Canada - Lesley Wood

Interview Details

• Region: North America
• Language: English
• Interviewee: Lesley Wood
• Interviewer: Leen Amarin
• Date: May 16 & May 23 2023
• PGA Affiliation: Direct Action Network
• Bio: Lesley Wood was involved in the Direct Action Network in New York City, participated in the organizing of the PGA North America conference in Amherst, MA in June 2001. She is involved in the Peoples Global Action Oral History project, and currently works in Toronto, Canada.
• Transcript: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6vuanfzarxb0eczw7d5u0/PGA-Canada-5-Wood-Full-Interview.docx?dl=0&rlkey=bz3457sb8fkv11h5g6r8cuay2

Transcript

Leen Amarin: All right. So let’s get started. Let’s get into the fun stuff. So, of course, as you know, we are mainly here to talk about the PGA. And the PGA has a lot of different elements to it, whether it’s the hallmarks, the manifesto, the caravans, so many different actions that have come out of the PGA. So really what we’re interested in hearing about and maybe to just kind of get started about your journey and your experience with the PGA specifically. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you’re working on now or maybe how you got involved with the PGA.

Lesley Wood: Well, I think those are two different questions. Um. Which one do you think I should start with?

Leen Amarin: Maybe we can start with what you’re working on now.

Lesley Wood: Okay. These days I’m involved in a few campaigns. One is that I’m involved in doing some solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en who are fighting the pipeline, the Coastal Gaslink pipeline across their territories and the West Coast. Um, and the other main one is helping to organize an abolitionist convergence this fall. A third, I guess I am involved in an anti-poverty organization that is currently shutting down. And so, yeah, I mean, I am also an academic, someone who studies social movements and involved in this project, the Peoples’ Global Action Oral History Project, amongst other things.

Leen Amarin: How did you get started with the PGA? I imagine that, you know, what has gotten you to this point in your life where you’re working on all these different movements and all these different kind of solidarity work, somewhere along the line you started and became interested in activism. I guess if you could tell us a little bit about that experience, especially as it pertains to the PGA and your involvement with the PGA.

Lesley Wood: As somebody who’s kind of old, there’s like, you know, we’re talking 40 years of history. So I think I have to be narrow it slightly. So I’ll talk about the PGA and the connection that I had to it. I’ll say that I was involved in Zapatista solidarity work. So the Zapatistas, as you know, you know, they kind of emerged into the public consciousness in 94. At that point I was living in the UK and was in grad school and was starting to be connected to anarchist networks and direct action networks. Protests that brought together anti-capitalist protests, though I think we really more called it like anti-corporate protests at the time around cars and housing, the environment. And there was a lot of very creative, disruptive protest at the time. And it was really there was this sense that the wall had gone down, the Soviet Union had collapsed, and there was a real sort of moment of uncertainty and on the left about how to make change. And because state socialism was kind of definitely back on its heels. And so there was a real move to more prefigurative creative ways of doing protest. And when the Zapatistas emerged and said, “We want a world in which many worlds fit.” And that we want to be able to be connected, but not the same. And understand that there are shared systems of oppression, but many, many different ways of doing things. And that was about reclaiming our humanity. That was something that really inspired me.

So when I came back to Canada after being in the UK, I helped to get involved in organizing some political work. Then, so in 96, I went to this gathering in Chicago called the Active Resistance Gathering, which was an anarchist gathering that had a kind of a model of building alternative institutions, community organizing, confrontation or direct action and alternative economics. So those four strategies offered this way we can start to build another world in the shell of the old. And that started to really kind of accelerate. That was 96, now 96 is in and around the time that you that, well, the PGA is formed. I don’t want to tell the whole history because I want to just tell my part of it. So what happened? There were these protests..

The global days of action that were announced that came out of the PGA. I wasn’t really sure about what happened in Geneva and the decision to form the PGA. I didn’t know any of that stuff, but I did, this is early Internet days, and I was on the Internet. I was in the Zapatista Solidarity Networks. And we had kind of a network of people who were kind of media interveners like creative billboard disruption, alternative zine culture, that whole thing. And we heard, okay, there’s going to be a Global Day of Action in Toronto. And I didn’t really, I knew it was kind of called by the Peoples’ Global Action. But what that meant, I wasn’t that sure. And we had this incredible protest started in the Grange Park. We had this big, I don’t even know how to describe it. This big metal drumming structure, it was like an art piece, but it was like an instrument and it took many people pushing it up the street and people were drumming on it and we kind of went up Bathurst Street and then went on to Bloor Street and kind of took Bloor Street and people started using yarn and building a giant web and shutting down the street in this extremely. And then I was part of a group that was really kind of a bike activist oriented and riding in Critical Mass bike rides at the time. And we had created these, we created these paper mache cars.

