The second chunk of the mega-post which began here

(The English translation has been provided by my sister, Elena Izyumenko, to whom I’m very grateful!)

The last post ended with me full of doubts about the politics in general and the green politics in particular. But, of course, knowing some people like Tomas Nilsson and others that I’ve met at the Green Party here, and seeing the way how Miljöpartiet actually works — all that gave me a new hope and a cause for more optimistic view on green politics. And the last drop of antidote against the cynicism was that Saturday’s course and especially the Lotta Hedström's presentation. I finally sort of separated in my mind what had happened with the ‘Union of Russian Greens’ in Russia and what is going on here in Sweden in Miljöpartiet…

But let’s get back now to the Lotta’s presentation. She was talking about the present day’s ‘triple solidarity’ which lies at the foundation of all Swedish Green party’s work:

• Solidarity with all the people around the world,
• Solidarity with future generations,
• Solidarity with non-human nature (animals, plants, ecosystems, landscapes).

The main ‘global’ issues for the Green party in this context are: Peace, Food, Environment, Solidarity (especially in the context of human rights; by the way, Lotta is sure too, that the explosions of buildings in Russia was accomplished by the domestic security service, fulfilling the government’s order to create a cause for a new war in Chechnya), Power (here such concepts as geopolitics, terrorism, globalization all become involved and intermixed) and, of course, the Struggle Against Poverty. Well, I won’t choke up your mind with politics any longer (especially because I’ll be back with this topics a couple of paragraphs below), unless if you are really interested in this topic — in this case you may write to my private address or in the comments to this post — we’ll discuss it together! ;-)

After the meeting (I was like bursting with inspiration!) me and Tomas hurried to visit the local esperantist Kalle.

On Sunday on the way to Småland Nation (five hours of vegan cooking orgy and a non-stop eating, there will be a post in my blog about this some time in the future) Tomas was telling me about his own vision of the green ideology (he is an author and co-author of a number of books on this topic, the last of which will soon be published by the Miljöpartiet’s office in Gothenburg). Exciting!

On Monday evening there was a long-expected meeting of the Green Students (or Gröna Studenter in Swedish), very similar to the Saturday’s course, but three times shorter and exclusively for the youth. Twenty four persons attented! I also contributed to his high number: my classmates made up almost a half of the participants. Ulf spoke again in the first part with the similar story (but this time in English) about the history of the party and its youth wing Grön Ungdom and the Green Students (the latter being a more recent development). He skilfully added his personal history with Miljöpartiet to the general narration. Then I was given an opportunity to tell about the emergence (it happened only a couple of months ago, when I had come to the Green party here and had been one of the participants of this process) and activities of the Green Students in Lund.

The second part of our meeting was guided by Karolina Algotsson from Malmö. She introduced green ideology a bit differently than Tomas. It would be interesting to discuss it with both of them (Tomas left Lund one day before, on Sunday), but I quite liked her vision too. I especially liked ideological link between ecology, diversity, decentralization, collectivism/solidarity, individualism and queer. And, of course, an overarching importance of such concepts as life quality, wellbeing, happiness… ‘This is what it’s all about!’, the final lines from this short video came to my mind. Early and eco-anarchists (including my favorite thinkers of this intellectual movement Peter Kropotkin and Murray Bookchin) were mentioned by Karolina among the main sources of green ideas!

To be continued…