Day 3 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL BORDERS
Tuesday started differently; a little uncomfortably for some. The Kulturhuset’s soft aesthetic was cut with forbidding black tape, sectioning off zones and restricting movement. As participants arrived from yoga, from breakfast, from drinking in the morning, they were stopped at the door by checkpoint guards for questioning. It was an exercise in feeling no control over where one can go. Some felt flustered or upset at the questioning, others started a peace protest and sang their dissent.
Eventually, all gathered in the lecture hall for processing time and a welcome to day 3 of Initiative Forum: Beyond Borders.
“I’m sorry that I couldn’t say, ‘I’m just human.’”
Manal, apologises to us all from the screen where her short video plays. The powerful statement grew inside us as she took us through her life from Yemen to now. The uncertainty, the sudden change, the all too reasonable bureaucratic blockades that suck like a cold wind at our fires. It was an emotional affair.
Then fika with all its entanglement and distraction, before we found ourselves once more seated in the main hall, learning from Ryan about the path that dehumanisation has taken in history and the consequences it has had…“We can do whatever the fuck we want to rats.”, he exasperated.
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At lunch the doorkeeper said to me: “Today, instead of showing your wristbands (conference ticket), you can give me a hug instead.” As the content of Initiative Forum becomes more confronting, so too does the hosting become softer.
Workshops were finally a chance to break into smaller, more individualised working groups and engage differently, as is their role. With a similar diversity to Monday, they also featured a YIP-only Co-Budgeting exercise, looking at how to further strengthen the inter-YIP connections that emerge year by year.
During afternoon fika Jaynese and Francisco (Frank) from Street Poets, Inc. shared with us their story in poem format, which wet our ears for the closing of the afternoon, once more in the main hall, with Ghayath Almadhoun mercurial Arabic poems; liquid and heavy as the world.
“I am smiling as if the war didn't eat my brother”
we read on the screen, while his deep, bubbling Arabic words washed through us.
“the wolf has eaten me, and it is not a metaphor”
The wars we think about now and then with a gentle sense of disinfected despair is savage and lustful.
It has been a heavy day and the reality of our theme of borders weighs on the mind. Dinner is a welcome break to debrief and re-breathe.
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Perhaps this is why the night feels so new, with Paraden soothing female supporting vocals and optimistic reggae rhythm balancing both joy and frivolity, a clearly successful combination considering the turnout. Bellaroush were a returning favourite from last year, and deservedly so, they felt like old friends while encouraging us to sing along and with use of horn, drums, guitar, bass and two vocal lines that knew each other well, like figure skaters do, we danced.
Somehow in the the fright and collective sadness that sculpted the day, we found ourselves closing day 3 of Beyond Borders in beauty.
BORDER CONTROL EXERCISE
What started the second day of the forum was in some cases triggering, and in all cases thought provoking. Before the first lecture, when sleep was still half lurking, and participants roamed through the pastel halls of the Kulturhuset, there was something happening. Tape divided the room. Before entering the stage, people were asked for their papers and bracelets. They were detained and questioned thoroughly. Some were smuggled silently through the door at the top of the stage in exchange for payment. There was tension in the air. Participants were angry, upset; worried and fidgety.
The day hosts explained that the border control just experienced was but a tiny imitation of what thousands of people go through every day. Most of the participants had never experienced this form of interrogation. They had never been held in rooms while the officer sitting behind the desk holds all the cards, and the one sitting across is made to feel like nothing. This is where many became aware of their white privilege for the first time. But this is the reality. It is harsh and unfair. It is painful and unjust. It is sexist, racist, and it is the reality for many.
Linda Al-sharif , who organised the experience with the help of Bakr Al-jaber, spoke on stage about her own white privilege, and having been the one to wait for her darker skinned brothers when they were picked out of the crowd and searched on the streets. She shared about the need she sees for awareness on social profiling, and its injustice. The microphone was passed around the audience to let participants share their experiences and thoughts. For some, this had not been the first meeting with detainment. Many emotions rose raw to the surface, and the check-point was very upsetting to a few participants. A contributor who had often been stopped at checkpoints expressed his confusion at being let through without question, and how the division in the hall set his nerves on edge. Linda apologised for reopening wounds, and confronting people with horrors in a sanctuary. Initiative Forum is a safe space, and this safety was briefly interrupted for a confronting reality check. Linda apologised that this is something happening everywhere, all the time, and invited anyone to come to her afterwards to share and express their reality.
DAY LECTURES
“My privilege has put me in debt“
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-Rembert Biemont
“The more political borders are built, the more my personal borders fall down“
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-Participant