Milan report: Global to Local workshop

Global to Local I.
(Notes from saturday and sunday in Milan. These notes should be completed/corrected by Gabrielle's, but I guess its better that you get something right away, while Milan is fresh in your minds. I changed around the order of some interventions to group similar ideas and thus hopefully make a clearer picture.)

We started with people of the group (about 35 at least) saying how things stood in their area with respect to linking global mobilisations (central demos or decentralised Days of Action) to local issues and struggles. And thus also how links were being made to the ACTORS of local struggles who are often people of different social strata than " us " (unionised workers, farmers, immigrants, etc.), with quite different organisations and political visions.

• Someone made an interesting correlation. They said that it seemed that " global " type mobilisations are typically strong where local resistance is weak.... (Note added by Olivier :This could actually be generalised to the North - South situation in general. In the North : London, Seattle, Prague, etc. plus heavy participation in the Global Days of Action (GDA) - for example, 40 cities of the USA for S26. In the South : the GDAs have been taken up less - except when they coincide with local mobilisations. This - coupled with the huge media bias in favor of events in the North - has actually led many shortsighted analysts to say that the struggle against globalisation is stronger in the North, started in Seattle and other rubbish. But the southern organisations of PGA network usually have huge local struggles going on most of the time, and to which they already give a global, anti-capitalist meaning. The GDAs have generally been important especially for relatively, small groups and places. In Brazil for example, the MST doesn't need PGA to act, but there were actions by anarcho-punk groups in 5 cities for S26. That is why PGA has been above all a chance for the North to rise up.)
• There was a fascinating variation in situations, going from making the local connections is really difficult to great local mobilisations, but with the impression that generally this was a process in which most places were making progress bit by bit. There was a consensus at any rate that global and local struggles should not be opposed or chosen between, but that the global helped the local and vice versa.
• Someone said that it is very difficult to bring the energy generated in Prague, etc., back home.
• Liverpool people said it was great to participate in international things, because at home people are often so cynical and disempowered.
• Swedes said Prague inspired a new generation. We went to Prague because we didn't have the strength to do anything at home, we had to assemble to crystallise our strength in one place. Prague gave us the energy to start something when we got back, but we still aren't strong enough to do without the global kind of mobilisations.
• Rennes, France told of very imaginative ways that they had linked global to local : a three weeks long festival linking northern and southern struggles around agriculture and water. They had people from the Bolivian water and land struggles come to discuss with the local Breton peasants. Drawing the festival out over a long time allowed people who had originally come as public to organise something themselves for the end of the event. During Davos/Puerto Allegre they didn't feel the need to travel. They organised a " Local Social Forum " instead. (It would be nice to hear more about this on the list !).
• There were other places where the local struggle / global struggle divide has been bridged in various ways :
• In Naples, 30000 people demonstrated a few weeks ago against the OECD new technology conference : 90 % of them local people, led by the unemployed - the strongest local struggle.
• In Slovenia, they linked the mobilisation against the G8 to a key local struggle : the fight for open borders. They coordinated an action with Ya Basta to actually disassemble a border with Italy.
• We should be trying to make links and open spaces of political exchange with any kind of groups which are organising themselves, even in a modest way. For ex. migrants and refugees. Migrants are like the ghost in the machine of globalisation : central but invisible, illegal but indispensable, the most vulnerable but often among the most combative.
• In Switzerland, the PGA network has been trying to make links stronger with local struggles and organisations since the start in 1998. The peasants are already pretty suspicious of anyone from the city and of the left in general (which has traditionally sat on the farmers problems). So for young anarchists and squatters.... The Intercontinental Caravan created the first link, and led to the first ever demonstration (for N30) where peasants and punks (slightly) mixed. Now we have a project in Geneva of urban gardenning in an alternative space where some farmers would come to sell directly their produce and participate in discussions.

Two or three leftwing unions have supported PGA from the beginning, but in a relatively limited way (signing leaflets, lending halls, getting visas, etc.). Some of their rank and file came to our demos, but not really making the link with their work and struggles. Nevertheless, the radicals in these organisations feel that the " global " struggles have helped them because they have delegitimised the neo-liberal, " free " market ideology. They say clearly that the unions are in general impotent, and that most of their bureaucracy is sold out (ideologically or literally) to the enemy. For them, unions as tools for struggle are almost destroyed, and that the only hope for a strong rebirth of struggle on the workplace would come from a junction with the new anti-globalisation movement. But that is not easy ! The Davos mobilisation, however, revealed some hopeful novelties. A top official of the printers and communication union took the initiative of asking for an authorisation for the demo, when the WOW !'s request was refused. He was attacked within the union for this and forced to retract the request. After the demo, which was a real success with respect to public opinion generally, the pressure went back on the other side. In fact, the union official who had opposed the request resigned her job in the union. Similarly, the railway workers union (which is being privatised, deregulated, etc.) had been contacted, without success, before the demo. But during the action, rank and file railway workers spontaneously helped the demonstrators.

