PGA, Leiden, Netherlands.

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday September 04, 2002 12:43 by Clare - Gluaiseacht, NUIG ecosoc clare at compsoc dot nuigalway dot ie Galway

Hello from the Second European Peoples Global Action conference taking place this week in Leiden.(Written on Tuesday for an email list and now slightly edited to post to indymedia... )

Hello

Just to let you all know that we have arrived in Leiden and are taking part
in the conference, attending the workshops and generally getting in the know
about the PGA. (see www.pgaconference.org or www.agp.org)

There are five Irish people here now - myself, Tracey, Padraic, Steve and
Michael (from Belfast) - representing Gluaiseacht, Grassroots Gathering, Dublin RTS. There are also a few other Irish people who now live
on the continent and they have all been really interested in the activist
scene starting up in Ireland and have been impressed!

There are representatives from different groups all around Europe - this is
the second European Peoples Global Action conference. Padraic and I have
gone to some of the process meetings (this is where we discussed what form
or structure - if any?- the European PGA could take). It is very interesting
to see that the PGA faces many of the problems that we have been talking
about. They do not have defined members, they are wondering should
the strengthen the name of the PGA and make it more widely known or should
the PGA remain slightly invisible while strengthening the groups in the
network - however if the network remains invisible how do new people know it
exists and how do they join/get involved. One woman made the point - if she
tells someone about the PGA and they are interested all she can say is well
there is this website and then a conference one a year.....not a great help
for a small group of activists working away in a remote corner of Europe.

There has been talk of lists of directories, email lists, convenors,
convenor ship, regional groups....etc.. as you can imagine a lot of talking
which as many of you know sometimes does my head in but as one wise man
pointed out to me this is supposed to be a talkshop so ....I can't complain.
However after discussing how we will discuss, how we will discuss what we
will discuss (or how do we decide if we should make certain decisions by
consensus) I have fully recognised that these discussions are similar all
over Europe - at least in some meetings at home we may even sometimes use the hand
signals more efficiently and move along a bit quicker....(we have yet to see that "process point" hand signal being used!!).

On Sat we were in Amsterdam and took part in a street party/protest march.
It was in connection with another more official day in solidarity with what
was going on in Jo'burg. Again, interesting and Sapi and I danced loads!

The amount of people here from ecotopia or that we recognised from the
winter meeting in Barcelona surprised me...its a small small world. The
workshops I've been to included intro to the PGA process,Radical History of
Food, the effect of globalisation on womens lives, Global contacts and the
PGA,Eastern Europe,GATS and WTO loads of interesting videos (including the really funny
"New Kids on the Black Block"). There has been music each evening and on
Sunday night David Rovics was playing in the little pub - it was really
good. On Fri night the Irish kept the dance floor alive - well we were bopping away and were the last to leave! A newspaper is printed each day with the minutes of the previous
days meeting and other bits and pieces. There are still not groups willing
to take on convenorship for the coming year - ie. someone to co-ordinate the
next European PGA conference and keep the communication within the network
going...it should be decided in the next few days though.

Well thats it for now. I'm off for lunch - the kitchen crew Rampenplan are
supposedly one of the best and have been on the go for about 20 years..well
our ecotopia pots and stirry things were just as big as theirs!!

Clare