From the bottom up!

Before my two contributions, I would like to introduce the fact that I live in Hamm / Westphalia about seven kilometers from the thorium high-temperature reactor1 and that this nuclear power plant has by necessity become an important center of my life. In 1971 the operators started construction. At the same time as the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, a major incident occurred in the high-temperature reactor immediately after it was put into operation. Three years later, after violent disputes, it was shut down in order to initiate a spectacular worldwide renaissance of nuclear power today in China, Japan and perhaps also in South Africa as a reactor line with an eco-label.

During the long construction period of 14 years, we tried as a citizens 'initiative after our founding in 1975 to prevent the commissioning and experimented with various non-violent forms of resistance. Since the local elections took place in 1984, parts of the citizens' initiative founded a local voter community together with the Greens. In the Hamm-Uentrop district council, the lowest communal political unit, I was district representative for five years and also councilor in Hamm at the next higher level for two years.

How difficult the resistance to the commissioning of the reactor turned out to be in this area and what experiences I had there is the subject of the first contribution. The political-theoretical background considerations at this time and conclusions for the future are the subject of the second contribution.

Every Sunday the boy went out of the house and entered the dusty, potholed path, where on weekdays his grandfather picked up the horse droppings with the help of a shovel in order to fertilize the plants in the garden. As a fourteen-year-old he could not have suspected that at that time scientists and energy companies were already planning at full speed to build a pebble-bed reactor within sight of his parents' house.

So on this way the boy went to the rifle home, carefully kicked the dirt off his shoes on the doormat, passed the cigarette machine in the anteroom and crept into the small hall. He found a group of about thirty people sitting in the rows of chairs and sat shyly in an inconspicuous seat further back.

After a short time, a man in the gown began talking in a monotonous voice. In order not to have to keep looking into his pale face, he turned his gaze to the wall, to which some older rifles were fastened, as well as two crossed flags, next to them on shelves standing silver and gold goblets, decorated with numbers and letters in flourishes with oak leaves. Surrendered, the boy let himself drift in the murmuring that began for no apparent reason, but only moved his mouth himself without uttering a sound. Because what the others said, he would never say of himself. All those present rose at a signal. Chair legs creaked embarrassingly on the floor, chairs rattled. After completing the procedure, the boy was finally able to sit down and look at the rows of trophies again and, as if from a distance, hear the voice "you shouldn't kill", while he still had the shots from the neighboring shooting range in his ear.

After not entering the unfortunate rooms for three years, he went there voluntarily, although he felt uncomfortable in these surroundings. The chairman was approached with Comrade Dieter. Right at the beginning of the meeting, all those present stood up and remembered the deceased, including his grandfather. He died a few months early for a XNUMXth party anniversary. "But," said Dieter, "the story goes on and the grandchildren are continuing the work of the ancients". He gestured for him to stand up and show the congregation. He shyly obeyed the request and noticed how the eyes of those present rested on him in a pleasing manner. Then they got to work, because the agenda on Dieter's note was long. This year's start of construction of the thorium high-temperature reactor in his district, however, was not on it.

Years later, the same place was sending invisible signals that reminded him of times past and tore him out of his usual activities. The building even sent messengers who startled and worried him at home, where he felt safe. Protected behind the curtain on the window, he saw the uniformed band moving in and playing marching music. This group was accompanied by staggering and slurping people who obviously enjoyed being watched by everyone in their condition. In the midst of these pathetic creatures stood one who seemed to have a clear head. Sometimes he waved patronizingly to this one, sometimes that, shouted a few friendly words to some viewers, shook hands. Laurenz Meyer, district manager of the United Electricity Works, already practiced for later. His political career began here, in the shadow of the reactor cooling tower, which was then a landmark of the city of Hamm.

However, as the manufacturers assured, the reactor itself was up and running two years before the start of operations. And that for twelve years. It wasn't so much our demonstrations and lawsuits that caused him problems, but mishaps and meanwhile rust. This state could not last forever. At some point they would actually want to put it into operation. So what?

