The Dramatic Rise of Peer-to-Peer Communication

within the emancipatory movements

Reflections of an International Labour, SocialJustice and Cyber Activist

Örsan Şenalp

Abstract

In the article I give a personal review on some of the important spaces ofconvergence and mobilisations some of which took place in 2011 and 2012 andothers are currently being planned: like, 15O, Joint Social Conferences, HubMeetings of Indignados, Global May, Agora 99 and Florence 10+10 amongothers. I also deliver my observations on the dramatic rise of peer to peer (P2P)communication as well as increasing involvement of new generation activists inthese spaces and mobilisations. Such developments might allow radicalreformist and revolutionary forces to invent an upgraded methodology forworking together which might in return make it possible to formtransnationally connected and strong alliances between horizontal and lessvertical forms of agency, so called movement of movements.

Introduction

In 2011 the world witnessed the beginning of the first

truly transnational and global grass-roots uprising. Peer

to peer self-organising, on-line connectivity,

horizontality, and commitment to non-violence have become

the common characteristics of the rising global movement.

Progressive and revolutionary civil society organisations

and trade unions have played a crucial role in the

uprisings that took place in Tunisia, Egypt, Iceland,

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Greece, Spain, Israel, Chile, the UK, the US as well as

many other places.

This constellation might explain why 2012 has begun as a

year in which the transnational capital and ruling elite

have gathered around a consensus on various types of

authoritarian and neoliberal state capitalism. More and

more divorce between capitalism and democracy followed the

market failure deepening in the West. While imperial

confrontations among the elite forces taking the form of

military conflicts, the common offensive against the poor

and working classes structurally and strategically

increased. The violence has been hardened against the

peaceful social opposition almost everywhere. Not only

austerity, flex-slavery and proletarianisation have spread

throughout the world; peaceful public space occupations

were violently evicted, militarisation, surveillance and

criminalisation captured all domains of social life,

strikes were banned, and even as happened in Marikana

tragedy in South Africa, tens of striking workers have been

massacred by the police forces in cold blood.1

On the other hand, 15M and Occupy movements have reached a

sustainable phase within 2012. After 15O, May 1 General

Strike and Global May/Spring mobilisations a lot of1 http://www.amandlapublishers.co.za/home-page/1522-amandla-editorial-comment--a-brutal-tragedy-that-should-never-have-happened

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experience has been gained.2 September 17, the first

anniversary of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and current autumn

mobilisations have proved the sustainability that the young

movement has achieved.3 A week before these lines are

written Global Noise mobilisation took place marking, this

time, the first anniversary of the October 15 uprising.

There have been many local and national mobilisations for

various causes between October 12 and 20. October 13 was

the global day of action. The Global Noise mobilisations

were organised in more than 30 countries and 230 cities

around the world making a huge meaningful noise against the

ruling class brutality. There have been and will be many

other initiatives and mobilisations taking place during

this autumn and winter.

Meanwhile we have been observing the formation of larger

alliances among more traditional progressive forces.

Important spaces and convergence processes have been

initiated, launched by radical democratic as well as

revolutionary alter-forces especially in Europe. At the

beginning of November there are two events taking place:

Agora 99 in Madrid November 1-4 and 10+10 in Florence

2 #15O: http://15october.net/ and http://map.15october.net/ , #11.11.11: http://www.facebook.com/events/179186642163285/, #1MGS: http://www.occupymay1st.org/ and http://maydaynyc.org/, #Global May: http://www.globalmay.org/en (# sign refers to the online aspects of the movement. # is a symbol used for tweet campaigns on Twitter) 3 #17S: http://s17nyc.org/ , OWS: http://occupywallst.org/

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Italy, November 8-11.4 The objective in these gatherings is

enabling constructive interaction between non-

representational new movements and progressive NGO networks

and unions, and defining the common ground and common

mobilisations. Hopefully much larger than the ones set for

so far. On top of all these unions from Greek, Spanish, and

Portugal have declared that they will set forth

simultaneous general strikes on November 14. There is a

possibility that the unions from Malta and Cyprus will also

join in and turn it into the first Mediterranean General

Strike of the world history.

