Post Yugoslav coalition Drugaciji Svet je Moguc had decided to assume all convenorship obligations for the Peoples Global Action network in Europe.
Dear friends,
As we announced in Dijon, we have met the basic prerequisities for organizing the next Peoples Global conference. After meetings in Belgrade and Novi Sad we have come to the conclusion, together with our friends from other European collectives, that Post Yugoslavia is, for many of reasons, a good location for organization of this important conference.
Oh yes! Our local context, as our guests from the last meeting are now aware of, is very troublesome in many regards. We need all the help we can get. We cannot do this alone.
Many of you still do not know us. So who are we?
DSM is a group united under the slogan "Drugaciji Svet je Moguc!". Together, we are striving to create a new political space unafiliated with political parties or the so-called non-governmental sector. This new space prefers direct political action to generally accepted forms of engagement, such as lobbying or voting.We insist on a social dialogue that is different from the one proposed by our governmnet and the NGO sector. The horizontal social dialogue we would like to be part of involves marginalised social groups that are systematically prevented from excercising their basic human rights. We also distance oursleves from the concept of civil society and instead suggest the concept of a "solidary society".We are actively invloved in the global fight against terrorism. Only, to us, terrorism is the domination and terror of abstract human rights over what is concrete and real - situat ions in which labour rights boil down to the worker's right to choose under which bridge to die after being laid off from the working post.
Take the example of the unemployed, in post -Yugoslavia, who number almost a million citizens of this country, with a population of some 7 million people. We must not forget the 250,000 people who have part-time jobs and the 200,000 that are destined to end up in the streets by the end of next year as a result of a social dialogue in which they have no say effectively making it a social monologue.We must ask ourselves whether the time has come to replace social dialogue with social conflict as a means to induce change, and start taking over factories instead of being thrown out of them.
Despite being a relatively young movement, DSM has managed to attract a significant number of activists with various social and professional backgrounds. Our diversity provides us with a steady flow of ideas, which we have started to implement through short and long-term projects and activities.
The first tangible results of our group is the print edition Global, a non-profit magazine that promotes the ideas of direct actiona dn direct democracy through articles written by our members or taken over from a variety of sources. Furthermore, DSM has organized a number of lectures and discussions in the continuing effort to encourage people to think, interact and to become aware of the need for co-operative grass-roots action as the only possible path towards equity, justice and better sustainable life for all. The latest event was a two-day conference against the process of privatisation where international and local participants exchanged views and experiences regarding mo dern economic concepts and their devastating impact on the society.
Our country has been under isolation for a very long time and what the people need most is a wake up call. And this is what we are doing and will continue to do - by providing information, through direct action and an open-minded approach that will try to convince people to co-operate in building a new society, rather than to compete for the crumbs contemptibly tossed to them by the ruling oligarchy.
In conclusion, we hope that all who are concerned can trust our incentives and positive plans for action. DSM is not a movement that will stop at words and phrases, and calls on everyone with good intentions in the pursuit of this common goal not to use words to polarise and fractionise a society that can only succeed if its principal quality remains untarnished - solidarity!
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