In the information service for the dissemination of missed news, a forerunner of the TAZ, his address as co-editor of "The Green Hammer - City newspaper for nature and environmental protection" was printed together with 200 others. Over the next few years, like all other contact persons in the alternative newspapers, he received various printed matter from the Red Army Faction at certain intervals. In addition to the usual command statements, this included various instructions on blowing bridges, building bombs and covering up tracks.

If the THTR was really as dangerous as we ourselves always said, then under no circumstances should it operate. So if nothing else helped, wasn't there another possibility that even Gandhi spoke of, if one doesn't want to cowardly cause an injustice or a misfortune to happen?

Before loading the radioactive fuel elements, he inspected the construction site in order to carefully familiarize himself with a very specific thought. The porter's house with a barrier, the expensive concrete wall, the fence on the cooling tower - wasn't there a loophole somewhere? While he was walking along the barrier, an aggressively barking German Shepherd suddenly jumped at him in the middle of his thoughts. How good that there was such a high fence! Then he heard the voice call "hello Horst, what are you doing here". - Fucked, the security guard lived two doors down his street, didn't he work as an ice cream seller? In any case, he was known here like a sore thumb. Embarrassed and a little irritated, he withdrew and consoled himself with the thought that he would be unsuitable for such tasks anyway because of his lack of technical talent. He had to come up with something else.

Because all demonstrating didn't help, he was back in the rifle home a short time later. This time as an election worker. The other party representatives eyed the unwelcome intruder suspiciously. After years of humiliation, he finally wanted to meet her in her most sensitive place. Take away their power to pursue only their own interests.

He was nothing when he handed leaflets to some stupid philistines in the pedestrian zone, whose insults endured and who had to expect to be physically attacked by them at any time. While they struggled from action to action for a decade, seemingly enduring setbacks with equanimity, those in power reacted only with malicious condescension.

But now that a small glimmer of hope was looming, with perhaps five or six percent of the people professing them, which would be little enough, wouldn't it make sense to use the little power that might accrue to them as an instrument?

Because of this, he sat here and even endured the view of the trophies and flags on the walls. The other MP clung to the big book that registered and ticked off all voters as they entered the room and presented their notice. Another watched over the ballot papers to be distributed, the ballot box, the booths. Old friends and playmates came in all day, greeted him with "man, you're running too!" Neighbors asked about his parents' health. An elderly lady, whom he could barely remember, spoke to him unabashedly to his horror with "you grew up", but wished everything, all the best. When he saw the grumpy faces of the other election officials, he thought he knew he was on the right track.

There was also the great politics in North Rhine-Westphalia, which had a say in the decision-making process for the reactor. As a relic from his long-forgotten time in the SPD, he was still a member of the Friends of Nature and for years began to write articles on the social democratic favorite reactor on dozens of pages in the Westphalian Friends of Nature newspaper "Culture and Environmental Protection". SPD sub-district conferences were harassed with calls for rebellion against the party season, while at the same time, as a member of the editorial board of the NRW state newspaper of the Greens, he did not miss an opportunity to point out the imminent danger of the reactor being put into operation. However, many local nature lovers did not even pass on the penetrating nest pollution to their members and the Greens amateurishly messed up their entry into the state parliament and were only little interested in a reactor in which any resistance came too late and laurels were guaranteed not to be expected.

So while the hoped-for red-green coalition did not materialize in his country, the reactor was loaded with radioactive fuel elements. The zero energy tests began. These went over to the 1st criticality, and then the heat test begins - but stop it! Now it was high time to hold the public hearing on the disaster control plan with the publication of the iodine tablet dispensaries, garnished with the howling of sirens and the clatter of skeletons from the citizens' groups.

