[mobglob-discuss] Going Down To Kananaskis (Comclusion and PROPOSAL)

[Macdonald Stainsby]

   What I hope has happened is that we are saying good-bye to something we can
never forget, and only give the greatest of thanks to: Summit hopping as an
overarching strategy. We cannot continue in this fashion or we will perish and
disappear from the horizon, something we simply cannot afford to do at all. In
Europe, the peoples awakening continues unabated, with hundreds of thousands of
people taking to the streets on a regular basis. There are many reasons for
this, but we cannot afford to get left behind. We need to leave this strategy in
the dustbin of history, as surely as we intend to with their whole imperialist
system. We face this fork in our road to the New World can hopefully provide a
new life to our entire movement, provided the death of summit hopping (as our
main strategy, not to ignore it completely) gives us the spark to rethink where
we are going.

  What was the purpose of Summit Hopping? Does shutting down meetings or ripping
down fences help slow down the advance of corporate globalisation? No more than
smashing a Starbucks window actually helps create better working conditions in
Guatemalan coffee plantations. What has been the point is that it allowed people
to see they are not alone, that there are people willing to risk their very
lives to oppose the current system- and that these same people have no recourse
left to them but to take to the streets and challenge power wherever there is a
possibility that we can be seen and heard. The point has been to be heard by
other people, to get them thinking outside of the box, the sandbox of the
playground we are all banished to in these "democracies". When people shut down
the WTO in Seattle, we alerted the world that there would be no more business as
usual for the leaders who put maximum profits ahead of the lives of children in
every city, country and continent of the globe.

  Summits have also been places where nearly the entire spectrum of issues that
victimise all the inhabitants of the planet and the very planet itself are
discussed. It provided the absolutely perfect place and forum for the coming
together of activists from the multitude of issues to network and make the
larger links in their own thinking. It also was a place where the symbols we
were challenging represented the supra-state level of our current late
capitalist era: the fact that decisions no longer are made at the level of a
particular national state. Corporate power has gone far beyond the sovereignty
of any particular state, even to a limited extent, the US. So has the response
to these manoeuvres in the form of our "anti-globalisation" movement.

   Summits have now been driven by our increasing strength, both militant and
with ideas, into nowhere: not just in K-Country, but some have indeed cancelled
face-to-face meetings all together, going online for their discussions instead.
As this happens, we will become disoriented if we do not foment an idea that can
move us to the next level. We cannot surrender the initiative. In fact, in order
to get back ahead of the elites who run the world, we need to stop being, for
lack of a more accurate word, reactionary. We cannot simply sit on our hands and
wait until they call another summit in a location where we might possibly be
able to have a convergence. Yes, it is great news that so many people decided to
stay home and work on their own local struggles this time around- but the simple
fact is that there are many other reasons why we had such a low turn out in the
actions in Calgary and Ottawa. One of those is simple: repression works. This is
a movement that has not come to terms entirely with our new situation on the
ground, and people were scared off by the repressive measures, particularly in
Alberta. This should not be condemned, everyone has their own safety levels and
must have them respected. However, when people lose the sense that something in
front of them is self-evidently the correct choice, then we are not going to win
their allegiance in getting them to the "red zones", or even the cities that are
under an unofficial form of martial law.

   We also have yet to clearly put forward what it is we are for. My suggestion
to many people is that they come out and see the planning and organising that
goes into these convergences: so many of our people have made clearly defined
choices to live now as they want to see the world organised, that we ourselves
are trying to help create. Part of this can never truly be rectified, as the
struggle itself will sweep away sloganeering and certain forms of collectivity
will be made self-evident by the facts on the ground. To "blueprint" too many of
our ideas for that better world would be to make false promises- ones we cannot
necessarily keep. The starting point is that no real democracy can exist without
economic equality. Anything else is inevitably hollow, and that is why we are
the only real speakers for democracy. With every new law passed against dissent,
the truth of this becomes self-evident almost to the point of parody.

   We are in a period of our movement in North America where we see the people's
awakening going from success to success, and growing in leaps and bounds
throughout Europe. Yet we ourselves are in a period of seeming stagnation. There
are many reasons for this new turn, and a lot of them stem from a few planes in
the air back in September 2001.

