PGA Process Working Group

The Introduction to the Process Working Group took place Sunday morning with over 25 people. The agenda items included a definition of PGA, a brief PGA history, a look at decisions that need to be taken at this PGA conference, proposals made by EuroDusnie and MRG thus far, other thoughts and ideas about the process, and general clarifications of the issues brought up.

Intro to the Process Working Group
Sunday, September 1, 2002
10:00 - 13:15

Agenda

What is PGA
History
Look at decisions that need to be taken and what has been proposed so far for the PGA European Network
Other ideas and thoughts from the group
Clarifications
Quick summery Newspaper

I. What is PGA?

PGA is not an organization, it is a network There are no members, no representatives, no one can speak for pga and pga can speak for no one.
PGA is a space for people to meet and share experiences. It is politically defined by hallmarks and there is also a manefesto.
Hallmarks
- Rejection of capitalism and the institutions of globalisation
- A rejection of domination, sexism, racism, patriarchy, etc.
- A confrontational attitude that embraces direct action and not lobbying
- A call for direct action, civil disobedience, and the creation of local alternatives
- An organisational philosophy based on decentralisation and autonomy
PGA only decides about the network itself, and not about local groups - we can decide about how to organise the conference and this role is filled by the convenor. The convenor is the only structure within pga that has a mandate to organise.
There are also support groups but they do not have a clear structure. The first meeting about support groups was held in December where convenors met and discussed the support groups. We will have to think about how to organize these at this conference and make a decision about them.
PGA also does other things that can be collective projects, such as the intercontinental caravan and global days of action, where we decide jointly and it is called out.
Tools: website of pga www.agp.org, the conference website, and a new initiative to start a global archive for notes of meetings and general outcomes of the conferences, caravan99 email general list - caravan99@lists.riseup.net, but it is not completely clear, as there is also an email list for convenors and support groups.

II. History of PGA

Started in 1998 - focused on opposing free trade and commercialism, 300 people from 74 countries met and worked out a basic structure of PGA, the first global day of action at first WTO conference, actions at Geneva and Birmingham
Just after the convenor meeting it was decided to have intercontinental caravan in June 99 to bring groups and people from global south. This created some of the basic network of PGA.
Also planned to have a global day of action against financial centers in June 1999. A huge action tool place in England, but there were also actions in many others places.
Had the next global conference in Bangor India in 1999 - decided to focus more broadly - not only on neoliberalism, but also capitalism
Decided to have global days of action around WTO meeting in Seattle and May Day 2000
Also involved in mobilisation against IMF/World Bank in Praha in Sept 2000
First European PGA meeting in Milano
Sept 2001 - latest global PGA conference in Cochabamba in Bolivia - most importantly decided that all groups would have autonomy to work on what they want and therefore the hallmarks and manifesto changed slightly
Many groups have been involved in PGA so far.

III. Decisions that need to be taken and what has been proposed so far PGA European Network presented by someone speaking for EuroDusnie

Decision 1: Who will be the convenor for the next conference, what is the convenor, do we want to have a convenor?
Decision 2: communication tools - European conferences, European website, and European email lists - do we want to keep it this way or change it especially as related to conference do we want to have them each year, 2 years, etc
Decision 3: Support groups- there was is no approved structure, but there were proposals from December to create support groups for 1.finaces, 2.communication tools, 3.global contacts, 4.european conferences

Many proposals: EuroDusnie, MRG, and maybe more? Proposals will be published in newspaper, but in the end we will have to make a final decision at the plenary meeting.
EuroDusnie wants to make sure a decision will be made so they want to have the consensus in the three days to develop the proposal through the meetings and the conference newspaper, and then ratify the proposal with ¾ majority b/c they are afraid of discussion in a three hour plenary
Others disagree with voting and want consensus in plenary

Question - There was something about global contacts that the note-taker did not catch

Comment - there is one other proposal that is not in paper, it involves more local meetings and decentralisation, and then a delegate structure that would send regional delegates to the European structure [I am not quite sure if I got all of this right] This could get more people involved, prevent from big plenaries, and [something I missed].

