S2B's contribution to the assembly of social movements

Susan, Alessandro, Frédéric, Marc, Alexandra, Charly (laptop)

On Saturday morning, after the campaign assembly organized by the Seattle to Brussels Network, S2B activists drafted a declaration on corporate trade and trade liberalization to be issued after the ESF by the assembly of social movements (ASM). Several meetings took place throughout the forum to prepare the ASM which will take place on Sunday morning. The “networks” (this concept is of course very vague and many “networks” are ad-hoc and self-declared by one (!) or two friend organisations) were requested to submit their proposals in writing for the assembly (mainly consisting of “declaration” on the issue of the network and “calls for actions”). It is not clear what this will finally bring about as the ASM looks to me as a totally “unregulated” process, or perhaps regulation does exist but I only a few know the rules... The question of the representativity of this ASM, as the one of the ESF EPAs (see first post on this blog), is an issue that social movements should urgently pay attention to, now, but it will never be raised if other groups than the usual ones don’t participate in the process. How does it happen today? Two expressions characterize it well I think:
- “les absents ont toujours tort” (“absents are always wrong”, meaning that if you don’t participate to a meeting, your voice will never be heard)
- “qui ne dit mot consent” (“silence is agreement”, meaning that the you need to be vocal in order to have your ideas on the agenda)