The second preparatory meeting for the next european PGA conference decided that, as in the previous conferences, groups would be free to propose workshops. However, it also seemed important to identify some central themes, for which the convenors and preparation group would encourage a collective process of preparation before the conference. A first, provisional list was proposed and a working group volonteered to try and organise them into a provisional proposition of central themes.

Here is one possible version. (I am sending it as a personal contribution towards the next meeting and in response to a request for "having the program in a bit more structured way".)

I have tried to spell out a little what these proposed titles would imply
so as to try and organise them, but I may have put something else into them
than what the people who proposed them actually meant. In that case, they
must correct ! Anyhow here it is:

The subjects proposed fall into two categories. About half concern the
critique of the capitalist agenda, the others were more concerned with our
strategy and practice to oppose their agenda and impose ours.

Of course, simply criticising their agenda without constantly referring to
our methods of struggle against it could make for rather abstract and
disempowering discourses of denunciation, and talking of our practice will
always bring us to talk of the concrete context – of what we are resisting.
So we propose to try and structure the themes by starting from "their"
agenda, while reminding ourselves to each time ask ourselves the "transversal" questions about our practice : how do we (or could we) resist
their attacks (and propose alternatives)? That said, it will probably also
be interesting to organise some discussions specifically on our practices
and projects.

Whatever people think of this way of organising these themes, I hope that
this introduction to them can start a discussion on their content on this
list. It is ESSENTIAL that the debate start now, not the morning of the
first day of the meeting !

So this is how I have tried to organise the subjects (in bold letters)
proposed at the reunion. The general framework could be :

What’s next on their agenda ? And on ours ?

For a conference hosted in Eastern Europe, it seemed logical to start with
a major question that concerns us all, East and West :

I. European enlargement and its consequences. Some of them are already
indicated by the related questions below, but there are probably other
important ones that should be filled in, beginning maybe with making some
geographical distinctions: what will enlargement mean for parts of eastern
Europe that are being immediately included in the EU ? For those that
remain outside? For the west?

Transversal questions on our practice: Well, the simple fact that we are
doing the European PGA conference in Serbia and on this theme, is no doubt
a consequence of enlargement on our practice! The old wall is definitely
coming down. (Note that up until now Eastern Europe, which has its own PGA
convenors and process, has been largely separate. Apropos, the East
European convenors, Rainbow Keepers, should logically be also part of this
process. Have contacts been made with them about this?)

A closely related question is Avoiding the mistakes of the West, the
difference being that "european enlargement" seems to admit that we are
already all in the same boat. Does the East as such still have the choice
of another road (at least in some particular aspects) ? Or will we all more probably make or break a european capitalist project together ?

Of course, being in Europe together doesn’t mean that capitalism will
really offer similar conditions for all. On the contrary, The East as Third World expresses the fact that at least most of the East is clearly being pushed back into the necessary and complementary role of underdevelopment:
a dependent zone of cheap labor, raw materials and lower social and ecological standards.

(Transversal questions:
To avoid fatalism, we must avoid confusing their agenda with the social
reality, where resistance awaits them. For instance, they may have decided
to cut social services (say public transport) in the East even more than in the West. But that may be more difficult than expected in ex-socialist
societies. That is why it seems important that all these themes of their
agenda always be brought down to the very concrete and diverse experiences
: how are people reacting – or not reacting – to privatisations or urban
development or Bush’s neocolonial wars or immigration and xenophobia... in
Croatia for instance, or Italy or Great Britain? How have we been trying
to intervene in these realities? With what success?)

A wider Europe under decadent capitalism has aspects of particular
importance for us.
Immigration, of course, with its strategy of division and increased
pressure on certain categories of people. And also the more and more brutal forms of Social Control, from workfare blackmail to War, by way of street surveillance cameras, new ID cards and worldwide computer surveillance of activists.

Gender: Patriarchal oppression of course continues in the new context (and
in subtler forms in our own movement !) It also takes on new, more violent
forms by the increasing workloads on women, who have to replace in their "free" time lost social services; the reinforcement of merchandised sexist stereotypes and the ongoing crime against humanity constituted by the
massive sex-slave trade organised between east and west, just to mention
the most obvious points.

II. Another (wider than Europe and more ecologically minded) way of posing
the question that faces us all is : Criticism of Industrial Society. We
don’t want development any more than underdevelopment, because it is unjust (development depending on the existence of underdevelopment), but also because it is unsustainable, destroys communities, makes selfmanagement (decentralisation and local control) impossible, promotes merchandisation and individualistic consumption and in short makes people unhappy.

To sum up the "their agenda" part, people seem to want to think about the
general social project (if one can call it that !) of an enlarged
capitalist Europe or of industrial society generally. Specific workshops as different as Immigration or Sustainable Technologies would develop aspects of this general theme.

