Thursday January 01 1970
Irish Social Forum Oct 8-10
national |
public consultation / irish social forum |
event notice 
Sunday October 03, 2004 21:45
by Liz Curry - Irish Social Forum
keykiet at yahoo dot com
Fri Oct 8th 7.30pm: Introduction to the Social Forum with music and films
St. Nicholas’ Parish Centre, Carmen Hall Rd., off Francis St., The Liberties, Dublin 8.
Sat Oct 9th 10.30am: Speakers and open floor discussion on Anti-Racism
All day Workshops
UCD Student Centre, Belfield, Dublin 4.
Sun Oct 10th 10.30am: Discussions on different forms of opposition to Neoliberalism
Workshops and Assembly of the Social Movements
ATGWU Hall, Middle Abbey St., Dublin 1.
The Irish Social Forum is a space to bring together everyone who wants to see an actually sustainable world and is working on it right now or has ideas about how .
What kind of world do we want?
How possible is it?
How exactly will it work?
How will decisions be made?
How do we cope with our differing opinions on how to proceed?
This is not a convention with speakers and audience, it is a participative forum for discussion and action. Get ready to back up your opinions.
Launched in July 2003, the Irish Social Forum draws its inspiration and energy from the international movement of social forums, such as the World Social Forum and the European Social Forum, coming together to build alternatives in the belief that “another world is possible”. The forum is created by and for the movements and is organised in accordance with the World Social Forum Charter of Principles of Porto Alegre (visit www.fse-esf.org/en/charter.html).
How to get involved:
This year’s Irish Social Forum will take place October 8-10th 2004 in Dublin. This is a chance for people from around Ireland to come together to engage in debate, organize action and build networks to strengthen the global justice movement.
Friday night will feature music with Man & the Machine and film-showings celebrating the global movements.
This will be followed by two plenaries over the weekend, one on the theme of anti-racism - what methods are most effective?featuring speakers such as Aisling Reidy (Irish Council of Civil Liberties), Ronit Lentin (Campaign Against Deportation of Irish Children) and Rosana Flynn (Residents Against Racism).
The second plenary focuses on neoliberalism and the speakers will be Peadar Kirby (DCU lecturer), Aileen O’Carroll (Workers Solidarity Movement), Mick O’Reilly (trade unionist) and Mary Murphy (former national policy officer with St. Vincent de Paul). The discussion will focus on the state, beyond the state and social partnerships.
One hour of talks, one hour open discussion.
The weekend will also host a variety of workshops on issues such as the arms trade, anti-racism, trade justice, the Coca-Cola boycott, waste management and incineration, the EU constitution, heritage protection, the upcoming "less lethal" weapons conference in Dublin and the upcoming European Social Forum taking place in London in October.
Please note the invitation is still open to individuals, organisations and groups to shape the content of the ISF by proposing workshops. All proposals are being collated and arrangements made for groups suggesting similar titles to club together. This is only one of the ways in which the ISF seeks to promote cooperation across Irish civil society. The deadline for applications is Friday September 24th 2004 but still possible to combine with existing ones.
For a workshop form, please contact Mary Kinane at mkinane@dlrcoco.ie (086 – 6097532). To cover the costs of organising the Irish Social Forum, organisations who wish to hold a workshop are asked - if possible - to give a donation (recommended €50). No one will be excluded for lack of funding.
You and/or your organisation is also encouraged to help support and organise the event by coming along to the weekly Dublin Social Forum Working Group meetings on Mondays at 7pm in the Comhlámh offices, 10 Upper Camden St., Dublin 2. Alternatively you can get involved in regional social forums such as the Cork Social Forum, the Southeast Social Forum in Waterford or the Northeast Social Forum in Belfast.
See you on the 8th.
Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5really looking foreward to the REVOLUTION talk hosted by SWP and WSM
should make for a lively discussion
image from here
http://picturebook.nothingness.org/pbook/1936/display/31
meeting of four proletarian organizations -- the anarchist FAI-CNT and the socialist PSUC and UGT in the La Monumental-arena
think it will take a little more to get these numbers,
you never know though........?
1936 -- The Spanish Revolution
There's much more to what's going on, on Saturday and Sunday than indicated above. Checkout the URL below which lists the full programme details.
