Only a few weeks left and the fifth edition of the Intercontinental Youth Camp will find its realisation in Porto Alegre, Brasil from 24th to 31st of January. While the organizational process has been going on for many months, these days the first campers are already arriving in Parque Harmonia, on the shore of Lake Guaíba in the heart of the city of Porto Alegre, to join in with the construction of the camp. Having surged during the first World Social Forum in January 2001, the camp rapidly developed its own dynamics and concepts and grew quickly counting over 25.000 participants in Porto Alegre in 2003 and more than 4.000 in Mumbai, India in 2004. It joins political discourse and action with practical approaches of convivencia (living together) in a huge laboratory.
Camp 2003
Political process and structure
The political process can be characterized by ideas such as self-management, horizontality, diversity and creative resistance, experimenting and proposing alternatives that oppose capitalist and neoliberal hegemony. The term Youth in the camps title refers to its new approaches to political practice rather than to a group of a defined age and so all people from diverse social, political and cultural backgrounds will find a place to live, participate and interact in the camp during the last week of January.
The organizational process is based on a horizontal-hierarchical hybrid structure with ten commissions and the COA (Organizing Committee of the Camp) as the main organs of articulation and collective decision making. All decisions are made by consensus and the commissions have a high degree of autonomy in order to decentralize the process as much as possible. The participants of the process are individuals as well as representatives of groups, organizations and social movements, most of them Brazilian, yet without leaving aside the focus on international issues.
Everyone is welcome to participate
Activities for the camp week can be registered by anyone, independent of being of an organized entity or not, – a big difference from the World Social Forum, where being organized is the basic condition to offer activities. Thus, expecting more than 300 activities from participants of many different countries from all the continents, the camp will be a huge space of exchange, networking, debate and convergence of the most diverse forms of social, political and cultural activism while at the same time functioning as a laboratory for reflection and reinvention of political relations and social life in general. Bio-construction, solidarity economy, free knowledge are some of the many concepts making the IYC an impressive laboratory of alternatives.
There will be seven centres of action (capacity up to 500 people,) besides various other smaller spaces to host the activities, spread out over all of the camp area. The centres represent different main topics and struggles (Cultural Resistance, Health and Culture, Communication and Free Knowledge, Social and Student Movements, Human Rights and Sexual Diversity, Environment, Global Struggle and Direct Action), yet as all the other spaces are open to other kinds of themes as well. Pre-Registration for activities and individuals (Fees of 12 R/30 R$ for people from the “geopolitical” global south/north) will be possible until the 15th of January, after that upon arrival on the camp site. There will also be three spaces of free occupation (ELOs) without a fix program for spontaneous activities.
Self-managed camp life
Beyond this the poli-centric spatial set-up of the camp-territory in opposition to the centralist logics of most of the cities in the world will create many spaces of spontaneous and free encounter of the camps inhabitants. Sixty small neighbourhood centres (barrios) will be the main unit for the campers to self-manage co-existence in the camp. The building of the camps structures is realised based on the contribution and knowledge of different social movements.
Financially the camp is dependant on the World Social Forum, which does not impede a high degree of political autonomy and will not undermine its critical position in relation to the forum, which will be spread out just north and south of the camp area – a great difference from 2003, when the forum was located far more distant in other city areas.
After the all resistances-camp in Quito, Ecuador during the first Social Forum of the Americas the fifth Intercontinental Youth Camp will be another important landmark bringing together and strengthening the diverse forms of global resistance struggle. Once more over 20.000 people will opt to live together in the camp, creatively and powerfully showing face to the dominant powers of our neoliberal world.
More information: www.acampamentofsm.org
Contact:
acampamento@acampamentofsm.org Program Committee:
programacao@acampamentofsm.org To participate as a volunteer:
voluntarios@acampamentofsm.org text for the fotos:
Political process and structure
The political process can be characterized by ideas such as self-management, horizontality, diversity and creative resistance, experimenting and proposing alternatives that oppose capitalist and neoliberal hegemony. The term Youth in the camps title refers to its new approaches to political practice rather than to a group of a defined age and so all people from diverse social, political and cultural backgrounds will find a place to live, participate and interact in the camp during the last week of January.
The organizational process is based on a horizontal-hierarchical hybrid structure with ten commissions and the COA (Organizing Committee of the Camp) as the main organs of articulation and collective decision making. All decisions are made by consensus and the commissions have a high degree of autonomy in order to decentralize the process as much as possible. The participants of the process are individuals as well as representatives of groups, organizations and social movements, most of them Brazilian, yet without leaving aside the focus on international issues.
Everyone is welcome to participate
Activities for the camp week can be registered by anyone, independent of being of an organized entity or not, – a big difference from the World Social Forum, where being organized is the basic condition to offer activities. Thus, expecting more than 300 activities from participants of many different countries from all the continents, the camp will be a huge space of exchange, networking, debate and convergence of the most diverse forms of social, political and cultural activism while at the same time functioning as a laboratory for reflection and reinvention of political relations and social life in general. Bio-construction, solidarity economy, free knowledge are some of the many concepts making the IYC an impressive laboratory of alternatives.
There will be seven centres of action (capacity up to 500 people,) besides various other smaller spaces to host the activities, spread out over all of the camp area. The centres represent different main topics and struggles (Cultural Resistance, Health and Culture, Communication and Free Knowledge, Social and Student Movements, Human Rights and Sexual Diversity, Environment, Global Struggle and Direct Action), yet as all the other spaces are open to other kinds of themes as well. Pre-Registration for activities and individuals (Fees of 12 R/30 R$ for people from the “geopolitical” global south/north) will be possible until the 15th of January, after that upon arrival on the camp site. There will also be three spaces of free occupation (ELOs) without a fix program for spontaneous activities.
Self-managed camp life
Beyond this the poli-centric spatial set-up of the camp-territory in opposition to the centralist logics of most of the cities in the world will create many spaces of spontaneous and free encounter of the camps inhabitants. Sixty small neighbourhood centres (barrios) will be the main unit for the campers to self-manage co-existence in the camp. The building of the camps structures is realised based on the contribution and knowledge of different social movements.
Financially the camp is dependant on the World Social Forum, which does not impede a high degree of political autonomy and will not undermine its critical position in relation to the forum, which will be spread out just north and south of the camp area – a great difference from 2003, when the forum was located far more distant in other city areas.
After the all resistances-camp in Quito, Ecuador during the first Social Forum of the Americas the fifth Intercontinental Youth Camp will be another important landmark bringing together and strengthening the diverse forms of global resistance struggle. Once more over 20.000 people will opt to live together in the camp, creatively and powerfully showing face to the dominant powers of our neoliberal world.
More information: www.acampamentofsm.org
Contact:
acampamento@acampamentofsm.org Program Committee:
programacao@acampamentofsm.org To participate as a volunteer:
voluntarios@acampamentofsm.org camp_03.jpg:
Once again, like here in 2003, people from around the world will live together in Parque Harmonia, Porto Alegre during the last week of January 2005
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