Complexity and Social Movements: Multitudes at the Edge of Chaos ...

Prefiguration and emergence 31
We think that until November we will not be able to develop (as a group)
very elaborated internal demands, but we should be able to at least agree
on (1) the external demands, (2) a minimum of internal demands and
(3) a methodology of ‘distance discussion’ to keep developing demands
(external and internal) in a participative and democratic way. Direct action
is not a new contribution of the campaign; there are plenty of organisations
involved in it. The contribution of the campaign would be: (i) offering a
framework and a common platform for decentralised actions addressed to
the WTO (or the institution(s) we finally choose), as did the campaign 50
years is Enough! for the actions addressed to the World Bank and the IMF;
(ii) facilitate joint actions that one organisation wouldn’t be able to do alone.
For example, in 1999 a new negotiation round will start within the WTO. For
this date we propose preparing decentralised actions and/or a big action
to wish bad luck to the round.
B. Mutual support
This action line proposes mechanisms for bilateral and multilateral
support among the organisations involved in the campaign.
The bilateral North–South support is no novelty in itself; many
Southern organisations have cooperation agreements with NGOs in the
North, which are in general structured along development cooperation
projects. However, what we propose is another thing: it is about longterm
institutional and political support to people’s movements, a support
to the strengthening of their social and political role.
At the multilateral level the campaign should – in our opinion – offer also
support in the sense of securing the basic conditions that make international
campaigning work possible. To this aim, we propose that it includes
the access to:
1 informatic equipment and access to the internet for the organisations
lacking it,
2 training in the use of electronic mail and the internet in the cases it
is needed (already included in the programme of Rome).
These two points should to a great extent be covered by the potential
already existing in the different networks that participate in the campaign.
These networks have already built means of communication and
information spreading, and hence their participation could reduce these
needs, which would enable us to use more resources to cover other
needs.