[WSIS CS-Plenary] seattle/geneva

Thu Dec 18 09:52:33 GMT 2003

Sasha,

I agree with the general thrust of your argument.  In fact I would take 
it a step further and say that while we are fighting for ways to keep 
ourselves at the table instead of huddled in the lobby or shouting in 
the street, we also are developing our own methods of reaching 
consensus and solutions to these IS issues.    So we continue to work 
with the flawed modalities that we are offered to a point, and we 
develop our own better mechanisms among ourselves, and invite other 
stakeholders to join us.

I also agree that we should have this discussion on minimum 
requirements for our own participation, both collectively and for each 
organization.  I.e. a Beijing-level of "participation" would be 
unacceptable at this point.  If these requirements are not met, than we 
have to resort to other (nonviolent) methods to get our message heard.

The point to emphasize is that there is only one summit, with two 
phases. So all modalities developed so far should remain in effect. And 
if they are changed, they should be enhanced, not diminished in the 
run-up to Tunis.

Regards,

Rik Panganiban
WFM

On Jeudi, décembre 18, 2003, at 01:15  AM, Sasha Costanza-Chock wrote:

> I don't mean this as a personal attack, so please don't take it that 
> way - it's just that I think there's an important discussion we need 
> to have immediately. I'm frankly dismayed that any of us would 
> continue to fall into the trap of setting ourselves as 'good' 
> alternative voices who write documents, against the 'unruly' 
> alternative voices, violent protestors (or even...'terrorists'...) who 
> fight police.
>
> Are we so ignorant of history? This has always been the tactic 
> employed by those in power: split dissent into 'moderates' and 
> 'radicals,' offer the moderates a place at the table, then crush the 
> 'radicals' while the moderates look the other way...and happily ignore 
> the timid suggestions of the moderates.
>
> Before I go further, I'll clarify that I am speaking as someone who 
> truly supports the CS Plenary process, has been involved on the 
> 'inside' since the first preparatory meeting, who has spent large 
> chunks of time over the past two years drafting documents of all kinds 
> - suggested changes to governmental language, sentences for civil 
> society language, and statements from 'outside' events. I have also, 
> during the past two years, spent time on the streets over these same 
> issues - and when our rights to free speech and peaceful assembly were 
> violated, as in Cancun and in Miami, I have stood with my brothers and 
> sisters from North and South, farmers, workers, indigenous, men and 
> women, young and old, and together with them have, when necessary, 
> fought with the police.
>
> Now, geneva is not cancun, and the WSIS is not the WTO. But there are 
> some quite simple, highly relevant political lessons that have been 
> widely discussed and adopted by the global justice movement but seem 
> unknown in the WSIS civil society process:
>
> - avoid the 'in/out' dichotomy.
> To realize our aims requires people working inside the official 
> process, people working to expose the faults and flaws of the official 
> process, and people working to develop parallel/alternative/autonomous 
> proposals. The greatest victories come when all work closely together, 
> and the greatest defeats when they are set against one another.
>
> - power concedes nothing without a threat.
> CS delegates have made repeated references to requirements that were 
> not met. For example, there was no space for organizing within the 
> palexpo; a physical space 'owned' by and always available for CS 
> Plenary meeting was absent. Documents were rarely translated on time. 
> Our access was limited, our voices were not heard. All of these - and 
> much more, of substance - could have been obtained quite easily by 
> making an organized demand at any point up to (or even, most likely, 
> during) the Summit. I say this with certainty since I was part of the 
> team from Geneva03 that obtained a wonderful space for the Polimedia 
> lab, after the first space was shut down by police. How did we do it? 
> Simple: a clear demand backed by a threat. We said "we've been 
> planning for months, and now you shut our space down. Unless we have 
> access to an accessible space with high bandwidth internet and free 
> printing by tomorrow, we will do disruptive actions inside Palexpo." 
> Voila. At 7 am the next day we were inside the Paladium and 
> fibre-optic cable had been laid to provide us with more bandwidth than 
> 200 multimedia activists could fill. (Incidentally, this is how we 
> will achieve 'Universal Access': not 'Public Private Partnership' but 
> organized demands).
>
> Now, I am not saying that CS Plenary necessarily needs to threaten to 
> do spectacular disruptive actions when its demands are not met (though 
> I personally can think of many situations in which this would be 
> important). But regardless of the form of the symbolic action, the 
> leverage held by CS delegates working inside this process is not 
> insignificant: CS participation grants legitimacy to what is actually 
> a top-down, non-participatory process. The threat of withdrawal, 
> rather than floating as a vague fear in the background, is a political 
> tool that we need to seize and utilize between here and Tunis. We need 
> a list of minimum demands, which if not met, mean our withdrawal and 
> quite frankly the collapse of the process.
>
> So I propose that this be high on our agenda post-geneva: in taking 
> the decision between the competing proposals (continue as before; 
> boycott Tunis; etc. etc.) it is fundamental that we develop a common 
> understanding of our minumum demands, make them concrete in a written 
> document and deliver them publicly, along with a clear picture of what 
> happens if they are met/not met.
>
> Sasha Costanza-Chock
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Plenary mailing list
> Plenary at wsis-cs.org
> http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/plenary
>
>
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
  Rik Panganiban             email: rikp at bluewin.ch
  Special Adviser            Mobile: +41 76 473 3274
  World Federalist Movement  www.wfm.org
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/enriched
Size: 6257 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mailman-new.greennet.org.uk/pipermail/plenary/attachments/20031218/5cae860e/attachment.bin