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Title: My visit to Leiden Author: Antti Rautiainen Date: December 3, 2006 Language: en Topics: anti-globalization, conferences Source: Retrieved on 3rd November 2021 from https://anttirautiainen.livejournal.com/15859.html Notes: A subjective report of 2nd European PGA conference which took place 31st of August — 4th of September 2002 in Leiden of Holland. Unpublished.
The purpose of this article is to summarize my personal experiences from
the European conference of the People’s Global Action, which took place
31^(st) of August-4^(th) of September 2002 in Leiden of Holland. The
experience was indeed confusing, and more than once I really find myself
asking “what am I doing in this place?”. However it was very useful to
clarify to myself some things what are going on in the Western Europe —
on situation and perspectives of the movement. My experiences were maybe
not always encouraging, but maybe I understand certain things more
clearly by now.
There are two kinds of people — others write too long articles, others
too short or do not write at all. After finishing this one (or making to
the middle), you won’t have a doubt to which category the author goes. I
decided first to write down everything, and then to make different
referates to various journals. If you haven’t seen these journals and
are reading this article, you are propably too dependent on the
internet.
During last 5 years when I have been active in Finland and Russia, I
have found myself countless times criticizing activist tourism, where
people travel thousands of kilometres to some spectacles instead of
trying to get the message spread in their own areas. I personally tried
to stay away from these events, never travelling to West from the river
Oder. Last spring I however decided to travel to European PGA
conference, since I discovered that I am much in a need of some moral
boost. Luckily I expected to get this moral boost just from seeing big
bunch of political hippies, and not from the possible resolutions or
practical coordination the conference could make.
Altough no Russian was interested to travel with me and I am not
completely broken, I decided to hitchike onwards from Latvian border to
save money and to raise awareness in Russia that if you really want to
participate to an international event, it is not really a question of
money. I soon realized that my estimations about schedule were far too
optimistic, but I had incredible luck on the road plenty of times and
arrived to Leiden early in the morning of Friday the 30^(th), just a bit
more than 5 days and some 2500 kilometres since I had left Moscow.
It took days to accomodate to the environment. It was not only the
demonstration against the Corporate influence over the UN in Amsterdam
of the Saturday, which was the most hippie action I have ever been in,
but the Leiden in itself and Dutch cities in general. I mean, everything
was just too nice and cute even in the Finnish scale, not to talk about
the Russian! How can one seriously think about destroying the global
capitalism in such a place? In another hand, my undocumented Polish
friend from Berlin got harrassed by cops just for dumpster diving or
walking on the street — if you disturb all this disgusting niceness, you
are immediately pushed around! In such places one has feeling that you
just have to break something. No wonder why so many voted the racist LPF
party, the place would be ready to fascism if there only was some
movement crushing of which would require that! How I hate those welfare
states!
I was in the Finnish group which organised the first PGA conveyor’s
meeting in Finland in the summer of 1998 (to be honest I did not really
lift a finger for that since I had other projects then), and I have been
following the developments of the network ever since. Conveyor’s meeting
eventually lead to few burn-outs and destruction of our group, but I am
not really bitter for that since it was anyway best thing our group ever
got done. But what disappointed me was the analysis I then made about
the conveyor’s group. To me it then seemed like a discussion group of
super-activists, a sort of activist equivalent of the WEF. Reading old
PGA materials now, it is clear to me that the process of choosing the
conveyors was indeed transparent, but I do not think representatives of
the conveyors themselves had much of any mandate to discussions and
endorsements they made from the organisations they were represening. Not
that decisions about action days or informal discussions about NGO’s
were that crucial decisions about future of our all, but networks which
are based on personal ties only claiming to represent mass movements are
just in clear contradiction with my personal ideas. But biggest
disappointment of all was that it seemed to me that nothing else is
really possible — PGA unites such a multitude of different movements
with different structures from different organisational traditions, that
any attempts to make more democratic and rigit mechanism would lead to
immediate collapse of the project. In the world of today, any attempt to
more coherent international organisation seems to be doomed to 100 times
smaller scale.
However there has been some development in the network during 4 years,
most importantly introduction of the continental dimension. In Europe
there is much more coherence between the movements, people and groups
involved in the European PGA are from much more similar traditions (such
as anarchist, autonomist, anti-imperialist or radical NGO) than in the
global scale. Lately a number of people (such as French Sans Titre
collective and Eurodusnie) have raised the criticisms about problems I
had seen, and in the European level there maybe would be ways to find at
least partial solutions.
We must point out that we have really a big cultural barrier here,
during last 3 years author of this text has soaken deep into tradition
of the “organisational anarchism”, which has same roots as the
“anti-authoritarian networking” which is somewhat hegemonic paradigm in
the European PGA, but has developed very different answers to problems
of representation and decisionmaking. Where many comments in the
European PGA discourse raise criticism of representation as such, my
current organisation Autonomous Action relies on delegates with
imperative mandates and immediate recallability. Our view of democracy
also does not demand consensus decisionmaking. Lack of the
“organisational anarchism” is that it does not put that much stress to
good process than “networking/consensus/affinity group” approach of
“anti-authoritarian networking”, where by simplifying a little one may
say that latter tradition is ready to sacrifice results for sake of a
good process.