IV. Other ideas and thoughts from the group

Eurodusnie Proposal

Convenors - best is dual convenorship, build structure to pass knowledge, convenorship should last two years - for example one would organise a conference, then choose a new convenor, the new convenor organises the next conference with the old group there to help.
Communication tools -
- action announcements
- strategy and tactical list
- convenor list
- general list for al people doing support work
Conferences should have a definitive date every year so people can better organise for them and prepare
Technical support groups
- have one technical support email list so they are not split up

MRG Comment

The fact that the structure was already strictly defined beforehand about how to talk about the process was not good. MRG has proposed a fourth point for decision as a part of this - talking about PGA as a global network (not about how PGA Europe relates to other PGA outside of Europe) They don’t want to loose the spirit of PGA as a global network - this is especially important for the Spanish State, as they have lots of contacts in Latin America. They question if we going to open this process and make a decision about which issues we will talk about or is it closed?

MRG Proposal

The specific proposal will be in newspaper, so he will talk about it generally
Support Group: technical differences between what EuroDusnie proposed for the support group, but wont talk about it here
Convenors - also two, but one should focus on the European conference and network and one on global contacts and networks, focus on more of a concrete definition of what convenors should do. Also think that the role of the convenor should be discussed, and that the convenor should be there to circulate ideas and proposals and provide communication between ideas, but not to actually create proposals themselves.
Subdivide Europe into different regions, and then each region would have their own process and convenor to give more strength to the local level

Other Proposals or Ideas? [each bullet should be one person]