• Campaign Against the Arms Trade. This network doesn't participate officially in GDAs, etc., but a lot of the grass roots level groups actually do.
• RTS has developped good contacts with some unions. For example, there was a subway strike during the N30 GDA (Seattle summit). And we don't have to necessarily wait for summits to act. There is Mayday for example.
• In North America, Direct Action Network is systematically making contact with local struggles, and these sectors are starting to take notice and respond. For ex. DAN (which is still in the main a yound, white, often student or " alternative " movement) contacted the Mohawk indians who live on the canadian/US border. The warriors said that they would be very glad to open the border to let US demonstrators go to the FTAA summit in Quebec City in april.... !
• In Argentina the demo against the ALCA/FTAA (Free Trade of the Americas negociations) will be linked to a 48 hour general strike (but of course this is the South...)

Another part of the discussion was more concerned with HOW the global mobilisations (in particular the central summit events) are and should be done.

• Crossing all Europe just to demonstrate isn't worth it, but it is if we also meet and talk together at the same time. The combination really gives us a lot of energy and new ideas. It is also positive to travel if it means that we are enough to actually win some battles.
• SansTitre warns that we will run out of steam if we simply repeat ourselves, with no advances from one summit to another. Nice was for them a mess, because there was not an analysis of the particular context : we should have realised that on the EU question the political space is already well occupied by the unions and trotskyist organisations. We were not prepared for this situation and therefor were not really successful. On the other hand, the Caravane Anti-capitaliste, which went through 20 french speaking cities before and after S26 doing street theatre, meetings and small actions, was a real success. The theatre for ex. was very well received. People who had seen us could no longer believe the media hype about " terrorists ", etc, in Prague.
• The anti sweat shop campaign points out that it is possible to do important solidarity work at a distance, for example with fax or email campaigns.
• Big actions are judged really positive because people hear about them, but we must be careful not to let the media take over our action, for example to criminalise the movement and/or to depict us as " NGO "s fighting for reforms.

Absurd media images can even infiltrate us ourselves. For example the question about the strategy of " summit hopping ". Media often say " thousands of people (or NGOs !) from all the world converged in Seattle ", etc. That's nonsense, the overwhelming majority of the demonstrators in Seattle, Naples, Davos or wherever usually are local or regional people. (Prague was exceptional to have no doubt more than half of the activists >from abroad.) No one has proposed a strategy of simple " summit hopping ". In fact, the main proposal of PGA from the start was GDAs - simultaneous, decentralised actions - coordinated with some central event. Just as a " poll ", we saw that in the group only half a dozen people had been to more than one summit - and this is at a conference called partly for organising summit demos !

• Someone says that we need victories to fight off cynicism and fatalism. Maybe also at medium levels between local and global : the European Union for example would be a necessary level of action.
• Someone proposed a europe-wide stoppage of trains as an alternative to a central action. Someone else pointed out that this kind of action may be (relatively) easy to do, but it is extremely difficult to explain or have accepted.
• When we do central events, we stressed the importance of making strong contacts with local people (in Prague for example), in particular to avoid a repressive backlash on our local friends there. There was a concerted effort to do this, both before and after Prague. But all the same, S26 has hastened the passing of a law criminalising direct action in the streets.
• The Aspe valley conflict was also cited, where (although this road project is still seen as disastrous) strong repression finally discouraged the local people and left the people who come in solidarity relatively isolated.
• The danger of being progressively marginalised and criminalised if we rely too much on big central events is very real ! The group on the " anti-terrorism " laws will hopefully inform us more on that. The more people see us on a local level - and in face to face situations - the more difficult it will be to criminalise us.

Conclusions :
There is not an opposition to be made between global and local struggles. Decentralised actions and links to local issues are possible options for the movement BECAUSE central actions have been going on. The two kinds of action will no doubt have their place for some time yet.

We must rather think how we can do each of these things better, and better link the two.

• Doing global stuff better : Importance of converging sometime before the action to exchange with others and to work on the contact with local people and organisations (in Prague for example we even went to talk in schools and church meetings ! Note Olivier). Working to bring local players into global things (unemployed from Naples to Genoa, Mohawks, border action in Slovenia, etc.)
• Doing local things linked to and inspired by global : The 4th WTO Summit (5-9 November) is going to hide in the desert in Qatar (in itself an amazing victory for us !). So there will be ONLY a Global Day of Action (since there can be no central demo). It is proposed to try and link these decentralised actions against WTO much better to local issues.

The idea is to start right away:

• To decide what is the most interesting local issue(s) (a privatisation, for example) that can be linked to globalisation and WTO.
• To make contacts with local groups working on the theme and to think about it ourselves to see what special contribution our kind of movement can bring to the subject (maybe a more international or more radical perspective for example or other forms of action).
• To make links and exchanges with all the other places in the world that have also chosen similar issues to act on. Thus there would a sub-network of places in the world mobilising, on privatisations for example, within the general network of places mobilising for the WTO summit.