In many Western countries less than 5% of the anarchists (not that most
in PGA define themselves as such) are part in any formal organisation,
in East-Europe this share is bigger but propably nowhere much more than
25%. It is an open question if organisational anarchism may organise
mass movements these days, since it has not really succeeded in that
since 1936. But PGA is around and unites millions (and tens of thousands
in Europe), so plenty of organisational anarchists find themselves in
the PGA conferences (including leading moderate syndicalist unions,
Swedish SAC and Spanish CGT).
However, since my understanding of democracy differs so much from the
European PGA paradigm, in every discussion I am in another leg
out-situation. However since many people had made similar criticisms as
I have, I was more inside than for example the syndicalists who were
carefully following process discussions but never said a word, obviously
feeling themselves as sole observers.
As I said I had no any expectations beforehand, but this changed soon on
the place. Everything (food, nightplaces, venues) was stunningly well
organised, organised even published a daily conference paper with
informations about all the sessions of the day before! Even more
important, the wish to deal with the structural problems on the European
level was very evident, both conveyors, MRG Catalonia and Eurodusnie,
had done propositions to deal with some of the problems, such as
increasing transparency to the process how conveyors are working and
what are their responsabilities. I was expecially happy to see that
Eurodusnie had published Jo Freeman’s “tyranny of structurelesness” in
the conference reader, this text is very important theoretical reference
of our movement and we (Autonomous Action) have distributed its Russian
translation in the former Soviet Union.
So suddenly I was much more motivated with the process part of the
conference, expecially when I realized that none of the more practical
working groups were about themes which have any relevancy in the former
Soviet Union. The fact that “civil society” does not exist in xUSSR sets
a very rigid frame to what you may even think to try. For example,
although Russia is not contributing less to the global debt problem than
Western countries, in Russia you may forget about organising around some
demands towards decisionmakers which do not raise direct possibilities
of people to influence their own lifes by direct action. Same thing with
any Third World issue whatsoever, the segment of the society which would
pressure policymakers towards something just does not exist. Chechen war
was another thing since the own nationals were slained there in
thousands in the both sides, and there were real chances of mutinies for
example, but we finished organising against even that when anti-war
movement took course to agony two years ago (in December 2002 we however
resurrected our campaign). Our solidarity demonstration as part of the
S26 of year 2000 around IMF and World Bank issues is unlikely to be
repeated, it is not really the problem in Russia that people do not know
that they are robbed, they know it very well — it is not the information
what is needed but effective and credibile forms of resistance.
Discussions about Rio+10 or Carbon Trade could be as well in another
planet for us.
So besides the East European working group in afternoon of the Monday
the 2^(nd) of September, I ended up to Strategy and Process debates.
Since in Saturday evening I heard that there was an urgent lack of the
note takers, I listed to taking notes from two strategy debates of the
Sunday. This was a mistake for sure, since there was 8 PM deadline for
the notes to be published in the paper of next day — by that time I had
not even notes of the first debate finished! I was for sure somewhat
disappointed about this, expecially when I saw next morning that small
size of the paper (one A3) allowed only very superficial look to debates
which had taken place, and for half of the discussions there was no
place in the first place. There was a sort of misunderstanding about the
function of the paper — editors had journalistic approach, and materials
were treated as news — where people writing the notes for sure wanted to
give people who had not been able to participate to concrete discussions
as complete picture as possible about what had taken place. Luckily
these two approaches were converging later on, expecially when size of
the conference paper grew bigger... and anyway internet compensated
partly limitations of the paper version.
There were 6 themes for the strategy debates — “How do we look back on
the international mobilisations and days of action, and how will we move
forward?”, “What concrete alternatives can we create?”, “How do we
relate to more vertical organisations and with the wider society”, “How
do we react to repression”, “Which new forms of resistance are emerging”
and “How do we organise in a direct democratic way and build up counter
power”. All debates took place both in the morning and in afternoon,
where the idea was that everyone could then participate to two different
debates on different times. I was taking notes about 6^(th) theme in the
afternoon, and 4^(th) theme in the morning.
