a concentrated and decentralised festival of events in Western Australia to challenge corporate globalisation and the WTO
This document outlines the intentions and vision for local action as part of an international week of events, to take place in November during the first major World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference since the failed 1999 talks in Seattle.
It is an invitation to become involved in an innovative, diverse and creative festival of events on the theme "PEOPLE'S GLOBALISATION, NOT CORPORATE GLOBALISATION".
Recent blockades against the WTO, IMF, WB, WEF and FTAA have been vital in placing the issues of corporate globalisation, market fundamentalism, 'free' trade and international speculative investment on the public agenda. By disrupting the meetings of these transnational institutions, these blockades have attempted to prevent decisions from being made that advance life-destroying corporate culture.
However, we cannot rely on the blockade as our one and only tactic. Community responses to the recent M1 protests demonstrate that many more people than we realise are already concerned about corporate globalisation. The issues - though not necessarily well understood - are already on the public agenda. It is time to evolve the next step in our long-term work towards Life-Sustaining Societies free from global capitalism and corporate control.
While nonviolent direct action will still be necessary in many situations to prevent life-destroying decisions and actions by Industrial Growth Systems, what is currently needed to engage the public is very different from the M1-type blockade. Drawing upon decentralised and non-hierarchical approaches to organising action, a 'new' paradigm of protest is required that:
In Western Australia we are evolving a vision for a concentrated and decentralised festival of events, that will provide spaces for community interaction and education appropriate to a range of ages and (sub)cultures.
We are not proposing a single huge event at a particular time and location. Rather, we will co-create a web of events in Perth that spans dozens of locations and times. By coming into contact with numerous nodes and edges of this concentrated and decentralised festival of events, people will naturally feel moved to share their encounters with work colleagues, friends, family members, etc - because everyone would know that everyone else would have similar encounters to share.
Through public forums, street theatre, conversation groups, street-level strategic questioning, agitprop puppetry, information products and stalls, creative art installations, letter-writing campaigns, independent and mainstream media, union-environmentalist collaborations, culture jamming, organarchy gigs ~ in total happening on hundreds of occasions at a range of locations during these five days ~ thousands of West Australians will be exposed to and interact with the festival energies - without the need for us to directly engage the meme-production factories of the Industrial Growth Trance (television, marketing companies, etc).
The perfect opportunity for this festival will arise later in the year. The fourth WTO Ministerial Conference will be held in the middle eastern nation of Qatar, November 9-13. Protest events will be occurring throughout the world during this period, and as with M1 the corporate-controlled media will saturate our mental environments with images of 'violent battles'. As we are the media, it is our responsibility to engage the community in interactive, informative and heart-felt discussions about the issues.
Feelings of anger and despair over the damage caused by corporate globalisation are healthy and natural, and the corporate-controlled media has tried to alienate protestors from the general community by sensationalising scenes of physical confrontation (and by ignoring the paramilitary-police's responsibility for the violence). However, it is vital to create welcoming and non-threatening spaces for people to consider the issues. As a result, we wish to weave the following intentions into the process of turning this evolving vision into reality:
One of the dozens of possibilities for this festival of events ~ the Corporate Dollar Wall and Ecological Heart Flower ~ shows how these intentions can be put into practice. This will be a symbolic installation that people can interact with to express and deepen their concern, without feeling that they need to know everything about the issues or commit themselves to a particular group or political ideology ~ much like the symbolic act of the reconciliation bridge walk that drew 600,000 Australians to the streets.
People passing through this installation space would be invited to take down a dollar-brick from a large purpose-built wall (old Nike shoes could serve as the bricks!), peel off the dollar sign emblem stuck to the brick, and write a message on the emblem expressing their concerns about corporations, the WTO, consumerism or economic rationalism. The person would address the dollar sign to a particular corporation or government agency and send it off like a postcard ~ having hundreds or even thousands of these through the post, arriving at all sorts of corporate headquarters and government departments, would be a great way of creating workplace conversations about the issues.
The person would then be given a heart-shaped card with a seed taped to it for their own planting - much like the Seeds of Change card produced by Wiseworld during S11 - with the card containing an inspirational message 'written' by a descendant of a future generation
On the heart card s/he would be invited to write a message or a vision about a world free from corporate control and greed, or a statement expressing what s/he could do to work towards change. Each heart would be stuck on a progressively-built installation, in such a way that the cumulative placing of hundreds or even thousands of hearts would result in the growth of a beautiful flower or food plant several metres tall and wide ~ at the same time as the corporate dollar wall crumbles.
We are determined to build as much integrity into the organisational process as possible, so that we make a non-hierarchical, counter-capitalist community come alive in the present moment. We will challenge patriarchy, racism and other forms of oppression and identity-fixation in our organisational processes. We will create fora and spaces for participant-organisers to communicate with each other and to celebrate, so that we work towards a Life Sustaining Society in the being, doing and relating around our organising.
The festival of events will be organised through a decentralised yet richly inter-connected affinity group structure, where networks and individuals will be supported to make their own contributions that add to the general vision, and which put into practice the intentions outlined above. We will encourage self-organisation, diversity and spontaneity of action, direct participatory democracy and an understanding that we operate as autonomous, interconnected neurons within coherent systems.
