A global resistance movement comes to the home of the Water Wars

Peoples' Global Action (PGA) is a world wide network for communication and co-ordination between grassroots social movements and all those fighting the destruction of humanity and planet by the present world order. The PGA network has been a key force behind the Global Days of Action and 'anti-globalisation' events in recent years.
PGA has no members or constituted legal identity, no central funds or spokespeople, and instead relies on grassroots groups for its continued existence. Internationally and regionally, the conferences are organised by different groups on a rota basis.
Since its origins, and early focus on opposing 'free trade', PGA has expanded to oppose all forms of domination, and to propose local alternatives based on autonomy, direct action and self-organisation.
Between the 16th and the 23rd of November 2001 PGA held its 3rd Conference, in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Many of us first heard about the city when it emerged as a key symbol of the global struggle against privatisation. In late 1999, the water supply was privatised, the prices increased by 300% and it became illegal to form autonomous water co-operatives. Tens of thousands took to the streets, and through taking direct action now control the city's supply, an event ignored by the corporate media.
As the conference was held a few days after the September 11th, many delegates with valid visas were detained at the airport, one was sent back. Many of them were released after pressure from human rights organisations and the leader of Movement towards Socialism (MAS). MAS is a union of Bolivian cocaleros who have chosen to form a political party.
There were participants from Asia, the Pacific, Australasia, South Africa, Europe and the Americas (stretching between Alaska and Patagonia).

Cultural differences and political contradictions.
How people organise and participate in discussions is culturally specific: reflected in styles of presentation, decision making processes, and language.
An example of this at the most basic level is the word non-violence: in India it means respect for life, in the West it means also respect for private property.
These differences reflect deeper perceived power relations between 'North' and 'South' and how colonial history affects how we work together. Some of the problems highlight the fact that some people are closer to power than others due to their class, race, place of birth and gender.

Gender
For the first time it was openly recognised that sexism still exists even within the spaces of PGA. This and further discussion on gender resulted in a specific gender declaration, and the creation of an environment where sexism and sexual harassment are made unacceptable.
In some way we bring contradictions into our networks, or rather the contradictions between how the world is now, how we would like it to be and how to get there. But these contradictions are what fuels our desire for change, by facing them we move forward.
The third PGA conference showed another important shift: previously northern groups were seen primarily as acting in solidarity with southern struggles, in a one way direction. Now there is an understanding that northern groups have their own struggles, highlighted recently in Seattle, Prague, Gothenburg and Genoa, and the repression 'northern' groups have been going through.

The future
The conference agreed that we need further regionalise and localise the network. We need to move beyond Global Days of Action; to take action in our local areas, rather than travel to large protests, and to get involved in sustained campaigns like popular education campaigns and local discussions and consultations, and in the construction of grassroots alternatives to the capitalist system.

Declaracion de Cochabamba
On a day of September in year 2001, solstice of spring in the continental territory of Abya Yala (Latin America), women and men from various cultures gathered in Cochabamba. We address the peoples of the world thus. In these days of uncertainty and tension, war announcements and witch hunting, we want to talk to you about hope and affection, about fear and sorrow.
We have seen the horror and desperation in the faces of ordinary people affected at random in the attacks on New York and Washington. We know this pain; we have daily experience and memory of terror and unnecessary violence.
Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, millions of innocent and anonymous victims wear the same look of horror in their own suffering of the irrational violence in the middle of silence and indifference.
Since the beginnings of humankind, the struggle for power and dominance by a few has immersed peoples in bloody and cruel battles. We see with pain that they haven't learnt to live in peace, justice and mutual respect, and they go on spilling innocent blood on the soil.
The historical memory of our dominated peoples helps us understand the intensity of sorrow, horror and anxiety these families of innocent victims feel: we express our deepest solidarity.
We hope that the experience of horror that our North American brothers and sisters went through helps them understand how cruel and absurd the abuse of military power is, and extends their solidarity against any type of attacks on civil populations.
It is for this reason that we condemn crimes such as the strikes announced by the US government and their allies on civil populations. These rushed reactions only feed hatred, violence and terror, speeding the systematic destruction of the planet.
Our philosophy is opposed to militarism and domination. We love freedom and equilibrium between all peoples: the vital strength of our struggle is to defend lives and life, so we will oppose the absurd war announced by the United State through global actions.
Cochabamba, 23rd of September 2001

Call to action against the WTO in Qatar

THEY CAN RUN BUT THEY CAN'T HIDE: WE ARE EVERYWHERE! RESIST THE WTO THROUGHOUT THE WORLD THROUGH DIRECT ACTION AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE WHEREVER COMMUNITIES ARE DESTROYED AND ECOSYSTEMS SACRIFICED FOR THE SAKE OF FREE TRADE!

Peoples Global Action calls on all grassroots social movements, community based organisations, trade unions, student organisations, indigenous peoples, farmers organisations, autonomous collectives and everyone who wishes to participate around the world, to carry out actions against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during the next ministerial summit in Doha, Qatar, November 9th-13th, 2001.
The WTO's aim is very simple: to remove anything that gets in the way of big business and free trade, upholding the freedom for multinational companies to act as they please. The WTO polices international trade and continues to set an agenda that places profit above people and the planet.
Faced with a rapidly expanding grassroots resistance to capitalist globalisation, the WTO has fled to an isolated desert dictatorship for its next meeting.
Already built into the agenda are three immensely destructive trade agreements: the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Between them, they cover issues like: the privatisation of health, education and water, forcing GMO foods and seeds on member countries and patents on life forms.

Regardless of whether the WTO meetings continue or not, we will be in the streets, because the streets are ours. Grassroots organisations all over the world are organising the following kinds of actions and call on others to do the same:

• Awareness-raising campaigns against WTO and the effect of their policies on a global and local level: community based consultations, counter-meetings, public debates, publications.
• Maximum disruption of the work of the trade ministers attending the conference: demands for the publication of national positions, blocking of communications or of departures of delegations, etc.
• Mass coordinated actions on a national and international level: work stoppages, road blocks, occupation of stock exchanges and other financial institutions (New York, San Francisco, Sao Paolo...), liberation of grain stocks (India) on Nov. 9th.
• Decentralised local action: land occupations, creative demonstrations of grassroots alternatives...

Can we choose a different future?
Yes - by acting together! - People are already taking action against privatisation in millions of ways across the world. By linking up globally we make our separate struggles stronger and we can act together to challenge capitalism at its very foundations ­ our everyday lives!
Peoples' Global Action is a network, formed in 1998 from a meeting of groups from both the global North and South, including Mexico's Zapatistas, Indian farmers, Colombia's U'wa indigenous people, and London Reclaim the Streets.
The PGA network has helped publicise and co-ordinate some of the recent global days of action against capitalism and its various institutions; financial centres on June 18th 1999, which included a Carnival Against Capitalism in the City of London; the WTO in Seattle on November 30th 1999; and the IMF & World Bank in Prague on September 26th 2000. These days were made up of demonstrations, actions and meetings across the globe ­ 110 cities on September 26th - of which the media reported only a handful.
The 3rd PGA international conference was held in September 2001. Three women from the UK were there, and are now available for speaking and showing slides at meetings etc. Please contact them on pgabolivia@yahoo.co.uk

It's time to share more information about our many movements and actions for positive social and ecological change, and a world without political parties or leaders.
PGA website: www.pga.org