Lesley Wood: This sounds so bizarre that we would put on our heads and we did this folk dance that we designed that when we put our car hats on, we were very aggressive and then we’d take them off. And then we danced in this very like collaborative circle dance way. At the same time, people were building community gardens in Bloor Street. And so it was this very different kind of protest than I had ever really seen. Very creative, very visionary and like, this is the world we want. And the police freaked out. And they didn’t understand it. And it was so it was under the kind of the idea of Reclaim the Streets. This is and Reclaim the Streets was an organization in the UK that had been involved in kind of disrupting highways, being pushed through poor neighbourhoods and thinking about car culture and trying to think of a much different way that people could live together. Bringing these ideas together. So this was sort of the idea that had kind of caught on here. And the police came in with horses and they and people sat down in the streets and they arrested a bunch of people. And so that was sort of the first the first global day of global day of action. And this is happening in a period where there is an increasing mobilization around cuts to social services, social welfare… the 96/97.

Lesley Wood: At the same time, in 96/97, you have a big anti-poverty movement happening. There’s a big labor movement as well – a very active fight against neoliberalism. So and there were these global days of action that were happening in in Ontario against that kind of rising neoliberalism. So this is part of a moment of acceleration of the movements that weren’t really necessarily tied to PGA. There’s another Global Day of Action in 1998 it was called Carnival Against Capitalism. Um, there’s a march across the viaduct. There was a bit of tension between folks about whether or not it was a protest or an enactment. And so there was some tension. By this point, I was kind of shifting towards more of the protest because I’d become part of some of the anti poverty movements and things, but there were definitely people who were like, we shouldn’t even have slogans. We should just have like inspiring symbols and really emphasize the kind of festival transformative nature. And one of the things that had come I’m jumping back and forth a little bit, but one of the things that had come from Reclaim the Streets was the idea of having dance parties as resistance. And so and this is partly because in the UK the government had banned protests that disrupted economic activity and raves at the same time, which had actually created this lovely synergy between these two different movements.

So you had creative arts folks and movement people working together. So this was like very exciting. Uh, 98 We, uh, as this is continuing to accelerate, we had a gathering, we replicated the 1996 gathering from Chicago in Toronto. So we had Active Resistance in Toronto, and we have 600 or 700 people come from around North America to strategize. There’s building of puppets. We do a very creative direct action in front of police headquarters. This was when also there was a real police crackdown on squeegee kids. Uh, during that time and again, some tension about whether or not to be angry or joyous and how to combine those things. The conversation from earlier. Some people felt that the joy was making light of the harshness. Other people felt that the anger was not nourishing and not helping to build a new world so that you start to see a little bit of debate around that. And so that’s the end of August in 98. Then I go to New York for grad school and I get involved in Reclaim the Streets protests there, and there’s community gardening protests there. And this is all leading up to The Days of Action in Seattle, which was like the third in the sequence of global days of action that PGA had called. And so this was the shut down.

Lesley Wood: November 30th, 1999, of the World Trade Organization summit meetings. And I didn’t have any money, so I didn’t go. I’d gone to the protest in New York that was aligned with the Global Days of Action. But I was just watching it intensely. And this was really you had Indymedia, so you had independent media using people with camcorders, going out and filming and then putting it, uploading it online so we could all see what was happening. So you have a real transformation of media and communication. We didn’t have social media. I don’t even know if we had Friendster yet in 99. It wasn’t social media so much. Then Direct Action Network forms. Direct Action Network had been a group of people who had come together to organize the Seattle protests, and they had used the PGA hallmarks that had been decided to kind of. Well, the hallmarks had been decided in Europe out of this global conference. And whoever knew about it in the US took on those hallmarks, and created the Direct Action Network, which had groups in different cities. They managed to attract some funding, so they also brought up activists from the Mexico and Brazil and the Caribbean and India and different parts of the world to go to the Global Days of Action in Seattle.

Lesley Wood: So I was watching all that. And then I went to the first meeting of the Direct Action Network in New York, and it was super exciting because the protests had been successful and had shut down the summit and had been front page news. And there was this first meeting of the Direct Action Network in New York was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and we were hungry to hear the stories of what had happened and how they’d done it. And so, yeah, I got deep into that over the next while. And then at some point, and I’m not sure exactly the time seems to expand during this period because a lot happened between the December 99 and December 2000 for sure, like that full year. This guy, Olivier de Marcellus, who was one of the hosts in Geneva of the PGA first conference, showed up in New York and came to our meeting, The Direct Action Network, to explain what the PGA was and give us a little bit more of the history of what was going on in Europe. And I found that super interesting. And he told us this story about this formation that was really grounded in movements in the global South, in India and Brazil, and that had connected, you know, squatters in Europe and had brought these Indian farm workers through Europe.

