[pp.int.general] Why Activism Isn't Enough | TorrentFreak

Wed Jun 4 07:52:23 CEST 2014

Hi all,

I agree 100% with Matias.

I have personally long conversations with preeminent members of the occupy
movement. You should too, as in the US they have a hardtime getting in
politics, they see political participation from a quite different angle.

In the US the ones that fight for Internet and digital freedoms are not
structured as political parties...they are movements or organizations,
like the EFF, ACLU, DEMAND OF PROGRESS(Created by Aaron Swartz), FIGHT FOR
THE FUTURE etc...their work is to get their fight and policies to be
defended by Democrats or Republicans...and they do succeed...see SOPA and
PIPA, see the NSA matters...

Their elections calendar is quite predictable, every 2 years they have
major elections and they can easily build campaigns to get their concerns
into politics.

Europe is quite different, 28 countries with elections scheduled in each of
them almost every months and with another difficulty...anticipated
elections. If we take Spain for example...general elections every 4 years
and in between autonomous, municipals and european and the possibility in
autonomous and general ones to have anticipated ones.

The original PPES statutes only considered the possibility for the party to
participate in GENERAL ELECTIONS and EUROPEANS ones...because our ideals
have only to do with  national and european level. But those statutes were
changed and now we may participate at any level...and this means that all
our scarce energies are wasted in participating in elections every
year/year and half...this is UNSUSTAINABLE.

We barely finished with the european elections that we have to get ready
for the municipal and regional ones in just a year...and the general ones
by the end of 2015...if those don't get anticipated , in a word we are
always into campaign loosing energies that may be used more efficiently if
we work more as EFF, ACLU or DEMAND ON PROGRESS way...and thats to where
the WIRED article points us...be a movement and only get into elections in
level where it does matter.

GETTING ELECTED shouldn't be our main GOAL.
El 04/06/2014 01:22, "seykron" <seykron at partidopirata.com.ar> escribió:

> I can tell you something about the piracy experience in Argentina.
>
> We are a movement. But we are a political party as well (well... we're
> trying to get the legal status, but it is another story).
>
> Why a movement? Because we are very close to the bases, our fights are
> not behind any particular interest but in the community's daily life
> practices and problems. From this perspective, we're engaged to the
> community through specific topics: common goods, privacy and
> surveillance, alternative production models, cooperative movements, net
> neutrality, education, public transparency, housing shortage, and a long
> "etc" that depends on collective interests. We usually call ourselves
> "a movement of movements", but also the "political party of movements".
>
> Why a political party? This answer is not that easy, but I will give it
> a try. The movement perspective usually is not a political perspective.
> It usually lacks the organized understanding of how the bureaucracy
> works at State level, it doesn't create political spaces in the way
> that their fights are contrasted against the public agenda, they don't
> have representation in public debates and they usually don't want to get
> involved in classical politics. And more important: movements are a
> mistake from the State perspective, they're out of the State structure
> so they could be dangerous.
>
> Being both a movement and a political party has several advantages:
>
> 1. You're close to real fights, so you have a strong base supporting
> you. The engagement from people is stronger than in common political
> parties, because people have a real relationship with the party.
>
> 2. You can protect movements from the public opinion. It is very very
> easy to belittle movements from state structures because they are in
> the borders of "illegality". You can protect victories as well to avoid
> being robbed from other political parties. It is very frequent that
> movements finally negotiate with a party to achieve something, and the
> party takes the victory that was from a collective fight.
>
> 3. You get funding from the State (at least here).
>
> 4. You can be aware of what is being cooked in the State's kitchen. You
> have voice in the places where decisions are made. Of course, probably
> it means nothing. Most of the parliamentary work is made in committees
> and the political party with more power is the one that wins. All
> others parties have to negotiate. But it is better than nothing.
>
>
> And it has a lot of disadvantages as well:
>
> 1. You cannot be just a political party. If you focus on "doing
> politics" instead of representing people interests, you quickly loose
> legitimation.
>
> 2. Funding is a pain. No one wants to fund organizations that neither
> produce more money nor represent particular interests.
>
> 3. You have to work a lot to create an identity and promote common
> principles and practices among the party and movement.
>
> 4. If you get a seat in the parliament, you cannot operate as a normal
> party, and it could be extremely painful.
>
>
> This isn't something new, political parties at the beginning of 20th
> century did work like this. They were usually called "mass parties". But
> they faded out when the society turned more and more complex, and now
> parties are like "cartels", they just find fundings and convince people
> that they have something to give, but finally the facts show the real
> face. Right now politics work just like a vote (free) market.
>
> Finally, I would like to mention that mass parties didn't work for
> people. When they entered into the State bureaucracy a new elite did
> arise and the supporting people were left very far from decisions.
>
> In the PPAr we're trying to do something similar but without elites :).
> I read this email list and I cannot believe that there are some people
> trying to figure out which is the best software to fix democracy when
> the real problem (IMHO) is very far away from keyboard.
>
> Regards,
>
> Matías
>
>
> On Tue, 3 Jun 2014 23:07:40 +0200
> "Cal." <peppecal at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > http://torrentfreak.com/activism-isnt-enough-140601/
> >
> > I thought about this. I saw it as a reply to this:
> > http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-05/26/pirate-party
> >
> > I ended up with two points.
> >
> > 1. The one and only reason for pirate party's existence in life is to
> > get that disintermediated representation; and as such, there is not
> > and should not be ethics involved, in the electoral phase, at all. The
> > platform becomes "everything that gets us elected."
> >
> > 2. Are (were?) we a single issue movement? What happens to single
> > issue movements is that others take their issues and fuel them,
> > killing the movement; and that is the single-issue-movement definition
> > of success.
> >
> > What happened? What are we?
> > ____________________________________________________
> > Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> > pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> > http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Pirate Parties International - General Talk
> pp.international.general at lists.pirateweb.net
> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general
>
>
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