Why a European framework for this conference, why not a more local structure and then related directly to the global?
PGA used to exist in eastern Europe, there is nothing PGA related in Czech, but in Russia there is a network of 5 groups that want to have an autonomous network
Again, an advocate for more local organisation
We should have local, European, and global networks
Wants to clarify how we can improve our support for Latin America
Improve local level and circulation of information from local levels
Level of motivation locally would depend on how open the process is and how consensualised. He thinks consensus is very important.
Not to make too much of a structure and make sure organisation and information is decentralised
We can come and go as we want, no need to make decisions [note-taker did not completely understand]
We should balance between the need to coordinate and bureaucracy, we should try to improve coordination, but we should be aware to not go too far.
Does not want to participate in voting here at all, as locally they have a commitment to the consensus process
It seems that there are two levels of thought - local and european levels, structure should reflect ideas of how localities can strengthen each other. And also, bulletin to distribute info non-electronically, but this should be combined with ideas of how to finance this
It should be flexible, certainly not to create a bureaucratic structure, the reason why pga first started was to create a global network structure to interact. Also, it is important to outreach to groups that do not use the web, email and who cannot even read, so maybe we should see how we can use a radio structure.
Decentralisation - decentralise pga, find 10 or so groups across Europe to make meetings (does not have to be based upon borders) people would go to the nearest meeting, all regional meetings would talk about the same thing, and then each meeting would send delegates to a european level meeting, local decisions should be made locally
Change will be necessary in order that pga survives as a workable structure, but s(he) is still suspicious of change, PGA’s weakness has always been its strength also, as this has allowed us to avoid domination even if we are extremely effective this could serve to make issues of the global south invisible and until now we have focused on making it visible. S(he) is suspicious of local pga networks, as it should be the local groups that work and have their own face so effectively PGA should be invisible and does not work as an organisation but as a spirit that encourges new ideas, for example in Prague- although the idea to plan the Prague demos came out of pga, INPEG was formed out of the local situation and had the face for the local situation - it did not have to be pga organising the demo, also likes the idea of rotating the convenorship as EuroDusnie proposed and making it easier, while still finding a way to make it more transparent for new people to get involved
Decision making - consensus is the most important, but we should find a way to deal with blocks, make sure information is spread to local networks, through email distribution lists, but to also move beyond like to radio or video. It is also important to connect struggles from north and south and show the richness of southern struggles.
Issue of visibility, good to have invisibility, but still we need to be visible to get people to become a part of the PGA network - if we just say well we have a meeting every two years and take a look at the website it does not do much, so how can we walk this balance? Ideological framework of PGA - are we focused too much on actions? maybe we know what we are against but don’t have a clear idea of what we are for. We should start an exchange on alternatives and what we are for on the global level.
PGA does have an identity… something about PGA becoming some label… [note-taker cannot remember the rest]
The local level is very important and it is also important to avoid a top-down approach, so as not to promote pga as a label, but rather the hallmarks at the local level and practicing them in a collective search process - find ways like “preguntando caminamos”. It is clear that we need to improve the structure that we have and broaden the access to the support group in accordance with the hallmarks, without becoming bureaucratic.
Level of organisation -the conference is mandated to organise on the european scale, in terms of connectivity with other regions that is a strategy question - there is nothing that prevents people from organising on the local level, examples of Israel, if only one group volunteers that can facilitate email, web, and conferences it is better than none - which we saw in Milano, you can organise what you have. there is no point to talk about what we will do when we are thousands, s(he) thinks there are four or five serious stable groups in pga, there should be two levels - a groups responsible for convenor tasks for the conference, and then have other groups responsible for the coordination of the other tasks - they do not have to do themselves, but rather coordinate them. This would give us accountability and transparency, decision making - to adopt consensus decision making it is clear that we must consense to consensus. But the reverse is not true - if there is voting, the people that are for consensus can stand aside, if there is a time limit and it is important for people to decide for this maybe we can use a 75% support
All of the time people are calling for formal structure, s(he) is very suspicious of structure, structures cannot substitute a local movement, rather than develop structures we need to develop at the local level. Does not want to have a ___ between global and local structure, we had a lot of good experiences with global actions, but now we need to put it back on the floor, we need to connect the rest of the world and the global level with the local level and the continent we are limited in our experiences, and there is a need for a local level, a european level, and a global level. our target is not to be efficient because this is a capitalist word and thinking. The system we fight tries to destroy human connections and behavior, we need friendships and personal relationships not business relationships.
Does not want a process for how to talk about and how to discuss thing - finds it boring, the pga meeting is about meeting people, seeing people, and hearing dreams and visions and that is it. Whatever will come out will come out of it.
The way we discuss things and the way we make decisions are important and the way we come together to make collective decisions and process are more important than strategies - process is fundamental not boring. In terms of decision making, maybe the most important problem now is not consensus versus voting, but rather how we talk about things. S(he) introduces their proposal of a spokes council idea for the final plenary. Meet in groups of 20 people and discuss ideas and proposals and then meet in a spokes council meeting. Decentralised pga does not conflict with the global or european level, we need to enforce our human relations.
PGA should not be top heavy, but we should make sure that whatever process, structures, and communication we do have should be transparent and open. Nice to talk about local work, but from this meeting we cannot mandate that people do local work, but we can build better communication and relationships between us all working locally.

V. Clarifications

Does not want different mailing lists for each issue
Clarify that when we talk about convenors at the regional and european level, we are not talking about structures but just communication
Convenors have concrete proposals and tomorrow we should try to address those rather than get bigger and bigger and more abstract.
When talking about decentralisation it is not about creating lots more local structure, but making it all decentralised. Consensus should be taken seriously, and maybe it is better to not make any decisions here if we do not have the space and time to properly consense to anything.
Should not talk about this now, but it is not the same thing working on something and taking a decisions, consensus is a process not only a decision.

Quick Summary for Newspaper

More about PGA and its history can be found in this paper as well as on the website. While only one person from EuroDusnie was present, their proposal was presented and can be found in the first conference newspaper. MRG's proposal will be printed in this paper, but they also expressed criticism at the strictly pre-defined structure for the process debate that has shaped how we discuss these issues.

Additionally there were many other thoughts that came from people outside of EuroDusnie and MRG. They included a strong sentiment that people have a commitment to the process of how we work together rather than being overly concerned about efficiency (which is a capitalist concept in itself.) To this end there was a strong but not unanimous support for consensus.

Many people acknowledged that change in the PGA process is necessary in order to survive as a workable structure, people were still suspicious of change, especially as related to defining more structures and PGA visibility, which may not only lead to bureaucratic tendencies but also to domination and centralizsation.