The biggest problem to me as a note taker was not the unrealistic
deadline or extracting demand, but the fact that it was almost
impossible to grasp some content from the discussions in the first
place. The themes were just way too abstract to get something out, in
context where there could be dozens of people in the room and most saw
each other the very first time. Sixth group I choosed as a laboratory
experiment, since I found the theme most widest and thus most impossible
to have results in 3 hours. To discussion about repression in afternoon
I went because it was the most concrete, but still people (there were
only 5 of us) expressed their concerns about anything from bloodtests in
England via banning the demonstrations in Strasbourg to Pim Fortyin’s
murder, RAF and repressions in Moscow. What is the point in discussion
repression without any focus on what could we do about it? And as
always, discussing concrete proposals is impossible if they are not
printed to paper and distributed says in prior to beginning of the
discussion. Not that I am criticizing, since I noted that during all the
strategy debates there were number of people who
results
interesting
I can do nothing but remember those people with an enormous respect. I
can also only respect the note takers who were able to extract contents
of the groups to 200 words, and giving picture that there had been a
clear process which had converged to some common solution about the
problem in question. I tried that, but I realized that it would be
horrible violence against contents of the discussion since I should
imagine the overall storyline which I just could not see. Those people
must just have born a laptop in their hands.
In the morning of Monday the 2^(nd) there were still no any really
relevant one case issue workshops from xUSSR perspective, and I decided
to join the PGA process discussion. Here my activist culture went to a
full crash course with the one around there, the consensus process here
became a painful experience at least. Most of the morning session went
to discussion about what issues we should discuss and in which order. In
the end not any real decision was made, discussion just followed it’s
own logic. Later I hear that the afternoon session had been less painful
and had managed to proceed with the agenda.
In the end, conference ended up to make decisions about 5 issues
concerning the process of the European PGA network. First was about
infopoints, how information about PGA is distributed on the local level.
Second one was about Global contacts, how European PGA takes care about
global communications and maintains the global contacts list. Third one
was about support group, group of people who together with conveyors
help with the practical work. Fourth one was how convenors are chosen
and what their tasks are, and fifth one was about communication tools.
Eurodusnie had made ready-written propositions only about issues of
communication tools and conveyorship. MRG Catalonia had had propositions
on decentralization (this developed into infopoint structure) and
support group, but in their original form propositions were somewhat
loosely defined and pleased few people. Issues of both infopoints and
support group were controversial for many people around, and the
conference was in the end somewhat unable to make about any decisions on
the latter. Taking in the account that guidelines for infopoint- and
support group working had to be drafted from zero, it was actually
surprising that conference was able to make even that much decisions.
The pain of the consensus was that I had to strive to keep my mouth shut
in order not to sabotage the process. Everytime I opened it (usually
that was for some fundamental criticism), I received suffering looks
pleaing for mercy. For sure no-one was rude and asked me to shut up, but
it was clear that most of my comments (and many comments of other people
as well) caused plenty of suffering. When you make majority decisions,
you can raise objection on about every detail, since most of the details
are not very interesting to most of the people and thus you may just
vote, and everything is over in the five minutes. In consensus process
in large groups, if you start to whine about details everyone will just
get crazy.
One example was the issue of decisionmaking in the final plenary.
Eurodusnie had proposed that decisions could be made with 3/4 majority
if consensus may not be reached, where MRG Catalonia was strictly
demanding consensus. This was a clear conflict, and to me it seemed that
solving it should be of first priority since plenary itself could hardly
make a draft decision about this one. So I proposed the topic to be the
first to be discussed. Some people agreed, others not, and somewhat the
idea just got buried without any explicit decision having been made
about it. Of course I could have insisted when facilitator made
propositions about next issues to be discussed, but that would hardly
have been constructive. I heard that in the beginning of the afternoon
session another person had made the same proposition, but it sinked as
well without any special rejection. Finally no any session managed to
really priorize issues, which ended up to situation that process
discussion was finished 3 AM in the morning of the plenary day. And if
some draft decision about plenary decisionmaking was made, it was not
announced anywhere (so I supposed it was not made). So plenary ended up
to work in a consensus. Quite logical — if there is not consensus about
something else than consensus, decisions will be made in consensus.
Consensus for sure made the final plenary very slow, and in a sense
these flaws which were present in the process from the very beginning
lead to situation where final plenary was unable to make decisions about
a number of points.
I am not against consensus decisionmaking, but the conditions for it to
work out are that group should be small enough (less than 30 persons),
homogenous in their opinions and discussion culture and there should be
almost unlimited time frame. None of these conditions were fulfilled in
the European PGA conference. Due to this, even many hard boiled
activists get very frustrated and stressed. For sure consensus decisions
might be made in an unrelaxed atmosphere as well, but there is no more
any guarantee that these are real consensus decisions, not arbitrary and
watered down compromises which people agree only in order to get back
home some day. In this kind of conditions consensus decisions become
sort of a game, where each participator has to weight very carefully are
their disagreements with some points principial enough to have them said
out, since this will always increase frustration of others and endanger
the discussion about even more important topics, since time frame is
limited and it is not possible to make decision about all of the points.