This approach could help us develop much richer political content and contacts (both locally and in the network) than just all of us doing a Street Party or whatever on the given day. And the contacts with other people and movements will also be our best defense against criminalisation.
 

We discussed at some length the example of privatisations, which seemed a good theme for most of the group.

In Switzerland, for example, there will be a referendum in December against the privatisation of electricity, an issue important not only for all workers but also for ecologists (since it will make ending nuclear power and energy economy much more difficult). The idea would be to start working on this theme right away, but not only opposing it with the standard arguments. We could also bring in international experience with privatisations in Brazil, California or Scandinavia (having people come over from there to make this very concrete). We should also make clear that we are not opposing privatisation because we believe in the State, but because privatisation is one step worse, one more expropriation and merchandisation of all the wealth that was once " the commons ". All that was and should and could be shared collectively : land, water, grains, education, intellectual property, DNA (Make love, not business !) Public services still reflect, however imperfectly, something of the commons, but we could also raise the question of better ways to share them - some of which are applied today by our friends in Chiapas or by the Afro-american communities of Colombia, for example.

Proposals :
A " Global to Local " place on Indymedia or the PGA webpage, where we could have two things:

• A " bank of experiences " concerning the global to local process. Where people could continue to tell the kind of stories we talked about in the group and profit from each others experiences.
• A place for the " sub-networks " mobilising on different themes for the Qatar GDA could get organised. The list of different themes and the groups that have picked them, documents and materials on the subject, proposed actions and exchanges, etc.

Since there was a consensus on the idea of organising a " global to local " GDA around the Quatar summit, we started our second meeting with an information from Stefan of Madrid on the plans made at a meeting of the more progressive NGOs (Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen, etc.) for Qatar.

• It is important to keep informed on the WTO projects, as agriculture and the GATS (General Agreement on Trade and Services) are being renegociated and will have heavy effects on local issues such as privatisation of water, education, health, electricity, etc. And the NGOs are professionals who have a lot of important information. Stefan will circulate the URLs of the relevant webpages on the caravan list.
• For the summit there will apparently not be a general boycott of presence in Qatar by the NGOs, despite the appeal of Susan George and others, and the totally unacceptable conditions imposed there : Only 4 persons per NGO can go. They register directly with WTO... All meetings (like unions and other things) are illegal in Qatar. Exceptionally, they will allow 1000 people to assemble (But only if they are polite and wear ties, no doubt !) Susan George and Via Campesina say that no one should go in these conditions, but ATTAC (!) and others apparently say that it is important to have people there to talk to the press, even though it will allow WTO to say that the opposition was represented.

The other NGOs talk of organising a big demo in Geneva at WTO headquarters BEFORE (september or october). The trade unions are talking of organising a " carnival " in London (where do you suppose they got that idea ? ? ! !) The discussion brings out that the link between local and WTO is often not totally direct. Water is not being privatised in Europe because of GATS but already by the European Union. In Switzerland privatisation s, etc. are justified by the necessity to be " euro-compatible " rather than directly by WTO. We should not simplify and appear obsessed with WTO and " global governance " as such. On the contrary, it is important to insist on the fact that globalisation is being driven forward by national governments, the EU, etc., which are just as sold out to multinational capital as the WTO.

Our problem isn't just global governance, its capitalism. But global governance (the globalisation of capital) does make resistance (by escaping from local and national organisations) even harder. And international agreements (WTO, etc.) tend to make national policies of privatisation, etc. irreversible and without any possible conditions or limitations. They aim to define a permanent system, a worldwide, " economic constitution ".

The discussion came back to the question of how to organise a " Global to local " kind of Global Day of Action for Qatar. One day or several ? One issue or more ? Take over the commercial World Trade Centers that can be found in many cities ? How should we choose a the theme(s) ? Maybe organise a " Local Social Summit " like the people from Rennes ? How to address people's fear and fatalism, that which paralyses them ? How to avoid strengthening reformist (or also fascist) currents that are also getting into the anti-globalisation business?

Should we make local or larger gatherings ? This seemed to be something that would depend on the particular theme and local/larger context. Having a certain number of relatively big demos seemed important for the visibility of the movement, but there is no point in centralising artificially everyone in a region or a country on one objective, when the enemy is actually in Qatar.

Privatisation continued to seem a good theme for many, but it could also be important to insist on agriculture, on TRIPS (intellectual property) or other themes in some places. (A propos of privatisation : One shouldn't underestimate capital's capacity to innovate and adapt itself. After World War II they were quite happy about nationalising a lot of stuff.)

In any case it seems important to have the chosen theme PLUS - or as a point of departure of - the general themes : Scrap WTO, scrap capitalism.

Milan Encuentro
PGA