In the article I give a personal review on some of the

important spaces of convergence and mobilisations which

took place in 2011 and 2012 and currently being planned:

like, 15O, Joint Social Conferences, Hub Meetings of

Indignados, Global May, Agora 99 and Florence 10+10 among

others. I also deliver my observations on the dramatic rise

of peer to peer (P2P) communication as well as increasing

involvement of new generation activists and spreading of

P2P relational dynamics within in these spaces and

mobilisations. Such developments might allow radical

reformist and revolutionary forces to invent a methodology

for working together which might in return make it possible

to form transnationally connected and strong alliances4 Agora 99: http://99agora.net., Florence 10+10: http://Florence1010.eu , globalNOISE: http://www.globalnoise.net

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between horizontal and less vertical forms of agency; so

called movement of movements.

General assemblies, transnational working groups, and hub

meetings

Since the Seattle and the first World Social Forum in Porto

Alegre, global solidarity and justice activists have been

intensively using email lists, Skype meetings, video-

sharing, websites and other software available in order to

organise alter- or anti-summits as well as reach out the

public. However since 2004, with the arrival of high

capacity servers and fibreglass cables that allows storing

and transmitting of much larger amount of information, the

available online tools for activism have become more and

more sophisticated, interactive and accessible. The new Web

(Web 2.0) has opened up the cyberspace for users’

participation, by producing content, self-publishing and

sharing; without any computer programming knowledge.

The neoliberal offensive and the deepening of capitalist

crisis has been triggering radical politicisation of cyber-

activism during the late 80s and 90s.5 The first generation

participants of the P2P movement was leading an underground

fight against the commodification of the Internet, against5 Cyberpunk movement: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk, P2P movements: http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Movements

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the intellectual property regime launched by GATS through

the WTO.6 GATS was providing the legal framework for what

has been called 'the second enclosure' of cyberspace and

allowing private capital to build the client-server model

Web (World Wide Web) on top of the unprofitable distributed

network known as the Internet.7 Part of this first

generation P2P activism was transformed into the Free and

Open Source Software and Access to Free Knowledge

movements. Various groups has generated amazingly useful

tools and projects as result of the struggle in this filed

(like Linux, Wikipedia, Copy Left, Creative Commons, TOR,

Telekommunisten etc).

The cyber activism had to be performed on the terrain of

capital, the Web, in order to make an impact. As radical

left cyber-activists who were collaborating in the

globalisation of the Zapatista movement, fighting against

the NAFTA (and GATT) also by utilizing the new Web.8 This

6 K. Milberry (2009) 'Geeks and Global Justice: Another (Cyber)World is Possible' http://geeksandglobaljustice.com/wp-content/Milberry-Dissertation-for-Library.pdf, Networks of Dissent: A Typology of Social Movements in a Global Age: http://www.csudh.edu/dearhabermas/langmanbk01.htm 7 M. Berlinguer (2010) 'The Effects of the Open Source Movement on theDevelopment of Politics and Society': http://transform-network.net/journal/issue-062010/news/detail/Journal/knowledge-is-a-common-good.html 8 GNU: http://www.gnu.org, Linux: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux, Copy Left: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/ , Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/, TOR: https://www.torproject.org/, Telekommunisten: http://telekommunisten.net/

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has allowed the reaching out to the new activists,

including non-cyber ones. This emergent collaboration and

cross- fertilisation had been extended via Seattle and the

World Social Forum yet it remained limited because of the

form of the Web at the time. This situation has changed

radically while the great anti-war movement of 2003 and

Social Forum movements were in decline during the second

half of the 2000s. After the arrival of the new Web such

interaction and cross-fertilisation among the cyber-

activists and social justice activists has brought about

the newest social movements (like the Pirates movement,

hacker groups Anonymous and LulzSec, Wikileaks - just to

mention the more widely known ones).9

15M, widely known as the Indignados, and Occupy movements

have created transnational political spaces for closer

collaboration among cyber, semi-cyber and non cyber

activists; those who involved in union and community

organising, issue campaigns, progressive NGO sector,

previously non-active but politicised independent

individuals and small-scale new generation political

collectives. Following the 2007 crisis, and most recently

during the protests in Wisconsin, US, and the student

revolts in Europe in 2010, there was a rapid increase in

9 Pirate Parties International: http://www.pp-international.net/, Wikileaks: http://wikileaks.org/, Anonymous Central: http://anoncentral.tumblr.com/

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the interactions between these activisms, internet based

media activists and digital artists. Following the dramatic

events in Tunisia and Egypt last year these interactions

had suddenly gave rise to deployment of both free and open

source software and new Web based tool for the practice of

transnational organising, decision making, visioning,

strategy forming, reach out and logistics.

