Forum Post: The worlds northernmost occupation: Kiruna, Lappland/Sápmi, Sweden
Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 22, 2011, 11:03 a.m. EST by gerrit
(0)
from Kiruna, Norrbotten
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
On Saturday 22 October, Occupy Wall Street arrived in freezing -1°C Kiruna, Sápmi (Lappland), Sweden, a mining community with 17,000 inhabitants, 150 km north of the Arctic Circle. Three men and two women presented a large, mostly empty carton board for the general public to leave messages on. Initially, the board was empty, apart from the encouraging messages in Swedish and English:
Du är 99%!'',You are 99%!'',
Lämna gärna dina synpunkter!'',Please leave your message!''
In the beginning, movement was slow, but soon people started to leave messages. An event by the Swedish social-democratic party was happening in parallel, but soon finished and the place was free for Occupy Kiruna. People started to write their messages.
People should own banks'',more power to the youth'' and ``we will not pay for
their crisis''.
As more text appeared on the cardboard, more people decided to leave their messages, all while interesting and enriching conversations were going on. Questions, solutions or just messages about how to live, all were welcome in this open meeting. Some very generic, some quite specific relating to regional events.
Is money really necessary?'',Stop the militarisation of Nordkalotten!'',
``Peace and Love''.
Then, on the public cardboard, a Sami passer-by wrote:
``Shop your meat with us at Thorneus Reindeer products. I will give you a discount.''
At first I thought: that's not really the kind of message we're after. But thinking twice, I realised: actually, it's nice. Support local Sami products rather than food produced by big multinationals. Maybe it fits in quite well with the whole movement! Meanwhile, it was getting colder and the short shopping day in Kiruna was coming to an end. The city centre was getting empty of people while the cardboard was getting full of messages. Some messages were still squeezed in:
Freedom, peace, love, hope is always the right way'',They are only 1%'',
``Fight the power''.
Another call for power to the youth, another peace message. Peace and the distribution of power; those appear to be the most pressing messages from Occupy Kiruna. A very inspiring afternoon, and very succesful occupation considering the very small number of people taking the initiative.
More information, contact information and photographs of the event at:
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