[spectre] this tuesday

[florian schneider]

Everyone is an expert presents:
THIS TUESDAY

Migration, labour, media and organizing --
The back side of the information society

Saskia Sassen, Chicago/London
Valery Alzaga, Mexico City/Denver
Myoingjoon Kim, Seoul
Shahidul Alam, Dhaka
and many others


TUESDAY DECEMBER 9 2003
Workshop starting at 1 pm
Presentations at 7 pm

Université Ouvrière de Genève
Place des Grottes
Geneva (CH)
(50 meters from the railway station)


What does migrant workers struggle have to do with the information
society?

How can information and communication technologies empower social
struggles on a global level?

What's the link between the campaigns for freedom of communication and
the fight for freedom of movement?

On the eve of the UN summit on the information society the EVERYONE IS
AN EXPERT association calls to a debate about issues that are not
present on the agenda of neither govermental nor non-governmental
organizations: migration, labour, and organizing

Tabooing the so called dirty side of the information society comes as
no surprise: It refers to a naive view on technology and development
but also responds to the real threat and manifolded impact of
migration patterns to the existing world order.

Migration is not just a collateral damage of global capitalism nor a
dispensable side-effect of the information society: The political
power of exodus and refusal is subverting the souvereignity of both
the nation states as well as the new regimes of hyper-exploitation on
a global level.

As globalization from below, migration movements constitute a global
resistance against old and new economies and their modes of exclusion,
repression, division, separation, detention and selection.

Migration is the subjective, most pragmatic and realistic attempt, to
overcome a divide, no matter if it is conceived as digital or analog.


COMBATING THE MANAGEMENT PARADIGM

Digital rights management, the intellectual property discourse and
copyright issues refer more than accidentially to the postmodern
concepts of border management, migration control and racism.

FROM THE MOUNTAINS TO THE SCYSCRAPERS

Offside of the information highways there are numerous tracks and
trails, where migrants carry revolutionary experiences from the
periphery to the metropolitan centers and create hybrids of social
resistance.

VIRTUAL ORGANIZING AND AD-HOC NETWORKING

Collaborative research projects, migrant rights campaigns and worker
centers form new organizing models that respond to corporate attacks
on organizing, make creative use of new technologies and reach out far
beyond the idea of unity and union.


This event has been organized ad-hoc and very spontaneously. It is
meant rather as an strategic discussion than a conference. Therefore
the schedule is split up into two parts:

- A series of presentations by researchers, theorists, labour as well
as media-activists focusing on strategic questions of freedom of
movement, freedom of communication, corporate attacks on labor and
human rights, the multitudes and the constitutive elements of global
struggles

- A workshop on strategies with participants from various different
backgrounds presenting upcoming campaigns and projects, such as the
high-tech campaign of justice for janitors or the noborder-tour in
summer 2004.


Check out the stream at:
http://www.thistuesday.org
http://www.weseize.org
http://www.geneva03.org