STAMP's evaluation on the European PGA conference in 2006

from email, 25 September 2007: What follows is a report, a story, a synthesis about the European PGA Gatherings in 2006, based on the convenor collective's post-conference discussions.

Table Of Contents

- Preparation
- Organisational process: communication, distribution, financing, trip to the east, information distribution, energy spent, exhaustion;
- Contents
- Very small stories about the decentralized meetings;
- Decentralized meeting in Dijon;
- Actions within the conference and... repression;
- Cross-over, outreach, decentralisation
- Cross-over & dissipation within the prep. process
- Crossing-over: external
- Are PGA gatherings proper moments to get out of the radical activist ghetto?
- Crossing-over: internal
- Exclusion, power struggles, autonomy and the rest
- International participation
- Money
- What's next?
- Dynamics for the PGA's network; Meaning of its existence?
- Questionings, doubts, etc...
- STAMP follow-up: winter meeting, passing-on knowledge, techniques, information tools

Preparation

# Organizational process:
# communication, distribution, financing, trip to the
# east, information distribution, energy spent, exhaustion

The organization of the PGA conference in 2006 has been quite a weird adventure. The STAMP group was born about a year and an half before the conference, with about fifteen persons scattered around France. We began with really ambitious desires: a decentralized conference, the development of links with Eastern Europe, serious work against structures of power, efforts towards horizontal organizating and strong considerations about the contents, the integration of new people in the STAMP group during the process and the will to take time, when needed, to dive into questions that we felt were important: relations with institutions & capitalism, definition of a social struggle or relationships we imagine in this kind of meetings.

We didn't make half of what we wanted to do, but it took us a lot of time, especially in the three last months. What is really weird in this story is that we did it together and in a good mood, even if we went on with things that didn't seem very exciting at first: finding money, failing to divert some grants, working for the visas, writing dozens of texts to invite friends & activist networks, trying to do as many translations we could and failing to do so, creating weird registration forms without seeing that they were crazy, running through activist camps to invite people to come, failing the sending of posters, making contacts with some lawyers... One more thing was to build toilets and showers, kitchens and food containers, to organise sleeping places, sites for meetings and different activities, to imagine ways to be organized during the week, to think about other plans if there were some problems... all that in five different locations (which we first had to find, which was not an easy task either).

It sure wasn't trivial to do all that, while being all scattered across France, gathering together every two months. Decentralization allowed us to organize meetings without too many people (and allowed people from STAMP to address the whole organization process), but we had some moments of fear too. We sometimes felt a certain isolation, not knowing how many people would come (50, 200, 700...). We had some debates about the contents too, trying to assign topics to the locations that related to them or experienced them the most, and contacting people to ask them about what they'd like to talk about. We regret that this specific part happened late in the process. We also worked on a reader that grouped together reflexions and things we wrote about the different topics.

We should also mention that some of the STAMP crew went to the Balkans and north of the Balkans during three weeks in April, to meet people who were interested in the PGA, and organize with them an international meeting in Budapest, to prepare the conference. It was really interesting, even if a lot of people we met there were more interested in social movements that shook France in Spring 2006, than in the conference itself ;)

Taken as a whole, all of us lived this moment of preparation like a strong and exhausting moment, especially since we went on with some other plans: there was an important social struggle (against a law called CPE) in France at the same time, which basically kept most people from STAMP really busy from the end of Winter til Summer.

Contents

# Very small stories about the decentralized meetings:
# Decentralized meeting in Dijon

In Dijon, there was in between 80 and 150 adults and one child. Most of them were from France and Germany, but some others came from other countries of eastern and western Europe, from Canada, USA and Australia too. The pace was quite fast, with a lot of workshops happening all the time in a huge place, industrial sheds, an old mercedes van turned into a hacklab, a garage turned into collective kitchen, garden or climbing moments on the other side of the boulevard, dance parties, cinema and beer in the concert room and a impromptu wagenburgh on the waste ground.

People met each day and had workshops about the three main topics: digital struggles, autonomous spaces, spring's social uprisings in France; but about some others subjects too: zapatista struggles, the next G8 and some other workshops that people suggested by putting up movable small papers on a big diary wall.