As such there were several proposals to decentralise the European PGA process into regional conferences which would send delegates to a European conference. The European conference would then send delegates to the international PGA conference. There were many variations on this, but they all seem to highlight that such a process would allow for greater participation and access to information on the local level which can make the European level more transparent.

Top

PGA Process Working Group
Monday September 2, 2002
10:00 am -

Things that we want decisions on

Convenor
- discuss structure of this
- depending on the above, maybe also choose new one(s)
Communication
Email list
Website
Decentralisation and regionalisation
Support Groups
Global Contacts – relation with global pga network
Visibility – current status and if decisions will be taken about it
Decision making process either during conferences or with in pga in general
Clarify PGA’s abiliy to initiatiate actions or if t is just a network for communication?
Final plenary, and its decision making

Keep in mind through the entire process the issue of coordination versus structure.

Prioritise Issues to Talk About

Issue of how to decide about the final plenary was raised as one of the most important topics to decide here, but there were to objections to this. Firstly, we should get a more concrete idea of what needs to be decided before we can know how to discuss this in the plenary. Secondly, the issue was raised that this is not the space to decide how the entire group will decide. To this though it was recommended that this space can develop a concrete recommendation to take to the plenary to make it easier for the entire group.
Another proprosal from many people that we should try to look at the content and concrete things that should be decided first as otherwise it is empty, and especially since all (even EuroDusnie) are okay with using consensus for this meeting.
Concrete Proposal: first do a quick round of how we make decisions here, go over concrete points, and then decision making in final plenary.
Facilitator pointed out that all here have already stated that we agree with consensus, there was a test to see if anyone disagrees, one person disagreed.
Then it was proposed that we try to have consenus on proposals, but we take all proposals to the final plenary – even the ones that we did not have consensus on. This was consensed!!!!!!!!
Facilitator proposed to talk first about decentralisation, and then the rest.

20 minute coffee break

Decentralisation/Regionalisation

Presntation of the idea – structure pga within europe in muh the same way that it broken up with world regional areas – like pga eastern europe, western europe, etc
Thinks it looks more like centralisation rather than decentralisation, as it limits the individual’s contact with other people from other regions outside of one’s own.
Clarification that MRG’s proposal was just a guide for discussion and it does not have to be this way exactly, but the ideas was to divide europe into 3 zones with convenors in each zone but with only one role to distribute and circulate the information. The other idea is that these would be a contact point to facilitate circulation of information. MRG believes that this would allow us to reach to more people locally. There would also still be a European convenor. But each region and even sub-regions would have contact people. Meetings – is there a meeting in each regions? ????????
Other idea is two european convenors one to be a contact point and one to organise the meetings
What can people spread and why contact points if we dont know how visible pga can be?
L- what kind of structures to hook up with the network do we create and what kind of visibility do we give to solve these problems that were critiqued over the last year (more can be found in conference paper debates…) It seems that anti authoritarian groups have used to deal with this problem is either no one speaks for the network or everyone can speak for the network in relation to some specific agreed upon points. It seems that in creating local points we want to make pga clearly more visible, so what If we start giving pga more visibility it will could to create problems with bureaucracy and repression – we should really discuss this.
What is the point about visibility as to him it seems like it is rather this is an issue of dynamics.
Wants to sepparate visibility and legitisimation – they are not the same.
Regional proposal – point of it would be to get regions more close and to coordinate in campaign ways across regions (for example the issue of water) Practically, some regions have the capacity to create a local contact points, ect, but not all regions do. So why cant we let the regions that do have the desire to do so, do it, and those that can’t or don’t want to, dont have to.
In Switzerland they already are delegated regionally – for example from one area they sent delegates to this meeting that they decided upon themselves, so it does not make sense to over structure this regional structure as they already have it themsleves.
Thought that maybe there should be national convenor groups
It is important that often we confuse visibility with a name, what is important about pga is a way of working and reaching out to society. If we do that within our own communities then that is creating visibility.
It is true that maybe you can focus on your own region, but pga is based upon interest points and the manifesto which bring us together in a way that we have not come together before. If s(he) were to organise pga regionally then it would not do this due to regional political boundaries and only certain groups would get involved. But with a non labled pga the way it is now that does not have a formalised political structure, then it has the chance to bring together people that would not normally talk together in their own region. The example of Italy was discussed.
We could have pga contact groups (collectives or individuals) serving as only an info point. They should never speak about pga but only pass info like the hallmarks. If it were this way, he would have no problem with lots of pga contact points.
We cannot decide this for everyone as in some areas people cannot or do not want to regionalise, but maybe we can say that if regionalisation is appropriate for the area they can do so as desired
People want more visibility and contact points, but they don’t want more structures. So he thinks this would mean that people would do their own work but sometime do pga things – like they could have a pga regional meeting but with no decision making status. The local contact points can serve as a part of the support groups. Because what the convenors have experienced is that you can organise a conference, but it is very hard to contact people across Europe on the local level. On the MRG proposal point 2, rather than divide europe into 3 regions and say that we have to regionalise these areas, you can chose to regionalise discussons if you want, but without representation.
Clarification that we really need to find a way to incorporate local groups that would like to be a part of pga but cannot travel to an international conference in order to get involved.
It is not only a question of what kind of convenorship we are establishing, but we find a way to develop structures that can strengthen us with our campaigns. This is more important than regionalisation. It should be issues that are visible and not the structures.
Feels like proposed changes suggested we have already been doing. We should NOT to use the pga label in work we do at home in terms of political positions, and we should NOT use the pga label in terms of action (unless there are campaigns that are speacifically endorsed by all of pga.) But we can use the pga label to organise local or regional meetings and we can use the pga label when you are acting as a contact point for pga. We can, in these cases, speak about pga in reference to its manifeto, hallmarks, history, and outcomes of conferences.
Do we even want pga to call for actions and campaigns?

