is waif
REBELS ARE WAIF
Because you could end up taking a piss in the middle of an open pit coal mine in front of a ton of very serious policemen. And that is waif. Let me give you some context; First of all, you may be wondering: “what the fuck is civil disobedience?” The principle is very simple: it is a peaceful breaking of rules (usually a bit more extreme then eating candy after brushing your teeth) for a greater cause.
To give you an idea, here are some examples:
- Singing shitty remakes of pop songs in front of McDonalds to scare of customers
- Free the nipple while swimming in the fountain of Trevi to expose oversexualization of the female body (to be noted: of the three statues to be seen on the fountain, only one pair of nipples is exposed and guess who’s they are?)
- Planting tons of tomatoes around the head offices of Total to absorb the excess CO2 they emit every day
- Acting like a flock of chickens in the middle of a bridge to disrupt traffic
You get the idea. The more creative, the better.
Now, onto my story:
Last year, I was living in Berlin and got involved in ecological activism. I began marching in the streets and meeting lots of very cool people. We screamed lame slogans, held signs with even lamer slogans which we had thought about very hard and were very proud of. Stuff like “winter is not coming” or “how will we throw shade, if there are no more trees..” I also have very german ones, but you’ll need a german C1 level and a very good knowledge of german culture to understand them. Sorry.
"Having this apocalyptic landscape in front of our own eyes only made the feeling of doing the right thing grow inside all of us. More than determined, we slowly made our way down the mine pit."
It took me a couple of hundred kilometers of marching to realize, that these demonstrations
were not having the repercussions I had hoped for. The news talked very little of us and the politicians didn’t take us seriously at all. After all, we were doing nothing to really bother them. I felt like I needed to do more. That is how I ended up on a bridge in the middle of winter, drinking tea and singing with strangers. I then took part in a massive bike ride in the middle of the city of Berlin. When we would arrive at roundabouts, we would just ride around in circles, ringing our bells and shouting. When the police decided to join in and when the honking of cars covered our bells and shouts, we would just decide on another roundabout to disturb and continue our way. At that point, I was beginning to act like an addict, needing something more every time.
A couple of months later, I heard about this bigger action, taking place in the southwestern part of Germany. You have to know that Germany is big on lignite, considered the most polluting energy source because of its low calorific value, meaning you need to burn more matter to get the same amount of energy out of it. The region of North Rhine-Westphalia is home to three enormous open-pit coal mines in Europe. 100 million tons of CO2 yearly are extracted every year. That area is the biggest CO2 emitter in Europe. My addicted self couldn’t resist. I convinced a couple of friends, we packed our tents and hit the road to join thousands of people, from all over Europe, having only one idea in mind: blocking this giant coal mine with our own bodies.
I am making it all sound very simple to keep it spicy, but nothing about the whole thing was actually simple. The whole mass actions had been organized for months by very intelligent people. Even on a personal note, the mental game I played before making the decision to jump in the car was complex. It was bigger than everything I had done before, it had real legal implications, it was in another part of the country. And adding to that, we had very little information about the action, which made sense (for organizational purposes) but was kind of scary also. But we just did it. And when we arrived on the giant campsite, in the middle of nowhere, we were surrounded by the coolest people ever. It just felt like a small music festival. All the fears and anxiety faded away.
Early the next morning, we started walking, having no idea what the exact plan was. We just walked for hours and hours, being stopped for even longer hours by the police multiple times. Every time we found a way to continue walking. And at some point, we left the walking path and started running in fields. Suddenly, we arrived in front of this gigantic hole in the ground. I felt like Frodo arriving to Mordor and it felt terrifying and really good at the same time. Having this apocalyptic landscape in front of our own eyes only made the feeling of doing the right thing grow inside all of us. More than determined, we slowly made our way down the mine pit.
We managed to get to the bottom, a couple of hundred meters deep into the ground. There, we were welcomed by the police and a bunch of workers of the company owning the mine and had to stop. We still outnumbered them, so they didn’t really do anything except gaze into the void, arms crossed and legs wide open. They blocked the way and we couldn’t continue. At this point, we all were very tired from the long walk. We embraced the situation and all of us, two thousand people, sat down. We unpacked our snacks, blankets, books and card games and made ourselves at home.
After a while, some of us where starting to feel the liquids from their bodies needing to get out. So, we decided to build toilets. We chose the spot that seamed the most appropriate and it happened to be just in front of these very stiff standing policemen. When it was my turn to pee, it felt like the most magical moment of my life. Even better than the time my parents were out of town for the weekend when I was a child and me and my sister played The Sims for 48 hours straight.
Jumping a few hours later, it was beginning to get dark, we heard Lily Allen’s “Fuck You” blasting from outside the mine pit. We looked up to find some of our co-activists with the biggest speaker I have ever seen. We all got up and had a giant dance party. As we all danced wildly, we could see the police starting to elaborate a plan to get us out, they wanted to go home to their wives and a nice home cooked meal, who can blame them? The leader of the pack came forward with a microphone. He stood in front of us and started to speak. We were all staring at him, waiting for the very important matter he wished to communicate us. Amazingly, the microphone was, like us, in a rebellious mood that day and decided not to work. With our music still running, it just looked like he was in a karaoke, singing his go-to song and it was fucking hilarious.
I could go on and on with stories like these, but I have to somehow finish up the story. At some point, things started to get less funny, we were carried one by one by these very serious and muscular men. I guess, at this point, they were pretty pissed that we made them miss that night’s episode of “The Young and the Restless” so they didn’t handle us with great care. We were put in busses and driven out of the mine. It felt like we were going on a school trip. We sang and laughed. We arrived in a field, where they took us one by one and asked question (which we didn’t answer), took our fingerprints (that we had carefully covered with glue and glitter) and tried photographing our paint, glitter and dust covered face. I made sure to grin sillily and blink more than average. I’m pretty sure not even my mom would recognize me at this point. And then they just let us go. Now just imagine how long it took them to go through all of us, thousands of activists. I’m pretty positive we kept them busy until 12 the next day.
We made our way to the campsite and arrived there in the middle of the night. Naturally after a day like this, you just can’t go to sleep. So we stayed up, talking to random people that felt like the bestest of friends after we had been through together. The whole atmosphere of that night was very magical. The next day, everyone returned to their lives. That part was very difficult to me, it felt very strange to be back in that big city, going through my day like nothing happened. As if I had spent my Saturday, like most of my Saturdays, on my couch watching movies. Instead, I had spent it sitting on a pile of coal. I felt very sad and nostalgic of a very close past. I just had felt so deep emotions that everything felt dull. But don’t worry, the feeling goes away and my couch and I figured things out, we’re good. I promised him some one-on-one time in following weeks.
It is safe to say that our common goal as readers of Waif magazine is waifiness, right? And I can assure you that going in streets and expressing your discontent in a creative, peaceful (sometimes illegal) way will help you pursue that goal. More importantly, you will have an amazing time with amazing people and a feeling of doing the right thing. Rebel, my kids.
And honestly, I have to say, thinking more and more about this fountain of Trevi action, I feel like we may be onto something. I anyone is up, contact me at mikaa.lk@protonmail.com and let’s meet next week in Rome. Or just send me waif ideas for future waif actions of civil disobedience.