Tenth Grassroots Gathering to take place in Rossport Solidarity Camp

mayo | environment | news report Tuesday August 09, 2005 01:30 by Terry - Rossport Solidarity Camp room101ucg at yahoo dot co dot uk

Details of the Tenth Grassroots Gathering, a big get together due to happen at Rossport Solidarity Camp on August 27th and 28th.

Since the winter of 2001 Nine Grassroots Gatherings have taken place in Ireland, with discussion and organisation around a wide range of issues.
Each one takes place in a different city from the last and is organised by a different group of people from the last. Grassroots Gatherings have taken place in Limerick, Galway, Dublin, Cork, and Belfast.

The Tenth Grassroots Gathering is to take place in Rossport Solidarity Camp on the weekend of the 27th and 28th of August. For details of how to get there visit:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70581

This Grassroots Gathering is to have a very specific theme.

That theme is local community campaigns, that is, situations similar to that in Rossport and the surrounding areas.

To reiterate the theme is locally based popular struggles of “ordinary people”, the theme is not environmental activism.

This is not a judgement on the value of various issues but a recognition that Rossport type situations have a particular nature different from “activist” dominated social movements and it is those struggles we wish to dedicate this Gathering to and from which we wish to learn from.

The Gathering has no cover charge and will take place over two days. Food is provided by the Bitchin' Kitchen Cooking Collective.

Remember accomadation is in tents and you are in Ireland, come equiped.

The format for the first day is workshops, that is a small number of speakers giving a ten to fifteen minute talk followed by open discussion.

The workshops will consist of people from local community campaigns talking about the different tactics, forms of organisation, and methods they have used in their campaigns rather than a concentration on the issues.
There will also be some skills share workshops.

The format for the second day is plenary, that is open discussion around a particular theme.
In this case the theme is to be how can different local community campaigns support each other and how can green/left activists support them.

Speakers have been invited on the following topics/from the following groups (some are to be confirmed):
Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment aka CHASE (involved in campaigning against incineration), anti-nuclear protest camps in West Germany in the ‘80s, contempory anti-pylons groups, Galway for a Safe Environment (involved in campaigning against incineration). More to follow.

The Tenth Grassroots Gathering is to be the culmination of the Solidarity Week at the camp, which begins on Monday August 22nd. More details to follow very shortly.
For more details of the Gathering phone Terry at: 086 1682416, for more details of the Solidarity Week phone Tracey at: 087 6543425

Or e-mail [email protected]

The grassroots gatherings have aimed towards a network which would:

Be based on the principle that people should control their own lives and work together as equals, as part of how we work as well as what we are working towards.

Within the network this means rejecting top-down and state-centred forms of organisation (hierarchical, authoritarian, expert-based, Leninist etc.). We need a network that's open, decentralised, and really democratic.

Call for solutions that involve ordinary people controlling their own lives and having the resources to do so: the abolition, not reform, of global bodies like the World Bank and WTO, and a challenge to underlying structures of power and inequality.

Organise for the control of the workplace by those who work there.

Call for the control of communities by the people who live there.

Argue for a sustainable environmental, economic and social system, agreed by the people of the planet.

Working together in ways which are accessible to ordinary people, particularly women and working-class people, rather than reproducing feelings of disempowerment and alienation within our own network.