Tallin and Helsinki form a “twin city” with plans to build a tunnel under the Finnish Gulf under the codename ‘Talsinki’. The Pirates of the Finnish Gulf and Estonian Pirates have started collaborating on joint projects to foster extended collaboration between PPFI and PPEE under the name ‘Talsinki Pirates’. They have scheduled their second encounter to happen in Tallin on 19-21st of May where they will meet for a series of campaign events and to hold the general assembly (GA) of PPEE. Sunday is left for idling, eventual recaps and unofficial talks.

The general assembly of Pirate Party Estonia will take place on Saturday, 21st of May.  Starting from Thursday, 19th of May, there will be a series of activist events preceding the GA. However, the main day will be on Friday 20th of May, where you can participate and help with:

• A “nothing to hide” campaign with fake surveillance cams.
• A panel interview about whistleblower protection and government transparency with Julia Reda
• A battle rap challenge to Kaur Kender to see if we accept him as our candidate for Estonian president
• A copyright light music night @Kultuuriklubi Kelm
• Several encounters and ad hoc campaigns
• Preparing the PPEE GA
• Developing further plans for Talsinki Pirates collaboration
• Spreading and discussing on twitter under #talsinki #pirates

The organizers of Talsinki Meeting #2 told Pirate Times that the idea of the event is to engage in practical activism. Focusing on a learning-by-doing and inspiring each other without too much direction from above. The events are accessible by everyone and formal barriers of participation have been minimized. They strongly encourage everyone to bring their own specific skills and help where able, basically anything goes: slacktivism on social media, graphical design, explaining pirate ideas to layman on the street, using cameras and microphones to record activities, playing copyright light dance music or climbing walls to install fake surveillance cameras.

For me, I think, it’s all about courage, it’s something that the whole movement started from. Pirates decided to bite the bullet and say, yeah, we copy stuff illegally, we are pirates and we are not ashamed of it, and we are right about Internet, not you. Pirates without Borders agreed Pirate Codex already in 2011 and it says more about being a pirate than our official programs. This codex is still very much relevant for individual pirates and supporters.

The reason is that being a pirate politician or more like an activist entails a special moral disposition. You don’t become active pirate just because you support copyright reform or net neutrality or whistleblowers’ rights, it’s that you want to change something about these things in a special way. You want to change these things in a permanent manner, so you don’t have to do it over and over again, you want to reinvent the whole process and make it more meaningful.

And it takes a lots of courage, because if you start analyzing what needs to be done you find yourself sitting on an enormous pack of documents from the past, every single one shouting at you: “It’s not that easy!” You become a pirate by saying: “Come on, who said it has to be easy, I want to do it anyway!” And you know, usually the people who have written those documents, they don’t know more than you do, usually even less. I think we need more people realizing that in Estonian Pirate Party but I suppose it’s not that different in other countries too. For example, in Iceland they certainly have showed some courage. – Märt Põder, PPEE

Featured image: CC, BY 4.0 TrueActivist.com

About Josef Ohlsson Collentine

I’m a dual citizen (American/Swede) and try to integrate my reflections from a more global perspective if possible. I’m the organizational leader for Pirate Times and work actively to strengthen the pirate movement through this work as well as being the international contact for Piratpartiet (PPSE). Elected board member of PPSE for 2015-2018.
If you would like to ask me something I speak English, Swedish and Spanish. Find me on the links below

 

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Tallin and Helsinki form a “twin city” with plans to build a tunnel under the Finnish Gulf under the codename ‘Talsinki’. The Pirates of the Finnish Gulf and Estonian Pirates have started collaborating…