There was more or less a coordination meeting every evening and some collective wake-up every morning at nine, mixing conviviality and tireless activism. In any case, many people stayed for about three weeks, which led to the creation of strong relationships, and the appropriation of the space, especially the cellar, digital den where we could meet enthusiastic zombies at each time of the day and the night, with banjos, cups of coffee, recipes or boxes of copies; not to forget the the primitive living-room suite, where people would be tasting red wine and cheese during two weeks, perched on big chunks of wood.

# Very small stories about the decentralized meetings:
# Decentralized meeting in Toulouse

In Toulouse, people carried direct action by occupying an "historic" waste ground, that used to be the location of a mythical squat in Toulouse, evicted about ten years ago. At the moment, it is property of OPAC, an social housing organisation that is specialised in expropriations, speculation, and putting the poor on the street. On the first day, about a hundred people arrived and knocked over a boarding that was closing the land.

Then they built a camp and informed the surrounding inhabitants about the reasons of the occupation. During the whole decentralized meeting, there were between 30 and 60 persons on the ground, quite more when the habitants or local activists who were interested came to visit. There was about ten children, some of which were born during the occupation of the place ten years before. The prefecture of Toulouse choosed to let people carry the occupation on, rather than coming into conflict.

The activities of the day were based on general assemblies that were done on the morning, and as well as ping pong games, people did many workshops about "autoconstruction" : solar shower, building with brocken glass, test of different kind of walls and insulators, furniture, tables and chairs, a dome. An unmountable and transportable house made of "terre paillé" had been built before, and the roof was finished during the week.

The few big formal discussions mostly revolved around access to land, with quite a lot of post-urban residents struggling to find collective land. Some discussions were more spontaneous, about neighbourood struggles in Toulouse. The occupation ended up with a collective departure, people going to a party to support the rural squat of Baluette, whose occupiers have been fighting for years to buy their ground. The following day, there was a last discussion about collective life within self-managed collectives.

# Very small stories about the decentralized meetings:
# Decentralized meeting in Bellevue

About 50 persons came for 9-10 days to a collective farm in Bellevue, on the rural plateau of "Mille Vaches", Limousin. Despite the promised arrival of several Hungarians and Ukranians, this exceptional week was enjoyed by french speakers who came from Spain, Italy and France, therefore it was overwhelmingly Western European. Local issues and struggles were highlighted thanks to the massive involvement of local people "from the plateau' in both the lead up to and throughout the conference.

Running the conference in terms of daily duties worked well collectively. This included meals, gardening, cleaning, maintaining the 'indian' wood fired showers and above all running the bar. At the bar there was music and lyrics accompanied by home brewed beer and thyme flavoured syrup. At sunset we had folk dances, games and improvised performances in the woods.

Throughout the whole week there were discussions based on several topics, particularly on the general theme of self-sufficiency and independence. These took the form of 'round tables' and specific workshops:

- Material self-sufficiency: self-production, exchanges, education : home schooling, teaching, relationships between parents and children, community responsibility

- Self-sufficiency over our bodies: health, gynecological self-examination, mental health, anti- psychiatry, ways of dealing with these issues as a collective.

- Ecological self-sufficiency: leaving the industrial society, putting into place a network of producers, limiting our dependency on the system, opposing capitalist 'growth' with 'shrinkage'.

Also the self-sufficiency ghetto, non-violent communication... Every day there was also the opportunity to attend practical workshops and projects (a solar oven, creating a system of filtering grey water through plants) or skill sharing workshops (massage, picking wild plants, peat conservation).

The ten days at Bellevue were for many of us a rich learning experience where we formed close connections with others. Many people declared that they would take home and apply to where they lived a renewed energy as well as new knowledge. The same went for the local inhabitants of the 'plateau' of 'mille vaches' who formed a renewed appreciation of their own achievements.

# Very small stories about the decentralized meetings:
# Decentralized meeting in Frayssinous

Approximately 70-80 people attended the week at Frayssinous, of which about 20 children. This part of the conference was almost entirely french-speaking, which some people felt to be not such a good thing. Another regret was that many of the inhabitants of Frayssinous decided to retire from the scene of the conference, making it impossible to create links with them.

