We send you (below) the document gathering the intentions of EUR@ACTION HUB PROJECT, that peoples from several colectives and networks (Indymedia, Intergalactika, Chainworkers, Las Agencias, Yomango,Moviment de Resistència Global de Catalunya-Internacional, Comunicacció, Laboratorio Desobediente -España-, Universidad Nómada, Colectivo de Solidaridad con Chiapas, Dinero gratis) have elaborated during a meeting in Barcelona, on october 5th and 6th, about Eurpean Social Forum, that will take place in Florence, from november 6th to 10th.
Since many months ago, from different realities from the continent with antiauthoritarian and asamblearies sensitivities, has being receiving echo the idea to construct in Florence a space that during some time was called "independent". This idea began to take shape during the Noborder Camp of Strasbourg, and it became formaliced in the the European Conference of the People's Global Action. Documents drafted after both encounter have been circulating around numerous mail lists. In both situations we thought that we have to visibilice in Florence a way to make policy that we did not feel reflected in the way ESF operates. Since then, we have not seen totally clarify -mainly for those of us who we are not implied in the Italian reality- the rest of proposals from movements or networks that are trying to form an own space in Florence, should be inside or outside the ESF, or at least the necessary methods have not been implemented to be able to participate actively in the processes of construction of such spaces.
Several groups and colectivs we have met in Barcelona on october 5th-6th, valuing the dificulty/imposibility/inconvenience to implement, because on very diverse reasons, a kind of "omnicomprensive and complex autonomus space" in Florence, as it had being worked in last months. However, we thought that it is essential to work in some kind of specific proposal from our political realities to have a presence in Florence and further on. From this point hub arises: in order to impel a participative route that allows the construction of something common and opened.
- Hub is not a proposal of space "anti", nor a jocker, some that serves for all. We propose structure It on two thematic axes: (1) to reflect on means, that is to say, on the processes of political production, as an implicit critic to the vertical and barely inclusives and participatives models; (2) to reflect on the activist communication and the new forms of expression of the antagonism and the conflict, it is to say, on the new ways that the new policy has (or should have) to express itself, stopping being an adornment or an operation of aesthetic surgery of the old things.
- Hub is not a closed space, an autorreferencial one. To reproduce a new more or less homogenous politic space, more or less identitary, is in the antipodal of our proposal. It is not a political space "more" that it is added to the supplied ones in Florence, inside, semiinside or outside the ESF. We impel Hub because we thought that our political realities are part of the legitimacy that enjoys the FSE and for diverse reasons we think that it is had to affect him, but also that our projects overflow it, they go further on and they are uncontainable in its frame. Hub is a space that it looks for to open other spaces. These other spaces (from a media center opened to inform about all the realities and events in Florence, to work shops with more or less heterodox format, actions, etc.), try spaces and situations of alliance and contact, that are not nobody's property, but temporary constructions directed to affect the situation of Florence, and in some cases with a continuity hypothesis, in agreement with the asamblearies and antiauthoritarian networks and movements in which or we participated. It is essential to emphasize that Hub does not compete with any of the political proposals that arouse in Florence, although, by his nature, it can also show to obvious affinities and evident differences. It is very important talso enphasize that the proposal of Hub does not exclude, all the opposite, impel the opening of spaces and moments of confluence within other political spaces that will take place in Florence. Such confluences will have to be part of our path.
- Hub is, in effect, a connector. It is not a space paid attention with a pre-established content. Anyone can contribute with proposals conceived specifically for Hub, but "also connect" to this space other that can take place in other spaces or moments of Florence. Hub is also an interconnection tool: in order to make come together proposals or ideas until now dispersed or insufficiently formalized, that through Hub can perhaps acquire a greater complexity. The document that we enclosed to you contains an approximate listing of the type of initiatives that are in march.
The best tool that we have found to implement Hub is a Web page (http://www.inventati.org/hub), whose operation and objectives are explained in the document.
All of you are invited to contact the opened list (hub@inventati.org ) with asambleary operation and, we hope, to participate in the path that now we opened.
All of you are invited to propose, prepare (or to help to prepare) workshops o to give any kind of idea (http://www.inventati.org/hub/calendar/event_display_add.php).
Hub is your's
Health.
EUR@CTION HUB PROJECT [en]
hub@inventati.org
From autonomous space to space liberation. First remarks, themes, thoughts on the start of a common, plural path of discussion and creation.
