The “Hafengruppe Hamburg” (harbour group) is a grassroot organised project, which started in 1983 to do actions about trade and harbour issues and guided tours in the port about the injustice trade system across the world. In these times a lot of left-wing activists were organised in solidarity groups in order to support liberation fights of the people for example in Middle and South America, in the Philippines or the Anti-Apartheid-Movement in South Africa. The focus was on the one hand collecting and sending money in order to support the local struggles (e.g. weapons for the Liberation Army of El Salvador) and on the other hand to stress on the capitalistic supporters of the local repressive systems like coffee traders the Junta (e.g. Campaign against Tchibo: Kaffee an dem Blut klebt / bloody coffee). 

In the more than 40 years the so-called Harbour Group developed a lot of different boat tours about several issues. In the 1990ies we started a tour with the title: Migration and Racism as our contribution to the fights against new forms of structural and social racism in Germany. Together with friends of the Seamans Club Duckdalben located in the port of Hamburg we focussed on the working situation of workers in the Shipping Industries, where these peoples are called “ABs” for Abled Bodies. With the organisation Women at Sea the women of our group developed a tour about Women’s Work in the Port and on the Sea. Other tours are more specific about Coffee, Bananas or China to name some of them. 

It´s always an honour for us as a group monitoring and reporting the Central European benefits out of the injustice of a post-colonial trade system focussing on Hamburg/Germany to be in contact with the struggles against the living conditions and nature destroying effects of it in the former colonized regions. For example, we are stressing since the 1980 in our tours on the massive increase of the import of soybeans and soybean meal in the port of Hamburg. The Brazilian Government invited in the 1970ies a lot of international industrial concerns to produce in the rapidly growing industrial area of Sao Paolo which became one of the biggest of the world in this period. The state has asked the German Companie Siemens/KWU to sell a nuclear power plant to have enough electricity for the industrial production of western companies.  In the 1980ies Brasilia could not pay back the debts to the German banks for this investment. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank dealt out the increasing of the cash-crop-export of soybeans in order to pay back the debts to the German banks. This had a big and bad impact of the region where the soybeans are produced. About these connections we try to inform in our boat tours.

It would be great for us to bring also the experiences of the riparian strugglers against industrial pollution in the Santana River area inside our tours. To bring information’s about your situation and your struggles in connection with our information about the financial background of the industrial area which is polluting your river and your live is maybe one step to show, how our struggles are connected to each other even when the conditions of live and struggles are very different. We are looking forward to going on in connecting each other.