The camping zones were scattered on a hill several hundred metres from the collective village, in clearings done especially for the occasion. By following pathways, discussion groups gathered in yurts, straw bale circles, tipis and a woman only space "Denises' cabin". Life in the actual village was centred around the outdoor kitchen and three domes erected next to a huge info-booth. Topics of the week were: the struggle against the industrial society on one hand, and on the other, issues and practices linked to childhood.

These two topics were thoroughly discussed and extended: (childhood: home-schooling, censorship/culture, parenting, to have children or not, the medicalisation of birth,etc; Anti-industrialism: summing up/perspective, space, land and peasant struggles, a society which seeks to control, psychiatry, criminalizing of childhood...).

Both of them gave birth to new networks. The discussions were however more introductory than profound, partly because people wanted to attend meetings on both themes and partly because people didn't know each other and came from radically different points of view and lifestyles. Several practical and game based workshops took place, often at the same time.

The presence of children at this meeting and at similar events in general was questioned all week, not without clashes, misunderstandings, difficulties with finding mutual territory to move forward. Some of the kids participated in this debate in a somewhat radical manner, taking over the large dome (the third which was assigned to them being considered ridiculously small) and also by stealing the weeks' planning board in the middle of the conference. We had to launch an extensive 'paper chase' in order to find it.

# Very small stories about the decentralized meetings:
# Decentralized meeting in Lyon

Between 100 and 150 people attended the week at La Friche in Lyon, an amazing art space in large hangars with massive sculptures in rusty iron and other extraordinary sights. Four topics were explored: security politics and 'control society', biometric data, video surveillance, police oppression and new technologies; racism, neo-colonialism, migration politics; struggles against patriarchy, dominance of heterosexuality, feminism and gender; analysis and reflections on the social struggles that occurred in spring '06.

Due to a lack of involvement from local collectives, the chosen topics did not allow for strong local rooting and interaction. However, there was a lot of workshops, among which a number of womyn-only discussions. While the "control society" chapter lacked a proper working group, the anti-patriarchal and anti-racist topics were better thought out, especially since a number of participants were actively involved in such struggles.

Overall, the anti-patriarchal and feminist topic was the strongest point, as many feminists, lesbians, and queers came to the conference. This contributed to create a particularly intense, pleasant and unusual atmosphere over the 9 days. Nevertheless, there were frustrations: a difficult time table, the four topics overlapping each other, having to make choices between workshops and discussions, little time for making contacts and informal discussions...

# The centralized meeting in Dijon

A number of people who had taken part in the decentralised gatherings didn't come to the centralised meeting, though some others only came to the centralised part. Nevertheless, we were around 300 people during the four days that it lasted. Generally speaking, it was structured around various kind of feedbacks (plenaries, small groups, around the bar...) from the decentralised gatherings, around working groups about the PGA process, and finally a spokes council plenary for strategical debates and decision taking about the future of the network.

A pirate radio had been created with daily broadcoasts on the conference's issues. Many people also took time to go on working on the projects and issues started during the previous ten days, most of the time with new people. Others proposed new workshops and discussions. There were also parties, a big collective cleaning session, and a huge palet fire.

For us STAMPers, its was the hardest, and the most conflictual part of the conference. Busy with logistics and general organizing, we had defined contents of the centralized gathering as a small group, at the last minute.

We hadn't foreseen the extent of the gaps in between what we'd all been living in the various decentralized locations. Indeed, each local chapter had really diverse rythmns, atmospheres and contents from the others: big urban factories VS quiet hills, overloaded agendas VS slow pace, focus on building and practical activities VS tons of meetings, lots of womyn and queers here, mix of kids and adults there, a majority of anarchogeeks and speed activists in another place...

Over a short period of time, people had built strong attachments to the identity and spirit of what they had created locally. This meant some really positive and diverse kind of meetings, but also potential misunderstandings and clashes.