Time to drop some heads? Not quite. I could not really grasp the logics
how some propositions got accepted and some just dropped without any
discussion. However the process discussion followed all the time a
certain logic. One reason for this might be homogenity of opinions among
dominating activists — which is maybe not due to clique but due to a
long experience on PGA work which has lead to different people
supporting similar kind of solutions to existing problems. Many people
seemed to have a really clear vision what could work in practice and
what not, and on which themes a consensus might be reached and on which
themes not. Facilitators were extremely skilled as well. For example
other people than me just implicitly understood, that as no other
proposition than consensus would be accepted for the final plenary,
waisting hours to discuss about that be a waste of time. Most of the
decisions made were really small steps, but in a sense important steps
for the development of the network.
The East European working group in the Monday afternoon was a source of
controversial feelings not only for me. We had met in the Saturday
evening with a small group of people from Russia, Czech Republic and
Poland, as well as the Swedish person who had initiated this working
group for the conference. Our purpose was not to take control of the
agenda, but to make some propositions for the general discussion. We
decided to pick up three points — EU expansion and campaigns related to
that, European Social Consulta impact and participation in the Eastern
Europe and at last how western groups willing to help East European
groups could do that in a constructive and useful way. We did not picked
up the issue of NATO protests coming up in Prague, since that was a
topic of a separate presentation. These points were agreed (or more
correctly, no-one disagreed) in the big working group, although the
discussion to come was propably something different from what we had
expected.
People who had initiated the point in program had one ambitious idea
above others — making European PGA a genuinely European organisation,
where East-European groups are as much present as those of the West. But
as the usual rule goes, if you have not written concrete prosposals
prepared, you may just forget about it. Even worse if you have your goal
but expect others to make the concrete proposals to reach it.
After lenghty presentations of the groups present, we decided to start
with the theme of the EU expansion. Some people noted that they would
like to talk about expansion of the capital in general. It was very
clear to me that this kind of debate would transfer discussion to a
moarning in a choir about evils of the capital. People did not seem to
figure out, that for example Czech comrades were planning a very
concrete campaign on the EU expansion, and wished to have that discussed
on a very concrete level. But only me and Czech comrades were supporting
splitting of the group to have more practical issues to be discussed
separately, so the group went for the moarning.
At this point it became clear that people had come to the discussion
with very different kinds of ideas what it should be, and most came
without any idea whatsoever. Almost all people from the West came to
hear a lecture about East Europe, without any opinions or wishes to do
something. Many people from the East came to talk about their concerns
about any theme whatsoever, without any attempt to make some concrete
proposals (not that they could have been worked out collectively in any
case). Some people were NGOists, they were very nice people but I am
afraid there would be no any basis for common projects for them since I
have no any faith to NGO way of activity in the Eastern Europe. So in
the end I just ended up listening the flow of words and trying to write
notes.
I do not think the presentations in conferences are a good idea, if
people want to just learn something the written articles are for that.
However, for many people from East it was pleasant just to sit and tell
about their projects, and to listen about projects of the others. This
obviously because for many people adopting oral information is more
easier that adopting written one, and because many people are unable to
use full opportunities of the internet, where information about any
groups and projects is available but hard to reach.
During the break, more than 10 Western Europeans left the room, without
having said any word. Propably most were there for presentations anyway,
but maybe some were silenced because for some reason the discussion
adopted a sort of “East talks, West listens” mode. I do not see much of
a point in this, maybe it is some remniscent of some “Western guilt”
discourse which is quite present in all documents of the movement who
address the issue of raising the Eastern and Southern participation.
However as far as the East goes, this is quite pointless approach since
role of Westerners here is not that of sole cheerleaders, since in East
there are no similar living tradition of peoples movements than in the
South and thus the ideas and modes of organisations come from the West.
Some groups in the East for sure try to operate on the tradition of the
movements which toppled the iron curtain, but to a large extent it is
the Western movements which generate movements in the East, and thus
Western and Eastern groups should have completely equal roles in this
discussion.
I am quite happy that the European Social Consulta was not adressed a
lot, I had only supported its inclusion to draft agenda since some
comrades in the Czech republic seemed to have a some sort of vision
about its relevance in the East. To me, all consulta documents seem to
be some of the most horrible collections of vague and abstract rhetorics
I have ever seen. I do not claim that there is no any concrete content
in the projet, they just succeeded very well in making it unvisible. At
first sight, it seems like either there is a hidden agenda in it, or
organisers do not have much of any idea and just hope that gathering
masses of people to one common mess would be a good goal in itself. So I
decided to stay far from any conference events with any relation to
consulta, and watch from the distance what is about to come from the
process until stepping into it.
Actually there had been one concrete proposal to increase East European
participation in the preparation of the conference — proposition of the
MRG Catalonia to create regional PGA’s to various areas of the Europe,
one being the East Europe. This would have been a disaster for East
Europe, if passed. No group in East Europe which currently has any
commitment whatsoever to PGA has a capacity to do such an organising on
their own. This would have effectively meant throwing responsability of
East European organising to East Europeans, and that Western groups
focus only to their own area — as it unfortunately has usually been at
least until now.
