Strident Tent State

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UK Roadtrip #1 June 28th - June 30th

Anna and I set out on the evening of the 27th and took an 8-hour megabus up to Glasgow. Had a brief rest/freshen up the morning of the 28th at sufi family house of patrick and rosaleen (and her son liam who i hadn't seen in seven years!), and then on to helensburgh and in search of this tent state out in the boondocks.

We were quite unsure of where we were going until we suddenly happened upon it. The first thing I noticed is that is was very quiet. I wondered if we were in the right place. The second thing I noticed was that it looked really small. All I could see was about 3 tents and a camper van, which perplexed me since when I talked to Jo, one of the main organizers of the tent state, she said they were expecting around a hundred people. Not a soul in sight.

We peeked our heads into the tent that said registration. A person. A strangely dressed, slightly hippied out looking person. Phew, we were in the right place. It turns out that minutes before we arrived, a submarine had passed the camp in the loch, and everyone present had jumped in the minibus to drive around to the nuclear base to protest the submarine.

The tent state camp site was literally across the road from the beach, a beautiful loch, with the opposite bank sweeping upwards in lush green scottish hills. We were surprisingly camped quite aways from the nuclear base (about a 5-10 minute drive at least). One reason was because the local townspeople were quite against the protest camp. Many of them or their relatives were employed at the base, and they hated the disruption that the blockades had been causing all year. They made a lot of noise about the camp being set up by the base, close by a cemetery, etc. The other reason is that the woods we were camping in were owned by a friendly peace activist, so it seemed quite convenient.

Strident Tent State was only a week long stint of the Faslane 365 campaign, which is an organized year long campaign of blockades and protests against the nuclear base and Trident. There is actually a permanent peace camp right across the road from the nuclear base (which is massive massive massive by the way), that has been there for 20-25 years. One woman, Jane, who was central in organizing Faslane 365, lives at the camp and has brought up her two boys there. One was around 18 and the other was a bit older, and the day I was leaving he was beside himself with excitement because he had learned that they were preparing a convoy at Colpourt to bring supplies etc to Faslane. I asked him why that excited him so much and he said, "Because whenever these convoys happen there are never enough people here to disrupt or blockade them. I've been waiting years for this." That really made me stop and think. Regardless of whether you agree with his choice of tactics, that boy has got some serious spirit and commitment.

The camp itself was incredibly impressive. The small arrangement of tents that I saw at first glance were only the base camp. They had centralized all the gathering places at the bottom of the hill. As you went up the hill, into the forest, there were sleeper tents, and once you climbed to the top of the hill, there was a bit of a clearing where a large tipi sat in the middle, equipt with a wood burning stove, pots, pans, tea, etc. The tipi was about 20 feet in diameter on the inside floor. As for the bottom of the hill camp, they had built up a mini village that made the rain and the cold bearable and even cozy. There was a large tent (almost twice the length of our town hall tent) that included the kitchen and a general area where you lined up for meals (cooked three times a day on a cooking rota and all vegan/vegetarian), could make tea or fix a snack, look at the schedule for the next few days, sign up for workshops (an idea for our tent state, advance workshop sign up?), and get and give general info. There was a tipi (a bit smaller than the one on the top of the hill) with a fire in the middle, where you could run away from the midgies (frightful tiny beasts that made me yearn for mosquitos), listen to some music or fine revolutionary conversation, and dry your damp socks or jumper. There was also a registration tent (seems like some organizing things are intuitively universal), and a camper van that held all the electronic needs of organizing and staying in touch with the real world.

There were also compost toilets, a little "shower" area, constructed by tarps hung from trees across a stream, and compost for food and water, making the entire camp self sustaining and incredibly low impact. I was really impressed by how smoothly the logistical things of the camp ran, including food.

On thursday evening, we had our first general assembly meeting on the beach. There were roughly forty people present. Aside from general disorganization and frustration that can happen at meetings that large in the very beginning when people are just settling in, as well as the occasional paranoid comment about how the police must be listening in to our direct action plans and therefore we should not discuss affinity groups in such an open setting, I was generally pleased with the meeting. It was so exciting to see the kick off of yet another tent state in a completely different setting.

