Snatching moments of peace

This week­end was a few moments of peace snatched out of a night­mare week.

The Social Forum was excel­lent. Smal­ler than expec­ted but with a good core of act­iv­ists with great ideas and a real sense of know­ledge exchange and con­sol­id­a­tion. Plans for the G20 con­fer­ence for next year got star­ted, lots of dis­cus­sion of per­form­ance as act­iv­ism, a debrief and les­sons learnt from Scott Park­in’s deport­a­tion, a great ses­sion on the polit­ics of inform­a­tion run by Darren Sharp, although that star­ted out a little overly aca­demic for the audi­ence, I think and was mostly stuff I already knew to begin – Cre­at­ive Com­mons, Cas­tells, Rushkoff, Hardt & Negri… Some inter­est­ing stuff from a Wollon­gong aca­demic on ‘back­fire’ prin­ciples and how to turn a repress­ive event into a suc­cess for the act­iv­ist movement. 

And I met a really inter­est­ing guy from Vet­er­ans for Peace who has given up his job to become a full-time act­iv­ist after he went to Camp Casey and has now sold his house and moved to New Orleans to do relief work. Very inspiring…

And in the middle of that, went to the Span­ish fest­ival and ate paella and churros and drank hot chocol­ate and danced Sat­urday night away to latin grooves with said vet­eran and Matt and vari­ous other people. A really great night, and a really good week­end. Made a very nice change not to have my head going around in circles about this week’s issues.