The process for the conference and the decentralized gatherings had already required a pretty full-on involvment; exciting, but tiring. We had planned a so-called "break" of two days before the centralised encounter, but it turned out to be a collective journey for most participants, and for those who were already in Dijon, a squat opening and a big collective cleaning session. In fact, lots of the STAMPers were just exhausted and not so ready to go straight on directly with the weight of logistics for 300 people.

While we had to keep running forward to initiate the centralized moment, some felt a need for other paces and contents, hence modify the planned agenda in order to allow for the emergence of new things, inspired by the diverse dynamics of the decentralised gatherings. This desire to push things around relied on the confidence in the ability to collectively bring new contents that would question more radically the norms of this kind of big activist regroupment.

Part of the collective, however, had the strong desire to stick to what had previously been planned for the four centralized days, for everyone not to feel completely lost and disorientated. In fact, some of us were more attached to the very activist traditions that others would criticize, were reluctant to wipe previously carried work, and felt the risk for many people with little time to turn the whole thing into a chaotic conference about the conference itself.

Some people then trusted the possibility for participants to embrace logistical work, or let go, not willing to feel responsable anymore at this point, while some others felt that a number of tasks had to be pushed forward anyhow for the whole thing to kick off. Nevertheless, it kind of worked smoothly, and many non-STAMPers met our hopes and expectations, helping for cleaning, cooking, doing infopoint shifts... even if the whole thing became slightly more rock'n'roll at times, with harder coordination meetings attempts at night and collective wake-ups with blasting AC/DC in the morning!

Though this can't be seen as a general solution to all these issues, we feel that we should at least have come back together as a STAMP group during the transition between decentralized gatherings and the centralized encounter, in order to address our organizing, share our decentralized experiences and build back sort of a cohesion.

So, internally speaking, it was a bit hard for us and maybe a bit desorientating for some of the participants, though it sure didn't prevent lots of positive thing to happen during this part of the conference. It also seems that part of this debates hadn't been so visible to many, which is why we're attempting to explain in now, in our everfamous tradition of long bladibla transparency.

# Projects and initiatives coming out of this PGA gathering

The aim of this meeting was to give birth to projets. For this point, we really think that the time, the collectif workcamps and the small size of the groups made it possible for everyone to build up stronger complicities and to work together by going further than simple opinion debates and information exchanges. Sometimes, projects managed to enroot themselves in local dynamics and sometimes this aspect didn't work. Some of those projects are more linked with the frenchspeaking area, while some others have an europeen dimension. Some concern two persons, others a hundred. Some start slowly, others are on to revolution already.

We sure lost track of some, but let's at least state the following:

- the creation of a network of solidarity between autonomous servers in europe and beyond;
- the realisation of a DIY mobile house which has been unmounted and rebuilt in a collective place where it is now used as a rehearsal room;
- the initiation of the construction of a library, which has been finished in Summer 2007, and will start working in October 2007;
- the constitution of an activist samba group in Lyon;
- "Squatters' Talks", a documentary with interviews of squatters from various places all around europe and a book project about the experieces of squats in Europe;
- the constitution of an intersquat alarm and solidarity tool for Europe and a legal guide ressource for squats on the Internet (http://legal.squat.net/);
- an awareness-rising group working about integrated racism, with white people, non-whites, non-mixed and mixed meeting;
- "Tomate" (tomato), a network about childhood, ageism, education and unschooling;
- "Ail" (garlic), a network about criminilization of the youth and security politics with an anti-industrial orientation;
- the publication of a book collecting the stories and analyses of the anti-CPE movement, including rioting and direct action practical skills;
- a workcamp combining the translation of the book "anarchy in the age of the dinosaurs" with a skill sharing workshop about wood cutting;
- the continuation of the "Movin' Europe" caravan project;
- a contribution to the preparation of the anti-G8 summit in 2007 in Germany;
- an unexpected project of a legal group supporting the people charged after the occupation of the mexican consulate in Dijon;
- the creation of a working group about the global perspectives and the questions about war, petrol and climatic changes;
- the creation of an Internet site named "polyradicals.org" associated with mailing lists, about polyamory, feminism and revolution (yeah!);
- early-morning support for the opening of a squat in Dijon;
- various leaflets & reports, not to forget the radio broadcasts of the pirate radio station;

Regarding our desire to reinforce local dynamics and not to burn all our energy in the PGA process, the evaluation is both positive and negative. In some of the places that welcomed decentralised gatherings, the conference neither created nor killed local dynamics. In other places like Bellevue or Lyon (on the issue of feminism, for example), it worked well. There has been various moments of hyperactivity, exhaustion, and even conflict, especially during the centralised gathering, within the STAMP group.

