Euraction Hub Florence 6-10 November

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday October 18, 2002 03:58 by hydrarchist - slash.autonomedia.org

ESF, Florence, Autonomous Space

Dear Friends and Companions,
Many of you will by now have heard something about the European Social Foum Meeting due to take place in Florence between the 6th and 10th of November next. In Ireland and Britain organisation for this event has mostly occurred under the auspices of the SWP controlled fron 'Global Resistance'. What you may not know is that there will also be a parallel meeting of radical groups and individuals of a somewhat more free-spirited nature, under the name of the Euraction Hub. This is not a counter conference but rather an initiative launched out of a desire to have the chance to talk, scheme, inspire and co-inspire with one another, and to give expression to innovative grassrooots activity and organising be it amidst the new working environments or the image factory.

Discussions towards this project took place at the last PGA meeting in Leiden, a subsequent meeting in Barcelona and now on a mailing list established to plan the event. The final call from the Barcelona session as wellas details on the mailing list are included below.

I'm sure that many people are exhausted due to the work against the Nice Treaty, as well as all of the other things which have animated Ireland's streets in the last months, nonetheless, I hope that some of you will make the trip for what is a relatively rare opportunity to talk face to face in an atmosphere and context of our own choosing rather than that of the state or an international organisation. Furthermore, I think that the experiences accumulated in Ireland in the last decade are important to communicate to our friends in Europe. From the abortion struggles to the water charges, the bin tax and the campaign against Nice, the fight against sectarianism and the repressive six county state, reclaim the streets and Thorp, radical activity in Ireland has expanded to address wider sections of the population.

Please come.

hydra

Eur@action Hub
To all individual and collective entities of social activism on the continent Europe,
Today, Sat Oct 5, we held an assembly in Barcelona, celebrated at the same time as the preparatory meeting of the Euro Soc Forum.
The following document has been laid out and approved by consensus by people participating in groups, collectives, squats, social centers, movements, networks such as Indymedia, Intergalactika, ChainWorkers, Las Agencias, Yomango, Movimiento de Resistencia Global de Catalunya, Comunicaccio, Laboratorio Desobediente (Spain), Universidad Nomada, Colectivo de Solidaridad con Chiapas, Dinero Gratis, Ninguna persona es ilegal, etc., etc.

The Barcelona assembly is the last of a string of documents produced on the possible creation of an "autonomous space" in Florence, written in the euro meetings of Strasbourg (noborder camp) and Leiden (euro conference of People's Global Action).
The first view shared by the assembly is that the constituting process of the autonomous space has stalled. Participants in the assembly take this point of view, that is common across the many differences and reasonings. At no moment in time we thought of the aut space as a closeminded opposition to the ESF, neither we meant to adhere to a steryle logic of in/out FSE, and above we do not mean to enter in competition or worse in conflict with "other" subjects in the movement.
There is however something else we share, which goes beyond the failure of the aut space as it was conceived: our intention to reflect upon and work on the processes of political production, to the experimentation on forms of expression and communication in the movement.
From this double hypothesis of method/communication (cooperation/new forms of social activism) comes our wanting to build a project in Florence, open to all people and realities who will come together in the occasion of the ESF and thereafter.

The creation of a place of crossover cooperation where common projects and treks can develop, where transversal relations come into being, where bartering practices and ideas, where sharing transnational horizontal networks affirming new social and communication rights, reclaiming public spaces on the net and the city, agitating new conflicts across constituent Europe: all these are fundamental objectives achievable at the ESF in Florence.

We think that the definition of this project is base on these key idea for the proliferation of transnational networks of social activism:
freedom of access and circulation of messages and knowledge socialize knowledge, share practices
design campaings, develop actions contaminate identities and innovate on forms of media activism experimenting with new uses of peer-to-peer, diffusive, many-to-many communication
This is why we wanto to reclaim a metropolitan public space to traversed by groups coming from the all of Europe, South America and all participation-based networks enabling mobilitation of communities and activists all over the planet. A space where each subject can develop relationships based on the sharing of a common method on the following content areas:
economic and state power cartography in a Europe dominated by technocrats and capitalistic interests democratization of the information, education and research systems
interposition and disertion against the global permanent war action laboratory of the social temporary workers in commercial chains and supermarkets make transnational humna beings rights and movement areas of freeness and free enjoying of goods and knowledges
daily spreading of subversion technique
self-government strategies.

The method we have in mind has to focus on decentralization, collective decision-making process based on consensus, practice affinity, transparency and full publicity of discussions, decisions and practices that will be used both in the net and in the freed urban space.
We find in communication and in political production one of the aims and at the same time one of the mechanism through which we want to develop this project, as part itself of the activities, actions and contents of the project itself.
We believe that are practices and method that define the nature of a project and of a political proposal in the first place, and we think that the central element of this project is the process in which it has developed and is becoming reality.
Opening spaces as a political element in itself and as catalyst to the multiplication of spaces and relationships among networks and movements.
The network that participated to the meeting have started with proposing some workshop and activities to be hold in this project. These are just proposals and suggestion as how to give birth to a space open to creative spirit and to the proposals content.
The text is a first step to allow the full deployement of contribution on the part of any group and subjects interested.
A text cannot contain all the multiplicity of the patterns, the poliphony of approach, the plurality of ways that the creation of such a space wants to cross; for this reason we invite everybody to build a patchwork able to draw and colour the space we are thinking and we are trying to realize.
One of the tool everybody will be able to use to give birth to this transnational, open, poliphinc project is the website http://www.inventati.org/hub, a telematic space as a platform to launch the Euraction Hub.
It is possible to suggest new contribution through the form in the site.
The proposal will be elaborated and facilitated through the use of the mailing list hub@inventati.org, that everybody can subscribe to the address: http://www.inventati.org/mailman/listinfo/hub
The mailing list is also the distributed contact for any question and curiosity about the project and its developments
The following proposal are meant to still be discussed and developed through a open and interactive process.
http://www.inventati.org/hub/calendar/
We invite everybody interested to contribute, participate, develop this project.