Dear friends of PGA

First the positive side: PGA TRIUMPHANT

When PGA started, in 1998, it was the only network organising actions on
a global scale, and its political positions were considered too extreme
by the other networks that formed rapidly after (ATTAC, World Social
Forum, etc.). Today, there are so many networks that most people in the
movement have probably not even heard of PGA, but as time goes by most
of its political positions have been imposing themselves more and more
widely.

Concerning forms of action:

- Direct action (rather than polite demos) to block summits. With the
exception of Scotland, where Dissent was all alone, there has generally
been at least formal support for this form of action from many other
networks. From what I have heard, at this summit that tendency is
confirmed. And that is ESSENTIAL, even if different organisations will
of course block in different ways, with different degrees of conviction
and efficiency...

- Global Days of Action have been taken up by so many networks that they
have unfortunately become generally less successful for everyone,
including ourselves. Still, it is positive that the need for them is
recognised, and it is probable that given the right conditions, that
other GDAs could again shake the world (like the one which mobilised 15
million against the war in Irak, for instance). Inside the World Social
Forum, which many of us have seen as a domestication of the movement,
turning it from action towards unoriented discussions, there is
increasing dissatisfaction. The Assembly of Social Movements, which
meets during WSF events is trying to develop a real agenda for global
action (rather than the sort of politically correct wish list that it
normally ratifies).

- And now in Rostok, ATTAC has even planned to have its very own
"barrio" in one of the camps!! It is said that imitation is the
sincerest form of flattery. In politics, its of course the ultimate success.

Concerning political content:

- In 1998 we were the only ones saying squarely, No to free trade and No
to WTO, IMF, WB, ETC, while the others were talking "social clauses",
access to northern markets or, at best, taking agriculture from WTO to
the UN. Today, most of the organisations in networks like Via Campesina
or Our World Is Not for Sale (OWINS) have no problem with the slogan
WTO  Kills, Kill WTO! Much more important, it is has actually become
imaginable that WTO and WB be killed.

- Certainly there are many more organisations that assume saying that
they are anti-capitalist. even if ( a bit like ourselves...) the
northern ones have difficulty  showing what this means in  practice. In
the South, and particularly in Latin America, the progress has been
enormous. Not only has the Alianza Social Continental (ASC) managed to
block the free trade of the americas agreement (FTAA), but its
conference of popular movements in Cochabamba was on approximately the
same political line as the one held there by PGA in 2001. The difference
was that we were 300 from the whole world and they were 4400 just from
the Americas. And that the struggles in some countries have reached a
level where the question of refusing "development", "growth" and the
capitalist, neo-colonial plans for the continent is really on the table.

Of course, PGA isn't responsible for all this! We were just lucky enough
to be defending the ideas that this piece of history has shown to be sound.

PGA REDUNDANT?

But where does PGA go from here? Of course, I guess we must continue the
stuff we have been doing already. I imagine that the mobilization for
the Heiligendamm might have taken quite different directions if Dissent
had not been there. But we should not be too self-satisfied. The rest of
the movement is catching up with our ideas, that's great, but isn't it
time we had some new ones? Got back to the problems we couldn't solve
before? Or tackle the urgent new ones?

- Since the beginning, in the North we have had difficulty linking our
discourse and activism against international institutions, etc., to
local realities, struggles and alternatives. As the general process of
precarisation of our societies advances, these links should be easier to
make. More people should be able to understand us, if we really make
that effort to  "get out of the ghetto". We have talked about that a
lot, but in practice I would say that PGA in Europe has tended to have
less contacts outside the anarchist-alternative scene, rather than more
(compared to the time of the Caravan in 1999, for example). And, isn't
it also evident that more and more people who should be listening to us,
are being convinced by the hard or extreme right (Sarkozy, UDC in
Switzerland, Berlusconi, etc.)? The poisonous suspicion that everyone
else is somehow profiting from the State, only out for themselves, etc.,
is spreading very well. Here in Geneva, we are really trying to
understand how we can deal with this stuff better, because right now the
future of Europe looks more and more brown. That job is more urgent for
me personally now than going to the G8.

- And at the same time we should be talking of how we develop
alternatives, of course. When the oil economy collapses (some say we are
just now passing by peak oil production) they could be more essential
than we thought!

These are just a couple of examples, and not particularly new ones
either. Just to say that for me, the real urgency is to better share our
reflections and our local experiences (I still would love to organise
something like the Chain Refl-action thing!). Certainly the PGA
conference last summer was an excellent experience, and I hope that the
greeks (or others) are up for organising another!

el viejo