It took us a while, but we finally managed to do what many of you expected/demanded of us, and what had actually been decided by the PGA Convenors' Committee at their meeting in Helsinki at the beginning of September: Here is the forum for discussing the manifesto. At this stage, we do not have a fancy setup where your contributions are automatically added to the page, but please e-mail us your comments on the manifesto to the PGA secretariat address: agpweb (AT) lists.riseup.net. We will put them up on this page as quickly as we manage.
Skip introduction and go directly to discussion
The idea of this discussion forum is the following:
According to critics, the manifesto written by the participants of the first PGA conference in Geneva, Switzerland in February 1998 leaves much to be desired, although many people think it can be used as a starting point for discussions. In fact, it has been translated to numerous languages, and discussions of the text are taking place in many countries and regions (please, if you have a translated version of the manifesto that is not yet on the PGA web site, send it to: agpweb (AT) lists.riseup.net, and if we manage with the character sets, we will put it on — of course, for us, the best is if you send us directly an HTML file, especially if there is a chance that we do not have the corresponding fonts at hand). The manifesto will be rediscussed and rewritten at the next (the second) PGA conference which will take place in Bangalore, India, in the first days of April 1999. Until then, we want to have an in-depth discussion on the manifesto, so that discussions do not have to start from scratch at the Bangalore conference itself, where the amount of people will be limited (it is limited here, too, to some extent, by the access people may or may not have to the web/e-mail), but especially the time will be short. Let's start an intensive discussion now and develop ideas on which to base the discussion at the Bangalore conference. Here's a few thoughts more or less at random, of the types of things which could be discussed:
On this page, we will document all the replies/comments/suggestions/discussions we receive, in the language(s) they are sent to us. We cannot guarantee translations, but if the people offering a comment could try to make it available in English and in Spanish, that would be very helpful. One month before the Bangalore conference, we will then take all the comments from this page and produce a summary, which we will get translated in several languages (at least English and Spanish — other languages depend on your help). This summary will serve as a basis of discussion immediately before and during the Bangalore conference.
manifesto-related questions: agpweb (AT) lists.riseup.net
information about PGA : info@agp.org
action proposals/ press questions : press-action@agp.org
editing: webmaster@agp.org