[fse-esf] Report on ESF-5 mobilisation

[Tord Bj ö rk]

Report on ESF-5 mobilisation from Tord Björk, coordinator of NOC contact
Group for Europe and the World and EPA European mobilisation group, 7.3
2005.

The mobilisation is structured in three dimensions, general, geographic and
movements. At the general level both mechanical ways to contact people with
the help of email and internet are gradually expanding. There are problems
with the total capacity and the balance between different tasks to fully
support mobilisation from NOC and European working groups and staff. The
European mobilisation groups is fairly passive cointrary to the European
programme group. Tendencies exists in diverging interests concerning
resources for moblisation between different CEE needs and web page needs. To
little or nothing is done outside Nordic countries to help fund-raising to
the solidarity fund. Geograhically there is full mobilisation nowhere yet
but many countries in Eastern and Western Europe ar well ahead while some
lagg behind and in some few countries no contacts exists at all.
Mobilisation tours primarily in CEE countries but also Southern Europe have
proven to be usful new tools in the mobilisation, hopefully also caravans to
ESF can enlarge the impact. Concerning mobilisation in movements the picture
is not yet clear but the contact group put special effort in mobilising new
groups as Romani people, Sami people and other organisations working with
indigenous interests. Other groups with earlier fairly low participation are
now well advanced like environmentalists, peasants and EU-critical
movements. Youth participation is also promoted by many movements as trade
unions, peasants, environmentalists, radical pacifists and anticapitalists.

General mobilisation

The different organisations and persons responsible for producing
information material as a common ESF-5 invitation and EPA newsletters and
CEE-ESF mobilisation news now regularly produce useful material for the
mobilisation. To our knowledge there still lacks a plan for how different
groups should jointly produce updating material but groups like the
programme group and Contact group for Europe and the world are now capable
of producing such news. A meeting to coordinate such efforts takes place
this weekend in Malmö. There are some problems with getting translations
done. 

5 000 addresses to organisations that have organised seminars at earlier ESF
have been sent with the help of Marco Berlinguer to the NOC office. The
Association for knowledge on Activism and popular movements have produced
email lists to relevant Nordic organisations but there is still gaps to be
filled. More email lists are useful as more and more written material can be
sent.

Three Web pages (fse-esf.org, esf2008.org and openesf.net) and esf email
lists still have some problems but are gradually developing. Facebook is
used as an additional web tool for mobilisation. We have now reached more
than 900 people saying that they will attend on facebook and more than 1300
saying that they maybe will attend, mainly from Nordic countries.

There are some problems with the total capacity of the Nordic and European
organizational strength and the balance between different needs. The NOC
office has just started to work and it is still hard to estimate how much
the office and its staff can do. The NOC European Contact Group has
developed well both in its internal decision making structure and due to a
decentralised network helping with different tasks but also here the work
load all done by volunteers somewhat exceeds the capacity for both carrying
out daily routines and making strategic initiatives to support the
mobilisation.

Especially there is problems with getting help from outside the Nordic
countries in Western Europe concerning both mobilisation initiatives and
support for CEE-participation. This is combined with new competing financial
needs with the risk of getting the main focus on support for the solidarity
fund diverted to the need of support for CEE participation at EPA in Kiev
and the yet not existing funds for openesf.net. The EPA European
mobilisation group is to a large extent passive. While it has been hard to
gather interest for strategising concerning mobilisation and fund-raising
more effort has been put into the European programme group. A way to deal
with this inbalance is to call for a European mobilisation and fund-raising
meeting to take place in connection to the European programme meeting in
Malmö 27.4. At the moment the seriousness of the EPA decision to prioritise
CEE-participation can be questioned as no fund-raising to our knowledge has
taken place outside the Nordic countries to the solidarity fund in spite of
earlier promises made at earlier EPA meetings and only 1/3 of the travel
costs for CEE-participants at the EPA meeting in Berlin was repayed.

The EPA meeting in Berlin was very useful for all kinds of mobilisation
contacts in all of Europe. Politically the EPA meeting showed little
sensivity in regard to both the political inteterest among CEE movements to
oppose rigth-wing extremism as a theme in the program and European feminists
concerns regarding the church influence on state politics effecting womens
lifes.

Geographic mobilisation

The levels of mobilisation in different countries can be cathegorised in
five steps. Since the last mapping of the geographic mobilisation was made
by the European Contact group some countries have made advances, this is
sometimes due to that they already had started doing things but did not tell
us and in other cases due to new activities:

Level 5, National mobilisation committee(s) or subregional committees for
many parts of the country exists and mobilisation plans are carried out with
the help of relevant organisations and media:

Nowhere yet.

Level 4, National mobilisation committee(s) exists and have started
mobilisation activities and plans for collective transport or other forms of
joint efforts: 

Austria, Belarus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway,
Romania, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine.