This pointed out some political lines of disagreement more clearly, that could set limits to further collaborations. Nevertheless, it seemed, during the evaluation meeting two months afterwards, that most STAMPers strongly wanted top keep on doing common projects, thanks to confidence and affinity that were reinforced by monthes of common work. On another aspect, the extended lenght of the conference (14 days) allowed many great things to happen, but also gave a priviledge to specific people with more time and maybe less professional obligations...

# Actions within the conference... and repression

During the centralised gatherintg in Dijon, an action in solidarity with the people of Oaxaca was conducted. The police was quick to come, giving the fact that the consul had been bitten, his address book & phone stolen as a pretext. As a result, 6 persons will faced court in June 2007, 5 of which live outside France (the trial itself led to a local mobilisation, and charges were finally dropped against all defendants).

We didn't consider organising actions during the centralized conference, in order to allow an untroubled and efficient framework for deep discussions, and create way different an atmosphere from those of counter-summits or action camps. Until then, PGA conferences had been considered separate to actions -actions often leading to repression and stealing our focus. For this reason, STAMP had set a very minimal anti repression infranstructure (it was considered important to have one still, just in case), which didn't make it easy to handle the situation, though it was dealt with quite ok.

The legal consequences have been taken care of in a collective way, without the whole conference process coming to a grinding halt. However, it would have been useful to setup a space to share legal antirep information beforehand, in between people who were involved in the action; on the STAMP side, it would have been good to setup a dedicated space for legal work, to centralise information and follow-ups, to keep track of people in custody and moderate rumours and anxieties.

This "actions" issue was (too) quickly tackled around during the organisation process, and it generated some tense discussion. Generally speaking, it seemed crucial to some people, before organising an action, to take the local context into account, and to ask for the advice and opinion of people involved in the place, and people who would generally have to bear the consequences of an action in the long-run. Some find it less important than others to focus on those. Some people argued that it was important to anticipate actions, even within a supposedly calm context such as the PGA conference, knowing that stuff might happen anyways.

For this precise PGA conference, we had clearly decided not to prevent anything from happening, even though it was agreed that it wasn't an appropriate context to carry actions on. It was clear that we would stand in solidarity with though who would be hit by repression in any case. Legal & political support for the trial is currently being taken care of by part of the accused, together with some people who feel concerned and people from STAMP. The trial has been postponed, and will take place on June 12th. Some encounters around Mexican struggles and public actions will very probably take place around that time.

Cross-Over, Outreach, Decentralisation

# Cross-over & dissipation within the preparation process

As far as preparing the encounters was concerned, being a country- wide collective brought a great diversity of tools, contents and experience, but also made it difficult to find a proper dynamic outside meetings and collective working sessions.

# Crossing-over: external
Are PGA gatherings proper moments to get out of the radical activist ghetto?

These encounters did allow cross-overs, the extent of which depends upon each decentralised location.

The very idea of cross-over and the notion of "people" (as in "People's Global Action) has been addressed through a number of discussions within the STAMP collective. We are part of a certain "scene", and share visible common grounds related to autonomous culture & DIY practice, that clearly stand against dominant social norms, at least partially. In short, "we recognize each other". We constitute social groups with their own languages, communication styles, dresscodes & uniforms, cultures & aesthetics... that stand out. Our will to open up and meet "the people" is often vexed by a certain tightness or closure to neophytes and non-activists. Whatever its name might lead to think, it is quite clear to many that the PGA first and foremost brings together "specialists" of radical activism.

