National - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

10th Grassroots Gathering

national | miscellaneous | event notice

Thursday August 25, 2005 18:39

by Clare - Grassroots Gathering

...10 gatherings agrowing!

The 10th Grassroots Gathering will take place this weekend Fri-Sun 26th-28th of August. The gathering will be part of the Rossport Solidarity camp in north Mayo. Further details below.

If you have a spare place in a car travelling to Mayo from any part of the country please let post it up below.

All very welcome.

Details of the Tenth Grassroots Gathering, a big get together due to happen at Rossport Solidarity Camp on August 27th and 28th.

Since the winter of 2001 Nine Grassroots Gatherings have taken place in Ireland, with discussion and organisation around a wide range of issues.
Each one takes place in a different city from the last and is organised by a different group of people from the last. Grassroots Gatherings have taken place in Limerick, Galway, Dublin, Cork, and Belfast.

The Tenth Grassroots Gathering is to take place in Rossport Solidarity Camp on the weekend of the 27th and 28th of August. For details of how to get there visit:
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70581

This Grassroots Gathering is to have a very specific theme.

That theme is local community campaigns, that is, situations similar to that in Rossport and the surrounding areas.

To reiterate the theme is locally based popular struggles of “ordinary people”, the theme is not environmental activism.

This is not a judgement on the value of various issues but a recognition that Rossport type situations have a particular nature different from “activist” dominated social movements and it is those struggles we wish to dedicate this Gathering to and from which we wish to learn from.

The Gathering has no cover charge and will take place over two days. Food is provided by the Bitchin' Kitchen Cooking Collective.

Remember accomadation is in tents and you are in Ireland, come equiped.

The format for the first day is workshops, that is a small number of speakers giving a ten to fifteen minute talk followed by open discussion.

The workshops will consist of people from local community campaigns talking about the different tactics, forms of organisation, and methods they have used in their campaigns rather than a concentration on the issues.

There will also be some skills share workshops.

The format for the second day is plenary, that is open discussion around a particular theme.
In this case the theme is to be how can different local community campaigns support each other and how can green/left activists support them.

Speakers have been invited on the following topics/from the following groups (some are to be confirmed):
Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment aka CHASE (involved in campaigning against incineration), anti-nuclear protest camps in West Germany in the ‘80s, contempory anti-pylons groups, Galway for a Safe Environment (involved in campaigning against incineration). More to follow.

The Tenth Grassroots Gathering is to be the culmination of the Solidarity Week at the camp, which begins on Monday August 22nd. More details to follow very shortly.
For more details of the Gathering phone Terry at: 086 1682416, for more details of the Solidarity Week phone Tracey at: 087 6543425

Or e-mail room101ucg@yahoo.co.uk

The grassroots gatherings have aimed towards a network which would:

Be based on the principle that people should control their own lives and work together as equals, as part of how we work as well as what we are working towards.

Within the network this means rejecting top-down and state-centred forms of organisation (hierarchical, authoritarian, expert-based, Leninist etc.). We need a network that's open, decentralised, and really democratic.

Call for solutions that involve ordinary people controlling their own lives and having the resources to do so: the abolition, not reform, of global bodies like the World Bank and WTO, and a challenge to underlying structures of power and inequality.

Organise for the control of the workplace by those who work there.

Call for the control of communities by the people who live there.

Argue for a sustainable environmental, economic and social system, agreed by the people of the planet.

Working together in ways which are accessible to ordinary people, particularly women and working-class people, rather than reproducing feelings of disempowerment and alienation within our own network.

save preference

Comments (2 of 2)

Very short notice

by Would have be interested

Tue Aug 30, 2005 00:37

This was posted up with very short notice. If I had known about it earlier it might have been more useful

Was posted Earlier in the events section Vis...

by Peig Mahone

Tue Aug 30, 2005 01:48

.... "Rossport Solidarity Week Programme
by Shelltosea Friday, Aug 19 2005, 7:54pm

Includes...

- Updates on the Shell to Sea Campaign
- Non Violent Direct Action Training
- Protests
- Wind Powered Movies
- Social Nights, Local Story Telling and Music
- Kids Space
- Skill Sharing
- Report back from recent solidarity delegation to
Columbia.
- Talk on Peak Oil and Fuelling the Future
- Talks by local people on the impact of the proposed pipeline
- Grassroots Gathering Sat 27 & Sun 28

Free camping on site and meals provided at the camp by The Bitchin Kitchen.

For more info contact Tracey 087 6543425 or Bob 086 3201612

Grassroots Gathering info, click on link below.

http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=89&type=event "

Upcoming Events

New Events

Other Press

User Preferences

Feeds

Blog Feeds

Anti-Empire

The Saker

Lockdown Skeptics

Voltaire Network

10th Grassroots Gathering

Comments (2 of 2)