[Media-watch] FW: [Fwd: WSIS and WE SEIZE media events report]

[David Miller]

Message on WSIS:



December 13, 2003. I am at the airport in Chicago,
still trying to get home to Oklahoma after attending
the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
in Geneva, Switzerland. Here are some highlights of
what the summit meant for me. As I come across other
reports on the Summit I'll try to circulate them so
that we can have a more diverse and complex vision.
Please keep in mind that this is a very personal
view of the Summit.

The Declaration of Civil Society "Shaping
information societies for human needs" was, in my
view, the most important accomplishment emerging
from the Summit.  The Declaration is a 21 page
document that lays out the vision of civil society
for an information and communication society
conducive to inclusive, democratic, and fair
societies.  The Declaration includes key issues,
such as community media, gender, indigenous
knowledges, the role of media in war and peace, the
public domain, open software, and the inclusion of
"communication" as equally important to
"information."  The Declaration is a document we
should all become familiar with, and use to trigger
discussion, debate, and mobilization around issues
of information and communication technologies among
our people.  Those of us in academia should include
it in our syllabi; those of us working with
grassroots organizations should disseminate it and
facilitate discussions about it in our communities.
 Not that everyone should adopt the declaration as
their own vision, but I truly believe in its
potential to trigger local processes of awareness
and mobilization.  Please let me know if you are
using the Declaration in any way, so that we can
share potential uses. Endorsements to the
Declaration should be sent to ct-endorse at wsis-cs.org
and will be archived on http://www.wsis-cs.org.  The
Declaration is available in Spanish, French, and
English at
http://alainet.org/active/show_news.phtml?news_id=5118.

WE SEIZE: was the alternative summit event organized
by Independent Media Centers' and other information
and communication activists from different European
communities.  While the official summit was held in
Palexpo, a sterile convention center entirely
isolated and militarized where access was strictly
restricted (even those of us with the official badge
could not enter the rooms where official discussions
were taking place), WE SEIZE was organized in the
heart of Geneva, in a communal space entirely open
to all.  Although the Geneva police tried to shot
down WE SEIZE, the organizers managed to negotiate
with the city and organized a series of technology
workshops and open discussions around issues such as
infowars, the exploitation of information labor, and
open source software.  WE SEIZE was incredibly
inspiring in its inclusiveness, openness, and
technological savvy and beauty.  Unfortunately the
disconnection between Palexpo and WE SEIZE made it
very difficult for academics and activists from the
Global South to make it to WE SEIZE.  Looking toward
the future, those of us in contact with the Global
South activists and the Indymedia activists in the
North should do more to strengthen links between
these two collectives.  Information about WE SEIZE
in http://www.geneva03.net/.

The official summit was a mix between a high-end
technology market, gubernatorial deliberations, and
parallel panels, roundtables, and forums.  Among all
these, two forums were impressive: The Forum on
Communications Rights and The Community Media Forum.

The Forum on Communication Rights was organized by
the Communication Rights in the Information Society
Campaign (CRIS www.crisinfo.org), the World
Association of Christian Communication (WACC
http://www.wacc.org.uk/), the Association for
Progressive Communcation (APC www.apc.org/english),
General Intelligence Group, the Foundation Heinrich
Böll (http://www.boell.de/), Panos UK
(http://www.panos.org.uk/), People's Communication
Charter (http://www.pccharter.net/), and the WSIS'
Human Rights Caucus
(http://www.iris.sgdg.org/actions/smsi/hr-wsis/).
The Forum included panels on communication and
poverty, communication and human rights,
communication, war and peace, and communication,
copyrights and trade.  Soon all Forum presentations
will be available at www.communicationrights.org.

The Community Media Form was organized by Bread for
All ( www.bfa-ppp.ch), the Swiss Catholic Lenten
Fund, (www.fastenopfer.ch), ALER (Asociación
Latinoamericana de Educación Radiofónica,
www.aler.org.ec), AMARC (Asociación Mundial de
Radios Comunitarias www.amarc.org), CAMECO (Concejo
de Medios Católicos www.cameco.org), and  the Civil
Society's Community Media Caucus of the WSIS.   (I
mention all these organizations because we should
keep track of their key role in promoting global and
regional mobilization initiatives).  From this Forum
I came out convinced that despite the incredible
potential of recent communication technologies,
radio is still the most accessible and therefore
most important technology for most people on the
planet.  I was particularly impressed by the
evaluation initiative developed by ERBOL
(http://www.erbol.com.bo/) and ALER in Latin America
called La Práctica Inspira [Practice that Inspires].
 On the basis of 24 case studies plus a
comprehensive inventory of community radio in the
region, this project reveals when and how community
radio contributes to building more democratic,
empowered, and fair communities.  In January the
project will be available in a book and a CD, in
Spanish at least.

A final comment looking toward the future: I believe
it is important to get involved in the second phase
of the WSIS, in Tunisia in 2005.  At local,
national, regional and international levels, we all
have a role to play in the WSIS.  Personally, I see
two types of actions we should all contribute to:
first, to connect with others; there are so many
different groups, NGOs, and individuals working with
overlapping agendas but isolated from each other.
So, the community radio folks should connect with
the Internet governance folks; the social movements
folks should connect with the technology policy
folks (people working on governance, standards, open
software, technology design, etc).  Second, we
should all initiate processes of dialogue,
discussion, and debate around the WSIS Civil Society
Declaration.

I hope OURMedia IV in July in Porto Alegre can
become a meeting point where we can advance these
lines of action
(http://www.ourmedianet.org/eng/conferences.html).
Clemencia Rodriguez