"Transversal" questions on our practice

Every time we talk about some aspect of our big problem (capitalist society and where its heading), it would be pointless if we aren’t also thinking about how we are or could be opposing / transforming it. So here are some of the subjects that were proposed which maybe should be discussed separately too, but which should maybe be raised when we talk about the subjects listed above:

One question which I think should come up every time is Breaking out of the activist/alternative "ghetto". Ghetto is maybe too negative a term. Since ’68 there has been a diverse alternative political and social space (from "revolutionary" parties to alternative culture, communities, squats, etc.) which has allowed radical opposition to survive and develop. In western Europe, anyhow, there was such a consensus around the consumerist,
social-democratic paradise that we had to stick together and affirm our
difference, just to survive.

But that also meant letting ourselves be isolated from mainstream society.
We may distribute leaflets to “normal” people, but they don’t often aren’t really speak to someone who doesn’t share our mental points of departure.
It is difficult and frustrating to try to understand and be understood by
the mainstream, and we don’t often really try. In fact, we generally have
quite elitist, vanguardist and even comtemptuous attitudes towards people
from say the base of ATTAC, without speaking of the mass of "unenlightened" fellow citizens who still believe in jobs, votes or whatever! Maybe simply because we don’t know how to talk to them. And as long as we don’t try, we won’t learn how...

As a result, when our ideas do break through (feminism or ecology, for
instance) they have often been co-opted into reformist modes. Without
question, the anti-globalisation movement is the biggest, fastest
breakthrough we have had yet. No doubt because there is greater
dissatisfaction in capitalist society at any time since the 1930s. So are
we going to learn how to talk to the people at large, or will we leave that to more “reasonable” people? Is it enough to show that we are
revolutionary, radical, etc., or should we be convincing people that it is
normal to be that way?

Maybe we don’t really need our ghetto anymore (and PGA has led to
interesting meetings with european peasants, NGOs, etc., particularly
during the Intercontinental Caravan). But now that there is a wide range of "anti-globalisation" groups and networks, there is also a danger that PGA Europe will accept to be isolated somewhere in a more fragmented,
sectarian, movement as a sort of anarchist club. And not continue to be the more original, wider political space defined by the PGA hallmarks.
(And how does all this work in eastern Europe? How do piercings and black
fit into the post-socialist context?)

What’s next as an international movement? Poses the general question of
how, apart from talking, we can actually act together. This movement
created itself of on certain practices. First of all, by responding to
calls put through the PGA network for Global Days of decentralised Action.
That kind of worldwide mobilisation quite unintentionally provoked massive
central demos against the Summits. These practices have been incredibly
effective at de-legitimizing neoliberal ideology and reviving the idea of
anti-capitalism. At Seattle, and now Cancun, they even indirectly contributed to spoiling imperialist plans. How important is it to continue
this practice (what evaluation of our presence at the G8 this year, for
instance) or are we just repeating ourselves?

What’s next after summit hopping? is a way of asking if big demos are
enough, or if we don’t need to find new practices for the movement.
(Actually, we have also had other practices which should be evaluated too:
seminars, caravans and recently “villages”.)

From the start, in 1998, we have been conscious that we must find a way to link the “stratospheric”, ideological, battles of summits or global days of action with local, day to day resistances against the neoliberal offensive, with the alternatives we try to build. But its not easy!

Actually, acting as an international network has particularly empowered smaller, more isolated groups (the MST never depended on us to be visible!), although it has kept them oriented towards the “stratospheric”, rather unrooted practice. And now, if we put the emphasis on the local, how do we continue to exist as a network that ACTS (rather than just sharing information, etc.) and thus inspires? In other words:

What’s global about the local? We need some new ideas here. For instance,
what about if at the next global day of decentralised actions, we all did
actions directed very specifically against local manifestations of
globalisation (an action at a local hospital being privatised, for
example)? Would that still take advantage of international action while
making clear what globalisation means locally (and giving the occasion to
do local organising, instead of yet another slightly abstract demo)?

More strategically, people have asked
How do we imagine world change? (now that Lula is “in power” in Brazil...)
Its not only the IMF, the US army or the corrupting influence of
accumulated power and hierarchy, but the general pressure of political
“realism” that seems to make it impossible for those who take power to make the changes that are so essential. So are there really alternative (or complementary) ways of imagining change: self-management, autonomy, commons and communities, more “horizontal” practices to use every day (see
Gender...), “changing the world without taking power?” Great! But what does this, could this, really mean in our real life and activism?

To sum up these themes on our practice, one could say that people want to
evaluate the present practices of the network, in particular the big demos
and see how we could act at a more local and concrete level, but without
losing the dynamism of an international movement. And more generally, how
can one imagine radical change?