[governance] Internet Social Forum

[Norbert Bollow]

Whenever I post anything on this list, I'm obviously thereby taking the
risk of someone trying to twist my words around.

Of course we use the words that we use in order to convey the meaning
which those words have in the context in which we use them. Nothing
more, nothing less. The context of the Internet Social Forum (ISF)
announcement is a context of demanding social justice and of protesting
against the kind of agenda that the WEF is associated with.

In particular, in this kind of context, "social forum" has a very
specific meaning: a kind of forum in which all civil society groups
are welcome which are (like we also are) opposed to what is referred to
as neoliberalism and to what is referred to as imperialism, and in
which the organizers of the forum are not attempting to control the
substantive content of the forum.

That is the kind of Internet Social Forum that we want. It is an idea
born out of discussions which took place in the context of the Just Net
Coalition, yes, but already by now the ISF idea has much broader
support, and IMO the plan to launch the preparatory process at the
World Social Forum (WSF) pretty much guarantees that any attempt to give
the ISF a character which fundamentally differs from the WSF's spirit
which is in the below correctly characterized as "a broad, diverse,
pluralistic organisation of global civil society" would certainly fail.

So I hereby request that the Just Net Coalition and the Internet Social
Forum should not be conflated please. A coalition is by the very meaning
of the word based on agreeing about something. A forum is, again by the
very meaning of the word, all about bringing together a variety of
perspectives. I would expect that anyone who sees the Just Net
Coalition's set of viewpoints as being "very narrowly defined" should
agree that it makes sense for us to desire the existence of a civil
society forum which is much broader and which allows for exchanges of
views from a very wide variety of perspectives, but where (unlike the
situation e.g. here on the IGC list) the fundamentals of "opposition to
what in the social forums movement is referred to as neoliberalism and
to what is referred to as imperialism" are accepted. We desire to be
able to participate in a forum which is focused on the Internet and
where these fundamentals are not in themselves already a constant source
of conflict (conflict which is here on the IGC list so very often
disruptive, preventing the kind of discussions which we feel need to
take place from taking place here on the IGC list.)

Greetings,
Norbert
co-convenor, Just Net Coalition
http://JustNetCoalition.org


On Thu, 29 Jan 2015 01:24:14 +0800
David Cake <dave at difference.com.au> wrote:

> On 24 Jan 2015, at 12:57 am, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> > 
> > But to answer your question:
> > 
> > 1. Of course the "call to occupy the Internet" is not directed to
> > governments. That should be totally clear from the text that we have
> > published. We are at this point not in any way formally linked to
> > the occupy movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_movement
> > but we use the term "occupy" to broadly align the Internet Social
> > Forum initiative with that kind of protest viewpoint.
> 
> 	Clarifying that the use of the occupy terminology (much as
> the term 'social forum' itself) is simply an attempt to associate a
> JNC project with an unassociated protest movement, with quite
> different goals, is appreciated. 
> 
> > 2. Did anyone seriously think that when JNC decided that we would
> > not participate in the "NETmundial initiative" which was originally
> > single-handedly led by WEF and then led jointly by WEF, ICANN and
> > CGI.br (while there appears to be strong evidence of WEF still being
> > the leading partner among the three), that that would mean that we
> > would want to remove ourselves entirely from an important part of
> > the discourse about the future of the Internet???
> 
> 	We may have been a little surprised at the degree to which
> JNC is willing to try to co-opt the goodwill of unassociated
> organisations in order to promote its rather different agenda. 
> 
> 	I for one found the obvious attempt to associate the ISF with
> the WSF, a forum that is based around a broad, diverse, pluralistic
> organisation of global civil society, having its name associated with
> a group that represents a very narrowly defined, deliberately
> excluding the mainstream civil society position, somewhat
> disingenuous. 
> 
> 	I for one would welcome discussion of internet governance
> within a WSF context, but reject the ISF as a legitimate attempt at
> doing something similar, for obvious reasons. Cheers David
> 

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