The power test operation led to network operation with 10 percent power, continued with 30, 60, 80 percent and then something unprecedented happened. The great disaster in Chernobyl and only hours later the accident in our reactor with the subsequent release of radioactivity. This was followed by hair-raising attempts to cover up the operators and then the angry rearing up of the people:

Blockade of the main access gates of the reactor site with tractors and supporters, strategic retreat after two days in view of the overwhelming power of the police, large-scale rally in front of the main gate, renewed blockade with tent camp, retreat, large-scale rally with 7.000 people, tractor trek through the Ruhr area to Düsseldorf to the social democratic reactor friends, Cooling tower occupied, administration building occupied. Now ministries and parliaments began to discuss financial problems and technical difficulties, the reactor still managed 100 percent performance for a few days, one last rebellion by the SPD ministers to save their reactor after all, one last blockade with tractors and then the final end!

"It will be the last time," he thought, this time as he sat in the front row among the spectators to receive a kind of thank you for the work he had done during the previous legislative period. His eyes wandered over the faces of the lined up elected officials. There were only a few new ones. Session after session always the same ritual:

Listen to speeches, hands up, hands down, look for the next template from the pile, are deliberately overlooked by the management when asking to speak, but still fight for the right to speak, to give a speech to the THTR for once, go the pointless way to the microphone, then hear the senseless applause from a few onlookers, the next day stand in the newspaper and the reactor continues to run, possibly interrupted by a frightening number of reportable incidents and renewed repair work.

His speech was not only answered with arguing about what could be tolerated. It was not infrequently interrupted by scornful laughter from the other elected officials. Laurenz then demonstratively chatted with the man behind him. Some of them went to the bathroom or had a quick beer right now and only came back to vote down their proposals. Allies were nowhere in sight. To make matters worse, some parliamentarians began after a short time to want to shake his hand in greeting at the beginning of the session, but without changing their behavior in the slightest. He tried to evade this closeness as best he could by demonstratively immersing himself in the local newspaper in his seat, which he held up like a protective shield in front of him.

Finally. After five years, that time was over once and for all! One last time he accepted the invitation. For the new legislative period, the item on the agenda of the re-swearing of the neo-Nazis was called up. He knew what was going to happen now: The person to be sworn in would get up, Dieter, now chairman of this body, the district representatives, the administrative clerks anyway, the audience, even the newspaper jerk, everyone would get up, but not himself. He would remain seated while the chairman recited the same thing and the neo-Nazi repeated the same thing.

Why was he here? Did he wistfully bid farewell to a past period in his life? Or was it his willingness to serve allegedly charitable matters that had made him take every invitation seriously, even this one? Or was it vanity, the need to get a little bit of recognition even from these people at the end of the day?

His neighbor has just received a book present for his "tireless efforts to remove dog excrement in children's playgrounds". And when he was called by Dieter and he slipped the package with the words "a very controversial councilor and district representative, but still all the best", it was clear to him that he would never take part in this lousy game again.

In May 30, the Willi Brandt government was overthrown 1974 years ago. With his government declaration in Bonn, exactly 30 years ago to the day, the new Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt buried the timid attempts to humanize and democratize this society and put himself entirely at the service of capital.

Also at this time, a few hundred kilometers further south on the Rhine, thousands of people were strangely unimpressed by the change in management at the top of the state, because they had a very specific problem. With around four hundred tractors they demonstrated against the planned nuclear power plant in Wyhl, which would destroy their livelihoods. This movement was mainly carried by the rural population, who had not been trusted to do so before. As provincial internationalists, they joined forces with the opponents of the planned chemical plant in Marckolsheim on the other side of the Rhine and founded the Baden-Alsatian citizens' groups. They occupied the respective building sites and prevented the construction of these facilities through their long-lasting civil disobedience. For the first time in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany, this struggle of the 40 citizens' initiatives put the concentrated power of the state organs in their place and attracted a great deal of attention.

The ultimate success of this movement should not hide the fact that these associations were originally genuine emergency communities that were founded to ward off specific threats. People who did not want to be tied to political parties at the time, but instead looked after their interests in a self-organized manner, rather became pariahs of this system, as Hans-Helmuth Wüstenhagen, the first chairman of the Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection (BBU) put it in 1975. At that time, the German Atomic Forum saw the demand for a say in important planning anarchist activities that should be demonized.