The actions of Anonymous and Wikileaks have reflected this

connectivity and solidarity between the newest movements

and uprisings. Wikileaks released the material that

triggered the Arab spring and Anonymous attacked Egyptian

governments official sites, both stayed in solidarity with

uprisings everywhere, and the visual material shared with

speed of light among thousands of activists. Anonymous

created massive media channels for its own net. It produced

very effective artistic video messages to declare support,

make a public statement, call for action (or what they call

'operations').10

When the protesters in Wisconsin and Tahrir hailed each

other, visuals of the event were shared among millions on

the Web.11 Live video streaming channels were on air and

watched by tens of thousands of people across the world10 http://www.youtube.com/results?q=annymous %20operation&aq=f&sugexp=chrome,mod%3D0&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=w1&gl=NL 11 https://sites.google.com/site/meydantahrirtowisconsin/

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during the mass occupations at Puerta Del Sol Square in

Madrid, messages shared among Athens, Iceland, and London.

There were already online and real world communication

being established since then, between these spaces, groups

and rebels. Even after most Spanish city squares were

occupied for several weeks, starting from May 15, 2011,

with explicit reference to the Tahrir Square, not many

would guess that these occupations and regular citizen

assemblies - comparable to previous Latin American

experiences - was actually being systematically spread to

many European cities and beyond the Atlantic.

Following the international assemblies organised in Lisbon

and Paris, October 15 announced as the date of the ‘Global

Revolution’ - a day of massive global mobilisation. First

ties were established in the United States and then were

formed the first truly international/transnational networks

of online and offline working groups and committees. These

networks were covering the Mediterranean, European and

American regions. An ‘International Road to Dignity’

graphic was reflected the crucial points on the

timetable.12 These groups gathered, shared, worked and

discussed on a regular basis in order to build the movement

and organise the October 15 mobilisation. They have created

a peer to peer communication infrastructure for

12 http://takethesquare.net/tag/tahrir-puerta-del-sol/

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mobilisations and actions but also developed the practice

of ‘real democracy’ at the international level. Assembly

protocols, methodologies, designs, signs, rules, etc. were

formulated, experimented, tested and improved across

European cities. This knowledge and experience crossed the

Atlantic during the summer 2011. People’s assemblies

started to pop up in American cities and Adbusters Magazine

made the first call to Occupy Wall Street on the September

17, 2011.13 Just before the Wall Street occupation in

September 17, 2011, in Barcelona Indignados were holding a

transnational Hub Meeting to exchange information and ideas

on local situations and preparations, visions and future

perspectives toward 15O and after.

On the same day that Wall Street was occupied, the European

Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and European trade unions

organised a mass mobilisation in Poland to protest the

meeting of the European finance ministers.14 Yet no

connection was made between these two deeply connected

events that could have increased the impact of both. As a

result, that day and for the following couple of weeks,

there was almost no media coverage of these two big and

related events. People around the world did not hear much

about what happened in Wall Street or Poland and could not

see the connection. However, after several weeks of non-13 http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html14 http://www.etuc.org/a/8894

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violent resistance by those occupying the Zuccotti Park in

Wall Street, they were severely attacked by the police;

mainstream media could not ignore what was happening. This

eruption of unavoidable mass media attention, coming mainly

by international rivals of the BBC and the CNN, like Russia

Today (RT), the Chinese news channel CCTV, as well as Al

Jazeera, fed into the massive global mobilisations on the

15th of October, and concomitant occupations of more than

1,000 central city squares in more than 90 countries across

five continents.15

Outrage, occupy, strike, blockupy

The work and plans around the idea of a Global Spring

mobilisations in 2012 began to crystallise towards the end

of 2011.16 First after the success of the Oakland General

Strike on November 2. This historical event not only

prepared the ground for the Mayday General Strike plans but

also made it possible for the West Coast dockworkers’ union

(ILWU) to get a stronger position vis-à-vis the company in

15 Interactive map:http://map.15october.net/, Videos: http://roarmag.org/2011/10/global-revolution-mass-protests-in-1000-cities-in-videos/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+roarmag+%28Reflections+on+a+Revolution%29 16 http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/lets-begin-with-altering-the-system-peacefully-by-joining-social-mobilisations/

