Inspiration from Occupy Cologne: “Letter Storm”

Browsing the internet, we just stumbled upon a creative action idea from Occupy Köln (Occupy Cologne, Germany) (their Facebook, blog, additional homepage), which could also be used as one of many ways to take part in the action here for real democracy now on the 5th of November.

Their action called “letter storm” was to print out a lot of copies of a text (a letter) they wrote to inform about the worldwide protests, then meet as a group, and then divide up and deliver all the letters into the mailboxes of the citizens of Cologne. Their slogan was: “If they don’t come to the info, we’ll bring the info to them. Delivered free to the door.”

This obviously is one perfect example more on how you could take part in this action here “Print out a text on the 5th of November”, when you are going to take part as a group. But even when you’re going to act as an individual, you could post texts for real democracy in the mailboxes of your neighbours or of the other tenants in your house (the more decentralized way).

Imagine when in your town, on Saturday, the 5th of November, people doing their purchases, going to work, waiting at the train station, notice curious-making texts in the hands of people doing their respective errands in town; on the way home they pass by houses with “Real democracy now”-texts in the windows; and then they come home and find a text about real democracy now or occupy in their mailbox. Now imagine this in every town in the world, some acting decentralized, as individuals, some within organized groups. This would set a lot of people thinking. But even on a smaller scale: Every single person that makes somebody more aware, is a win. Every single person.

The action of Occupy Cologne took place yesterday, on October 23, 2011. We’ll now write them a message to ask about their experience with their action, how it went, and if they want to do it again. And we hope that this posting here inspires other local Occupy or Real Democracy Now groups and supporters to print out texts on the 5th of November and make a “letter storm” (and/or many other ideas how to show the texts), so together, we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never be forgot.

---