Mostly aimed at Jack, Saii and everyone else who was there.
Just wanted to get a solid debate started on the forum, focusing on short term and long term ideas.
Like who should we be asking to join right now?
and more importantly the follow on from that discussion raised at the end of the last meeting
Personally i don't want protest movements against the GB to be at the core of the forum at all, they shoudl be kept to the side, although soem mild affiliation is also essential. I just think that seperate groups, such as anarchist groups or peace campaigns should mobilise for that even if those groups are a large part of the ESF.
The main problem is as always how to link the indirect politics with the direct ones..
Opinions? ideas? wordy shit?
john
I don't think that having the forum as an officially non-politicised space is hiding anything, nor do I think of it as a front tactic.
The point of a forum is to allow people from all walks of life, politicised or no, to have a voice on issues which are important and discuss them without exclusion. The fact that the majority of the people currently involved are anti-capitalist should be irrelevant.
There's far too much of this 'you can't possibly care about the same things we do if you aren't anti capital' stuff going around - it's exclusionist and cuts down on the numbers the forum can potentially generate for useful causes.
If we are to hope to make a decent impact on the community with this idea it needs to be something people across East Anglia can be happy joining without fear of getting constantly barracked for their lack of sustained politics.
Frankly if it's simply going to be used as a propaganda tool it is pointless to call it a forum at all, we may as well give up the ghost entirely and call it an anti-capitalist recruitment drive.
That's not to say that the Anarchists can't show themselves to be useful, sensible people within the forum and lead by example. I don't see that as a stagist stretegy mind, just as a way of being helpful and cleaning up our image a bit.