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dispute, and certainly played a role in the union winning

the battle under-way.17

Since January 2012, Occupy General Assemblies (GAs) began

organising the first federal level General Strike in US

history, which took place on May 1, international worker’s

day, symbol of the 8-hour-day struggle and the unity of

subaltern classes. Indignados in Europe both encouraged and

responded to this call with a call to form popular

worker/citisen assemblies that would gather on Mayday

beside or after the mobilisations organised by unions, in

order to give support to the labour movement struggle in

general.18 On the other hand, beginning December 2011, the

15M and Occupy Movements in Europe were organising a day of

global mobilisation on the May 12 (#12M), the anniversary

of the ‘Spanish Revolution’ begun at Puerta del Sol square

in Madrid a year ago on 15 May.19 Another idea on an ‘open

source’ and indefinite global transition strikes on 15 May

(#15M) was also launched.20 Many initiatives have been

undertaken to link the dynamics of the new movement to

organised groups - like resisting workers, unions, campaign

17 For Oakland Strike: http://occupyoakland.org/2011/10/general-strike-mass-day-of-action/ , http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2011/nov/03/occupy-oakland-general-strike-live 18 http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/indignados-join-calls-for-global-solidarity-on-may-day/ 19 http://www.facebook.com/SpanishRevolution 20 https://n-1.cc/pg/groups/1010883/15m-global-strike/

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groups and NGO networks - in order to increase the

magnitude of the spring mobilisations and the strikes.

Connecting to the 1M, 12M and 15M actions, many groups that

were linked to or acted in solidarity with the Occupy and

15M Movements in Europe initiated the European mirror image

of OWS: The Blockupy action, to take place in Germany May

16-19.21 Massive mobilisations were planned to protest,

block and occupy the Frankfurt Financial Centre and the

European Central Bank (ECB), which were seen as the

European Head Office of Goldman Sachs. In the USA, anti-G8

and anti-NATO mobilisations were planned in Chicago for the

May 15-21 in tandem with these preceding mobilisations.22

A second hub meeting was held in Milan on March 30-31 April

1, 2012. Activists from many European cities and camps at

this meeting, shared information and discussed strategies

planned for May 2012.23 In this second meeting Global

Spring/Global May working group and Blockupy organisation

gave updates and a Skype call was made to a Mayday

organiser from OWS. Subjects for analysis discussed in the

workshops were austerity policies, debt, privatisations,

21 http://blockupy-frankfurt.org/ 22 http://occupyamerica.crooksandliars.com/diane-sweet/chicagospring-occupy-nato-may-12-21, http://occupywallst.org/archive/May-19-2012/ 23 Hub Meetings: http://bcnhubmeeting.wordpress.com/, report from Milan Hub Meeting: http://17to19m.blogsport.eu/2012/04/05/report-from-international-activist-hub-meeting-2-0-in-milan/

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the anti-democratic wave, the rise of the right wing.

Analyses were shared horizontally and brought back to local

groups and collectives involved. Since there was no

organisational representation, or aim at decision-making

during these meetings, no irresolvable disputes arose

coming from ideological, traditional, or cultural

diversity. The assembly style of working was adopted by all

and participants were individuals. Therefore it was easier

and faster to work and reach a consensus. Everybody could

join in spontaneous support, mentioning promising

initiatives about which they had information, and also

raise points regarding the methodology. Since formal

representation was not an issue, in practice the meeting

was mainly one of exchange and providing feedback to the

coming initiatives. The main impact of such organised

network meetings, however, comes when interlinked

individuals bring back the information and consensual

analyses to the local assemblies and groups. At the end of

the second Hub Meeting, support for Global Spring, 12M and

15M mobilisations was agreed with full consensus. There was

a big support to Mayday in the US Blockupy, although there

were concerns about the dedication to non-violence in

Frankfurt, horizontality in the planning of the

mobilisation, and collaboration with vertical organisations

and groups.

