[WSIS CS-Plenary] Re: EU/Pan-European/North-American Caucuses

[Sasha Costanza-Chock]

A brief word on the discussion over EU/NA caucus: 

Not only doesn't it make much sense to combine EU/NA, it seems unclear to me
what the purpose of an NA caucus would be. The Canadian, US, and Mexican
governments are not operating as a bloc here. 

Frankly, the US gov is currently one of the prime obstacles to key civil
society positions, esp. on free/libre open source software. This is in part
because their position is basically being written by the 'committee of
business interlocutors.' There is therefore the (overdue) need for 'civil
society' in the US to get organized, generate a more progressive US
position, and pressure the US gov.

Some steps have been taken in this direction: Clemencia Rodriguez of
OURmedia/Nuestr at sMedios, Dorothy Kidd of USF, and myself (Sasha
Costanza-Chock) of Free Press media reform network and the CRIS campaign,
are creating a first draft of a 'US civil society' statement for submission
to the CS Plenary, the CS Bureau, and the US gov. This will be widely
circulated for reworking and endorsement by US groups, then launched in
early November, probably at the National Conference on Media Reform
(mediareform.net/conference).

To facilitate this process, we have created a CRIS USA mailing list open to
US CS: http://comunica.org/mailman/listinfo/crisusa_comunica.org

We invite all US CS to help us make this happen, effectively, in a very
short time.

Sasha Costanza-Chock

schock at asc.upenn.edu