I think everybody is coming to a agreement in this discussion. Reading the last Marco's message i suppose Marco's don't really wanna mean it (i.e. "Stop hopping").

We should take care to do not think 'street demosntrations' and 'local activities' as opposites, as if people should stop doing one to start doing the other. They are complementary to each other and both play a important role in social change. And my opinion is that even with all its avoidable and unavoidable misfortunes, the so-called summithopping taking place in europe and noth-america (it has been a north phenomenon) has exceeded the expectations (in terms of building the conditions for a revolutionary change) one could have from street demonstrations and their similars.

In the RTS book of Reflections of J18, in the article Give Up Activism, the author states a truth that everyone should keep in mind: that kind of action (street demonstrations, occupation of stock exchanges, summithopp etc.) is fitted to liberal reformism. No one should expect more than some reforms from street demosntrations, even if they are mass street demos that produce martyrs. In Bolivia, last year, huge 'street riots' brought down back the price of water. People have died in the streets in those protests. Even if really intense, a street demo can not get more them bringing down a president or prime minister. Take it alone, its potential for social change is very restrict.

But it doesn't mean it can't play a important role in a wider movement.And for sure the so-caled summithopping is playing a very important role. To antecipate some arguments, i would say it is playing a huge catalystic role in re-building an internationalism that has been for a long time gone. It is creating an identity worldwide through a same and visible praxis. The praxis of Global Days of Action (or summmit hopping) strengthens the solidarity and identity among pepole and groups worldwide. Some academics have already observed that a social movement is defined by its goals and the 'enemies' it fights. By being directed against managers of global capitalism (BM, IMF, G8, WTO, etc) and therefore putting the 'enemy' in the ground (putting it in a concrete way), and by putting in pratice a coordenated and visible practice, the GDAs have been a important tool to create a internationalism and to put together groups that would be perhaps just making local activities but with no solidarity, indentity, or even knowing each other.

I'm just trying to show the importance of ' summithopping' in creating the subjective conditions to a international libertarian movement. Of course it has its retrictions in this role as well. The GDAs has been creating identity (mainly) among young people, students, and people with 'counter-culture' backgrounds. It is for sure a restriction, but this restriction does't diminishes its value of putting together so much people.

I think these big street demonstrations, the massive indiscipline of the bodies (giving flowers to cops or throwing rocks at the heads of IMF managers), play a role similar of that of EZLN in the zapatista movement. The zapatista had to take guns and put scurffs to make themselves visibles. They had to take guns to use their voice as a weapon. And they know very well that the army (EZLN) has its function, has its role, but will not achieve anything by itself. Simultaneously, the zapatista movement is unthinkable without EZLN. I think it is the same paradoz of th GDAs-summithopping. The EZLN was unpredictable only in january 94, what doesn't mean its significance has diminished over the years.

Two years ago, when happened j18, the libertarians in brazil didn't even know what was appearing and growing in north (i think the london j18 would be very inspiring for the brazilian anarchists, or at least was to me). Only two years later, we still have a brazilian IMC (Will IMC emerge without the summithoppings?), and more and more people are getting information from there, what makes the brazilian goverment send trojans to the people involved with it and monitorate the site.

The zapatistas have built their independent structures, the autonomous cities, and a movement that wants to overthrow capitalism must build non-capitalist and self-managed structures to replace it. I think the great task is to build these kind of structures (cooperatives, solidary economy, free comunities, whatever), link with one another and with the uprising of street demonstrations.

Quit or stop hopping (as a political strategy, not as a personal decision) would be a great mistake.

I would like to write more, but i spend too much time writing in english.
Leo