And anyway, it was it was very exciting. It put kind of a little bit more detail on what we knew about these hallmarks, which we were using as our orienting thing, but we didn’t necessarily understand what they were. I remember a few things. There was a discussion about how nobody can speak for the PGA, that there are no resources of the PGA, and it’s just an instrument for coordination. There’s a real emphasis on networked decentralization. Horizontalism. And so after he left, like, we kind of continued to talk a little bit. I have the minutes somewhere of what did it mean for us as an organization in New York? We were part of also these continental Direct Action Network Spokescouncil. These were some phone calls that happened between the different formations in different cities. These, though, started to decline relatively quickly. There were only a few cities where Direct Action Network was able to endure for very long. It had been brought together for the purposes of the Seattle protests. And then there was real differences of opinion about what should happen next. The one the version in New York that I was a part of started to focus. Was influenced by its context. So there was a lot of people who became involved who were really engaged in fights around racist police brutality. And. As well as, like, an active community gardening struggle and some of the kind of anti-gentrification work and some labor folks. And so there were working groups on different issues that started to be kind of a real space for local work as well. We were organizing for big summit protests, so we organized for the IMF World Bank protests in April 2000. And the May Day 2000, which was focused a lot on immigrant workers. And then we really started to mobilize for the closest big summit to us, which was, Philadelphia the Republican convention in August 2000.

Then after that we decided to try and organize or help to organize a continental Canada/US PGA Conference. And so this was to be held in Amherst, Massachusetts in June 2001. So PGA in North America wasn’t that developed. It was an idea. It didn’t really have… There were a few people who had gone to the meetings in Europe. But most of us had learned about it through the Internet. Or from hearing stories from people who’d gone to places in Europe. So, and one of the people who’d gone to Europe was this guy from Florida. Who had, I don’t think it had a ton of experience organizing. But he somehow became the lead on organizing Peoples’ Global Action Caravan, uh, around the US with different activists from mostly Latin America.

Lesley Wood: And they were ending up at this conference in Amherst. Um. So the Amherst conference there was a group called Western Mass Resist. They were kind of our hosts. Maybe a couple hundred people showed up for this thing. All these people, what I remember, all these people gathered and there was this discussion about who would represent North America at the next global conference, which was scheduled for. This is why I started to think it’s 2001. It was scheduled for September, like, 13th to 15th, 2001. Oh, interesting timing it turned it out. I agreed with the folks from Montreal who really believed this idea from the PGA hallmarks that we needed to be grounded in the directly affected folks. And this is our thinking is 2001. And so we proposed this idea that, uh, out of I think there was supposed to be 200 delegates participating at the Global Conference in Cochabamba Bolivia, and North America was allocated for 10% or something because they really wanted to keep the, the strength in the global South.

And so there was only going to be like 20 delegates from North America or Canada and the USA. And that created a lot of tension because a lot of people in Canada and the US had resources and wanted to go to the conference and we had this proposal that the participants needed to be like at least half poor people, at least half women, people of color, regional representation, and we passed it. But indeed, there really wasn’t the capacity to make that happen in a lot of cases, especially in the US and Canada. CLAC which was the organization in Montreal, did have enough ties and enough heft and connections to indigenous groups and stuff so that that people. But the tensions were intense at this conference. And in the end, my partner and I left. We walked out. Uh, we were getting accused of, I don’t know what, like being bossy maybe. We were really tired, and I don’t think it’s the only time, almost the only time I’ve ever walked out of something. But I think I did walk out of that, which was interesting. Um, but yeah, then PGA kind of foundered at that point in in especially in the US, but in Canada it did keep going.

So the global PGA conference in September 2001 was right after 9/11, obviously in New York things were a little busy. People went down to Bolivia. The conference was in Bolivia, but nobody that I knew from New York. And I’ve got some interviews with people who went there to it. But when I went back to Canada, though, then this formation started called the PGA Bloc, which connected activists around. Ottawa, Kingston, Montreal, Toronto area that kind of embraced a more of a kind of direct action anti-capitalist politic. And that became like kind of a thing for I don’t know, probably about 8 or 9 years. The hallmarks were used for a lot of different organizations. But I think that was the end of really kind of organizing as, under the PGA framework. That’s, you know, so, you know, there is this story about how 9/11 affected movements in Canada and the US and the intense securitization and all that. And I think that’s. Partly true, but I also do think that the ideas continue to resonate with activists of that generation. That was a long ramble.

Leen Amarin: That was great. We got some really great information in there. That was excellent. I think we covered a few of the different questions so that’s great. I’m curious maybe if you can talk a little bit about, you’ve talked, I guess you’ve spoken a little bit about what happened locally and globally. Is there anything specific that you feel maybe you didn’t mention that you feel is significant for us to know?