Initially, the citizens' initiatives only made use of rights that formally existed, but were curtailed beyond recognition in the approval process for large-scale projects. The ultimate denial of these participation rights by the state institutions led to experiences of impotence among the critics, which very soon turned into indignation and resistance.

In the course of the clashes, many activists had doubts about the legitimacy of the parliamentary representation systems. They lost all respect for representatives who decided rigorously over the heads of the affected citizens. The immediate experiences during the arguments resulted in a collective learning process. The experiences were thematized and processed in their own educational institutions such as the Wyhler Wald adult education center on the occupied building site. Living together in these places and the political work meant that different milieus and age groups got to know each other better and existing differences could be endured and dealt with. Many of the people involved in the campaign realized that, as producers or consumers, they were also involved in the conflict over nuclear energy on an economic level. As a result of this self-reflection, alternative companies, ecological research institutes, future workshops and alternative energy systems emerged.

The original non-partisan nature of the citizens' initiatives increasingly turned into a conscious extra-parliamentary policy, which from experience mistrusted the ruling power apparatus and institutions and was looking for new paths. The Baden-Alsatian activist and musician Walter Mossmann put it this way: "Citizens' initiatives are an independent element in our political culture, and I would like us to develop them further, across all institutions of political decision-making that exist. Without them In contradiction to all centralized authorities such as the state, parties, corporations and whatever the names of the apparatuses, I cannot imagine a future society that has to solve our current problems "3.

With their own organizational structure, most citizens' initiatives anticipated their objectives for a future form of society and initially coordinated their activities in regional associations on a project basis. The Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection (BBU) was established as the largest umbrella organization with almost a thousand initiatives and a total of around 200.000 members in 1979. It has retained its decentralized organizational structure to this day4. This means that each individual initiative is independent and only committed to the common principles of non-partisanship and non-violence. The main tasks of this association are the coordination and the establishment of a continuous exchange of information. The aim was not to conquer power, but to reduce it. In addition to nonviolent actions, constructive work for a new social order were propagated as methods. That means, the realization of alternative forms of life in economy, society and politics until - I quote - "a dense carpet of grass gradually forms from the thousand grass roots of the individual initiatives, which transforms our society (...) profoundly" 5.

However, the BBU was not the only umbrella organization of citizens' initiatives. In the course of the violent disputes at the respective locations of planned nuclear power plants, a whole series of location- or regional-related associations of very different characters emerged. The various parties and organizations of the New Left influenced parts of these grassroots initiatives with some success. These then often became the plaything and field of activity of various Marxist-Leninist parties, so that in the respective regions several different state and regional unions not only practiced different forms of resistance and political work, but also competed with one another.

The so-called K groups tried with all their might to impose their own authoritarian model of revolution on the citizens' initiatives by trying to enforce violent-military forms of struggle and an exaggerated, verbal and radical criticism of capitalism. In contrast, the local citizens' initiatives at the locations particularly attached great importance to the fact that their non-violent methods of struggle, strategies and their external image were comprehensible to the majority of the population and were based on their own experiences and mutually agreed goals.

In particular, the Kommunistische Bund (KB) 6 from Hamburg used the emerging citizens' initiatives as a recruiting mass to be incorporated and founded its cadre organizations from the regional conferences of the anti-nuclear movement. This Maoist alliance manipulated the composition of the delegate assemblies with questionable methods in order to serve its own political goals. In his classic "Friedlich in die Katastrophe" 7, Holger Strohm has shown that this organization has only faked the existence of groups with countless letterbox initiatives in order to unscrupulously expand its own position of power with these mandates. It is certainly no coincidence that after the collapse of this Marxist-Leninist alliance, many of its former members moved up to the leading positions of the Greens and later the PDS up to ministerial posts because they already tried out the methods of appropriating power in the citizens' initiative movement had.

The more than thirty-year history of the citizens' initiative movement shows us that movement cannot go on forever, that partial successes and temporary defeats follow one another, that there are phases of exhaustion, resignation and reorientation. The development does not take place linearly, but is in a constant ups and downs.

