MFPL's International Working Group 2014-01-16 @ 15:00 New York / 14:00 Mexico City Present: Juan Gerardo, Enrique, Mallory, Alfredo, Stephen Agenda: - Adopting a new name for the WG based on Jamie's proposal - Scope of work, reviewing priorities from the member, the Internationalization (translation and interpretation) team, some recruitment outside of US/Mexico, world-wide responsibility, tech - Coordinator of the WG - next meeting and tasks - France software meeting - report back from WSF IC in Casablanca erq: jamie mentioned a few minutes ago, the initiative that JG brought about a coop. A coop based in france, that develops software on FLOSS, to include in the agenda. Also to go through the details of JG to develop with the coop in France. To see how this goes. Adopting a new name for the WG based on Jamie's proposal * Mallory: I are their JG: I sent an email proposing to differentiate our tasks from the OutReach Committee, not only territorial basis, but the types of relations mayfirst will have. This will interfere with the territorial factor. To summarize, I believe that we should have a name related to international work. We should focus on the international organizations. The Outreach group should focus on social movements, many will be in the US and Mexico, i believe, in certain casis the outreach group would involve with some international social movements. The part of logistics, which traditionally have been with ????, starting with ethnical groups and how we relate to them. Erq: The difference, I think we need to have more clarity on the difference between these 2 working groups. I think the international working group could be doing outreach outside of mexico and the US. That could be a clear difference. Mallory: I think we are all building on top of each other and it is becoming clearer. One example that comes up for me, is the stopwatchingus coalition, is it is supposed to be international, but it does not fall into the scope of this group cause it is primarily focuses on the US. The WSF is a place we have worked a long time, and it could fall into Outreach, but feel it is International group cause they are all organizations that are not US based. It is when the work primarily takes us out of the US and Mexico. Based on emails and communication Alfredo: I think what we have said this far is correct, one big component is recruitment, outreach is geared toward building membership and recruitment in the US and mexico. The international work will not produce that much recruitment but will have some, but it is part of all movements world wide. I think mexico has much more international work among its left. In the US it is not as much, it is much more in technology, it is great potential. International work is critical in that regaurd, but it seems there is a general consensus of where this work is going. Erq: I think there will be specific projeccts that should be addressed by the 2 WGs perhaps that is the case if the WSF develops wider participation on a specific event. I think those are exceptions if we have clear division now of the regional scope of each working group. JG: I would like to add to Alfredo's definition, the outreach group should also promote alliances with similiar work in technology as we do. Alfredo: That is definitely part of the definition, participating is a central part of our work. JG: That is something that the International WG would not do. With groups like WSF we should focus on what FLOSS technology does and goals. THis idea that another world is possible is not only sustainable development, solidarity economy but the importance of alternative technology in international organizations. Up to now the subject of these international communities does not include communication. Mallory: The call tomorrrow with the software group from France, i think that is a place for the international WG to broaden our international connections. In Bolivia we worked with techies local ???. It would be part of the work of the International WG. JG: I believe this is one of the overlaps of the outreach WG with connecting to these groups to recruit. Mallory: Also infrastructure, but in some instances they are ISPs they are not likely to join but for us to work with them. let conversation flow and not pick coordinators. I want to look at the priorities from the membership meeting to see how hey fit in. Erq: There is an expression I would like to clarify, JG mentioned that he wanted to promote alliances to work. JG: I think we are trying to establish a difference between the 2 WGs, one of the points that Alfredo mentioned, was that Outreach has an important aspect is to recruit new members. Also that important is developing on alliances. Our primary objected would not be establishing alliances and recruitment, that would be the Outreach territory. (sorry notes are not complete) Alfredo: I think it is a complicated question, cause recruitment is something everyone should be doing. I am trying to think of cases that would substantiate JG's point, cause almost everyone that we run into is involved in technology. Technology based organization like the Progressive Tech (missed the rest), would be a place for International WG. I think the question is strategic, how do wwe build the organization. Do we build it differently in the US [& mexico] than we do internationally. In some cases we develop an alliance. Case in point we would like orgnizations like Riseup to be members. Internationally the situation is reversed, we will accept members internationally, but our objective is not recruitment but an embodiment of that priority. That essentially what we are doing is building collaborative work. That is what we are doing internationally. That i think that this is a distinction between the 2 WGs. Mallory: More so today, people are concerned about putting their data in servers based in the US, with good reason. I think at this moment we are ready to become an international ISP. Everything going on between US and mexico is handled. I suspect that the difference will be clearer. Erq: Stephen: I think there is crossover, but not as often as we expect there to be. Part of the discussion about why we have international committee is that we need to build collaboration and connections, not recruitement. Scope of work, reviewing priorities from the member, the Internationalization (translation and interpretation) team Mallory: MFPL international growth is the only vague priority related to international work. suspected that the priorities would not be specific and rather vague. Erq, do you want present your case for having the Internationalization team to be in this WG. Erq: it has been more than a year since the creation of the Internationalization team, which has been focused on translations and interpretation. Their profile up til now is support, a team that supports the work initiatives plan of other teams. I think that is one of the main reasons the people in this team, most of the time is quiet. We have not been successful to create more participation inside this team. I think at this point that most of the requests that are sent to this group are not responded to positively. I think we are in need of developing a different strategy. I