Momentum
The Belgian climate movement has grown a lot in the last years and especially since 2018. We have seen student strikes, climate marches, an action of mass civil disobedience and participation in mass non-violent direct actions in neighbouring countries. This constant focus on action in both the actions themselves and the training programme has nevertheless come at a cost : it has strengthened the sense of urgency that is already present in the mainstream climate narrative (‘now or never’, ‘we have 12 years to save the planet’), which has created conflicts with other movements. During the organizing, not enough attention has been paid to other movements and their agenda’s, leading to a weaker definition of climate justice.
Consequently, several individuals from different grassroots groups working on climate issues and/or active in different struggles felt the need to take a step back from daily organizing and the action focus to set-up a space to think about what climate justice actually means and entails. Inspired by other initiatives in other countries (especially in the UK, Germany, Czech Republic etc.), we decided at the end of 2018 that this space would take the form of a camp that would gather different social justice movements in order to strengthen the growing Belgian climate justice movement. Indeed, our own experiences in different climate justice camps outside Belgium have shown us how empowering, educational and energizing these spaces can be.
More precisely, our aim is to contribute to build a stronger, more intersectional and better connected movement. As such, the programme of the camp is not only focused on climate, but also allows space for other subjects, specifically when it comes to questioning the privileges that are prevalent within the climate movement.
Therefore, the goals of the climate justice camp are:
- to meet and gather our forces;
- to have fun and make our movements grow stronger and more interconnected;
- to share and learn about climate justice and the different struggles against capitalism and other oppression systems : patriarchy, racism and colonialism, cisheteronormativity, validism, class domination / classism, speciesism…
- to interrogate our privileges and deconstruct them in order to create a space that is as safe as possible;
- to train and think about the strategies to use in our struggles.
