- General overview of the current situation within PGA network
- Global PGA conference in India in October 2005
- Contents of the conference -- preparation and interlinkage
- PGA internal matters
- Fund-raising for Southern participation
- Caracol Methodlogy
1. General overview of the current situation within PGA network
- PGA Asia is very vibrant and having the situation under control with growing interest for PGA related activities in various parts of Asia.
- Latin America has not seen much of a PGA process over the last couple of years even though the interest for revival of the PGA idea in the region is clearly present. There is a bit of a clash between the mass farmer movements and autonomous mostly urban activist formations which should be taken into account.
- PGA Pacific is getting increasingly strong. PGA New Zealand tend to send their representative to the global conference as well as try to raise additional funds for potential participants from the global South. PGA Australia seems to be active as well.
- PGA North America has seen formation of new PGA info points. PGA New York seem to be sending a representative to the global conference as well as raising additional funds. Similar situation is also with the Canadian Postal Workers Union. Others should still be contacted.
- PGA Europe have organized a rather successful conference in July 2004 in Serbia. There has been a lack of activity since then which was also reflected in a badly attended but productive and well organized wintermeeting which took place in Austria in January 2005. One of the important realisations of the wintermeeting was the problem of lack of continuity PGA Europe is facing, but on the other, new convenors came forward to replace Serbian group which seized to exist. A part of the network Sans Titre is therefore taking on PGA Europe convenership and organization of the next conference of PGA Europe which is to take place in the summer 2006.
- Africa remains the most challenging continent for PGA since there are only some potential contacts that have not really been properly explored yet. There might be representatives from the Antiprivatisation Forum from South Africa as well as activists from Zimbabwe attending the global conference in India in October 2005. Further networking is needed in the area which could potentially also be done parallel to the preparation process for the next decentralised WSF in 2006 as well as the following centralised WSF in 2007 which are supposed to take place in Africa.
2. Global PGA conference in India in October 2005
- One of the important changes resulting from a move of the location from Nepal to India is less emphasis on the quota system proposed previously. People are welcome to attend as long as the conference stays focused.
- Therefore the European participation should be more unified, forming some sort of a delegation or a team that would not take as much content space as in the previous events of the global nature. That should help bridging the gap between different political cultures as well. With a goal of having a global conference that is more focused, better preparation process is needed and since there is not much time left, the process in Europe should start right away.
- There has been some confusion concerning the dates of the global conference and the final dates are: 5 October - 12 October 2005 (with a big demonstration taking place in Mumbai on the 2nd of October).
- There has been more of a discussion about the Northern groups paying travel costs for the Southern groups which would be the general but flexible guidance since the nature of poverty is not necessarily hemisphere bound.
- There is a general call out for people to come and help with the organization process - the main office will be in Delhi and it is important for the interested people to first contact conference organizers.
- There has been a proposal for an organization of simultaneous translation which will possibly be taken care of.
- Additional computers could also be shipped from UK to help with the organization process.
- The main email list related to global conference organization is globalaction@lists.riseup.net.
- There would be a display of various actions and documents done in various European countries taken over by the PGA Europe representatives. There would probably also be a written document relating to various conference topics put together.
- The intended PGA caravan covering an overland trip to the global conference coupled with additional networking is sadly not happening.
3. Contents of the conference -- preparation and interlinkage
Everyone in the meeting agreed on the need to make sure that the conference does *not* consist of a series of disconnected workshops on different topics. We hope to be able, collectively, to prepare more creative and interesting exchanges than the sort of market/fair of struggles presenting themselves one after another and competing for attention (which we referred to as the "social forum model", that everyone thinks is extremely limited).
We strongly propose to have a collective inter-continental preparatory process for the contents of the conference, with the aim of making sure that all the conference topics are previously discussed with a particular emphasis on the interconnection between the struggles.
We of course hope that all participants will bring into the conference the input and experience of their particular struggles, which will surely be related to a wide range of issues (such as gender, food sovereignity, militarism, energy, racism, etc). But we propose that everyone thinks (and if possible also writes) before the conference:
- How the issue on which they are working relates to other struggles [for instance, how a specific struggle for local control of energy resources relates to gender, militarism, food sovereignity, racism, environmental sustainability, etc... -- this is just an example]
- How their struggle relates to common questions like: how to bring about the sort of overall [revolutionary] social change we'd like to be part of, how to build the alternatives that are needed for that kind of social change, what kind of social dynamics that would be needed to make all of this a reality, etc.
- How the relation and connection between all struggles, and their relation to overall [revolutionary] change, can be translated into practice, in the form of action (global days of action and other action forms), on-going exchanges between our movements, etc...
The point of asking all these questions is to try to collectively find, during the conference, ways to deepen the existing(rather superficial) networking and convergence between different struggles in different parts of the world. We think that a conference on the "social forum model" would only strengthen this superficiality, and it would be a very bad for the future of the PGA process.