As for the last common topic, “how western groups willing to help East
European groups could do it in a constructive and useful way” goes, it
was my idea. When I started with it we had some 20 minutes left, so I
just said what I think without much of hope that some larger discussion
would take place. The point behind the topic was that there seems to be
much goodwill in the West about how to get East Europeans involved, but
not much of any practical ideas. For example I have not read a single
strategy paper during the last years not wooing about low level of East
European participation, and concerns how to have some more of it. In
another hand, when there are some very concrete proposals by Eastern
groups about cooperation, often nothing comes out from them.
When I was talking how conference and summit travelling of the few
without sharing the experience with the others creates activist elites,
a comrade from the Rainbow Keepers was a little bit insulted since she
had organised this kind of projects in the Russia in the past, and had a
contradictory experience. She felt that in general the interest in
Russia to international events is miserably low, and it is a huge pain
to have some people travelling even when it is possible to do it for
free.
In the end, I sort of agree with her that the issue is much more
complicated that just “activist elite vs. the rest”. But it is not the
stupid and ignorant mass of activists either — there are just deep
structural and social reasons which prevent PGA and other international
initiatives, such as summit spectacles, to create synergy with the
Russian movements. At first, the Russian society is currently in a very
different state that those of the West or of the South. Where in many
Southern countries structural adjustement has pushed huge masses of
people back against the wall, where chance is to resist or to die, and
in many Western countries traditional left is facing the same choice, in
Russia where Yeltsinite democracy is going to its agonizing death the
fragile civil society born during the Perestroika time is gone as well.
The nation is ready to totalitarism, only reason why it is not created
is that really fascism is only necessary for capital where there is an
opposition which has to be crushed, and in Russia there isn’t. For
masses of people hooked to their tv screens, events like Prague, Seattle
or Gothenburg would as well take place in another planet. Those Russians
who travel to these events get some moral boost, but do not have much of
an attempt to organise around same kind of issues on the local level
since there is hardly any perspective.
Really networking always goes from bottom to up — you must have a well
functioning group in your city until you may reach out to local and
national level, and unless the regional networks are not functioning,
doing international work is a waste of time. For example Alter-EE list
has been networking East European anti-authoritarian activists for 6
years already and has a very wide base of subscribers, but it has seldom
been able to create common projects since there is just not that much
base for such a thing. Really networking and common projects sort of
born out spontaneously, when time is ripe for them. For example I
proposed 4 years ago in East European anarchist conference in Prague to
set up such a East European news courier as the Abolishing the Borders
from Below is now, but the time was just not ripe then — now it is, and
ABB appeared completely independently from the networks in which I have
been raising the discussion. In some sense attempts to have some success
with Russian participation to international movement is sort of hitting
ones head to brickwall, as long as the social conditions for that just
are not there. Or more exactly, you maybe would get some results but
better not to expect too much, and better to very carefully work out
some model how those possible results could be reached since there are
many traps on the way, and good intentions alone are not much of any
help.
Once again, I was ready with the notes around midnight, which meant that
our working group was mentioned with 30 words in the conference
newspaper. This was a disappointement to a Swedish comrade who had
initiated the working group, but I commented that just having some
written words about East Europe could do a little to change the problems
we have. Same goes with his proposition to have something about East
Europe to have mentioned in the final strategy document — some nice
words like “we must work hard to increase East European involvement”
would change the real situation very little since the same phraseology
is present anywhere anyway. At first, there should be concrete
proposals, and at second, this concern should be integrated to network
far more deeper way than just the level of declarations. European PGA
network structure is lightyears from having a chance to make strategy
documents binding all participators. It is the minds of the people we
have to change, not papers, and to me the most crucial question with the
PGA is if there any chances for that in the first place?
After typing the notes another night in a row until midnight, I for sure
was quite tired, and much more confused than any time before wondering
what I am doing in this place. So Tuesday morning I spent few hours just
hanging around and refocusing. When my mind was cleared from all
intentions and I was 100% I was not nervous anymore, I find myself
floating to discussion about conclusions on the strategy debates. My
intention was not to participate but just to observe the process.
Quite long time was sacrificed to presenting the strategy debates which
had taken place some two days before. This was somewhat boring, mostly
just reading and referring from the conference newspaper. For some
reason I said something about the groups to which I had participated,
which seem to make people even more bored since I had not a much of idea
about what our discussions had been about and for why they had taken
place.
Some people showed incredible capacity of creative thought, and managed
to extract some common nominators from all the strategy debates. Or
maybe they had just been thinking about the issues they rised on their
own, and thus they saw everything linked to these issues. Anyway, these
nominators were “Intervention to real social dynamics”, “From welfare
state to control state” and “Private property & reappropriation”. Then
we faced a problem — all strategy debates should have included the
aspect of gender, in order that not to have been marginalized to its own
debate, but apparently no debate had been dealing with the issue. So it
was decided that this time gender issue will have another try in the
form of a separate group. I decided to opt for this one, since it was
most interesting in a sense of laboratory experiment — gender issue is
propably the worst among all of those “all talk no do” topics (beating
even “East European participation” and “local involvement”), and I was
very curious to know if something else could be reached this time. It
was a source of amusement for everyone to notice, that our debate
consisted of two guys — me and a French one. Later a Dutch guy working
in PGA radio joined us.