Working Toward a Proposal for Decentralisation

Local contact points but they work in their own name not pga as the label of ‘a pga group’ (ie EuroDusnie does work for pga, but not only pga)
They could organise regional meetings but there is no representative structure coming from these meetings
It would function to spread information, to discuss proposals of other groups in relation to European Conference, and to formulate proposals that can be discussed at the European Conference. But these
In order to be PGA info points they just have to say so and do so autonomously (and be in line with pga hallmarks and manifesto), they do not have be chosen by the pga plenary. But the groups that are info point should be transparent and at the conferences there should be a meeting of info points and groups interested in becoming info points.
Moved to later - All of these local points together would be the European support groups, and open transfer between these groups would be through an email list.

Comments/Clarifications

It is not that these info points have the only right to use pga name, but they would facilitate the exchange of information of all people identifying themselves in an area as pga.
What is the relationship between these meetings and the european conference, and maybe this links to how we can get rid of the plenary oranisation in the conference.
The point of support groups being formed only by all info points seems to still allow the current organisation problems with support groups.
It could happen that info points will not say that they want to be info points here and then we will end up with the same old hidden structure and can have groups that represent themselves as info points but do not opperate according to pga hallmarks– response that there is responsibility locally that groups that know each other can say that this group who has exclaimed itself as an info point is not in accord with pga hallmarks. Another response is that which groups are info point should be transparent and at the conferences there should be a meeting of info points and groups interested in becomming info points.

Transparency ?

Agenda proposed by facilitators for 2nd session

National regional geography of groups
- legitimacy
- “constituting”
regional conference
mechanisms there are for constituting an infopoint. Rotating ? Recalling in case of troubles ? etc
- framework
support groups
role of convenors (not deciding who…)
what kind of communication tools needed to do what.
Decision making process left for tomorrow ?
Disc about eurpoean conference tomorrow

Infopoints

Infopoints to be defined according to the existing groups and networks already involved in the PGA process, not a design imposed by this meeting. No predetermined geogaphy of the infopints distribution.

Infopoint to decide if they act for one country, one region etc
We should take the dynamic of decentralisation as an experiment.

Infopoints should not necessarily based around geographical areas, but should be more seen around political spectrums they reach.

