This is a translation of the german broshure 'Zusammen mehr erreichen. Kleiner Ratgeber fuer Bezugsgruppen', updated for the resistance against the G20 summit in Hamburg 2017.
Hello everyone, now a reader about affinity groups...
What for? We had the feeling that people often come alone to rallies and actions. They seem to be so badly informed, that they don’t know what the Legal Support (glossary) is, walk around aimlessly, and more often than not run away in panic.
We asked ourselves, how we could change that. We came up with the idea to create a reader in which we could speak of our experiences, print out others’ experiences and that inspires to organize in affinity groups.
Our Topic: “Achieving more together – Create affinity groups” received a diverse response: “What do you want with that? Isn’t it all clear?” and “Good idea! We really need that”. We dared to tinker this brochure, that surely leaves a lot of questions and initiates a lot of discussions; it may also generate discrepancies and hopefully contributes to do more together (Create affinity groups! Gang up!).
We are and have been organized in several affinity groups and we aren’t always unanimous, neither on what an affinity group is nor on how such can be organized.
We dared to try to pick up many things that crossed our minds and we want to encourage forming affinity groups, to be out and about together and to try out many things together. We don’t want to give recipes or instructions and know that this brochure can only be the beginning. What action you plan, carry out and where you participate or not is your decision. We deem affinity groups a basic concept of being politically active together.
So just as we aren’t always unanimous, we hope that many readers will find inspiration here and practice critique. The Brochure is there to browse, read and rummage through… it’s not a textbook to work through, it’s not that easy after all.
We are no “affinity group” per se. We occupy ourselves a lot with the anti-nuclear power –movement, as well as house projects(glossary), Antifa and Antira(glossary)-are our topics. Some of us have been active for about 25 years. We have diverse backgrounds and experiences. We hope that our different socializations will find expression in this reader. We wish you a lot of fun reading, experimenting and a self-determined routine.