This is seen as problematic by some, when it comes to finding common grounds with the rest of the population, to building links and affinities, in order to show what we're about, in order to discover other people's realities. This is seen as acceptable by some others, who precisely see the PGA as this rare opportunity for activists bound by common cultures & practices to meet, share debates, complicities and large scale projects.

However, all participants to the encounters did not necessary share a background of collective life, autonomous struggle, squat culture, etc. For some, STAMP was an occasion to meet people who are struggling in an original manner, without being part of the activist ghetto themselves.

Decentralisation allowed to greatly extend the potential for spreading practices, for encouraging exchanges, for reaching out in a broader way, opening up to a different kind of public at times. This experience contributed to strenghtening desires of fluidity in between diverse social universes; a conscious desire of not isolating our scene from the rest of the world.

For instance, in Bellevue, a number of locals are involved in building autonomy & non-capitalist interchange, without being "activists" themselves. During the Bellevue decentralized moment, there was a clear feeling of a "popular" participation, to an extent that might not have been made possible within previous European PGA conferences.

Knowing that these PGA encounters didn't aim at bringing together masses of tens of thousands, we can also ask ourselves to what extent it is compatible to keep these gatherings relatively small (some hundreds to some thousands of people) and to work towards opening them up to the "outside" at the same time. Within our circles, these encounters can already attract large numbers.

# Crossing-over: internal

PGA is also intended to be a space for cross-over and bridging within radical activist communities themselves. It allows to confront perspectives and connect people from different action backgrounds, share a diversity of stories, struggles and situations, based upon a common culture that mostly relies on "do it yourself" practices and political offensive.

On that matter, we have the feeling the conference succeeded in bringing forward a series of very important topics that weren't necessarily offered great visibility or consideration in the PGA, as in the rest of anticapitalist/anti-authoritarian movements. Such topics include: childhood & education, autonomous building, anti-industrial struggles, access to land, the role of alternative internet servers.

As planned, a number of practical working sessions took place during the encounters, such as setting up solar pannels, carpentry, gardening, wood-cutting, collecting medicinal herbs, screenprinting, etc. There was a definite cross-over between intellectual and manual practices, between "talking together" and "doing together". One of the two aspects was sometimes dominant, though: there were little debates in Toulouse, and the planned library construction project was not achieved in Dijon.

Putting together diverse topics allowed some fresh connections and fruitful projects: racism & gender politics, anti-industrialism & alternative education, autonomous spaces & autonomous servers... On the contrary, some topical groups remained rather self-focused during ten days, enjoying the rare quality of the moment. Naturally, these connections brought their share of confrontation in between different modes of expression and identities: technicity of the geeks, spontaneity of the unschooling people; intellectualisation of the anti-industrials; arrogant identitarism of the squatters and urban autonomen... though current collaborations leed us to think these clichés were in many ways overthrown.

Last but not least, these encounters allowed people who had struggled differently within a same social movement to get back together, share perspectives and strategies (more precisely: about the anti CPE struggles in France); it also allowed, for instance, people running internet servers living in different cities and countries to unite within a network to face state repression...

Exclusion, Power Struggles, Autonomy and the rest

# Exclusion, control, autonomy & co.

The STAMP collective tried to confront issues of power and exclusion induced by the "convenor" role. The very fact of working for months and months to prepare and reflect upon those PGA meetings put us in an extremely central position throughout the conference: we had the information, made the proposals, mastered the tools, knew the places and the people...

Obviously, this situation automatically places the organizing group in a situation of power, and generates inequalities in the role everyone can endorse. We believe that self-management & horizontality can't just be declarations or intents, but that they are to be embraced and experienced. No matter how hard we tried to facilitate this, it remained that: levels of involvement couldn't be the same between, say, a STAMP member (typically, uberactivist and from Dijon, for example) and, say, a hippy (with long greasy hair) arriving on the first day of the conference because s/he's seen the light and thought "hey, why not give it a try?". We attempted to encourage a general feeling of participatory ownership over the project, by giving loads of infos through a practical guide and introductory texts about the PGA... In fact, it can probably be said that we did that all too well, and that were was too much information (which would have gained a lot being spread _before_ the conference!).