Legitimacy of the infopints:

Infopoints can call for regional conference ???

can use the PGA lable in order to convene a meeting
can use the PGA label in order to network, talk about the history, the results of the European conference, etc But non representation.
discussion still open: which actions / campaigns can be carried out in the name of PGA. For later on.

example of the booklet published in London a few years ago, title “inspired by PGA” of publication to illustrate the point.

Some people say there shouldn’t be this kind of publications, rather publication / articles etc within concrete campaign without using PGA label.
Infopoints will need somehow agitprop materials PGA labelled if they are suposed to inform and network.
I.e people are calling for a “PGA UK gathering”. We should be able to give visibility the PGA process without representing it.
We are basically reaffirming the practice we have been doing in the past.

Wording

The PGA Infopoints can give visibility to the PGA process without representing it. They can convene regional meetings, produce articles publications, can network and inform interested people “inspired by PGA” without aiming to represent the network. (PGA has no membership, so the infopoints are not members, nor representatives of PGA.)

Questions and concerns to be clarified:

How do you become an infopint ?
Should they be physical spaces? or just email addresses? both?
What does the coordination look like ?
Label “infopoint” ? is it the correct label.
Limitations to the infopints ?

Consitution of infopoints:

European conference shouldn’t “choose” the infopoints.

Proposal:

If the groups fit with the hallmarks and want to do it, they should announce publicly that they’d like to be infopoint.
What do we do if a group does not fit the hallmarks ? Who will decide about ‘you can become one you cannot become one’. Can every group anyone just declare itself supporting the hallmarks and create an infopoint?
There should be a way of recalling a problematic infoshop.
Before constituting an infopoint there should be a regional meeting or process first. (Problems for instance with groups that consider themselves supporting the hallmarks but do not act accordingly) ? Italy, Ireland people consider it as not possible.
We shouldn’t impose the way of how these infopoints will be constituted. Regional dynamics will know what the best ways to go about are, no matter what the European conference decides.

Summary:

PGA has no membership.
No one speaks in the name of PGA.
We call everyone identifying with the hallmarks to give visibility to the PGA process (regional gatherings, act as infopoints, produce publications…) without representing it and without being a member.

support groups

Eurodusnie proposal plus cncers

The European support group’s communication tool:
ED proposes to have one list to which all the technical working groups have access, to which working groups give reports about their work. (see ED proposal).
People joining the support work have to support and act according to the hallmarks.
There should be moments to physically meet when you join the support group, ideally during the pga conference.
We agree there should be one main list. (consensus)
N: the convenors organise the European conference.
The convenor can call for 1,2,3 meetings where them and the people that want to support the tasks can join. We should clarify role of convenor and talk about sup group in relation to it.

Convenor

Comment: We should know more clearly what the role of the convenor should be and what the European meetings should be about. Given the large amount of work we should consider lowering the role of the convenors

ED proposal (see paper) : convenors A(1+2?) stop and support convenors B(1+2?), convenors B stop and supports new convenor C etc passing on information.

At least one.

Co convenors along the ED - MRG model
Shouldn’t be a diffuse group but a group that clearly takes on the task.
In addition to the 2 convenors, one convenor to take the role of maintenance (website, lists….) helped by a support group
MRG: proposal for basis for discussion without defending it to death
Proposal
1. convenor deals with communication of european network and orga of conference
2. convenor to deal with the relation to the global network. One of the reasons to
3. (??convenor working on the maintainance of the network ??)

comment: leave the door open for convenors that organise the conference to do the job with other groups if they want, need it and if it makes sense.

3 main convenor tasks – roles - needs

Global contacts (Global networking – work with convenors from other continents)
organisatio of the European conference
the European networking + the maintenance of infrastructures (including finances?)

Convenors or international working group taking over these tasks ? Who ? Rotation ?
We have to ensure the experience and contacts are passed on to everybody taking on convenorship work.
Working groups should be open and transparent
During European conferences we should have open working groups preparing input for the global conference.

Include in newspaper invite groups intersted to take over tasks to come to the meeting tomorrow.

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PGA Process Working Group Intro - Sunday, September 1, 2002