The French guy was taking notes, and he had also very strong vision what
we should state about the topic. I concentrated just to raise my bad
experiences about lack of real content on various gender debates and I
called for concrete proposals. I told about only new concrete proposal I
had heard in many years, that is the triple stack system. Stack is the
facilitation technique where instead of chairman giving one person a
right to speak at time, one person is just writing down names in the
order where people ask their turn, and everyone is given turn in their
times. There is a variant of this, when direct points and general points
are separated — people who want to make direct comments to one speaker
are given priority, so they “are in another, priorized stack”. But few
weeks before I heard from an American anarchist communist comrade
another variant used in their federation — that in which people who have
been unactive in the discussion before are giving priority to others,
which puts them to “third stack”, which is given a priority over the two
others (actually technical points are given a priority over all of
these, so it is not “triple stack” but “quadruple stack”). This is
certainly a gender issue and not a sex issue, since there are plenty of
macho women dominating the discussions, as well as silent and timid men
— persons discussion gender may differ from the biological one. But
usually it is women who are silent, and this method helps to integrate
everyone who is afraid to talk aloud in public to discussion.
However the French guy had another interest in this discussion, and he
ended up writing a very beautiful declaration on his own which consisted
about one third of the final conclusions of the strategy debates. For
sure there was not a single phrase in this text with which I would not
agree with, but it also had not anything I had not read dozens of times
before, it sort of fulfilled my bad expectations.
In general I think gender issue was not that rudely sidelined in the
conference. Although many debates were dominated by men, and the women
who participated were from the minority with a good self-esteem, still
in all of the issues (except gender issue) there was a much better
presence of women than in any issues our federation has lately been
working on in Russia. I do not think this is just an accident, the
European PGA paradigm of consensus and concentration to good process
(such as facilitation) instead of results really gives better abilities
for women (in the sense of gender, that means I include silent men here)
to participate. Of course applying this approach which is succesfull in
small, homogenous groups is not always doing so well in the big events
such as the European PGA conference, but still the difference is clear.
In Russia we should really think what to do improve our process, and
what in the European PGA paradigm would be applicable for us — miserable
share of women among our militants is a proof that we may not continue
as we have done before.
In afternoon I joined the discussion about conclusions of the of the PGA
process. At once I was able to sit the whole time without saying
anything. When the allocated time was finished, half of the themes were
not even discussed yet. As far as I know, there had not been any
priority discussion about the themes, althought it had been proposed
several times. This was maybe not such a bad thing after all, since such
a thing would have wasted hours. Finally some people ended up discussing
proposition to plenary until 3 AM. I guess everyone understands that
this approach is not very democratic or transparent since most people
are just too tired to participate, expecially if they want to be awake
during the plentary itself.
In the end I think the mistake was not really lack of the priority
discussion, but the fact that there was not enough time in the first
place, and too few well-prepared proposals. The issues of the support
group and infopoints are really big and controversial ones, and one and
half days to prepare them were certainly not enough. I do not really
understand what was the point in sacrificing the morning session to
strategy debates. Is goal of the European PGA to make some strategy
document which everyone will find useful and necessary to their
activity, and to which they will be committed to? I doubt. At worst, the
results will be just abstract words impossible to apply in any concrete
project, at best still just some commentaries and recommendations.
European PGA is quite far from being able to draft a sort of a party
action program, if such a thing is needed. I do not think that
increasing coherence is bad thing, certainly there are things I hope all
people involved in the European PGAdo and concentrate into. But due to
extremely loose structure, no any strategy debate may reach such
results, it is always the groups setting their agendas separately from
each other. That is the level where I hope the development to take
place, not in the level of the declarations.
So the morning of the plenary once again mostly ended up just to present
the results of the strategy debates. I think it would have been enough
to have these debates just once, and a note-taker to extract some 200
words from each to common report. What is the point of a structure like
European PGA to have some strategy paper, which everyone have formally
agreed? I would be surprised if any of the groups who were in the
conference would sit dow in their local, translate the strategy document
to their own language and make a decision how to apply it to each of
their projects. The abstractness of the paper was not result of the
confusion among those who came to conference, it was result of the
structure of the European PGA itself.
From which we may move to the point of having the plenary in the first
place. Lately I have come to conclusion that the main problem is in
having any kind of formal decision — this formal decision can be reached
in a more (such as parlamentary, authoritarian) or less evil (such as
imperatively mandated delegates, direct democracy, plenary or consensus)
ways, but it is evil anyway. Any need to have a formal, written down
decision is a sign that people are not capable to reach an agreement in
a normal face-to-face discussion, a decision which is expected to be
accepted and followed in the future as well. Making any formal, written
down decision is always a pain, against natural group dynamics of the
human beings.
