The 2nd Belfast Grassroots Gathering: an invitation

                                                                       

 

Sept 25th 2004

                                                                                                (for contact details see below)

 

Following the success of previous gatherings throughout Ireland over the past three years the grassroots gathering will be back in Belfast over the weekend of 22nd to the 24th of October.

 

Ø       The grassroots gatherings have aimed towards a network which would:

Ø       Be based on the principle that people should control their own lives and work together as equals, as part of how we work as well as what we are working towards.

Ø       Within the network this means rejecting top-down and state-centred forms of organisation (hierarchical, authoritarian, expert-based, Leninist etc.). We need a network that's open, decentralised, and really democratic.

Ø       Call for solutions that involve ordinary people controlling their own lives and having the resources to do so: the abolition, not reform, of global bodies like the World Bank and WTO, and a challenge to underlying structures of power and inequality.

Ø       Organise for the control of the workplace by those who work there.

Ø       Call for the control of communities by the people who live there.

Ø       Argue for a sustainable environmental, economic and social system, agreed by the people of the planet.

Ø       Working together in ways which are accessible to ordinary people, particularly women and working-class people, rather than reproducing feelings of disempowerment and alienation within our own network.

 

The grassroots gathering in Belfast has been booked into Queens Students Union, located on University Road opposite the main Queens building.

A theme this gathering hopes to tackle is building safe communities with an emphasis on undoing racism (both structural and interpersonal) and addressing gender bias and patriarchal structures and attitudes throughout society and within our social movements.  There will be space to discuss issues pertinent to the campaigns coming out of grassroots activism all over Ireland, such as, anti-water charges campaigns, war resistance, environmental campaigns, the global women’s strike and the other issues brought to the gathering by the people attending.

As always the success of the gathering is dependent upon the involvement of those attending.  Between then and now here’s how you can get involved.  You can pass this invitation on to people who support the aims of the gathering and would like to be involved.  There are regular organising meetings in Belfast.  If you would like to get involved or have suggestions for workshops get in touch, there is contact information below.

 

 

Signed with Solidarity & Autonomy,

 

the co-ordinating group for a grassroots gathering that will help prepare us to stop globalisation, war, capitalism and patriarchy dead in their tracks!

Contact Information

To receive further information about this grassroots gathering contact:

                By email contact us at grassrootsbelfast2@safe-mail.net

Belfast - c/o PO Box 505, Belfast, BT12 6BQ

                Telephone:   (UK) 07729785327

More information on the web at http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=66080

 or                                                    http://www.mallusk.net/grassrootsgathering