Grassroots Gathering 2008, 30th May-1st June, Ireland

Call-out for GG 2008, June Bank Hol­i­day week­end 30/05/08 to 01/06/08, Dublin

The Grass­roots Gath­er­ings – an insti­tu­tion of the move­ment-build­ing seen in Ire­land post-2000 – are com­ing out of hiber­na­tion this June Bank Hol­i­day week­end in Dublin. But it won’t be quite like before…

The sto­ry so far

The upsurge in social move­ment strug­gles around the turn of the cen­tu­ry, from the streets of Seat­tle to the bar­rios of Argenti­na, from the town­ships of South Africa to the docks of South Korea, set the tone for much of the oppo­si­tion­al pol­i­tics seen in the 2000s. Draw­ing clear lines around such moments is always dif­fi­cult: estab­lish­ing when some­thing has peaked, when some­thing has hit a plateau, and when some­thing is in decline. But UK-based col­lec­tive The Free Asso­ci­a­tion cap­tured a wide­spread sense of unease regard­ing this his­tor­i­cal con­tin­u­um in sum­mer 2007 when they observed that “the ‘we are win­ning’ sen­ti­ment of the cou­ple of years fol­low­ing Seat­tle has dis­ap­peared and been replaced by, at best, head-scratch­ing and soul-search­ing. More a case of WTF than WTO…”

The social move­ments land­scape of Ire­land did not go untouched by this chain of glob­al events: we’ve had our WTO moments and more recent­ly our WTFs. From 2001 – a high­point of the inter­na­tion­al wave of strug­gle – a key local sym­bol of glob­al devel­op­ments was the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings, open get-togeth­ers for any­one who want­ed to trans­form Irish soci­ety and the world in rad­i­cal ways – ‘grass­roots’ ways, in their focus on real democ­ra­cy, and bot­tom-up meth­ods, in keep­ing with the ethos of glob­al net­work­ing bod­ies born in the turn of the cen­tu­ry moment such as Peo­ple’s Glob­al Action (PGA). Though nev­er real­ly intend­ed as organ­is­ing plat­forms, the Gath­er­ings made up a key hub of Irish move­ment-build­ing and action: reclaim­ing the streets, build­ing social cen­tres, resist­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and EU neolib­er­al­ism, the net­works formed around the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings took their place in the glob­al upris­ing against cap­i­tal­ism.

But reflect­ing the col­lapse of that ‘we are win­ning’ sen­ti­ment inter­na­tion­al­ly, the Gath­er­ings them­selves had stalled by the end of 2005. It’s not as if this marked the death of Irish anti-cap­i­tal­ism – far too many good things have hap­pened in the mean­time, and too many great peo­ple have got on board for this to be true – but the sense of dis­tance from the heady days of the ear­ly part of the decade has become stronger. Lots has changed since Seat­tle.

So why res­ur­rect the Grass­roots Gath­er­ing in 2008? Falling back on forms that have already bro­ken down, until they break down again, is a self-defeat­ing strat­e­gy. It’s what you might do when you have no strat­e­gy at all. We need a time cap­sule back to 2003 or 2004 – to a hap­py-clap­py lucky dip of the same old work­shops on the same old cam­paigns, skill-shares and alter­na­tive lifestyle ideas – like we need a hole in the col­lec­tive head.

But unless we want to wal­low in cyn­i­cism, and bail out of his­to­ry like so many bro­ken, bit­ter ex-rad­i­cals before us, what we do need — and what is more chal­leng­ing — is to cre­ate a space in which to be crit­i­cal about our mis­takes and hand­i­caps, rather than just look back on them with a bale­ful eye; to learn from them, and to start to look for­wards and out­wards.

Maybe this means admit­ting that the forces set in motion at the turn of the decade have run their course. Maybe it does­n’t. Maybe it means we can’t speak of a ‘move­ment of move­ments’ any­more. Or maybe we can. Maybe it means that the idea of a ‘Grass­roots Gath­er­ing’ is obso­lete.

But one thing it def­i­nite­ly means is this: amid the lega­cy of the turn of the cen­tu­ry moment, a polit­i­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty (and maybe even a crit­i­cal mass of peo­ple) now exists here that did­n’t exist ten years ago: one that’s com­mit­ted to rad­i­cal social change, but not trapped in the dis­mal cul de sacs of Lenin­ist, Stal­in­ist and oth­er dog­mas. What­ev­er else has hap­pened, we have bro­ken through the ‘end of his­to­ry’ of the 1990s. Our local expe­ri­ence of post-2000 anti-cap­i­tal­ism has been idio­syn­crat­ic (com­pared to wider trends, the course of Irish his­to­ry often is); with­out the same move­ment tra­di­tions to draw upon as else­where, we reached our high-points lat­er, and while some oth­er nodes in the glob­al net­work have even col­lapsed, ours has­n’t. Activists from over­seas some­times remark that the move­ment in Ire­land seems fresh and out­ward-look­ing, unbur­dened by much of the bag­gage found else­where.