To all individual and collective entities of social activism on the continent Europe,
Today, Sat Oct 5, we held an assembly in Barcelona, celebrated at the same time as the preparatory meeting of the Euro Soc Forum.
The following document has been laid out and approved by consensus by people participating in groups, collectives, squats, social centers, movements, networks such as Indymedia, Intergalactika, ChainWorkers, Las Agencias, Yomango, Movimiento de Resistencia Global de Catalunya, Comunicaccio, Laboratorio Desobediente (Spain), Universidad Nomada, Colectivo de Solidaridad con Chiapas, Dinero Gratis, Ninguna persona es ilegal, etc., etc.The Barlcelona assembly is the last of a string of documents produced on the possible creation of an "autonomous space" in Florence, written in the euro meetings of Strasbourg (noborder camp) and Leiden (euro conference of People's Global Action).
The first view shared by the assembly is that the constituting process of the autonomous space has stalled.
Participants in the assembly take this point of view, that is common across the many differences and reasonings. At no moment in time we thought of the aut space as a closeminded opposition to the ESF, neither we meant to adhere to a steryle logic of in/out FSE, and above we do not mean to enter in competition or worse in conflict with "other" subjects in the movement.
There is however something else we share, which goes beyond the failure of the aut space as it was conceived: our intention to reflect upon and work on the processes of political production, to the experimentation on forms of expression and communication in the movement.
From this double hypothesis of method/communication (cooperation/new forms of social activism) comes our wanting to build a project in Florence, open to all people and realities who will come together in the occasion of the ESF and thereafter.
The creation of a place of crossover cooperation where common projects and treks can develop, where transversal relations come into being, where bartering practices and ideas, where sharing transnational horizontal networks affirming new social and communication rights, reclaiming public spaces on the net and the city, agitating new conflicts across constituent Europe: all these are fundamental objectives achievable at the ESF in Florence.
We think that the definition of this project is base on these key idea for the proliferation of transnational networks of social activism:
- freedom of access and circulation of messages and knowledge
- socialize knowledge, share practices
- design campaings, develop actions
- contaminate identities and innovate on forms of media activism
- experimenting with new uses of peer-to-peer, diffusive, many-to-many communication
This is why we wanto to reclaim a metropolitan public space to traversed by groups coming from the all of Europe, South America and all participation-based networks enabling mobilitation of communities and activists all over the planet. A space where each subject can develop relationships based on the sharing of a common method on the following content areas:
- economic and state power cartography in a Europe dominated by technocrats and capitalistic interests
- democratization of the information, education and research systems
- interposition and disertion against the global permanent war
- action laboratory of the social temporary workers in commercial chains and supermarkets
- make transnational humna beings rights and movement
- areas of freeness and free enjoying of goods and knoledges
- daily spreading of subversion technique
- self-government strategies
The method we have in mind has to focus on decentralization, collective decision-making process based on consensus, practice affinity, transparency and full publicity of discussions, decisions and practices that will be used both in the net and in the freed urban space.
We find in communication and in political production one of the aims and at the same time one of the mechanism through which we want to develop this project, as part itself of the activities, actions and contents of the project itself.
We believe that are practices and method that define the nature of a project and of a political proposal in the first place, and we think that the central element of this project is the process in which it has developed and is becoming reality.
Opening spaces as a political element in itself and as catalyst to the multiplication of spaces and relationships among networks and movements.
The network that participated to the meeting have started with proposing some workshop and activities to be hold in this project. These are just proposals and suggestion as how to give birth to a space open to creative spirit and to th eproposals content.
The text is a first step to allow the full deployement of contribution on the part of any group and subjects interested.
A text cannot contain all the multiplicity of the patterns, the poliphony of approach, the plurality of ways that the creation of such a space wants to cross; for this reason we invite everybody to build a patchwork able to draw and colour the space we are thinking and we are trying to realize.
One of the tool everybody will be able to use to give birth to this transnational, open, poliphinc project is the website http://www.inventati.org/hub, a telemativ space as a platform to launch the Euraction Hub.
It is possible to suggest new contribution through the form in the site.
The proposal will be elaborated and facilitated through the use of the mailing list hub@inventati.org, that everybody can subscribe to the address: http://www.inventati.org/mailman/listinfo/hub
The mailing list is also the distributed contact for any question and curiosity about the project and its developments
The following proposal are meant to still be discussed and developed through a open and interactive process.
http://www.inventati.org/hub/calendar/
We invite everybody interested to contribute, participate, develop this project.
texts and debates - ESF & HUB – autonomos space – www.agp.org