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The successful organising of and global support given the

Oakland General Strike took the discontent in the North,

which has been growing since the Seattle 1999 and made a

quantum leap with the OWS, even a step further. It

underlined the historical roots of the current moment of

the global uprising and strengthened connectivity,

communication and solidarity among various forces.

Since around the free fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the

general strike had already made a spectacular return in

Europe.24 However the Mayday General Strike in the US has

actually awakened the legacy of ideas like ‘One Big Union’,

‘Shorter Working Day’, ‘International Strike’ and

highlighted the ties connecting the old, new, newer and the

newest progressive and revolutionary movements. Hundreds of

millions marching around the world have given a strong echo

to this ‘happening’, and allowed us to visualise clear

images of new generation of actions and general strikes

that could start radical processes of social change.25

Although these ambiguous plans of the self-organised masses

did not find a strong resonance among a large part of the

hierarchically ‘organised’ forces, for the time being, the

new generation of activists has gained an immense amount of

experience and confidence. 24 http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/boaventura-santos-return-of-the-general-strike-english-and-spanish-via-peter-waterman/ 25 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_October_2011_global_protests, http://cryptome.org/info/ows-16/ows-16.htm

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In Frankfurt municipal government had issued a strong ban

on all the protests in the whole of Frankfurt-am-Main.

Police repression was very heavy and the issuing of such a

ban for all protests had not happened since the Nazis were

in power, indicating the depth of undemocratic rule

dominating the old continent. Meanwhile, in the US, Obama

was moving the venue of the G8 from his home town to Camp

David. Under such conditions the Blockupy managed to block

the ECB and to get a 30-thousand strong rally on the

19th.26

The above-mentioned mobilisations and actions were the

international ones directly organised by non-

representational groups including Occupy, 15M and those who

collaborated with them as in Blockupy mobilisation. In

order to uncover the real number of the local, national and

regional events, direct actions, mobilisations and strikes

organised by these groups - and their impact - we need an

intensive and systematic study.

European fellowship of the ring?

26 http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/blockupy-frankfurt-fotos-video-report-and-reflection-occupy-amsterdam/

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A month before Mayday 2012, on March 28-29, the next phase

of an important experiment took place at the International

Trade Union Building in Brussels, which hosts the

established global union structures of the ITUC, the ETUC

and associated union internationals. Among the participants

of the 2nd Spring Social Conference there were more than

140 representatives of around 40 progressive organisations,

unions, and NGO networks based in Europe.27

The first edition of the Conference had been held at the

same venue in March 2011 by participants in the ‘Joint

Social Conference’ process. The Joint Social Conference

initiative was officially born out of the European Social

Forum in Malmö in 2009. Yet the roots of the process can be

traced back to the foundation of the Labour and

Globalisation Network (L&G) during the World Social Forum

in 2007.28 L&G is a loose network of labour and union

activists originally aimed at making labour more visible

within the social forum processes. Since the Malmö ESF,

several social movements, NGO networks and labour unions

have become involved in the JSC process, have developed

mutual trust and recognition, and have experimented with

27 JSC: http://www.jointsocialconference.eu/?lang=fr, ETUC: http://www.etuc.org, ITUC: http://ituc.org/ 28 Video interview . with Marco Berlinguer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXGz58xSFh8, P. Waterman on the L&G Network: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/cssgj/documents/working-papers/wp008.pdf

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innovative ways of working together. The first conference

was a product of some years of work, was not easy to put

together and establish outreach. It was a difficult

experiment of collaboration in reaching concrete results,

because of the differences in cultures, ideologies, ways of

working and different interests. But lessons have been

learned and mutual trust and recognition gained. Besides,

the increasing pressure of the crisis and mobilisations on

the streets contributed to a much more successful second

edition.

During the 2nd Spring Social Conference many people,

including the ETUC General Secretary, repeated the need for

a Europe-wide general strike and joint actions, in order to

be able to resist capital and change the balance of power,

although stating that it would very hard to realise these.

