Food speaks louder than words: A fantastic guerilla market action at Nyeleni

Dan Iles

On the 3rd day of Nyeleni, we all took part in a meticulously coordinated action in the town of Krems, the host city of the forum. In this picture based blog post, I will explain how their use of colour, music, openness and most importantly local food to put across the idea of food sovereignty to Austrian public. This MUST come to the UK!

The March:

Setting off from the forum, we all congregated by the courtyard and then headed for the town centre. What with there being such a diverse crowd of young and old, men and women, and languages from across europe there was a lot of energy. The samba band was leading the way, which is always a great way of attracting attention from the public as well as providing a musical rhythm for the protest itself.

As we paraded around all the town's supermarkets, a dedicated team of leafleters were on the case, handing out information on the upcoming event (which I will explain about later) to every unwitting passer by. Each time we passed a supermarket we stopped, held a mini rally, handed out more flyers to the customers, and then moved on again:

The Market of Ideas

The great thing about this march is it wasn't just about raising awareness of the issue, it also acted as a great promotional tool to advertise our upcoming event in the town centre, the market of ideas, to all the public on the high street. This way you are hitting the same bird with two stones...as it were...

The market itself was a fantastic idea, it was a kind of pop up farmer's market with a political twist. The organisers had invited a selection of local farmers to come and run stalls, all packed with delicious local produce. These stalls were intermingled with interactively oriented political stalls that used tasting, or on the spot preparation to get the public engaging with some of the basic ideas around food sovereignty; contact between local producers and consumers, good tasting organic food and getting back in touch with the lost culture around food.

All the while, a vibrant village square atmosphere had been created with a bandstand, local beer bar and street theatre.

Here are some pictures of the kind of things they had:

Some local women selling some sort of delicious and original tasting Austrian pancake combied with fried cheese and chutney

A diverse range of organicly grown vegetables

Interactive butter churning, allowing people to taste the butter milk as well as the butter fresh from churning! All on grainy local bread.

This stall was challenging locals to do the taste test in order to try and work out which one was organic. I can tell you the organic one was like no other tomato I have tried before, really complex flavours...

A stall covered with food all sourced from local bins to demonstrate supermarket waste

An well constructed informational banner about the ubsurdity of the international food system. It shows where all the food from across the world comes from to get to France, and where you can find it locally!

 The band!

Conclusions

Not only was this a vibrant event for us delegates to take part in, this excellently organised action was a brilliant mechanism for demonstrating the cultural strengths of food sovereignty. By using food as a tool to drag people in, the market of ideas could afford to be overtly political, whilst at the same time creating a relaxed and inclusive atmosphere that laid the foundations for an unthreatening dialogue with the local people of Krems.

I think this model could easily spread to the UK and would add to the steps towards inclusiveness that UKuncut has already made. The great thing about food is that everyone can relate to it and noone can refuse a free sample! I really think there is room for more events like these in the UK