In contrast to the council time after World War I, where attempts were made to reshape as many areas of political power as possible in a certain area in one fell swoop, today a wide variety of citizens' initiatives operate as a one-point movement within a more or less pronounced parliamentary democracy. It is the declared aim of social movements to eliminate specific grievances and to change the power relations that have led to them. They not only want to create a new lobby organization, but also to regain political competence and influence by building and networking independent grassroots groups.

The problem that often emerges here is that two to three years after the start of the movement, many activists have the feeling that they have been unsuccessful and retire disappointed and burned out. This phenomenon has been investigated by Bill Moyer, trainer and strategy developer for social movements and a former colleague of Martin Luther King. The "Movement Action Plan" 8 developed by him has been discussed in numerous issues in the magazine "Graswurzelrevolution" 9. With this method, he wants to stimulate the activists of citizens' groups to long-term strategic thinking and above all to encourage them to recognize and build on their successes, which they will inevitably have. Moyer ascribes various roles to those involved. They are citizens, reformers, rebels and activists for social change. According to the "Movement Action Plan", successful social movements go through eight stages, in which the tasks of the initiatives are different and the behavior of the public and those in power also shows very specific characteristics.

The activists are empowered to examine each sub-area and each sub-goal of the movement: which successes have already been achieved, which effective strategies, tactics and programs need to be developed, which short-term or long-term goals are to be set, how the different roles of the activists, Reformers and citizens can best complement and what dangers should be avoided.

In the first phase of the movement, there is a certain problem or injustice that is not perceived by society. In the second phase, the possibilities of influence are used to prove that the system is failing. In the third phase of the ripening conditions, the movement is already clearly visible, but still relatively small. After a "triggering event" the movement starts, the fourth phase. Numerous new action groups and activities arise in this marriage of movement. This is usually followed by the fifth phase: the feeling of failure in the active. During the short start-up phase, they believed they could stop the rulers in direct confrontation, but this usually does not succeed.

Interestingly enough, this phase of development mostly runs parallel to the sixth phase, the winning of the majority of the population. Therefore, the movement has a good chance of reaching the seventh phase, success, if it does not give up and cleverly uses another triggering event and sets in motion another mass movement. In the eighth and final phase of moving on with new goals, the actions build on the experiences and successes of the old movement.

The MAP, which is only briefly outlined at this point, should not be misunderstood as a schematic instruction, because social movements have their own dynamics. "The purpose of the Action Plan is to give activists hope and energy to increase the effectiveness of social movements and counter the discouragement that often leads to individual burnout, the dropping out and decline of social movements," writes Moyer. As this strategy, in contrast to the superficial propagation of short-term successes, tries to help secure the long-term achievements of the social movements, it represents an important contribution to the stabilization of council-like organized grassroots initiatives10.

If you look more closely, there have been non-party-independent citizens' groups in Germany not only since Wyhl. As early as the 50s, the Adenauer opponent Gustav Heinemann - we are currently in the "Gustav Heinemann Educational Center" - founded the one-point movement "Emergency Community for Peace in Europe" against the rearmament of Germany. The "fight-the-atomic death movement" and the disarmament movement followed.

It is characteristic of the system-compliant character of these first extra-parliamentary citizens' initiatives that their own parties were founded from within their ranks. In the 50s it was the "All-German People's Party" (GVP), and in the 60s it was the "German Peace Union" (DFU). These small parties either merged after a short time into the large SPD party or quickly sank into insignificance.

With the founding of the Greens largely out of citizens' initiatives, tens of thousands of activists said goodbye to their original forms of action and content in several waves11. Thousands of green alternative local politicians have painfully felt their depressing powerlessness in relation to the prevailing conditions. This usually resulted in the extremely demoralizing experiences I described at the beginning. With the process of parliamentarization, particularly in the 90s, a rebellious potential for protest was lost because many activists increasingly wasted their energy on integrative party apparatuses. There the lively opposition spirit was worked into little by little until all that remained was resignation and adjustment.