One of the strong points (but perhaps also in some ways weak points) of this tent state was that it was so secluded. It meant that once you arrived you were there. it meant that there was a very strong sense of community and everyone was committed to the camp and to the work surrounding the camp and the direct actions. It was a really exciting vibe to be around. On the other hand, there was virtually no traffic through the camp, and therefore the mass consciousness-raising aspect of tent state was also virtually non-existent (save for whatever press the DA and arrests were given). This difference in model may be something to think about, however, in the future as we continue to expand and develop the tent state models. When is it important to be in a highly trafficked area, and when might it be more suitable to be more secluded and therefore more inwardly focused? Its kind of a bit like comparing Tent State Rutgers to the retreats we have afterwards in may....

I did my workshop on Friday afternoon. It was really well attended and I was well pleased. It seems the general response was good, which is kind of a sigh of relief, since we got caught up in about 10 minutes of questions about consensus versus majority decision making.

The evening before, I had been sat with a few folks around the fire, and we had gotten into that conversation. I had been briefly explaining tent state to the people around the fire, and one guy Andrew, said, really it sounds just like anarchism. I could have answered a few ways to that, but for some reason I decided to focus on the decision making example. Oops. It seems a lot of the people there are very protective over their consensus way of doing things, and I don't think they had ever heard a revolutionary talking about any other way of doing it. This issue and curiosity on behalf of some of them carried into the workshop. I fielded a few questions, gave reasons why we do things majority (allows for dissenting opinions to be officially a part of the discourse, is faster, more efficient, and how consensus or close to consensus if usually reached anyway. went through the concept of straw pull votes and using voting as part of the discussion process as opposed to just the end...etc). Anyway, at the end of it I finally asked them to stop focusing on this minor small detail and look at what the general spirit of Tent State. I said that not all Tent States need to have the same decision making process. They really appreciated and liked the decentralized aspect of Tent State.

I started the workshop by asking everyone to explain what "this" is. In other words, if they had to explain this Tent State to an outsider in one sentence, what would they say. Later, I made up a little poster, ala art city style, combining everyone's comments. It was a fun little icebreaker, and got people thinking of this thing as their own, as opposed to something I was telling them about.

I passed out a dozen or so organizing models, and a handful of the Revolution Starts Today, got a long list of about 15 others who wanted the essay emailed to them, and a few different people starting thinking about starting a tent state at their university. Goood stuff.

That night, after a much larger assembly meeting (I think about 85) a Scottish-American folksinger from Edinburgh, David Ferrard gave a small gig around the fire, which quickly devolved into general sing along folk singing. What's funny is you forget that folk songs are so folk! that is, i didn't know half of them because they were british folk songs, which was really nice to hear. That moment made me wish I knew the chords for "take all the good stuff" because it would have been a complete hit with that crowd.

I left the campfire early to join the firespinners down on the beach (Anna and I were not the only ones!). Get a couple more spins in before I had to leave on saturday. I found a handful of people gathered around a fire (instead of spinning it) in deep conversation. I met Gavin, Max, Tom, Sara, Luke. We talked well through the half darkness (it didn't actually ever get totally dark that night), talking about the scary things, the cultural and scientific indications that lead us to believe that we live in a most crucial time. That what we do here and everywhere is so important, because this is only the beginning of the battle, the uprising, the movement, the revolution. That the way we do it is even more essential. the process.

And then we started getting silly, talking about crop circles and aliens and all those things that are really creepy to think about right before bed. We forced ourselves away from the fire towards tents and warmth and sleep, away from the new friendships so easily formed, greatful to have reminded each other that we are not crazy, that there are others out there who think about it, and who fight for it and struggle for it. refueled by each other's light and vision. I awoke the next morning to the song somewhere over the rainbow, reworked by a hawaiian musician (if anyone knows the song i'm talking about i'm dying to have it). I awoke to this ukulele, under the quiet strength of the forest, comforted by the usual morning tent state sounds. Something was new. I felt changed. Charged. It was different from the feeling we get from our Tent State. It was more peaceful, more earthly connected. but just as open. a more gentle feeling of "there is no spoon."

It was hard to leave when I did. I plan to meet up with all the main organizers in London, and continue to scheme and make connections. There are a few from Edinburgh that I will also meet up with when I go there. There is something brewing. everywhere. Although our ideas might be different than most revolutionaries, it might just be that we are a few years ahead of others. Because others feel it. it's more intuitive at this point. But it's happening. Everywhere you make the effort to stop and look.

examples:
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/
http://www.theydid.org.uk/
http://www.faslane365students.org/
http://www.tentstate.com/

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