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Hallo Marco, I am not sure, if I agree with your analysis of the effects of summit-hoping and the consequence that you have drawn ( to stop summit-hoping). I don´t know where you are living.(leiden, the netherlands (marco)) I live in Germany and here I recognize for the first time, that the official media put further attention to the movement and publish more detailed about it than only repeating that riots are destroying cities. Until now this has been nearly the only commentary that the movement got from the media. Now the style of the commentaries is changing. The media here report about mainly peacefull protestors, and even mention that they have reasonable arguments concerning their globalisation-critics, though they still don´t describe them as too much serious people. The media here mostly describe the "homo anti-globalisation" as somebody, who has a right to critic the globalisation capitalism, but who does not know the real context and therefore can´t be taken as a serious discussion-partner in politics. The media stress out, that there are lots of different groups in the protests who have completely different difus arguments and don´t even agree with each other. Nevertheless they start to put more attention towards this movement for the first time, with the result of a discussion in civil society. So I want to underline that all the exhausting efforts of summit-hopping now seems to bear this positiv effect of a discussion in civil society. so far I can´t jugde if this will be a longer and serious discussion, or if it will end a few weeks after Genua, but it maintains a chance of people becoming more aware of the circumsctances of globalisation. I don´t know, if it wouldn´t be better to continue this summit-hopping, as you call it, once we got the attention for the discussion, because I think we got it, due to the mass protest on the summits. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Hi regina, nice of you to comment. About the things you write above i have to say you describe something i recognise as well. Athough i also think the mass-media distorts our message(s) as well a lot you are right to say that they ‘notice us’. You say among other things that you “want to underline that all the exhausting efforts of summit-hopping now seems to bear this positiv effect of a discussion in civil society.” Well first of all i am not quite clear what you mean with civil society. Often this refers to NGO like organisations, which are seen as the spokespersons of civil society. Most of these organisations were discussing the topic long before the extensive media coverage of what is called by them ‘the anti-globalisation movement’. The most important point i would like to stress is that i do not think it is a good idea to decide on my strategy based on how the media judges it. The media is one of the powers you have to keep in mind when you are struggling but making yourself and your actions depended on massmedia would be a mistake. It is better to develop your methods of informing and spreading the message ourselves and directly (without filters).

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Me personally, I don´t accept the word summit-hopping, because it sounds like polit-tourisme and doen´t express the political seriuosness of those who take the effort to protest. The word also reflects the opinion of the mass media, that the protestors have diffus arguments for protest but they are far not as politically educated to be able to jugde the situation and they only protest because they dicovered a new hobby : summit hopping.
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I dont agree with what you see here. They call it summithopping because they see the same ritual at every protest (at least in the western hemisphere). They are familiar with the ‘program’ and can pretty much predict what will happen.

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I agree that there should be other strategies to fight globalisation, but at the moment I think "summit-hopping" strengthens the international protest networks in an indespensable way. It´s one thing if you read that there are a lot of people who don´t agree, but it is far more important to experience that a lot of people are strongly opposed against our economic systems
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It has re-strengthened the movement, no doubt about it. but as i have already pointed out it is important to stay moving and not to forget that a strong anti authoritarian role depends on our ability to organise ourselves and involve others in our organisations. It is my strong impression we are to much caught up in the spectacle and spending to much time on chasing the worldleaders and satisfying the mass-media. For sure it is difficult to generalise in this discussion, but what i see myself in Holland and here from plenty of other folks from abroad is that the whole fuzz around summits is asking way to much energy and attention and they do not see much resulting in to local organising, but i am sure there are exeptions (maybe Quebec?)…

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, it is important to experience that, to have real contact with the people, to have the possibility to talk with people from other countries directly, we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of this experience - no internet can replace that.
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you are right about the importance of live international meetings. This can also be action orientated meetings but i rather have we decide on our own agenda instead of following the worldleaders around the globe. Of course we should have protests around their meetings if possible- but they should play a miner role then now and i really do not see the use of people travelling from al over the western hemisphere to Prague (like they did). So there were 12.000 cosmopolitan protesters on the streets, but how about the locals? How many of them stayed in there homes because they were hiding for the angry mob?

I would suggest to meet up regularly and to work together on concrete campaigns which relate to our own lives and if from startingpoint we decide te organise for example an international campaign (like a international week of squating to start social centres), or a week of solidarity sieges of detentioncentres it would empower me even more then sharing the fact that you were in the same demo or riot. Because hopefully something else then hundreds of people wounded and dead people would remain after it. Hopefully we would have gained some new social centres or closed down some detentioncentres. Regina doei, marco