One of the affinity groups will specialise in setting up systems of communication between other affinity groups and between participant-organisers in general ~ the overall network will be far too large for everyone to more than occasionally meet at the same place and time. This group will also focus on supporting affinity groups to understand the intentions behind the festival, and on creating positive vibes so that participant-organisers enjoy their work and play as November approaches. This affinity group will not act as a centralised commanding body, but rather will specialise in being of service to other affinity groups and individuals to make their roles easier.
Open and evolving affinity groups are forming to work on a range of tasks:
Festival events would not occur only during the month of November - some would take place in September and October as lead-up activities. Training workshops for participants on a range of topics would be particularly important during this time, as would the production of information materials. Letter-writing campaigns and media liaison could provide important warm-up momentum. Furthermore, the festival will come alive well before November, through information sessions and spaces for affinity groups to hang-out and to get to know each other.
A major forum will be held approximately three months before the start of the festival, to introduce the concept to people who may be interested in participating. Many affinity groups would have already formed by then, and would welcome an influx of new members - new affinity groups that wish to take responsibility for organising their own events/activities in the spirit of the festival's intentions and vision will be welcomed at this or at any other time.
Terms such as "corporate globalisation" and "global capitalism" can be perceived as alienating, as they are quite intellectual and abstract to people who are new to them. An important thread of November Magic will be one of listening to the emerging language that people use to describe what the issues of corporate globalisation and global capitalism mean to them, and the ways in which they express its effect on their lives. New terms may be specifically created to resonate with these expressions, rather than always attempting to bring people 'up to speed' with the language that activists feel comfortable with.
As root activists our role is to invite people to locate their concerns about a range of specific issues - harsh sweatshop labour conditions, the closure of rural banks, privatisation of services, etc - as consequences of the dominant system of corporate globalisation and global capitalism ... but to encourage people to understand the specific in terms of the broad, we may need to focus on mid-level concepts that provide a bridge between abstract terms such as 'corporate globalisation' and people's specific concerns. Two examples of mid-level concepts that may resonate with parts of the community are corporate control and corporate greed, and there are no doubt others that we should be open to discovering.
Providing information will not be sufficient to challenge corporate globalisation. Insight into the workings of the global economy is vitally important, but is often not enough to motivate people to work and play towards disengaging from the Industrial Growth Trance, and towards evolving Life-Sustaining alternatives.
The corporate dollar wall and heart flower installation is one example of an activity that could engage people on more than an intellectual level. Through interacting with the dollar bricks and heart flowers, participants will draw upon both their heart and their head in expressing their truths about corporate control and greed, and their visions for a society based on different values. This is in much the same way as the bridge walks in Australia drew hundreds of thousands of people to take a symbolic step towards reconciliation - an act which is vastly insufficient to end racism, of course, and one that some people can use to falsely claim that they are working towards the end of racism - but which nevertheless provided a social mirror to the deepening commitment by large numbers of people.
Indeed, the corporate dollar wall and heart flower installation provides an opportunity for participants to express and deepen their concern about the issues. Participation in this dynamic installation will not require people to know everything about corporate globalisation, nor to become part of a particular political movement or organisation ~ rather, by interacting with the dollar brick and heart flower, participants will have an outlet for their developing concern about what corporate control and greed is doing to our societies and environments. They may not yet express this concern fluently with words, but the installation will provide them with an opportunity to symbolically represent their evolving feelings about the issues - to express their intuitions and gut-reactions that corporate globalisation conflicts with their core values - and to see that thousands of other people feel the same way.
November Magic will incorporate dozens of events, activities and installations that hold a socially validating mirror to people's developing concern about the issues. It will provide multiple opportunities for people to actively engage their concern such that both insight into the Industrial Growth System and global capitalism, and compassion into its life-destructive effects, will deepen. Furthermore, people will know that they are not alone in how they think and feel about the issues.
Even if the current debate over corporate globalisation can be conceptualised as a 'war between different ideas', many people will not be encouraged to change the way they think through intellectual arguments alone. Activities that help people to experience the issues, even if only on a symbolic level, will be a very important part of the festival. Culture jamming, street theatre and Work that Reconnects despair and empowerment processes are some examples of activities that create spaces within our physical, mental and emotional environments to reveal and challenge the spectacle of the corporatised consumer monoculture.
Pro-capitalist positions are attempting to discredit our arguments by describing us as isolationists who wish to turn our backs on international cultural exchange. To counter this, activists are increasingly using terms such as corporate globalisation, global patriarchy and the consumer monoculture to express what we don't want. Each individual and affinity group would ideally be clear on their concerns about globalisation, which will vary across participants - different people and networks will be encouraged to take responsibility for their particular concerns, and there will be no attempt to create a unifying set of demands. In this way a broad range of social justice and environment movements will be encouraged to participate in the festival.
Related to this is the need to use language that does not only express what we are against, but which also represents alternative systems or values that could replace corporate globalisation. The sub-title to this project People's Globalisation, not Corporate Globalisation is an initial attempt at this, but many other expressions are possible and wait to be uncovered or created.
November Magic will encourage processes that create and ask innovative questions to progress the debate - questions such as "what would happen if Australia withdrew from the WTO?" and "could a modern-day corporation exist in a truly life-sustaining society?" While certain traditional questions need to be reiterated, we can also ask new questions that will create new social and personal change energies to compliment existing processes.
... please direct any comments or feedback on this proposal to Rodney at ecoheal@iinet.net.au
Global Action against WTO
The PGA call to action against the WTO
AGP