Amidst a whirl of terrorist accusations and border controls the third international Peoples Global Action (PGA)
conference took place in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Cochabamba, east of La Paz is town of around 600,000 people with a strong activist community. A coalition of community groups, anarchists, academics, workers and citizens recently overturned the privitisation of their water. The campaign involved protests from lobbying to direct action, where the
national guard were deployed against the people and a 17 year old protester was shot and killed.

Over 300 people from across Latin America and the world gathered in Cochabamba for a week to discuss strategies and possible global campaigns for the anti-capitalist movement. There were people from Ya Basta! Italy, CLAC, Canada, AWOL, Australia Reclaim the Streets, UK, Rising Tide, Netherlands, Chiapas Link, UK, Rainbow Keepers, Russia, IndyMedia, Brazil, Germany, Russia, USA, Aust, Womens Domestic Workers Union, Cochabamba, Aeotearoa Educators...

Discussions ranged from local autonomy and global
perspectives, the criminalisation and depiction of activists as terrorists, relations between the North and South, indigenous soveriegnity sustained campaigns - ie anti-water privitisation,and anti-military and Plan Columbia actions and much more!

From this conference came a PGA call to action against the WTO summit in Qatar. Peoples Global Action calls on all grassroots social movements, community based organisations, trade unions, student organisations, indigenous peoples, farmers organisations, autonomous collectives and everyone who wishes to participate around the world to carry out actions against the World Trade Organisation (WTO) during the next ministerial summit in Doha, Qatar, November 9th-13th, 2001.

The WTO's aim is very simple: to remove anything that gets in the way of big business and free trade, upholding the freedom for multinational companies to act as they please. Made up of 135 member countries, the WTO polices
international trade rules and continues to set an agenda that places profit above people and the planet. Already built into the agenda are three immensely destructive trade
agreements: the greement on Agriculture (AOA), the General Agreement on Trade and Services (GATS) and the Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Between them, they cover issues like: the privatisation of health, education and water, forcing GMO foods and seeds on member countries and patents on life forms.

"Regardless of whether the WTO meeting is maintained or not, we will be in the streets, because the streets are ours. Grassroots organisations all over the world are organising various forms of action and call on others to do the same."

A Cochabamba declaration from Peoples Global Action was also initiated from this conference. Here are some of the statements from this declaration - you can read the whole version at  http://www.agp.org.

"We want to talk to you about hope and affection, about fear and sorrow. We have seen the horror and desperation in the faces of plain people affected by random in the attacks on New York and Washington. We know this pain, we have daily experience and memory of terror and unnecessary violence."

"We hope that the experience of horror our North American brothers and sisters went through helps them understand how cruel and absurd the abuse of military power is and spread their solidarity against any type of attacks on civil population."

"It is this why we condemn crimes such as strikes announced by the USA Government and their allies on civil population. These rushed reactions only feed hatred, violence and terror, speeding the systematic destruction of the planet. Our philosophy is opposed to militarism and domination. We
love freedom and equilibrium between brother peoples, the vital strength of our struggle is to defend life, so we will oppose the absurd war announced by the United State through global actions."