Ya Basta! in Prague

EU Wanna Make Summit Of It?!

Global activist movement announces major European meeting

17th January 2001

A major meeting of the European wing of the global activist network, People's Global Action has been set for early March. The meeting will assess European activists' contribution to direct action against globalisation following what has been widely hailed by activists as the successes of the demonstrations against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Prague last September.

The People's Global Action (PGA) network was born out of a large conference of global activists which took place in Geneva in February 1998 (See Globalised Resistance in Squall 16). The organisation attempts to provide a non-hierarchical co-ordination of anti-capitalist movements across the world and its formidable success at such wide-scale inclusion has helped bring Mexican guerillas into contact with Pakistani farmers and Canadian postal workers into contact with Maori human rights activists.

The last full meeting of the PGA occurred in Bangalore in India in 1999 (See Bangin' In Banga). Each continent of the world has a rotating convenor organisation which helps co-ordinate participation from the various activist groups on that continent. The previous European convenor was Reclaim the Streets (RTS) from the UK and the present one is the formidable Ya Basta movement from Italy. The new PGA Europe meeting date of March 3 and 4 was set after representatives from RTS and Ya Basta met in November 2000.

The PGA have invited all European activist groups to participate in the two day conference to be held at the Leoncavallo Social Centre in Milan in Italy. The next full scale PGA meeting involving activist groups from across the world is in Cochabamba in Bolivia on September 16-24th this year.

Information about the meeting can be obtained from Ya Basta at yabasta@tin.it.

For a powerful interview with a Ya Basta activist see Ain't No Stopping Us Now.