[pp.int.general] Pirate Party from Argentina - General Assembly 2014

[seykron]

Dear pirates and piratesses,

I would like to share with you the outcome of the General Assembly that
has taken place on Friday 28.

Summary: we talked about what we made, what we're doing and what we'll
do on 2015. The full minutes are here (spanish language):

http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/Actas:2014-11-28

# What we'll do on 2015

1. We will focus on building the pirate space and the spreading of
pirate culture and organization, so more people will get involved in our
activities. Pirate space: horizontal relationships, free culture, safe
space[1], criticism, collective decisions. Pirate organization:
digital assemblies, decision making tools, direct democracy
implementation.

2. After a year of working on institutional politics from outside, we
decided to NOT put any effort on getting the legal status as political
party. We have several reasons for that (according the country's history
and politics):

  a. It is not possible to change or modify political decisions from
  inside the parliament. Power go from top to bottom, and legislatives
  do not have decision by themselves. They answer to the political
  party structure they belong to.

  b. If we compete in elections, we're enemies from ones and friends
  of others, and we DO HAVE to make this decision. We think it is
  better to participate in topics we're interested in and call our
  contacts in the parliament to join efforts, it doesn't matter which
  political party they belong to.

  c. Once you're in the parliament, you have to agree things you
  maybe don't agree in order to survive. In a parliament where more than
  50% are legislatives from the same political party, one or two
  legislatives will not be able to support assemblies decisions. For
  instance: chief legislative from the majority comes to tell you "we
  need you to back this bill". The pirate legislative says "we cannot
  back this bill, it goes against our values". So the chief legislative
  says: "you don't understand, if you don't back our bill, you will
  never be able to present a bill by yourself". Why does he/she can do
  that? It is simple: the majority also have majority in committees, so
  committees will never treat your bills if you don't back them.

  d. We have a tactical advantage: in the parliament no one understand
  the relationship between politics and technology. They think we're
  inoffensive guys because "we don't do classical politics". They don't
  see another power raising below their noses.

3. We will improve our digital tools to promote participation. So far,
we were using tools that are not user friendly (like email lists)
because we have political requirements: assemblies must be transparent
and a full registry of all discussions must be saved. The email is the
best tool to backup a distributed registry, but it does not scale, and
we know it since a time. We will finally solve this issue (maybe we'll
install loomio).

4. We will improve our processes to react to the political agenda in
which we're interested. If something like net neutrality appears in the
parliament, we need to react quickly and call our contacts there to
analyze how can we get involved.

# What we made

1. We presented legal actions to unblock The Pirate Bay in Argentina[2].
We're still waiting the legal process. Follow up: we'll try to appeal
for the unlock since according to the blocking sentence it should
expire in 90 days. We'll recover the ShareLikeAPirate campaign[3], so
we will ask for your help for that :)

2. We participated in several events at universities.

3. We made a huge online campaign to stop the fracking bill[4]. We
worked together with collectives, trade unions and oposition political
parties to build a common force against this bill. We didn't stop the
bill, but the people's answer was very impressive:

  a. People sent over 22.000 messages to legislatives in less than two
  weeks. At least 15.000 persons participated in the campaign.

  b. A legislative dedicated his speech to answer the campaign[5].

  c. Several artists expressed support to the action and two famous
  bands accepted to give a concert in front of the parliament. It didn't
  happen because of the weather...

4. We were invited to expose about the new telecommunications
bill in the Senate[6]. It was a huge collaborative job to make
amendments to the bill, since it was awful. We sent the recommendations
to the senators, but the bill is still awful. Anyway, some important
points were introduced as net neutrality, privacy protection, and a
special mention to Redes Libres[7]. The bill will be approved this week
so it is not possible to introduce new changes, but we'll still working
together with advisors to present an alternative dictum.

5. Meeting with the Confederación Pirata from Spain. It was a great
time, we talked about our experience and we agree to unify efforts in
order to build a fluid communication channel. You know it isn't easy,
but we trust it is very important to be informed about what's happening
in each country.

Please, let us know your thoughts about what we're doing. It is
essential to integrate different points of view in order to build a
strong knowledge.

Many thanks to read till here :D

Matías

[1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Safe_space
[2] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/BloqueoThePirateBay
[3] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/ShareLikeAPirate.en
[4] http://wiki.partidopirata.com.ar/YoLosParo
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5lVqGiLrRs
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36pLW9Xq7iA#t=337
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedLibre
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