Some of the workshops on both Sat and Sun look interesting and at least one or more are bound to interest everyone.
http://www.irishsocialforum.org/newswire.php?story_id=22
The organisation of the ESF in London has been a complete joke - with everybody managing to unite against the organisers due to their undemocratic methods and complete subservience to Ken Livingstone. But by far the worst element is the Assembly of Social Movements. In the Socialist Worker paper dated 25th September 2004 we are told that the Assembly of Social will launch "pan-European protests against next years G8 summit in Scotland."
Now, given that no method of coming up with an agenda has even been agreed for the ASM, it is v. prophetic of the SWP to know what will be decided at a meeting that is still two weeks away.
Will the ISF be any different? Is the social forum just a brand that people use for their latest project? How will the agenda for the assmebly of social movements in Dublin be decided - since this will lend the name social forum to whatever is decided.
in the case of the ISF it's organised by whoever shows up to the monday meetings in comhlamh on camden st.
& all the minutes including who was there are published on indymedia to keep it open.
At the moment it's a mixture of individuals, people involved in ngo's ,grassroots community groups & people involved in political parties who are there as individuals (tho we discovered that no-one at last mon.s meeting had a party affiliation, interestingly.)
we're really lucky in that it's a very democratic process , no-one's "taken it over" & branches of social movements from Socialists through NGO's to Libertarians are involved which is really unique.
The best thing about last year's ISF for me was the mix of activists & NGO workers etc. who would not normally be at the same events or get the opportunity to share info.
ESF's, particularly in London, have had a lot of controversy about how they've been organised . So has the WSF for that matter.
The biggest difficulty in progressive movements is how to organise & make decisions.
This may be partly due to the sheer size of them. Something that big & expensive to organise tends to be taken on by people with resources, in this case The Greater London Authority. Also they tend to be organised by people organised enough to go to organising meetings.
That's not a problem if the organisation stays open & democratic & obviously is a problem if it becomes a pet project or part of someone's political agenda .
There are 2 angles to this, groups really do try to take over & groups don't get involved & then complain about how it ends up.
In the case of a large forum the only way i can see to avoid a takeover would be by large numbers of small groups co-operating to host it.
For info on autonomous space events in London Oct 13th-17th see www.wombles.org.uk .Beyond the ESF.
These events will be organised by the participants & concentrate on autonomous action.
A Social Forum is a forum for open discussion.
In the case of the Assembly of Social Movements it's something that happens after the Social Forum officially ends where people can put forward proposals arising out of what's happened at their workshops etc.
How proposals are to be agreed on, majority, concensus etc. happens there & then. It's not governed by the Social Forum charter of principles because a Social Forum can't take decisions, it has no authority to do so.
if there's something general enough for everyone/most people to agree on then it's publicised as coming from the Assembly of Social Movements not from the Social Forum because a forum is just a forum & can't take decisions. I guess the Assembly happened so that groups could publicise what broad themes came out of the forum & build campaigns around them. The problem is that people don't tend to differentiate between the 2 & assume whatever proposals are agreed on come from "The Social Forum" therefore it must be an organisation etc. Nope. Hope that helps & someone correct any fuzzy details..
All,
the following URL starts with a summary view of whats happening at the ISF this wekend and is following by full programme, details, speakers, etc,
What is the Irish Social Forum?
What is a plenary? etc etc
Some Info Tips:
Transport:
Crèche:
Food: etc etc
please see:
http://www.irishsocialforum.org/newswire.php?story_id=22
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FYI ALSO:
Saturday Oct 9th: UCD Students Centre
7.30pm to 8pm
Workshop 20. Assembly of Social Movements Organising Meeting
Host: You.
Room: White Room
Details: This is a meeting for all those who wish to submit a proposal or motion for Sunday’s Assembly of Social Movements and to discuss ways in which the assembly will be organised.
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Their will be a Motion Idea Box on the registration table at the ISF so we can discuss these and decision making structures etc at the above workshop.
I presume we will all talk about it during Sundays ISF events in the T&G Hall and trash out some of decision making structures and motion making ways by 4pm!
- Barry.
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