Even so, there was quite a few people who truly "reclaimed" the logistics and participated rather brilliantly in the conference! In addition to that, many people who arrived without knowing anybody in STAMP, nor knew anything beforehand about the PGA, generated dynamics and encounters around issues that mattered to them, be they in the program or not.

Some of us believe that, whilst autonomy and horizontality are important, we should still acknowledge the reality of 'roles' and skills in specific jobs. Things don't often happen by magic, rather they happen thanks to people who coordinate and spark energy in processes at given moments.

Others believe that the "self-management machine" was too big at times, and that the complexity of the organisation paradoxically reinforced inequalities in the people's capabilities to appropriate or take part in the process. Formalism might not be such a solution to everything, after all...

Finally, it has also been said that an organising group is not necessarily a problem, as long as it isn't fixed in concrete, and that the next organisers can create their own temporary 'rules'. Above all, specialisation and confinement to any given role are the most dangerous case scenarios, leading to power issues.

Nevertheless, some elements have certainly favoured the exclusion phenomenas or take-overs: a daily workload of 8-10 hours of intense meetings (some people managing to keep focus, some finding it just too much), the monopoly on certain kinds of know-how such as: technical knowledge (computer skills, ability to write, confidence to speak up in public, abilty to synthetize...), contextual knowledge (history of the PGA, of "sans-titre", of relations between participants, etc.).

Well, as usual, we're not patting ourselves on the back, though we are also wondering at times, whether we should be asking ourselves so many questions...

International Participation

The international participation to this conference has unfortunately been one of our weak points. While there was a number of people from various european countries in Dijon, and some in Lyon too, the gatherings in Frayssinouss, Toulouse and Bellevue, where contents were probably more distant from the usual "international anticapitalist activist gathering standard issues", were nearly french-speaking only meetings. Even if we worked on international contacts, especially in Eastern Europe, and tried to raise interest through topical calls, it is quite clear that we focused much energy on the conceptualisation of the project, its logistics and contents, but not enough in early advertisement and propaganda around Europe for the conference itself.

Lots of us inside the STAMP collective didn't feel like writing or communicating in englishn and we couldn't count on a square team of translators. Therefore, we communicated a lot inside our group (through meetings and STAMP e-lists, and totally underused the PGA_process list, that could have given much more visibility and therefore participation of people from other countries.

Money

# Feedback about the money left after the last PGA conference

Here comes a slightly detailed presentation of the financial situation after the conference, and elements for future use of the money left: we found ourselves with still 6040 euros left after the conference (which is as great as unexpected for an event organized without any subsidies, solely based upon a few benefit discos/food parties in squats, and the donation based participation of all those who attended the conference).

During the last STAMP evaluation meeting, we decided this money was to stay within the PGA, to support PGA-related events and structures. Here are the few decisions we took below:

- we first decided that part of the money can go to Eastern Europe activists willing to take part in the next wintermeeting (that took place in Hamburg, on February 24th & 25th);

- however, most of it will go to support the next european PGA conference, to the next convenor (especially to help for visas of people from Eastern Europe, though extendable to any conference-related needs - in short, it's up to the convenors);

- if those arrested during the PGA conference at the mexican consulate in Dijon needed money for the trials and sentances, and couldn't find enough money around European Zapatista support roups, it was decided to let some money available for that. Meanwhile, all charges have been dropped against them, yeeha!

- a certain amount of money (2000 euros maximum) is dedicated to printing copies and sending PGA-related documents around europe to infopoints and infoshops: PGA presentation, 2006's conference report newspaper... Dijon's infopoint shall be in charge.

Write to stamp-interne[at]pgaconference.org for requests!

What's Next?

# Dynamics for the PGA's network;
# Meaning of its existence?
# Questionings, doubts, etc...

Just like every meeting, we had to talk about the structures of the network and its future, which was a rather difficult task.

STAMP worked to keep the dynamics of the network alive, when people were rather in the process of giving up and were rather focusing on criticizing a functioning pointed out as elitist and lacking transparency. Trying to experiment new forms of organization clearly meant to revive the network, to look for more appropriate ways to get politically involved or, as a last resort, to formalize the death of the network.