Level 3, Interested national or subregional organisations exists, have made
some mobilisation efforts and have fairly active contacts with NOC:

Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Latvia, Russia,
Slovenia, Spain.

Level 2, Interested organisations exists and there are a few contacts made:

Cyprus, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal,
Slovakia, Switzerland, UK.

Level 1, No active contacts:

Albania, Bosnia and Hercegovina, Iceland, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta,
Montenegro, Serbia.

If you have information about the mobilisation in your country or contacts,
please inform us!

To enlarge the mobilisation NOC contact group has started mobilisation
tours. Prioritised has been primarily two regions according to EPA decision
in September, most important CEE countries but also Southern Europe to
maintain a high interest for ESF in this region. In the autumn
representatives from the NOC contact group made visits to Milano, Torino
(Tord Björk) and other parts of Italy and to Poland (Maria Hagberg) while
also Brazil and Peru was visited (Azril Bacal). In February Tord Björk made
a Central European tour to Prague, Budapest, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Bratislava,
Cracow, and Warsaw. Azril Bacal went to Malaga, Seville, Madrid and Lisbon.
In March Laura Tuominen and three other Finnish people together with
Immanuel Wallerstein goes to Estonia and the Finns also go to Latvia.
Finnish plans are also to go to Russia and others will go more times to the
Iberian peninsula. The Northern Italian tour is reported in Swedish on the
esfNorden list, the Central European tour on the fse-esf list.

The mobilisation tours have had larger impact than was planned. They have
both worked to enlarge the interest in prioritised countries but also in new
groups. More countries have stated their interest in NOC visits: Belarus,
Bulgaria, Greece and Ukraine. Other countries have shown interest in helping
to reach out to regions with little contacts to enable new mobilisation
tours with the help of Croatian, Slovenian, Italian and Greek contacts in
post-Yugoslavia. It has also been seen as a positive new mobilisation effort
in the ESF process not systematically used before inspiring mobilisation in
general.

Systematic mobilisation efforts in Sweden lagged behind. Now a long
country-wide mobilisation tour will be organised in May from Malmö to Kiruna
in the North, a distance as long as between Malmö and Marseille, Florence,
Belgrade, Kiev or Moscow.

Efforts are now taken to organise caravans to ESF as part of the
mobilisation effort. The inspiration comes much from the US Social Forum
2007. Evnriomentalists discuss to organise bike tours and bus tours from
toher countries can stop during their way to Malmö to make activities during
the way.

Movement mobilisation

NOC contact group has not yet a good picture of mobilisation in all
movements. Attempts are now being made to have contact persons for each
European movement that gives and recieves information about the moblisation
efforts in their movement. Further activities are welcome to strengthen
different movements in their efforts to bring participants to ESF-5.

The main priority of the NOC contact group is to reach out to new groups
including such movements that have a declining or not yet very strong
participation.

One such group is Romani people. Here many contacts have been made in
different parts of Europe to significantly increase the presence of this
group in ESF.

Another are indigenous people. Also here active contacts have been made with
Sami people organisations, organisations working to support indigenous
peoples and inviting zapatistas and if possible other indigenous movements
from Latin America.

North-South solidarity movements are mobilising well. 15 Latin American
organisations have joined their interests in Sweden and have links to
similar movments in other countries. Work have also started in relation to
other continents.

EU-critical organisations in Scandinavia are cooperating to influence the
programme.

Groups that have had low participation earlier is the environmental movement
and peasants. Here the Contact group in the begining made some efforts but
soon these movements themsleves have started considerbale new efforts in
coordinating the mobilisation through the joint newsletter Prodemokratia and
other means.

A common priority is to have more youth participation. This has taken great
steps the last month, mainly thanks to interests among movements themselves.
Stronger youth participation or youth camps are now in preparation both
among trade unionists, Via Campesina, environmentalists, radical pacifists
and anticapitalists.

Student organisations is in the beginning of being mobilised by the contact
group.

Feminists, trade unions, popular education organisations, social forum
coalitions and other movements previously active is also now mobilising.

There are new groups that so far have been very little addressed as
religious organisations.

Transversal moblisation also takes place, e.g. environmentalists, peasants,
antiracists, third world solidarity and others jointly inviting the
zapatistas.

Action oriented initiatives are also taken partly autonomous from ESF among
radical pacifists, anticapitalists and others.


Please feel free to send comments, corrections and additional information
to:


Tord Björk

Coordinator, 
Contact group for Europe and the World, Nordic Organizing Committee ESF 2008

Finlandsgatan 2
291 31 Kristianstad
Sverige/Suede/Sweden
Tel: +46 (0)44 12 32 94 (evenings, sometimes am Monday-Tuesday)

E-mail: tord.bjork at mjv.se (best way for contacts)

Nordic Organizing Committee: esf2008 at gmail.com, www.esf2008.org