think we will have people more engaged if we invited them to play a an increasing role with political substance. I think it was not enough, to explain to them, the long term perspective of our work. The importance of developing a borderless infrastructure. I think part of this strategy could include reflection on what internationalist struggle is, I think we have lots of examples close to use in our history and human relations. Lots of examples of people that have engaged in progressive, revolutionary struggle, without considering placing part of their lives, security, they have placed them at risk without giving the importance of the fact of those that live abroad, with other language and race. That is the frame that we could place to start talking about the importance of translation and interpretation work. When you contribute with translation, you are participating in an internationalists struggle and part of this dialog. Perhaps that is not enough for all the people in this team to get excited and engage. I think it is a good frame to build alliances also. We have identified 2 different groups working. one of these groups is Tlaxcala http://tlaxcala-int.org it is a group of translators all volunteers, they are focused on translating articles. They translate into many languages. Mallory: we have worked with ??? that came out of the WSF project, they have similar model. In the USSF 2010 we worked with Roberto. Volunteers view it as a political act. Maybe solving problems is to budget it occasionally. It is not expensive that we could ensure a base line operation. Interpretation is more complicated. Stephen: I know Boston Interpreters Collective...http://interpreterscollective.org/ Erq: I think it would be a different iniative for this team. It would be quite different to the way it relates to their work, but similar to them. Perhaps people links is a good idea for possible other models for events to consider. This framing of the internationalist struggle, could help us develop these events and alliances. This is why i think this WG should include the Internationalization team. I want to mention this other iniative: COATI https://coati.pimienta.org/simultaneous-interpreting/index.en.html of people that have done technological work in support of interpretation for the progressive movement. Alfredo: I agree with work group taking with Internationalization work, i think the issue is leadership, this has not been treated in a political enough way. The LC has not provided leadership work to the internationalization. We need a conference about interpretation workers. We are not going to enter a pre-revolutionary situation unless we unify in some strategic way, so interpretation is important to that work. We have developed a politics of interpretation. Interpretation is not valued as it should. I think we need to select a coordinator to lead this effort. There are people that do quality work, people do not view that work as valueable. International WG can give that value to the Internationalization Mallory: I think we built a consensus. That international work to be part of this scope of this WG. Coordinator of the WG * JG: i must leave, but i propose that mallory is one of the coordinators for this WG. Mallory by consensus Next meeting and tasks * Thursday 16:00 Mexico/17:00 NYC Mallory: happy to write a workplan, but that we would try to work on a budget later after defining the workplan. anyone is welcome to help with writing the draft. Report back from WSF IC in Casablanca * Mallory: The meetings in casablanca were really good, there were groups there that were pleased to see Mayfirst there. Several people were glad we were there. We were the only ones from the US that were there. Because of the time difference I did not see anyone from the USSF. We tried to get a connection back of streaming, it was a small text communication. A ustream of people speaking in their native languages. In a couple of different accounts, it was all proprietary software, the logistics were bad. I did discover that they may find to use icecast, what worked well, I used my tablet to do the Ustream. There are apps out there on ice cast. If we could setup in advance to donate a tablet to stream video and audio app. At the meeting, the main descision, the next WSF will be in Tunisia again in 2015. I think it is interesting in the USSF, even though the WSF was happening without USSF there they were talking about it, they want to make sure they do not overlap. I spoke informally, and gave an outline of the timing. The other context of the USSF is the next WSF after Tunisia to be in Montreal in 2016. There are groups that are against it cause there is a peoples social forum in canada. The leaders in the proposed WSF are not base builders, they are mainly associated with Occupy. They are working with a diffrent sector of society than Occupy. They are different groups. THey are still considering Montreal for 2016. Canadian internal politics. The WSF folks did not know about the USSF structure and that there would need to be work done to connect a lot of the groups about the process. Finally, we did present a statement about the international surveillance, basically saying that the WSF movement are intimately connected to the internet. THere is a reason why we need to keep the internet open. We wanted to make that connection. We also reinforced the use of encryption are important to keeping the internet open. When I read in the session there were no comments, but after they came up and said they supported it. People are worried about surveillance. Diffficult to make inroads on that theme. There is a forum this month in Brazil, on media alternatives, this was the 3rd they have had. Someone approached me about establishing a youth social forum in the middle east. In his context it is people under the age of 35. The idea is to address the issues of and harness the power of young adults and movements. It was International Council. Grassroots Global Justice was not there, but it was a budget issue. Alfredo: For your report, the USSF will no longer we a vehicle about sharing experience it will be policentric, but consultative in nature, to come out with some unity on strategy or another to unify the progressives in the US. This is important that we bring this to WSF, cause it is a mayfirst proposal. We could be comfortable about putting these things forward. Mallory: It is interesting about bring that up, cause openness was challenged in that meeting. should the WSF international council make decisions about programming. THere was an interesting study done that came out with the divisions are changing. A lot of the organizations are ready make a movement that builds and has real power. I think it would be great. I talk about it 1 to 1 but not in the larger planary. The other thing to mention, jennifer cox, wanted to go, she is leading the NPC USSF, they are meeting this weekend and I am on that group, they have asked is someone from mfpl can be there? Can someone go? Alfredo: I cannot go, I will be in detroit. Mallory: Can we ask anyone to jump in? Alfredo: write an email to the LC and workers. Mallory: I do not feel it is critical, but they are asking a lot to involve MFPL.