It may be that our sit­u­a­tion is marked as much by oppor­tu­ni­ty as by defeat. So what are we going to do about it?

What’s hap­pen­ing?

While this Grass­roots Gath­er­ing, like past ones, retains a vital ele­ment of straight ahead ‘pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion’ – with work­shops on themes as diverse as Mil­i­tant Research and Biotech­nol­o­gy – run­ning through it are also some more focused work­shop streams.

One of those ‘streams’ looks out­wards: ‘Rad­i­cal civ­il soci­ety and the state: hopes, fears and expe­ri­ences’ is geared not so much towards the con­cerns of a typ­i­cal Grass­roots Gath­er­ing activist milieu, but towards those of com­mu­ni­ty work­ers and activists, who will join us at this Gath­er­ing, and whose strug­gles against the vicis­si­tudes of Irish soci­ety par­al­lel the goals of the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings.

Anoth­er stream looks for­wards and, to some extent, inwards: ‘Think­ing about the Grass­roots Move­ment’ takes in ses­sions on strat­e­gy; on how to cre­ate move­ment cul­tures of respect and sol­i­dar­i­ty; and on the ques­tion: across our uneven efforts to build net­works region­al­ly, nation­al­ly and glob­al­ly, who are we, any­way, and what is it that unites us?

While some work­shops are yet to be finalised, a list of con­firmed ses­sions is below. Fol­low the links for more infor­ma­tion and blurbs on work­shops and streams. Watch this space for the final timetable, com­ing soon. Fun and games through­out the week­end pro­vid­ed with help from Elec­tron­ic Resis­tance, Seom­ra Spraoi and friends.

Where?

Ground zero for GG 2008 is in the heart of Dublin’s Lib­er­ties: the build­ing’s called Casadh, and it’s at 13, New­mar­ket Square, D8. A map will be post­ed below.

Oth­er stuff

Take a look at our wish-list if you’d like to help out. We might even have a few open­ings for last minute work­shop pro­pos­als, so don’t be shy about drop­ping us a line. We hope to make Grass­roots Gath­er­ing 2008 a child-friend­ly space. We also hope to accom­mo­date any­one with spe­cial needs, so if there’s any­thing we need to know, get in touch as soon as you can.

Con­tact

grassrootsgathering08@gmail.com for all cor­re­spon­dence; or

Tel: +353 85 724 3832

Links

http://www.myspace.com/grassrootsgathering08

http://grassrootsgathering.baywords.com/

Infor­ma­tion on ses­sions and streams at:

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1…ate=1

Texts on the his­to­ry of the Grass­roots Gath­er­ings:

Lau­rence Cox, “The Grass­roots Gath­er­ings: Net­work­ing a ‘move­ment of move­ments’ ”.
http://www.wsm.ie/story/2799

Ter­ry, “A short his­to­ry of the Grass­roots Gath­er­ing”
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/73804

Ses­sions

Stream A: Rad­i­cal civ­il soci­ety and the state: hopes, fears and expe­ri­ences

(1) Rad­i­cal civ­il soci­ety and the state: hopes, fears and expe­ri­ences
(2a) What do we know?
(2b) Is what we’re doing work­ing?
(3) Ple­nary

Stream B: Think­ing about the Grass­roots move­ment (big ‘G’)

(1) Catch­ing up on who and what we are
(2) Going places: strat­e­gy and the Grass­roots move­ment
(3) Sol­i­dar­i­ty? Build­ing a healthy move­ment cul­ture

Stream C: Learn­ing about grass­roots move­ments (small ‘g’) – and every­thing else
(1) Time­line of the ‘Move­ment of move­ments’
(2) ABCs of social change
(3) Mil­i­tant Research
(4) What would it mean to win?
(5) Biotech­nolo­gies, food sov­er­eign­ty and cli­mate cri­sis
(6) Migrants in the move­ment
(7) The war against war
(8) Com­mu­ni­ty gar­den wan­der
(9) Social cen­tres net­work update
(10) The ‘gath­er­ing of gath­er­ings’: round-up from a sea­son of meets

More details and read­er at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/87693