Changes between Version 12 and Version 13 of americas_proposal_2008

Timestamp:

May 23, 2008, 5:45:26 PM (17 years ago)

Author:

alfredo

Comment:

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americas_proposal_2008

@@ -17 +17 @@
  * There is enormous disparity in resources, skills, and experiences in the left within the Americas, going in both directions
  * The Internet's potential for enabling low-cost and varied international communications is growing daily
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+For the first time in contemporary history, there is a division in economic functioning that affects the entire social fabric world-wide. Several of the countries in Asia have taken over responsibility for world production in capitalism. The United States and Canada have increasingly become specialists in consumption and the countries of the rest of the Hemisphere are responsible principally for the provision of raw materials and resources.
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+This dangerous and destructive situation is the result of capitalism's ever spiralling self-destructive irrationality. Essentially it means two things:
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+1 -- There is no way any country in this Hemisphere is going to survive economically and socially in the next coupe of decades without major changes in the way we organize our societies and their interaction.
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+2 -- The progressive movement has an immense opportunity to actually begin constructing an alternative that can serve as a social model (and all that emanates from it) around which to struggle.
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+The concept of a Hemispheric Collaboration at the grass roots level has been kicked around here (and in many other places) for some time now. I think that one area in which this collaboration can be "modelled" is in the area of technology. It's available in every country, it is supported and enabled by techies in every country, it is highly useful and vitally important politically and socially to everyone and yet it suffers from major discrepancies in access and power.
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+These discrepancies have meant that, not only can't many people in the Hemisphere not avail themselves of the Internet's potential but their society and their struggles and movements have had appreciably less impact on the development of the technology and its tools.
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+So not only would this Hemispheric collaboration server as an excellent model for collaboration in other areas but it will actually serve a concrete and very productive purpose.
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+To make this start happening, we'd need to pull people together from all over the Hemisphere and -- talk about getting the breaks -- here's the Foro Social de las Americas.
  
 == Discussion ==