The reasons for the ongoing orientation towards traditional party organizations are, among other things, that in Germany there is no independent libertarian political tradition anchored in the consciousness of many people, which would pass on experiences from past struggles and problematic party foundations on a broad level. That is why every generation of grassroots political activists has to make new fundamental experiences over and over again and try again and again to reconnect with the broken and buried threads of discussion.

In the future, it will therefore be important to anchor positions that have been developed in one's own projects, institutions and media in such a way that they are not lost again in the next big euphoria for a new party. At the moment there is once again the danger that part of the next generation of activists in the direction of the new Left Party12 will leave the social forums and networks critical of globalization.

This process is all the more significant because the call for this party originally came particularly loud from the middle and lower level of functionaries of the DGB. The SPD has in fact been lost as a party-political ally and with the planned re-establishment, the dissatisfied only want their old SPD back. They did not detach themselves from political concepts based on social partnerships and they did not radically question the neoliberal ideology.

The plan to stop the social cut-off with a left party cannot work out. Two years from now, the social security systems will be in ruins even before the general election. Then no left party can help either. With the new founding of the party, those affected have pushed the now necessary use of traditional weapons such as strikes and direct actions into the background.

The adjustment course of the DGB unions13 has not only led to a complete self-abandonment of its own positions in the last few decades, but also to the fact that this union itself, with its participation in the drafting of the Hartz laws and the almost unanimous approval of its unionized parliamentarians, is on the agenda 2010 is directly responsible for this social robbery.

After the DGB boycotted the European company day of action on April 2, 2004 and used the large demonstrations on April 3 by reckless appropriation only for its own self-expression, unemployment initiatives, anti-Hartz groups and social forums have to work out more their autonomy vis-à-vis the DGB in order to not to lose sight of their different interests.

The cooperation with the marginal trade union left within the DGB certainly continues to make sense. However, in the last year more and more people have been looking for alternative models of grassroots trade unions, as they are already practiced successfully on a large scale in France and Italy. In this context it is very gratifying that the local groups and syndicates of the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union (FAU) 14 are increasingly developing a qualified political practice and will certainly have some successes in the future.

In the current situation, it no longer makes sense to use our energies for dubious possibilities of influencing large organizations, but we should not forget that there are currently many groups and associations that achieve their libertarian goals through the conscious use of appropriate political means and organizational forms anticipate. These connections should therefore be strengthened: We oppose the "from above down" of the rulers with our "from below up"!

Horst Blume

Notes:

1 More information about the Thorium High Temperature Reactor (THTR), the HTR line worldwide and the resistance to it are available in the "THTR-Rundbrief".

2 Hans-Helmuth Wüstenhagen: "Experiences in citizens' initiatives for environmental protection" in "Blätter für deutsche und Internationale Politik" No. 10, 1975, p. 1107

3 quoted from: "The political provocation of citizens' initiatives" by Roland Roth in "Links. Sozialistische Zeitung" No. 122 (May 1980) p. 28

4 More information about the BBU is available on the following website: www.bbu-online.de

5 Orientation paper of the "Federal Association of Citizens' Initiatives Environmental Protection e.V." (BBU), 1977

6 In the article "The Visitation" in the magazine "Graswurzelrevolution" No. 282 (2003) I discussed the KB in detail in a review of the book "Stories from the Truffle Pig. Politics and Organization of the Communist League" by Michael Steffen. This can be found under: www.grassroots.net

It is a hopeful sign that the KB newspaper "Arbeiterkampf" (AK), later renamed "Analysis and Criticism" after the KB was dissolved, has changed its content to such an extent that libertarian tendencies predominate today. Further information: www.akweb.de. "The Visitation" is also the title of a book published in 1925 by Oskar Maria Graf.