However, standing closer to southern European union

positions, as well as the Indignados and Occupy movements’

actions, the General Secretary of the largest European

union federation, the European Public Services Unions

(EPSU), declared that even today such transnational strikes

are possible if we only bring existing struggles together

and link the national general strikes ongoing.

At the end of the day, there was no direct support for a

Mayday strike in the US or Europe, nor a call for

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mobilisation as proposed by 12M and 15M. But the effort was

relatively successful and a fairly strong final document,

with exciting content, was produced.29 Regardless of the

difficulties and interest conflicts (predictable with the

combination of actors involved) a common analysis,

resistance and mobilisations were identified.

After the end of the conference an inter-network meeting

gathered with the same participants and others, to work on

a call for organising an AlterSummit in the foreseeable

future.30 The call was made to build a Europe-wide social

movement, sharing a common ground of analysis, and defining

collective actions and alternatives against the austerity

policies, deregulations, privatisations and anti-democratic

measures in Europe as well as globally. The cornerstones

for building such a movement were identified as May 5-6,

2012 TNI-CEO conference that took in Brussels, 17-20 May

Blockupy for Global Change mobilisation in Frankfurt, 5-19

May Subversive Forum in Zagreb and Florence 10+10 to be

organised between November 8-11, 2012.31

29 Resisting Financial Dictatorship – Reclaiming Democracy and Social Rights! http://www.jointsocialconference.eu/sites/www.jointsocialconference.eu/IMG/pdf/2012-03-30_-_jsc_-_en_-_final_political_declaration.pdf 30 http://www.altersummit.eu/Call-for-an-alternative-summit,2.html 31 http://www.altersummit.eu/sites/www.altersummit.eu/IMG/pdf/ROADMAP_ALTER_SUMMIT_Eng.pdf

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Individual activists joined the meeting and raised calls

for support to the M1GS, 12M and 15M global actions

organised by the Occupy and 15M Movements. Participants

from the Indignados and Occupy movements reported on the

conference to the 2nd Hub Meeting gathering in Milan

mentioned before, right after the event on March 30. As I

said, both the Spring Social Conference and Hub Meeting

participants endorsed and declared active support to the

Blockupy action, which was inspired by the OWS and 15M and

organised by a wider coalition of forces, including Occupy

groups in Germany.

Some of the participating networks, like ATTAC and

Transform, NGOs like CEO and TNI among others, have linked

the outcomes of the conference to another process launched

in collaboration with political actors like the European

Left, that took place on the March 30-31.32 On 5 and 6 May

2012, following this process of interaction, another

important alliance-building event was organised in

Brussels, this time by Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO)

and the Transnational Institute. Around 300 participants

from across Europe came together to see the possibilities

of taking collaboration among activists, unions, movements

and networks one step further. They produced an inspiring

32 http://transform-network.net/uploads/tx_news/Alter-Summit_process.pdf

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statement calling for a halt to the EU Austerity Treaty.33

The two-day ‘EU in Crisis Conference’ marked CEO’s 15th

anniversary. Following two days of discussion and debate, a

new Pan-European network to fight against the EU’s

austerity policies, and support a fairer, greener, more

democratic Europe, was launched. There were calls made to

support the occupation of the European Central Bank on the

17-20 May and the Global Day of Action on 12 May.34 There

were also calls made to support the ‘No’ campaign in the

Irish Referendum on the Austerity Treaty that took place on

31 May 2012. Significant elements of the transnational

water justice movement were also at present in the

conference. The valuable experience of these actors in

terms of transnational alliance building contributed to the

convergence. A new campaign to challenge the push for the

privatisation of water services was launched, including

support for the campaign for a European Citizens’

Initiative, stating that ‘Water and sanitation are human

rights! Water is a public good, not a commodity.’35 Other

important European networks emerging and linking with this

process of wider alignment around similar issues were

European Alternatives and Another Road for Europe.36 During

33 http://www.corporateeurope.org/blog/stop-eus-antidemocratic-austerity-policies-different-europe 34 http://blockupy-frankfurt.org/en/node/95/, http://www.peoplesassemblies.org/2012/05/may-12th-globalmay-statement 35 http://www.right2water.eu 36 European Alternatives: http://www.euroalter.com, Another Road for Europe: http://www.anotherroadforeurope.org/index.php/en/the-appeal

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the TNI-CEO event these networks engaged actively in the

Alter Summit process and the Florence 10+10 space. Whilst

the European Alternative network puts a strong emphasis on

alternatives, commons and the grass-roots, the Another Road

for Europe network consists of European political parties

and research networks.

