Conclusions of the SW Organizing TOUR Peoples Movements Assembly June 1-July6, 2011

Conclusions:

1.    We initiated a new development or methodology to the World Social Forum process by developing and organizing a (Social Movements Assembly) Peoples Movements Assembly process before, during and after the social forum.  This has never been done before until now at the US Social Forum II in Detroit in June of 2010.

2.    Devised and organized the Peoples Movements Assembly as the vehicle for ACTION as the Social Forum is an ‘open’ space.  The ACTION process in our determination should accompany the organizing process for the social forum itself.  The ACTION space is just as important as the OPEN space.

3.    The design of having PMA’s during the USSF II proved to be effective and easily incorporated into the overall program of the USSF II.  The PMA’s brought convergence by grouping 4 organizations per PMA.  54 PMA's took place during the USSF II. The process of organizing the ‘assembly of assemblies’ was powerful tool of bottom up and collective organizing, and the synthesis commission worked because it was able to boil together all of the conclusions of each PMA into a National social movements declaration that can become a national social movements political platform for action.

4.    Followed up with the continuity of the PMA NWG and met in February 2011 in Atlanta to develop a vision and mission and a plan of action.  The SW PMA tour and the SE PMA tour resulted from this organizing plan to follow up on the USSF II.  The SE and SW organizing Tour have already accomplished something totally new in the social forum process.  Other PMA’s have been organized in Detroit, Atlanta, Berkeley and Portland, and are being planned in other parts of the country.

5.    The PMA NWG (James B) interviewed and documented the 54 PMA process with actual people from the grassroots organizations that participated and made them happen.  We established the pma2010.org website that has all of the resolutions approved by the PMA’s and the action calendar.  We have the contacts of all of the organizations that registered the 4-hour PMA sessions during the USSF II and in some cases the participants of the PMA’s.

6.    We can now close the PMA/USSF II plan that included before, during and after PMA’s associated with the USSF II process and event itself.  We need to measure our social change impacts, and our accomplishments in the over all process.  We should memorialize what we did and why by developing documentation for publishing and distribution.  We should share the knowledge and experience.

7.    The PMA NWG designed a new facilitation process & pedagogy for the PMA process based on ‘propulsion’ forward by debate and oxygenating the theory and practice plus the imagination of ‘another world is possible’ so we can start building the new while dismantling the old.

 ruben solis garcia