when it was, on the other hand, like men always
jumping in, like, being much more self- confident and maybe it's for reasons and
it's totally fine. But I think this is how we grew up, how we got educated and what
society teached us, how we should be, like, women always being or many times,
being very or less self-confident than men are. And this is something we try to
challenge on this ship, like, empowering women to be at least as self-confident as
the men are, or as the men try to be.
H: Maybe we should come to an end. So, I think now we are at 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 *unintelligible*
and taking care of the engine room. L: We can talk about a lot about the
engine, because our chief engineer has to stay off, so he's not here. *laughs* We
can say a lot about him. H: And...but I think for all kinds of
political action, the main thing is that we have to, 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 border, that
is dropping or crossing our waves. So we have to reflect, we have to force
ourselves to step about this or to cross this borders, to step over it. And to not
getting lost or desperated 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 to this sucking port, sitting around don't know what you are
doing, because why we are sitting here and everyone's talking about all those lovely
pink little ship that tries to challenge European borders. 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's 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 always have
to challenge ourselves. And we always have to support ourselves. And 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 something more, than this
limited space we are living in here. L: 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, or we have this vision of a world without
borders between humans in any kind, in any way. Thank you.
Herald: That is a nice way to talk. Thanks so much for telling us all that.
And I can relate the virtual applause you're getting from the
audiences. You 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
#rc3one in letters. So hashtag rc 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 in to you, for you is: "Have you had any direct confrontation or
other experience with Frontex officers or boats?"
L: Maybe I can answer the question. So, yes, definitely yes. When we go in to the
center of the Mediterranean Sea, 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 NGO
ships, 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. And that's definitely one of the main
experiences I make with the Frontex. Like organizing illegal pushbacks.
Herald: Most of it was plane sightings and not direct contact with personnel or ships
in touching distance. OK, so the next question is more of a technical side.
I think the core of the question was about how to grade situations, but I'm trying to
read that out, I think something is lost in the translation. I hope you see what
that means, but take it in good-meant spirit. How do you define a maritime
emergency / ship wreckage? Do you already take action for a dinghy with
a working motor and rescue them? Or is it only about situations where people's lives
is crucially endangered? Is there some guideline that you can...
Oh! L: Great.
Herald: What's happened, Toto? Yes. H: He was asking a question...
L: If this is our Internet, now we can just sit here.
H: No, I think it's not our Internet, I think it's just the audio signal.
Herald: I just saw the chat explode, with all the technical stuff.
Herald: I have so many good questions I would like to ask, but yeah,
technicalities are the great dictator and we are allowed to go four minutes over,
right Toto? I'm preparing to go four minutes over. When will we ever be back?
Give me a go and then I start.
So second question, so maybe something is lost in the translation,
but take it in a good spirit. This is about technicalities. How
do you define a maritime emergency/ship wreckage? Do you already take action for a
dinghy with a working motor and rescue them? Or is it only about situations where
people's life is crucially endangered? H: As soon as you enter the central
Mediterranean Sea and try to make it from e.g. Libya to Italy with a dinghy, with a
small engine, even if it's working, it's a distress case.
Herald: Yeah, OK. L: Yeah. And to be honest, it's not only
if the engine is broken down or there's already water coming in, but those
dinghies 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, no waves at all. But that's definitely not
the case. So, um, yeah, I think it's not always about this super dramatic scenes,
but as Hanah said, as soon as you enter those boats, this is not a good idea.
Herald: And and it's quite a distance and it would take several days to get there
right? So it is it is not a pleasure cruise or something.
L: No, I would not say so, not in general. Herald: OK, next question. Is the crew
also trying to overcome hierarchies on board, are they trying to find structures
that work without classical captains etc.? L & H: Yes.
Herald: And, I'm sorry. Go ahead. H: So there is, there is a legal side of
the things. And so when the ship is on the sea and when it's operating, the person
who is responsible is always the captain. So the person who's 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 leader who's the coordination on the 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 and it's going to be acknowledged.
L: But we have to be honest about that, we have to challenge ourselves to make this
running, to work with this flat hierarchy. Yeah, we are on it, we are far from
perfect, but we are trying to improve ourselves every day.
Herald: Good. OK, the nice people of the signal angel crowd have written me down
another question. Has 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 more of a technical question. H: I think I didn't really get the
question. But to be honest, this legal side of things is quite effective. So
there was once the question of we can't just leave as a pirate ship without a
flag. And if we do so and that's an invitation for all 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 also works and 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. Herald: OK, so this legal action works
really, really well. So the idea of 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? L: We definitely have to keep this in mind
all the time. We would not talk about very sensitive stuff or we are trying very hard
to protect our data. But we are not sure about this, but we have to keep this in
mind. I'll be keeping this in mind. Herald: And that's another question about
the hierarchy on board. More specifically what decision making processes do you use
on board? Do you want to give us some insight on that?
H: Yes, of course. We do, we are organized with a small crew, like a core crew, who's
coordinating and is also kind of decision making. This is sometimes a problem, but
the ship always works independently of it's core crew. And the crew who is
involved is organizing themselves so they can have 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. If they want to work up to 11
in the evening, they're more than welcome. But we will stop them at some point
because we don't want, we have an anti burn out policy. So then they also have to start
later. So, no, 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 core crew is trying to to take care of all the
organizational side of the things. That means caring about money, about
registration, the legal aspects. But at least we are always giving a big part of
our responsibilities that we have as a core crew at the moment. And they wanted me
a part of the core crew. And the ship crew is doing their own organization together
with us. So, yeah. Herald: Yeah. 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.
L: Yeah. Lovely. I'm so happy to talk about this.
Herald: Aren't we all. L: Yeah, great. Finally. So after the
rescue we try to wear masks and to hand over masks to our guests and for sure the
guests, they had to, 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 like there is no way. But we do
everything possible to protect us and other people.
H: 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 on some NGO ships to
keep the social distance, to ban [us]. 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.
L: So we 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. Herald: And follow up on that. You said in
your talk that the 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?
H: 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.
L: We are definitely talking to our guests about this, telling them that we are
living very close on a very small space and that 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 experience, It's 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.
Herald: So our time is up. Thank you so much for coming to us live from the boat
Louise 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. L: Thank you. Bye.
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