After the May mobilisations during the spring of 2012, a

series of real world, cyber evaluations and re-evaluations

took place. These evaluations helped to digest the

experiences of the May mobilisations and to draw lessons as

well as to re-energise for the autumn. During the spring

and end of the summer in the Northern hemisphere many

actions were organised, mainly in the US and Spain. But

maybe more importantly all evicted Occupy camps have

developed their own online spaces and tools to keep in

touch with local activists. Several important web portals

were developed and launched.37 Developing new communication

channels, local networks have built closer links among the

previously-created spaces for international communication

and coordination among 15M and Occupy assemblies, camps,

and networks in different continents. Building on previous

experiences, new ideas for dates and content of the global

mobilisations were discussed, and an international

workgroup was formed - this time with even closer and wider37 Interoccupy.net: http://interoccupy.net/, Occupy.net: http://occupy.net/.

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international participation from varying localities. A

Global Noise action took place in a distributed way. A new

international road to dignity was drawn up for the rest of

2012 and 2013, linking the cornerstones towards the aim of

global change.38

At the end of August participants of the almost all above

mentioned progressive, and less-horizontal networks,

organised a preparatory meeting on Skype in order to come

up with a draft programme for the September 14-17

preparatory meeting and to work on it in Milan towards

Florence 10+10.39 The Milan meeting was relatively

successful in terms of the convergence of ideas and

cultures. An online per-convergence process - which is

embedded in the preparatory work of five thematic groups

established - and last group to work on the convergence.

Groups and individual actors were asked to come up with

proposals for a common vision, strategy and action, in

order to improve the convergence at Florence and move

38 http://www.google.nl/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC8QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Finteroccupy.net%2Fttsinternational%2Fminutes%2Fminutes-of-aug-18th-occupy15mindigne-international-network-meeting%2F&ei=eil4ULm-GKaW0QXzkoE4&usg=AFQjCNF7c_rneKRIFScbYUnQFw4PGMtYNg&sig2=Ajc8fExhqLHCHSluWrEY3Q 39 Minutes of the Skype meeting: http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/alter-forces-are-converging-in-europe-to-fight-back-against-the-1-join-in-the-struggle-for-justice-and-solidarity/, Actual Program: http://Florence1010.eu/images/docs/3_Milano_program_14-16sept_EN.pdf

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further on a shared concrete path.40 The Milan meeting

coincided with the anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. Right

after the opening session for the meeting, Occupy and 15M

activists who were participating provided individual inputs

into the globalNOISE preparations, an Agora99 meeting, and

working methods of the movement. During the following days

they made suggestions for the working themes and the

methodology for Florence 10+10, They worked on several

possible ideas about how to involve Occupy 15M networks in

the space created in Florence.41

On the other hand, according to the decision taken by the

transnational assembly at the end of Blockupy action in

Frankfurt, a workgroup was formed in order to coordinate

the organisation of a transnational and transversal meeting

in Madrid, called Agora 99. Agora 99 has been organised as

an open meeting by collectives and individuals taking part

in 15M, Occupy and Blockupy movements. Florence is an open

space for organisations, unions, networks and individual

activists, whilst Agora99 is for political collectives,

groups and individuals joining Occupy and 15M assemblies,

mainly to work on practical issue. It is based on self-

40 Open pad for proposals: http://Florence1010.titanpad.com/3 41 Indignados' report:: http://titanpad.com/milanoFlorence15moccupy, Official report: http://Florence1010.eu/index.php/en/partecipate-2/milan-international-seminar/96-report-of-the-milan-meeting, full video report: http://openfsm.net/projects/occupy15m-Florence/oiFlorence-milano-videoreport

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representation. And whilst Florence focuses on Europe,

