Caravan for Life

By Maya von Ahnen

Supervisor: Dr. Gesa Lüdecke

This final project is an integration of my political work into my studies at the ESCP. The caravan “For Life … instead of G7” was a three-week tour through Germany in June of 2022, with the objectives of mobilizing toward the G7 protests and lending a platform to the voices ignored and oppressed by the G7 states. These are the voices of persons who fight for territorial integrity of indigenous peoples, climate justice in the Global South or denounce the relationship of capital, militarization, and environmental destruction.

The format of a tour served the necessity to create meaningful relationships amongst the non-parliamentary, emancipatory, grassroots organized left, as a tool to make the movements stronger and more durable. Travelling together as a group and serving as a form of connection between the groups and the cities surely supported this objective. Furthermore, this format offered the possibility for the guests of the caravan to share their embodied knowledge to many organized people as possible.

The format of the journal came to me intuitively as it seemed essential to capture the thoughts and feelings throughout the journey in their most immediate and raw state. I chose to write an essay to reflect on the caravan from a perspective of care, after realizing that my journal entries centered mostly around emotional and mental issues of people in the caravan. It is composed of feminist reflections on care in emancipatory political organizing.

The interdisciplinarity of this project goes beyond academia. Certainly, the entirety of my project includes influences from my bachelor’s in political science but also my newfound interest for anthropological methods. This final project benefited from the flexibility interdisciplinarity offers. Yet I believe that the perspective my work offers, speaks to the goal of the RCC to make insights of the environmental humanities available to a broader public and reach beyond the constraints of one discipline or conventional academics.

The target audience for this project was wide: the caravan spoke mostly to activists of social justice, of anti-colonial and anti-racist movements and of environmental justice. The journal, the talk at the RCC’s Eco-Slam and the essay are aimed at the community of environmental humanities, to bridge the divide between political activity and academic endeavors.

My thoughts, writings and activities are influenced by many important voices, that are not in academia. I wish to thank Bettina Cruz Velasquez, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and two mentors of mine, whom I am greatly inspired by, in all the work that I do.