7 Holger Strom: "Peaceful in the catastrophe", 1981, page 1212 ff

8 Bill Moyer "Action Plan for Social Movements. A Strategic Framework for Successful Social Movements." Verlag Weber, Zucht & Co, 61 pages, 5 euros plus shipping. Available from: Verlag Weber, Zucht & Co., Steinbruchweg 14a, 34123 Kassel

9 "Grassroots Revolution. For a non-violent, domineering society" appears monthly with 291 issues so far in the 32nd year and can be reached at: www.grassroots.net

This newspaper reported on the "Movement Action Plan" (MAP) in the following editions: No. 131 (February 1989), No. 160 (November 1991), No. 198 (May 1995)

10 The strengthening and stabilization of citizens' initiatives as an important intermediate goal appears to some people to be insufficiently substantial for a pioneering political perspective. You may be expecting a major strategic blueprint for what future libertarian socialist policy should look like. In the recent history of the left, there has never been a lack of big words about what should happen. The diaries of the "movement" officials are full of conferences and the corresponding newspapers are overflowing with cheap suggestions: one would have, one could, one should absolutely establish, coordinate, address, initiate, organize, agree or unify this and that.

Even the basis on which this is to be done is currently rather thin, despite the good starting conditions. The sometimes enormous media attention at the meetings of the anti-globalization parties does not change that much. Where are the people who really do effective and competent basic work, who provide all households in an entire district with important information on a specific topic and who also address all possible social groups with their concerns? There are very few who do this. It is the indispensable prerequisite for any further development.

The leaflets and posters of many left-wing groups usually only circulate within a certain scene. Its members are comparable to a hamster on a running wheel. They're moving somehow, but they're not really getting anywhere. And as long as this is the case, full-bodied strategic drafts should be met with a healthy dose of skepticism.

11 Horst Blume: "Election boycott - the last word in wisdom?" in the quarterly magazine "Schwarzer Faden" No. 0 (1980) and Horst Blume: "Organizing the radical break with the Greens" in "Schwarzer Faden" No. 20 (1/1986), address: www.trotzdem-verlag.de

12 Horst Blume: "Anyone who doesn't know what to do next founds a working group ... for a new Left Party!" in "Grassroots Revolution" No. 289 (May 2004)

13 Horst Blume: "The DGB wants to help shape social robbery" in "Graswurzelrevolution" No. 283 (November 2003)

14 The "Free Workers Union" (FAU) has local groups or sydikate in around 32 cities in Germany and has been publishing the newspaper "Direct Action" for 27 years, which appears every two months. Contact: www.fau.org

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Awakening of African-American Resistance in the XNUMXs

With an afterword by Heinrich W. Grosse
From the American by Lou Marin

638 pages, EUR 28,80
ISBN-3 9806353-6-8

Verlag Grasroots Revolution, Birkenhecker Str. 11, 53947 Nettersheim, www.grassroots.net

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is one of the most important organizations of the black civil rights movement in the USA. His campaigns and direct nonviolent mass actions in the XNUMXs intensified and promoted the struggles of American blacks against racial discrimination.

Clayborne Carson describes the entire development history of the SNCC for the first time: The successes in the early years, when the supporters of the SNCC shared the belief in the power of nonviolent direct action and the grass-root revolutionary approach to organization for religious or moral reasons. The organization attacked the system of segregation in the southern states with "sit-ins", "freedom rides" and campaigns for entry into the electoral roll. During this period, the SNCC constructively questioned Martin Luther King's dominant role in the civil rights movement.

In the course of the XNUMXs these nonviolent currents - some of them were shaped by libertarian nonviolent ideas - were pushed back. The SNCC was eventually dominated by supporters of militant, separatist black nationalism. In contrast to other authors whose books on the history of black resistance have been published in German translation, Carson does not portray this development of the SNCC as a straightforward process of radicalization, but rather as the disintegration of a formerly strong and influential organization.

Times of struggle but is not just the story of an organization of the black civil rights movement that has so far hardly been noticed in German-language literature. It is also a lesson on the successes and deviations of social movements.

Carson was himself a member of the SNCC and is today Professor of History at Stanford University and Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project. He received an award from the Organization of American Historians for his book.

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