In some decentralized places (Dijon, Lyon), a great number of people got involved in such questionings, discussing for exemple the development of technical tools that might stimulate the network on an international level (Internet). In other places (Frayssinous, Bellevue, Toulouse), there was rather a lack of interest for the PGA as a network, or at least, a lot of questioning regarding the need for such a structure. Why and for whom such a network should exist? Should we keep it alive at any cost? In which ways is it connected to our daily struggles? To what extremes (rythms, ghettoization) such form of activism are forcing us?

During the centralized phase in Dijon, this huge gap played an important role in disagreements we had to face. To put it in simple words, some of us were focusing on keeping alive what some others wanted to question in the first place. At the same time, many others didn't really understand this situation, and what was really at stake. Lack of understanding, the feeling that each side was trying to take power over the other, organizational mess, way too long meetings, boycott and too much talk, people freaking out and being very tired...

Still, even in such a context, a group of people -larger than during the previous european meetings - got involved with the network and kept it alive. Is that at the cost of exclusion for some? Should we rather consider that those people will simply get involved somewhere else, and have consciously decided to quit the network, or that they would have wished for a clearer rejection of this kind of activism? It is probably a bit of all this. Let's wish that in the future, such questionings will popup in a more coherent way.

# STAMP follow-up:
# winter meeting, passing-on knowledge,
# techniques, information tools

Born out of the " sans-titre" "non-network", STAMP had given itself a unique monomaniac mission: organizing this PGA conference. So it logically dissolved itself at the end of this meeting. Nevertheless, we promised that we wouldn't totally leave the boat after the conference, and that we would keep having a look at what was going on afterwards, to pass all the knowledge that we acquired during this adventure.

During the STAMP evaluation meeting, we gave ourselves a lists of tasks in order to do so:

- to be present during the wintermeeting in order to orally bring our evaluation and to be here to do whatever skill exchanges would be needed.

- to reorganize the http://pgaconference.org/ website in order to make it usable after the conference, and to include the various texts created during the preparation process and the gathering itself in it: PGA presentation, reader and political texts, newspapers, reports and articles coming out of the conference...

- to put on the website a "text-tool" that gives inputs about the process of organizing this conference and various small practical texts about the tools that it's been necessary to use: domes and DIY tents and structures, survival kit on how to cook for 100 people, getting visas, how not to manage to hack any official subsidies, legal guides, experimentation of various meeting practices, using a wiki in such collective and non geek projects in which half of the people don't want to hear too much about computers, doing a movie in a space where nobody wants to be filmed, creating dry toilets inside an old slaughterhouse, setting up a pirate radio, decentralizing a gathering and its organization and then giving yourself ten times more things to do... this kind of things, you know?

Some of us will take some holidays from the PGA process, some others have decided to stay involved in some of the PGA process working groups: infopoints, website... A lots STAMPers still do things together, inside sans-titre or new projects coming out of this conference, with quite a lot of new people met during the various gatherings as well. We decided to keep regular updates about the PGA and the continuation of the network during sans-titre meetings.

We decided that we didn't want to feel responsible to "find" some new convenors. Having a new convenor or not will depend of the dynamic created during this conference and of the relevance that other people feel of this network keeping running. If the PGA network in Europe dies in it's present form, we're not going to make it survive by ourselves, but we remain confident in the fact that it's allowed us to do many things in the past, as we're confident in the fact that it will reappear one day, in hundreds of different possible ways, as long as it is be relevant for the various components of an anticapitalist and anti-authoritarian movement in Europe to meet, deviate and create alliances. Nevertheless, if one or several new convenors (or whatever other weird monster) show up with a project of a new gathering... we'll be present to exchange with them about what we did and to give a hand. So the future is up to you!

You're invited to send a mail to STAMP@PGAconference.org if you want to receive some newspapers of the conference, PGA presentation and PGA process documents for your infopoint.

By the way, let's be honest, we're trying to be comitted, doing written evaluations and everytning, but we're also trying to do too many things at the same time at the last minute. Even if this text largely comes from collective discussions, it hasn't been collectively rediscussed afterwards.

See http://europe.pgaconference.org/

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