Rio+20: Guide Document on Convergence Plenary and People’s Assembly

Note: Here is a statement from the organizers of the alternative Peoples’ Summit that will occur in Rio around the time of the official UN Rio+20 (corporate sell-out) Summit.  People from around the world are coming together to talk about what it will really take to successfully address the myriad ecological and social crises we face, and how to make the real solutions happen.  This is not symbolic, this is people taking real action to make a change.

Climate-Connections will be covering daily the alternative Peoples’ Summit from 15 to 23 June and also the Greenwashed Rio+20 UN Summit from the 20-22 of June.  Stay tuned, or subscribe to stay in touch.

–The GJEP Team

To set in motion the spaces of convergence and expression of mobilization, unity and diversity in the People’s Summit

For Social and Environmental Justice, Against Commodification of Life and Nature, In defense of the Commons

We, Peoples of the World, invited to reinvent the World in the People’s Summit, we are (re) constructing all together a reading of reality from our historical fights and from our territories and looking for ways to get away with our discussions, convergence and organization.

We think about

• structural causes of crises and social and environmental injustice, fake solutions and new ways of capital accumulation on peoples and territories.
• real solutions and new paradigms of peoples that we are putting in practice and in proposals
• collective setting-up of agendas, campaigns and common mobilizations beyond Rio+ 20

Setting-up of the Peoples’ Assembly from Convergence Plenaries
Networks, movements, thematic articulations and organized civil society, that are part of the People’s Summit are called to bring together to the Convergence Plenaries before Assemblies, the reflexion of their struggles and debates based on the 3 axis.

This process of reflection and previous construction can also take place during the Self managed Activities, but the organization, objectives and results of these activities are under responsibility of the organizations who want to propose it.

The Plenaries, that will take place on 17 (all day) and 18 June (afternoon), will be spaces facilitated by the organization of the People’s Summit, in order to strengthen the dialogue and the convergence between thematics and areas, and strengthen positions and commons messages.
The Plenaries will be simultaneous and distributed in the People’s Summit place according to the thematic, space, and planning.

We don’t claim that we produce negotiated documents, we are not the UN. We want to generate political agreements between our movements and also common messages that mobilize us to answer with political and popular force to the capital offensive that is expressed through the “green economy” in the Agenda of Rio+20 Conference.

How the movement of water strengthens when rivers meet together going to the sea
Every day we will spend together, in each Plenary, we will bring agreements and common messages to People’s Assembly. This will be a time of mobilization and expression of convergences and positions built within People’s Summit ‘s process

Public presentation of positions and convergence of each Plenary will be reflected in common messages, stories, symbolic and cultural actions, celebrated and facilitated by different movements, respecting and promoting cultural diversity regarding organization and mobilization.

The Assemblies
In the Assembly on Structural Causes of crises, social and environmental injustices, and fake solutions (19 June), we will denounce and mobilize people for the Global Action Day (20 June).

In the Assembly on People’s solutions (21 June) we will present our proposals.

In the Assembly about our Agenda, Campaigns and future struggles (22 June), we will take position in front of Rio+20 Conference and we will strengthen our commitment to still change together the world and get the future we want.

The Assembly is not a time for deliberations of agreements, it is a time for expression of unity built within the Plenary process and by discussion and articulation between movements in People’s Summit