Oh, Mallory

(26 April, 2010) Cochabamba, Bolivia - Movement activists in the United States continue to build alternatives to crisis through global collaborations such as at last week's Climate Change conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Alfredo Lopez of May First/People Link writes, "The converging crises in the major capitalist economies, the precarious state of the world environment, the political crisis in government in so many of the world's countries and the usurpation of government authority by international banks and committees have brought humanity to a point of urgency and the Internet, a community of more than 1.4 billion people world-wide, is one of its responses. When all else fails, human beings come together to communicate and figure out how to survive. That's what's happening today with the Internet." Global social movements are directed towards alternatives to globalization, imperialism, and trade agreements that benefit the accumulation of capital. Neo-liberal efforts to mitigate climate crisis such as the COP fail to vision solutions which benefit the majority of the worlds population, disproportionately affected peasant communities in the global south. For the past decade, alter-globalization organizations and activists in the United States are increasingly involved in the progressive, global network of collaboration during alternative summits such as the recent World People's Conference on Climate Change (CMPCC) in Cochabamba, Bolivia. And while summits remain important events for cooperation, these convergences are no longer limited to time and place with the communications revolution of the Internet. Given that the CMPCC was announced a mere four months in advance and in a remote location, resources were secured to ensure participation from all over the world. Participation was conceived not just as attendance at the conference, but of collaboration on documents via email lists, communications strategy to spread messages sent out from the conference, and live streaming of video, audio, pictures, and reporting online. Technology activists such as One Climate in Europe, May First/People Link in New York assisted the strong technology community of Bolivia to implement Free Software tools for video/audio streaming, video conferencing, and citizen media website content. Due to the cancellation of flights out of Europe on the weekend before the conference due to ash cover, One Climate was unable to contribute their web casting strategy, leaving the webcasting team, which consisted of three leaders of May First/People Link, to devise a free and open source software solution to webcasting in a mere two days. The success of this tool as well as the audio streaming, publication of key documents, blog feeds, and microblog posts, could be seen immediately from the dynamic nature of the site, which reflected minute-by-minute additions and updates. The success of the CMPCC events continue to resonate through the global movement as is evident on the ongoing activity of the En Vivo CMPCC site, which reflects also the work done by a dedicated, international team of technologists. The site and webteam supported live and on-demand, multimedia, such as streaming video and audio, blogging, image galleries, microblogging, RSS and RSS2 feeds from affiliated websites, translation support for English/Spanish/French and 7 other languages. With the help of generous funders, organizations like US-based May First/People Link were able to support the strong, Bolivian technology team in actualizing this website and supporting communications work as well. This report outlines more specifically the work that was accomplished in the conference preparations and on-the-ground work. And while this summit at Cochabamba has now closed, the weeks following will prove to be the most important for those looking to the content of the website for reflection, reporting, and ongoing collaborations. The technology team that came together across borders, from all regions of the world to facilitate massive participation on climate change have committed themselves to working together in an ongoing way to preserve the work that has been done in the past. These technology activists have amassed invaluable experience in the open space summits of the World Social Forum movement, Klimaforum, and other events such that to cohere their cooperation will be an integral part of the continuing story of the alter-globalization movement to address issues of climate change, trade, and poverty. The United States Social Forum is the next, large, hemispheric convergence taking place June 22 - 26, 2010 in Detroit, Michigan. May First/People Link is leading the technology development of this event towards massive participation, both on the ground and remotely, by learning from this experience in Cochabamba with streaming and a dynamic content website. Organizations and individuals interested in participating in the USSF from a distance, can plan events in their communities to watch live broadcasts, hold video conferences with individual participants and during some of the workshops of the forum, and collaborate on documents submitted by the People's Movement Assembly process, a democratic model for creating grassroots action. Other politically key summits are scheduled for the next 12 months and beyond. These include nearly 50 thematic and geographic social forums such as the Social Forum of the Americas of Paraguay in August, World Education Forum of Palestine in October, and the World Social Forum in February 2011 in Dakar, Senegal, as well as other alternative convergences such as the COP16 summit in December to be held in Cancun, Mexico.