|
|
|
Brief Background on NEMA...On January 1, 2004, on the 10-year anniversary of the Zapatista Uprising, an anonymous call went out for a self-organized PGA-style network in North America. Organizations like SEAN (south-east anarchist network) started forming, and in the Northeast work and momentum has built from the Strategy Session in Worcester, MA (December 6, 2003), the NCOR Conference (January 24-25, 2004) and the Gathering for Autonomy in Hartford, CT (February 28-29). At the Hartford gathering, it was consensed by the fresh new group that A) yes we want *some* kind of anti-authoritarian network in the north-east, and B) we'll call it NEMA for the time-being. The 2nd gathering (May 2004?) was in new york with 30-60 in attendance, where the sense of the group was that NEMA wouldn't be a big banner organization that organized actions and had lots of meetings to decide unity points. Anyone that identifies as "North-East" is welcome to join, it's an open organization. The sense was that NEMA would be a network of people, a set of meetings to give us a time and a place to get to know each other and share ourselves. There would be time to share with each other what projects we're working on locally, share resources and skills and ideas with each other and to mutually aid each other. Right now it's hard to find out what kind of organizing is going on in philly or DC or NYC or hartford or wherever, this kind of networking isn't happening and NEMA is (among other things) an attempt to solve that. It was also consensed that the network speaks for no-one, and no-one speaks for the network. If any projects or actions come out of NEMA, they won't organize under the name "NEMA", so that we won't ALL have to consense on EVERY project, and so our meetings can continue to thrive as discussion and info-sharing and idea-generation facilities -- and in-depth project-planning can happen at another time. Structure-wise, we created several working-groups to facilitate various discusions (and said we wanted those groups to report-back over email once every two weeks), and decided we would try to meet once every 2 to 3 months. There was also a really great Robot dance party, really exceptional food throughout the gathering thanks to some Food Not Bombs volunteers, and it was decided that the next gathering would be in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in mid-July. The 3rd gathering was in Philadelphia July 2004, attendance was about the same as the New York gathering, with perhaps 30% continued attendance from the NYC gathering. Sessions included an RNC report-back on things going on during the RNC (I recall the Books not Bombs youth convergence, the Life After Capitalism conference, and the August 31st call to direct action), and also a really great session where we all went around and shared information about the projects we're working on. Perhaps two or three long meetings went towards (finally!) consensing on a particular decision-making model (consensus minus one). There was also some great food thanks to a Philly/Richmond/Cleveland Food Not Bombs squad, and it was decided that the next gathering would be in Cleveland Ohio sometime in early October. |
Reportback from the New York NEMA on the not-very complete NEMA website PGA's Hallmarks (adopted by NEMA) Zapatistas (Spanish) Zapatista Communiques (English) |