There was a suggestion to structure the programme — See the section Caracol Methodology at the end of the Minutes (it relates to the methodological proposal for structuration of the Caracol Intergalactica space within the Youthcamp of the last WSF in Porto Alegre in January 2005).
Finally, a question was raised about welcome and introduction of the conference and the participants. Right now it is not in the proposed programme structure sent by the Indian movements, according to which we start on the 5th directly with gender workshops. We hope that there will be some time to introduce ourselves when we start.
4. PGA internal matters
The final 2 days of the conference will be devoted to PGA internal stuff. We had a brainstorming about which topics need discussion, so that this discussion can be collectively prepared before we get there. We realise that many of these issues might be different in each region, and the priorities might also be different, but that is part of the discussion.
- How to stop global power imbalances from reflecting within the PGA process
- How to take PGA to the grassroots / community level
- Strenthening connections and the PGA process in Africa and the Arab world
- Continuity of the PGA process between conferences and/or actions
- (as part of that) Improving communication tools: web page, email tools, bulletins(?)...
- Translation (both at and between conferences)
- Building up resources for sustainable on-going networking
- "PGA identities" in the North and the South
- Cultural issues
- Dysfunctional structures in PGA: what to do about the convenors, the secretariat(s) and the support group(s)
- Hallmarks - what about simplifying them?
- Dealing with potential infiltration of the right in PGA
- Horizontality and anti-authoritarianism in PGA
- Promoting more and better exchanges, trainings and caravans
5. Fund-raising for Southern participation
We *VERY STRONGLY* suggest that all Western European and North American participants go as far as they can in paying the fare for a Southern delegate.
We propose to the North Americans to take over funding the travel costs for Latin American participants, and also contribute (if they can) to the travel costs of participants from other regions.
For participants from Europe, we suggest that we set ourselves a minimum aim of funding, at least, the travel costs for 5 people from Africa, 5 from the Middle East, 5 from Eastern Europe, and 5 from East and South-East Asia. (We understand that South Asian participants will travel overland, which is quite cheap and would not need funding from abroad.) Besides that, if the Latin American participants have a regional preparatory meeting, we suggest to aim at contributing at least 2000 euros to that. All together, this is likely to amount to a total of around 15000-20000 euros to be raised in Europe. Of course, it would be much better if there would be more funding (meaning also more participants), we are proposing this as a minimum.
There was the idea of trying to divide this amount between the different groups coming from Western Europe, and ask people to organise themselves (organising fund-raising parties, asking local fund-raising sources, etc) to get the money together. Conventional fund-raising sources are rather reluctant to fund PGA, but there might be the possibility to get some money from unions, more-or-less radical NGOs or foundations, etc.
We will also ask the Indymedia network to help spread the call for donations for the PGA conference.
We propose to continue the discussion on all these ideas in the globalaction and caravan99 discussion lists.
6. Caracol Methodlogy
Pre-conference:
As the organisations register for the conference, they provide information on the activities they want to propose. This is essentially the data that will be used to merge activities. There must be a facilitating group that goes through the proposals and works out the possible connections between them. It's better to only try to work out a way of grouping after having read them all, instead of before, as there might be more than one way of doing it (and starting from one could possibly prevent the others from being considered). If the intention is to create networks and facilitate common campaigns and projects, the best thing is to focus on the issue or area that the organisations work on (depending on how diverse they are, it's also important to pay attention to differences in profile).
(Even if not all proposals for activities are produced in writing and following a particular format, the facilitating group must keep track of all of those who come in — someone would have to anyway, for the programme to be produced!)
After the grouping for the first day has been done, the facilitating group should go through the proposals again to develop a 'mind map' of the possible connections. This is helpful for two reasons: to have a first idea of the possibilities that exist for the second day; and to try and already put some groups in contact with others.
First day:
Two sessions (morning and first half of the afternoon) where groups working on similar issues/areas/campaigns get together, present their work, discuss the similarities/differences, exchange ideas and experiences etc. If possible, they should produce charts etc. that can be presented to the other groups.
One session (second half of the afternoon) where there's a report back from the two sessions of the day, and based on it people collectively try to work out what the overlaps are, and how the sessions can be grouped for the following day. If there's a lot of difficulty in doing that, the facilitating group might present the 'mind map' prepared previously; but that shouldn't be necessary.
Second day:
Two 'overlap' sessions among groups who decided the previous day to have sessions together. The stress should be on how their campaigns can be related, how skills can be shared among them, how they can concretely contribute to each other's work etc. At the end of the day, another report back session where groups present what has come up in their meetings, and everyone can make suggestions and proposals. If necessary, another session could be scheduled for another day to continue the discussion, as well as smaller meetings among groups who have decided to work together.