[Spotykach] Experience of East-West meetings

[Will Firth]

Hi,

I've been subscribed to this list for a few days and haven't received any mail, so I thought I'd write one myself!

I was particularly interested in two ideas in the presentation of the Spotykach list:
- the imbalance in communication between participants, often with a predefined sense of dominance of the western participants [Does this mean the "westerners" define THEMSELVES as dominant, or they are MADE dominant by the "easterners"? Or a bit of both?!]
- finding ways of overcoming the predefined discriminative organizational and psychological inequalities bewteen east and west.

I was heavily involved in organizing the Anarcho-Syndicalist East-West Meetings in 1992 (Berlin), 1994 (Prague) and 1995 (Füzesgyarmat, HU). I felt the meetings were rather chaotic, as I think most other participants did too. That's probably unavoidable when you have people coming together for the first time from a range of different countries, backgrounds and generations; anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists, council communists, counter-culture punks, etc., etc. Not to mention the language barrier...

One situation that comes to mind took shape at one one of the painfully slow, multi-lingual assemblies at the meeting in Prague in 1994. For a few days no one from Poland had been at the meeting at all, it seemed, but then a group turned up. Anna Niedzwiecka was one of them. Unfortunately the people were very withdrawn and I don't remember them making any contribution, verbally or otherwise (e.g. helping with cooking, fetching water, etc.). I think something was really wrong with the "vibes" there, but I never found out what. Several months later I saw a rather negative report on the meeting in Mac pariadku, but my Polish is poor and my memory even worse, so I never understood what it said. I can imagine that there was some perception of predefined dominance - it would have been great to understand how those people felt the dynamics to be. 

Bye for now.

Will, Berlin (FAU)