Yesterday we had a small DiEM meeting in Lund. We were two people: Olof, who had attended other DiEM meetings in Lund during the last months, and me, who had attended several DiEM meetings in Madrid last autumn.

We first talked about the fact that we were two people in the meeting, and how is has been more or less like that in the previous meetings, maybe a little bit more than two people but no more than five. DiEM is a new political movement and it is not so well known in Europe in general, but in particular, in Sweden is much less known than in average. If you check DiEM webpage you can see that in Germany there are approximately 30 local groups, 20 in Italy or 7 in the Netherlands. In Sweden, there is a local group on the making – in Stockholm –  and that’s all. Why? Well, that’s one of the questions that we asked ourselves yesterday.

Then we were talking about politics and about future meetings. We talked about of connecting DiEM meetings with different events: public talks, documentary films, debates,… events not organized by DiEM but anyway related to topics that could be of interest for DiEM. Both in Lund and Malmö, and in other places in Skåne, lots of organizations and institutions are arranging plenty of activities that need participants. Well, let’s participate in those activities and let’s do it together with other people interested in DiEM. I will publish more information about this soon.

But back to yesterday’s meeting. A good thing of meeting someone who is interested in the same organization that you are, is that you’ll probably find that you have other things in common. Yesterday, for example, we discovered that we both enjoy reading Kant. I named for Olof a book that I’ve just borrowed from the library and it happened that he had read it last summer: Toward Perpetual Peace, by Kant. Not the no 1 in the bestsellers list right now but a book that I want to read, among other things, for a better understanding of Europe and of DiEM.

So, we talked about Kant and about Europe and one of the insights that I had while I was biking home afterward was how my feelings towards activism has changed through the years. For ten years ago I had probably felt very disappointed with the fact that we only were two people at the meeting. I would have been in the hurry of creating a local group, of organizing this and that event, and I would have felt the urge that we needed to be more people to do all those things. But now I feel more like: wait a minute, why such a hurry, let’s enjoy the two-people meetings, and if it happens that in the next meeting I’m the only participant let’s enjoy that too.

More info about DiEM here.