Porto Alegre * Madison * London * Montevideo
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 15 Hartford * Rural Pennsylvania * San Francisco THE HAVENS CENTER and PROGRESSIVE DANE Present COMMUNITY POWER 2002: INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LOCAL DEMOCRACY November 15-17, 2002 University of Wisconsin-Madison The Old Armory/Red Gym PROGRAM 7:00-10:00pm WELCOME RECEPTION SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16 9:00-11:00am "THE LESSONS OF ADVANCED LOCAL DEMOCRACY MOVEMENTS” - GIANPAOLO BAIOCCHI, University of Pittsburgh: The Workers Party in Porto Alegre, Brazil - DANIEL CHAVEZ, Transnational Institute (Amsterdam): The Broad Front in Montevideo, Uruguay - MICHAEL KEITH, Centre for Urban and Community Research, University of London: British Municipal Socialism of the 1980s 11:30-1:00pm FACILITATED BREAKOUT DISCUSSIONS 1:00-3:00pm LUNCH BREAK 3:00-5:00pm "ON THE ROAD TO SUCCESS?: INNOVATION & DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL IN THE UNITED STATES" - MEDEA BENJAMIN, Global Exchange: Public Power & Election Reform in San Francisco - ELIZABETH HORTON SHEFF, Hartford, CT City Council: How an African-American Green Became Hartford Majority Leader - BRENDA KONKEL, Madison Common Council: Progressive Politics at the Cusp in Madison, Wisconsin - THOMAS LINZEY, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund: Banning Corporate Agribusiness in Rural Pennsylvania 5:30-7:00pm FACILITATED BREAKOUT DISCUSSIONS 7:00pm CELEBRATION WITH FOOD, MUSIC, & MORE SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 17 10:00am-noon NUTS & BOLTS ACTION SESSIONS - Long-term Inter-community Cooperation - Democratizing Dane County - Possible additional "Democratizing <<Your Community>>" sessions (organized on the basis of attendance from each community). Noon-1:00pm LUNCH BREAK 1:00-3:00pm CLOSING PLENARY - Reports from the Action Sessions - Next Steps BACKGROUND The enormous expansion of transnational corporate power and the widespread adoption of neo-liberal economic policies over the last two decades have made “globalization” the defining characteristic of our times. Backed by the planet’s sole remaining superpower, and hailed by elite observers the world over as both a positive and irreversible development, it would appear that there is no alternative to corporate globalization and neo-liberalism. Yet, as corporate globalization has advanced, a growing popular resistance movement has emerged on a thousand fronts across the world. Examples include democratic deepening in Porto Alegre and Montevideo; the mass insurrections of Chiapas, Seoul, Mexico City, Ankara, Seattle, Washington D.C., Cincinnati, Quebec, Gothenburg, Genoa, Barcelona, and Argentina; the meetings of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre; and the many instances of localized labor, campus, and community resistance to the expansion of corporate power. In the United States, resistance has also taken the form of a nascent democracy movement, evident not only on the streets of American cities, but also in campus struggles against sweatshops and the corporatization of education, the growth of movements for voting rights and electoral reform, and the recent growth of American opposition parties. Notwithstanding these important developments, the US democracy movement remains very much in its infancy and has yet to move beyond a posture of resistance and reaction to corporate power and neo-liberal initiatives. Although the construction of a deeper American democracy is the ultimate aspiration of this movement, to date there has been little effort to devise a strategy for realizing this long-term objective. Indeed, progressive political activity in the US remains overwhelmingly short-term, oppositional, and non-strategic in its orientation. Addressing this strategic weakness is the central goal of the International Conference on Local Democracy, to be held in Madison, WI on the weekend of November 15-17, 2002. It is intended as the first in what the organizers hope will be a series of conferences aimed at elaborating an effective working agenda for deepening local democracy in the United States -- essentially, a local response to the World Social Forum’s call to “make another world possible.” While the primary focus of the conference is on deepening democracy at the local level, this is not meant to suggest that local communities are the only appropriate sites for pro-democracy efforts. Rather, they are seen as a crucial staging ground, as well as essential building blocks, for the construction of a larger national and international movement. Indeed, the bulk of the conference will be devoted to drawing lessons from the experiences of pro-democracy movements and struggles on other continents and in other communities, as well as to fostering links among various pro-democracy groupings in North America. By examining the experiences of more or less successful pro-democracy struggles and movements in the US and abroad, the conference seeks to accomplish two objectives: 1. Demonstrate that democratic deepening is indeed possible and thus inspire progressives in the U.S. to begin envisioning a more ambitious program of far-reaching change. 2. Gain practical insights as to what it will take to realize such change and thus stimulate a process of long-term strategic planning and organizing. More specifically, the conference will address the following questions: - What sorts of substantive goals should form the core of a long-term pro-democracy agenda? - How can municipal, county, and other instruments of local government be used to move such an agenda forward? - What role should political parties play at the local level in order to advance the pro-democracy struggle? - What unique challenges and obstacles will the movement face and how can it meet them? - How can local pro-democracy movements forge links with those in other localities in a manner that is mutually beneficial and leads to the construction of a bigger, stronger movement at the state, national, and international level? REGISTRATION Please register in advance by mail or email. Registration is free. However, contributions to the Local Democracy Project are accepted to help defray costs of this and future conferences. Please send a check made out to the "Havens Center" to: Local Democracy, c/o Havens Center, 8117 Social Sciences Building, 1180 Observatory Drive, Madison, Wisconsin, 53706 For more information, contact Patrick Barrett at 608-262-0854 or pbarrett@ssc.wisc.edu or consult the Local Democracy website: http://www.localdemocracy.org/ CONFERENCE HOSTS A. E. Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/havenscenter). Progressive Dane (http://www.prodane.org). SPONSORS UW-Madison Global Studies Program UW-Madison Latin American Caribbean and Iberian Studies Program UW-Madison Green Progressive Alliance Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative UW-Madison Geography Department Cities for People! Coalition The Progressive Magazine Four Lakes Green Party CO-SPONSORS National Lawyers Guild - UW-Madison; IWW - Madison General Membership Branch |