[WSIS CS-Plenary] seattle/geneva

[Sasha Costanza-Chock]

I don't mean this as a personal attack, so please don't take it that way 
- it's just that I think there's an important discussion we need to have 
immediately. I'm frankly dismayed that any of us would continue to fall 
into the trap of setting ourselves as 'good' alternative voices who 
write documents, against the 'unruly' alternative voices, violent 
protestors (or even...'terrorists'...) who fight police.

Are we so ignorant of history? This has always been the tactic employed 
by those in power: split dissent into 'moderates' and 'radicals,' offer 
the moderates a place at the table, then crush the 'radicals' while the 
moderates look the other way...and happily ignore the timid suggestions 
of the moderates.

Before I go further, I'll clarify that I am speaking as someone who 
truly supports the CS Plenary process, has been involved on the 'inside' 
since the first preparatory meeting, who has spent large chunks of time 
over the past two years drafting documents of all kinds - suggested 
changes to governmental language, sentences for civil society language, 
and statements from 'outside' events. I have also, during the past two 
years, spent time on the streets over these same issues - and when our 
rights to free speech and peaceful assembly were violated, as in Cancun 
and in Miami, I have stood with my brothers and sisters from North and 
South, farmers, workers, indigenous, men and women, young and old, and 
together with them have, when necessary, fought with the police.

Now, geneva is not cancun, and the WSIS is not the WTO. But there are 
some quite simple, highly relevant political lessons that have been 
widely discussed and adopted by the global justice movement but seem 
unknown in the WSIS civil society process:

- avoid the 'in/out' dichotomy.
To realize our aims requires people working inside the official process, 
people working to expose the faults and flaws of the official process, 
and people working to develop parallel/alternative/autonomous proposals. 
The greatest victories come when all work closely together, and the 
greatest defeats when they are set against one another.

- power concedes nothing without a threat.
CS delegates have made repeated references to requirements that were not 
met. For example, there was no space for organizing within the palexpo; 
a physical space 'owned' by and always available for CS Plenary meeting 
was absent. Documents were rarely translated on time. Our access was 
limited, our voices were not heard. All of these - and much more, of 
substance - could have been obtained quite easily by making an organized 
demand at any point up to (or even, most likely, during) the Summit. I 
say this with certainty since I was part of the team from Geneva03 that 
obtained a wonderful space for the Polimedia lab, after the first space 
was shut down by police. How did we do it? Simple: a clear demand backed 
by a threat. We said "we've been planning for months, and now you shut 
our space down. Unless we have access to an accessible space with high 
bandwidth internet and free printing by tomorrow, we will do disruptive 
actions inside Palexpo." Voila. At 7 am the next day we were inside the 
Paladium and fibre-optic cable had been laid to provide us with more 
bandwidth than 200 multimedia activists could fill. (Incidentally, this 
is how we will achieve 'Universal Access': not 'Public Private 
Partnership' but organized demands).

Now, I am not saying that CS Plenary necessarily needs to threaten to do 
spectacular disruptive actions when its demands are not met (though I 
personally can think of many situations in which this would be 
important). But regardless of the form of the symbolic action, the 
leverage held by CS delegates working inside this process is not 
insignificant: CS participation grants legitimacy to what is actually a 
top-down, non-participatory process. The threat of withdrawal, rather 
than floating as a vague fear in the background, is a political tool 
that we need to seize and utilize between here and Tunis. We need a list 
of minimum demands, which if not met, mean our withdrawal and quite 
frankly the collapse of the process.

So I propose that this be high on our agenda post-geneva: in taking the 
decision between the competing proposals (continue as before; boycott 
Tunis; etc. etc.) it is fundamental that we develop a common 
understanding of our minumum demands, make them concrete in a written 
document and deliver them publicly, along with a clear picture of what 
happens if they are met/not met.

Sasha Costanza-Chock