I have no doubt that such a pain is often needed — but the fact that the
pain is there shows that we are moving on dangerous ground here. And
more there is pain, more you may question the sense of all that. And
plenary, if anything, is a very painful thing. Its existence indicates
that people who are really committed to the PGA process have desperate
need to legitimaze the steps they are taking, by forcing everyone to one
big room for hours in a desperate attempt to reach a consensus decision.
Almost all people really interested about the process were in the
process discussion, which was some 4 or 5 times smaller than the final
plenary, and respectively 4 or 5 times less painful. But although PGA
crystallizes hopes of tens of millions of people, it networks millions
of people in the world and tens of thousands in Europe, and is the most
credible international initiative since founding of I-do-not-know-which
workers international, still in the European level there are just a
handful of people who have a slightest vision how the process of PGA
should develop. Just a handful of people who are ready to sacrifice few
days to difficult discussions about the theme. Such a small group of
people, that they must get legitimization to their decisions by the
painful plenary process — otherwise they will feel like a small activist
group, and propably will soon to collapse into being such. Although vast
majority of the participators of the conference and plenary are not
really committed to the process and their presence is mostly symbolical
support, their presence is still the lifeline for the maintenance of the
myth of the PGA.
Whatever, during the plenary I managed not to stress too much, instead I
was observing the social dynamics in a rather relaxed mood. A great help
for this one were my biNGO grids, where I crossed keywords every time
when someone mentioned them. Unfortunately I was not succesfull this
time, and in general only one French comrade got a biNGO although the
rules of the game had been published in the general conference newspaper
of the same morning. Here are my grids, crossed blocks are noted with
green colour. Strategy biNGO was a common effort of two Finnish and one
Swedish comrade, in process biNGO Finnish were supported by Danish.
Strategy debate:
Movimento Sem Terra
North-South Cooperation
Alternative
Zapatistas
Proposal
Autonomous
Continuation
Local involvement
Radical change
Creative forms of resistance
Reformism
Grassroot organization
Network
Argentina
Democratic
Social struggle
Decentrali-zed
Disobedien-ce
Horizontal
Prisoner support
Coordination
Forum
Migration
European Social Consulta
Anarchism
Process debate
E-mail list
Organisation
Issue
We don’t have that much time so...
Hierarchical
Working group
Hallmark
Democratic
Structure
<<Translation sign “L”>>
We should not go to the details
Technical detail
Network
Keep your comments short, please
Keep to the point
Internet
Reflect
Proposal
Webpage
So we leave it for later
Please
Initiative
Transparent
Diversity
Spirit
Note that words did not have to be mentioned in the exact form — for
example we crossed “anarchism” when “anarchist” was mentioned. However
combined expressions had to explicitly include all parts, although
“radical” and “change” were mentioned many times, sometimes even in the
same phrase, we could not cross “radical change” since they were not
mentioned combined. It was also not allowed to cross expressions when
they were just read aloud from written documents submitted to the
plenary.
We played the first biNGO to afternoon as well, but since the results
were not good we decided to make a separate process biNGO, which we
played only one hour — with tremendous results! One may make some
conclusions about the spirit in the plenary from the fact that “please”
was not said at once during this period...
Ok, having read some 7000 words of cynical or tragicomedical remarks,
reader maybe wants to know if I have something positive to say about the
European PGA conference, or at least some concrete proposals which I
called all the time. Well, although I certainly love all you people who
were there, boosting your moral is not that much my style. To me pain
and understanding have always been two somewhat synonymous expressions.
First good step would be that everyone just spent a while to think what
do they want from the network, after having done a reality check. It is
obvious that European PGA is unlikely rushing as one to any new
initiative, it is for example not necessary a sign of racism if network
does not run immediately to support issue such as the movement against
the war in Congo, in contrary to opinion of one African participator. In
another hand, although European PGA has its own priorizing dynamics, and
these dymanics are to a large extent independent from any collective
decision, priorities are still not necessary a monolith course which is
unchangeable, I think that by patient discussion it is possible to
influence not only formal priorization by the network (which is a little
in itself) but also to priorities of the individuals who are
participating to it.
Take concrete issue, such as the East-European involvement. At first
West-Europeans should realize, that most issues which work out in the
West do not work in the East. Even many issues, which you could imagine
should work in the East, will not work. Still there are and will be some
ideas which could be worth of trying. For example Autonomous Action of
Moscow got first hooked to European Noborder-network just in connection
with the organisation of the Polish bordercamps, but in few years an
idea of organising support campaign to Chechen refugees popped up. It
did not really worked out, but was worth of trying anyway. When we again
began questioning our participation to the Noborder in the spring of
2002, Southern groups of Autonomous Action began to organise
anti-deportation campaigns in the Kuban region of the Black Sea rim.