   The best thing to come out of the Summit in Alberta was the action in Ottawa,
the capital of Canada. Their numbers were around 5000 for a militant action
under the banner of "diversity of tactics" and the program of anti-capitalism
and anti-imperialism. This was such a massive growth, because it represented the
movement from one giant demonstration that everyone is supposed to attend to a
movement that thinks in terms of itself regionally. In North America, unlike in
Europe, it is simply too difficult to converge on one city for all the fighters
for a just world. As well, as we move into taking our global analysis into our
grassroots organising, we need to find ways to maintain our international charac
ter. In many ways, that there were large demonstrations to coincide with the
K-Country summit speaks to the way forward.

*A Call for New Ideas: Proposal*

   The first thing we must maintain, at all costs- is our regional contacts. We
are making larger than our own backyard leaps in inter-networking. This is
nothing but to strengthen us, and it makes our own work that much easier when we
see it as part of the larger world. As we work on our local fronts, the way
forward seems to do several adjustments to recapture the initiative of fighting
corporate globalisation. I propose, loosely, the following:

   We begin to set our own dates. We cannot wait for them to set things for us.
If we do so, we'll become lost chasing people into the forests and getting
nothing but a smaller and smaller turnout and dwindling sense of our own power,
as people begin to realise that there is nothing we can do to stop these
meetings. We have become horribly predictable, and we need to end that right
now.

   We organise our convergences under a banner of "building a culture of
convergence" and make it clear that this is not only to demonstrate, but to get
together with other activists that are not living in our backyards. Making
contacts, sharing information face-to-face can never be replicated by the
internet. We are part of an international movement, and we must know each other
as family. Each convergence date must also continue to build a conference around
it: with focuses on three basic areas:

1) The War on Terror (and all issues that are most directly related-
immigration, imperialism, environmental degradation from the fallout of war)

2) Corporate globalisation issues (such as the AIDS crisis in Africa, the
decline of unionisation the world over, the privatisation of  water, declining
environmental standards),

3) Local issues in the province/city or state that the convergence is to take
place in. (Gordon Campbell and his attacks on everyone)

   These will, clearly, have to be taken up as part of the same fight, making
the links and avoiding seeing them as separate but similar. We cannot stand on
one foot at a time, but see it as all in the same body of economic and political
repression.

   These conferences can be best brought together by bringing unions, student
unions and NGO's into their organisation- and have the whole gamut of activities
spearheaded by the anti-capitalists among our ranks. The organisation of these
things should allow at least 6 months and should make very clearly defined
choices as to where the convergence should take place. There could be bi-monthly
meetings of groups of activists from several different centres, perhaps
Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Victoria, Calgary and Edmonton could work on a
North-Western convergence out here on the Pacific Coast. Each city can be
independently responsible for organising a particular aspect of the conference,
and we meet to share information and make group decisions as to how to bring
people from our different areas to the convergence. Demonstrations should be
built primarily by the organisers in the host city itself. Propaganda should be
as unified and presented as a common front as possible, to help create the
larger networks as a culture, and to share our own ideas and begin to synthesise
an analytical framework that we can all agree upon.

   These ideas are to hopefully get us out of our rut, and to help us bring the
local to the global, and bring the global to the local. It must be seen as part
of the same basic movement we have all been working in and around, or it will
not clearly make itself known as the strategic jump it must become. Finally, it
gets us from where we are right now to something new. Where we are right now,
was heading down a one way road. but the fork in it can be seized, and we can
sustain ourselves so long as we recapture the right to determine when, where and
what we will do. We all know we can't allow the ruling class to determine what
our rights are. we can even less afford letting them tell us how our movement is
oriented.

   The anti-globalisation movement must meet the contradictory glare of the
local and the global head on. We will find a synthesis in this contradiction or
else we will be nothing but another blip on history. However, remember the words
of Bertholt Brecht: "In the contradiction lies the hope".

   The only thing I regret was that one of the best voices of our movement,
David Rovics, was stopped at the border and unable to perform at the concert on
the night of J26. So, to honour his being put on the dangerous list, I close
with a line from his "Shut Them Down" about our anti-corporate globalisation
selves.

_'And we will build a new world
Without the corporate elite
And we will see the day
Of their international defeat
We'll have self-determination
And equality for all
For what choice do we really have
But to rise up and see them fall'_

  We have absolutely no choice at all. And yet it is a beautiful one, just the
same.

June 29, 30
July 1, 2
2002.

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Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
--
In the contradiction lies the hope.
                                     --Bertholt Brecht