Debt, Commons, Labour and Social Rights, Democracy, the

themes of the Agora 99 gathering are Debt, Crisis and

Democracy. Suggesting the P2P dynamics behind the event

some of the slogans on the banners are P2P Democracy, P2P

Agora.42 While the Madrid event organisers made direct

reference to P2P, organisers of the Florence event have

opened the preparatory process to online participation of

individuals, networks and NGOs. This is done by using open

pads next to the email lists. There are also ideas being

mentioned, in relation to Florence, like using the German

Pirates' Liquid Democracy software which is developed and

used especially for P2P policy and decision making.43

Conclusion

The new methods and tools of communication and self-

organising that have been experimented with and developed

by the new-generation activists in creating a shared

feeling and experience, strategy and tactics, public space

and political impact. Information-gathering and exchanges

before making proposals to the local General Assemblies

about the mobilisations, action or alternative initiatives

to be taken forward have been representing varying

42 http://99agora.net/ 43 http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/22154/how-german-pirate-partys-liquid-democracy-works

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combinations of direct democracy powered by P2P relational

dynamics and tools, which were developed and adopted by the

previous and current generation activists, including those

active in Anonymous and Pirate party movements. Activist

from different movements need to reflected upon these new

knowledge and experience in order to strengthen

international level practices in order to contribute to

most radical social change possible.

Following the summer 2012, political momentum is rising

again. Upcoming elections in the US, Israel, and the power

transition in China, make intra-class conflicts more and

more difficult to handle for the ruling elite, in global

term. The coming months are potentially full of tension.

The increase in military confrontations between China and

Japan, Turkey and Syria, Israel & US vs. Iran, reveal these

fraternal conflicts. In most of the cases these hit hardest

the innocent civilians, the poor, children and elderly. But

the hope is always there. While I am making the last

corrections on the text, an International Strike for

November 14 has been set to take place in Greece, Spain and

Portugal. There are important workshops planned for Agora

99 and Firenze 10+10 to interlink the work has been done,

seek for collaboration and possibility of larger

mobilizations, and start a discussion on building a

transnational unionism. Another important unionist

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platforms New Unionism Network has launched a discussion on

how to build global unionism. These might be the signals of

the coming of stronger alliances between various types of

actors. Who knows may be we can this time achieve to form a

'Fellowship of the Ring', using Tolkien's fictive image as

a metaphor. A force that can attract the eye of the Mordor,

murderous 1% in our case, to herself and expand from the

Middle Earth (Europe) towards the Mediterranean, Middle

East, the Americas and across the world. Charge a glorious

battle against the common enemy who declared economic,

social, political, cultural and military class war at the

99% and the planet itself.44

About the author

Örsan Şenalp is an independent labour, social justicemovement and cyber (P2P) activist and internationalpolitical economist. In the past he involved in left partypolitics, labour and consumer movements in Turkey. He alsoworked for the National Assembly as apolitical/international relations expert and advisor. Inthe Netherlands he worked with Transnational Institute andTIE-Netherlands as freelance consultant and researcher. Hehas taken part in international movement-network-unioncollaborations like the Water Justice movement, JointSocial Conference and Alter Summit. In 2010, he launchedthe Social Network Unionism Project and initiated theGlobal Alliance for Immediate Alteration. Since January2011 he has been active in the 15M and Occupy movements at44 J.J.R. Tolkien: ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings

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the international and local levels. He has taken part inOctober 2011 #15O United for Global Change, 11 November2012 #11.11.11 Occupy the World, May 2012 #GlobalMay forGlobal Spring, and October 2012 #13O #globalNOISE for RealDemocracy mobilisations.45

orsan1234 AT gmail.com

45 TNI: http://www.tni.org/, TIE-Netherlands: www.tie-netherlands.nl, JSC: http://www.jointsocialconference.eu, Social Network Unionism: http://snuproject.wordpress.com, GAIA: https://n-1.cc/pg/groups/943821/global-alliance-for-immediate-alteration-gaia/, #15O: http://15october.net/ and http://map.15october.net/, #11.11.11: http://www.facebook.com/events/179186642163285/, #Global May: http://www.globalmay.org/en, #globalNOISE: http://www.globalnoise.net

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