En español

What did Greenham achieve?, by michelle

Greenham wimmin have contributed much more than offering an amazing example of women's nonviolent struggle: camp was like a parallel universe, a feminist pacifist individual anarchist microsociety, where parting from a specific struggle and with no preconceived idea of how to proceed, a community was developed, "an organic being", as Elizabeth would call it, consistent with the ideals of preserving the planet and never enslaving a human being; of collaborating, of giving mutual support, producing critical thinking, allowing the flow of information and experiences.

Greenham became a meeting point for the exchange of information and Nonviolent Direct Actions (including Civil Disobedience) related to innumerable social struggles, with a feminist/antipatriarchal approach and  vision. Operating as a network, not needing leaders but just people committed to work with other people while retaining their own criteria, its space for "Everything is possible" is one of the clearest examples of what happens when people help one another. It is galaxies away from the straight jacket of ideologies and their sacred Principles.

From a more personal approach, apart from the empowering effect all of this had in me, I learned a lot of things on very many different topics: how to chop wood, make gloop, make a bender; ideas for actions (we could consider the wildest ideas, that was also rare and amazing), like nonviolent sabotage; a lot of things about laws and court cases, and how to design actions avoiding we got caught or could be sentenced to prison; a bit about nuclear weapons; about how military bases operate; pros and cons of (individualistic-type) anarchistic modes of getting organized; about debates such as Iis destroying material things nonviolent? (factually the answer was "no"), or the difference between using humor in actions and making fun of people; I learned about the existence of Shoshone people, and their nonviolent struggle; I met interesting inspiring wimmin...

I was very happy to be a link putting in contact MOC women in Spain with Greenham wimmin... We had lots of fun in the tour they set up... And I felt very useful when my volunteering at the International Office -- something which consolidated and expanded my organizational skills -- of the WRI was helpful in different ways, e.g. for producing written materials (typing, photocopying, sending out stuff).

Well, these things are just an example, I cannot really list all I learned! Perhaps you might want to get the feeling of what it felt like by reading a story I wrote, Llegar a la Puerta Azul (Getting to Blue Gate), though it's in Spanish!

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