So when Western groups begin new campaigns, they should have a thought
if there could be an East- European dimension in them. The same way,
East-European groups should have a thought if their campaigns could have
some West European dimension, and more importantly, be concrete and
realisitic with their expectations, and even more importantly, to expect
something else except just money. People shouldn’t be too realistic —
every anti-repression issue, every ecological protest has at least some
potential to become international, you should at least have a try.
West-European movements in a more deeper than just a superficial way. At
first sight anything in West Europe seems just awesome, but after
another look it is easy to find plenty of problems. My strongest
discovery after Leiden was that I am actually hell of a lucky to live
and organise in Moscow — our autonomy of action is in a completely
different level than in the West. In the West, whatever you say or do is
annoying someone else in the “left”. In Russia there are people
criticizing and hating you as well, but they are something like 10
persons in some closed e-mail list. But in the West, there will always
be hundreds or thousands of people putting you as a reformist, an
extremist, an authoritarian, a disorganized, a liberal, a dogmatic, a
sexist or a sectarian feminist nutcracker or whatever on every step you
take. Here we can just do whatever we want and organise the way we want.
Actually in federative level Autonomous Action is just about as
organised as is possible without sinking into bureaucracy or to endless
discussions about formalisms, being in this edge is a sort of an ideal
compromise to me. In the West, there would not be a chance for such a
balancing. If East-Europeans do not start to understand West-European
society and movements, they do not even find any normal people to
cooperate with, for example dozens of people in Russia live in faith
that ATTAC in the West are good people and efforts should be taken in
order to network with them.... what a waste! In similar way, most of
people in Russia think that the commonly agreed main goal of any big
international mobilization is to have as big riot as possible.
If there is something from which West-Europeans should get rid of, that
is the attitude that everything should be on a walking distance! If you
think that places like Warsaw or Prague are far away.... fuck you! They
are not! People from Siberia spend days hitchiking on highways or
bumming in short-distance trains to get to our summer conferences at the
Black Sea, and you may not spend few short hours in a comfortable
Western train which is a direct connection!
Propably East-European involvement would also require that some people
which have a long-term involvement in the PGA should take the issue to
their hearts. Eastern expansion was for sure a condition for the
Noborder network to have any perspective at all (since soon Central
Europe won’t have any ground borders), but it would not have happended
without lots of sacrifices and work by a very few Western individuals.
There is also one very practical issue which is currently a barrier in
the East European involvement. That is the current East European
coordinator, Rainbow Keepers. I am sure that the few people who have
some vision about developing PGA in East Europe among Rainbow Keepers
have most honest intentions, but they seem to have much other
priorities. Besides few articles in somewhat little distributed paper,
Tretiy Put, and organising a bus travel to founding conference and
presence in Cochabamba, Finland and Leiden for example, I have not seen
much attempts to organise on PGA frame in the xUSSR by them. Nothing
came out from the idea to have East-European/CIS PGA conference
organised in Votkinsk in August of 2001.
Unactivity would not be a problem in itself it could not at times hamper
participation of the others. Example on this was the Cochabamba
conference, support group passed East-European applications to Rainbow
Keepers to approve, but Rainbow Keepers refused announcing that they do
not know these groups and have no method to decide about their
suitability. Support group had not such resources either, but it was
even worse idea to pass applications to conference organisers. In the
end, no-one did anything with the applications, and as far as I know
Rainbow Keepers was the only group travelling to the Cochabamba from
East Europe. Among thus refused applicants were two persons from
Autonomous Action. Actually the fact they applied was outrageous since
these people did not had approval of the whole organisation (which was
then just a network) to their application and seemed just to think that
Western activist are happy to waste $1000 anytime just to see some
Russian faces (this actually at times seems to be the case). However if
nothing is done with the current situation same thing is likely to be
repeated in the future.
A Rainbow Keeper activist explained me that in Cochabamba it was decided
that RK will not “monopolize contacts”, that any other East European
group should have equal access to information.
This is a good decision. I think another decision which should be made
is that any East Europeans should be able to participate to European
process in the equal terms, whatever happens to the East European
process hosted by Rainbow Keepers.
Note that I am as well a Rainbow Keeper member myself, so I am not just
trying to throw some mud on a rival organisation. And if these few
details are solved, I have no problem of having Rainbow Keepers to
continue as East-European coordinator, or conveyor, or whatever. But in
the long run, I think for European PGA it would be good to have an
East-European conveyor, or maybe a group of East European conveyors
since it is unlikely that a single group could handle the task on their
own.
This seems like a completely unrealistic thing right now, where some
East European groups which have had a long involvement in the PGA even
wonder have they enough resources to work as infopoints. But I think in
few years it would be possible to have East European conveyors, if we
approve it as a common goal now. For sure it would require also very
active role of the support group (if it will still exist) and
withdrawing conveyor, since organisation of the conference, and even
that of the coordination meetings would be financially dependant from
the West.
(Post scriptum: when making final edition to the text, it seems like PGA
will have an East-European conveyor already 2003...)