Lesley Wood: Well, just that even in my anti-poverty group, the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty. Because we identified with the PGA, it facilitated solidarity relationships with groups around the world. So, you know, the MST in Brazil or there was a Korean militant trade union movement. And it became a little bit of a like an identity of like, okay, you’re committed to horizontalist direct action and you have a you understand the connection between global and local. And I think that that it became a bit of a shorthand. And so yeah, I do think in Canada and the US it was very much of an idea more than it was a formation. So it facilitated that kind of politic for a long time. And yeah, groups like the Movement Defense Committee in Toronto, who does legal support for protests. They kind of were heavily influenced by the idea. Also, groups like No One is Illegal. I mean, that’s where a lot a lot of the work after 9/11 from Peoples’ Global Action, the groups that were connected to like Direct Action Network started working on antiwar, Palestine solidarity, and immigrant detention issues, because the crackdown of the security state at that point became the thing we needed to be paying attention to.

Leen Amarin: Interesting. So you mentioned that in the US and in Canada it was more of an idea than a formation for the PGA.

Leen Amarin: That the PGA really represented, more of an idea than a maybe necessarily a formal formation in North America—

Lesley Wood: Yes, absolutely

Leen Amarin: — Would you say that that was different from Europe or from other places in the world?

Lesley Wood: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that’s always striking to me when, you know, when I’m working on this project. Is that some people see themselves as PGA people, like it became their political identity, and that was particularly tied to the European support group. The people who were involved in doing some of the kind of infrastructure and logistical support. Um, whereas I don’t think you, with the exception of this PGA bloc, that was not the PGA. In North America there was nobody who saw themselves as a PGA person, as far as I understood. And people had other groups. And we took seriously this idea that you couldn’t be the PGA. You couldn’t speak for it.

Leen Amarin: So could you maybe talk a little bit about what aspects of the PGA worked, whether for your particular organization or particular movement or maybe within the particular region? Maybe you can talk a little bit about the differences between what you saw with the PGA in the US and in Canada as well.

Lesley Wood: I think the idea of and it came also from the Zapatistas, the idea that you could coordinate, but you didn’t have to be the same. You could coordinate around a shared analysis. But recognize you do things in very different ways. So there’s this great quote that, As a Subcomandante Marcos, to quote. That’s something like, “I am a Zapatista in Chiapas. I am a Palestinian in Gaza. I am a woman alone on the subway at you know, at 2 a.m. I am Mohawk in Quebec. I am…” And so it was like we are all, ‘against neoliberalism and for humanity’ was one of the other slogans. So these slogans kind of resonated that it was possible to coordinate. In a networked function. And I mean, you know, it definitely was tied to Internet emergence as well. Right? But that internationalist movements had involved a lot of emphasis on trying to get unity. And this was a different model of doing internationalism that allowed for diversity and coordination with some basic shared understandings that, you know, colonialism was a problem, capitalism was a problem, you know, racism, patriarchy, so that you could have some. One of the other slogans was ‘one no, many yeses’.

Lesley Wood: And that I think that that was so important. And it was very disruptive to the way things happened. And, you know, there we’re going to talk about in a second. And I think the next question is what didn’t work right? That diversity it also comes with challenges. So I never went to one of the big meetings (the international convergences). But when you have somebody from the Bangladesh Fishermen’s or Fishers Union, who represents 2 million people sitting in a meeting with somebody who represents six people in a squat in Brussels, and you’re making decisions about what to do next. Like, how do you recognize, the difference there of doing politics. And there are some interesting intentions where sometimes the folks in the smaller more ideological groups would be really emphasizing consensus. We need to participate. But if you’re in a group representing 2 million people, it’s going to be a lot harder to get consensus. right? You’ve got a much more of a hierarchical structure because it’s so big but so powerful.

I did this one research project where I looked at all the different protests that happened on these global days of action in order to try and understand the different ways that people participated in fighting neoliberalism. And you see in some countries they’re fighting the government or the stock exchange, that, particularly in the global South. In other countries. It’s well, in North America and in Europe, it was much more likely to be at Nike stores and corporations. And it makes sense that that’s the case because capitalism takes different forms and, you know, where the reins are different is different in different places. So now, why did things not hold that long? It’s very difficult to maintain that diversity, especially with no resources. So PGA was so determined not to turn itself into an NGO that was dominated by the North and so said we should have no resources, although there was a lawsuit that led to a bunch of money being channeled into it in Europe from a police crackdown.

So there were some resources, but. There was a real desire not to turn into an NGO. And so there would be these conversations where, there’s going to be a conference. This happened for Bolivia. We need folks from North America and Europe to pay for the reps from South Africa and from like, you know, Asia to come to this meeting. But the partners that were part of the PGA in Europe and North America were like scrappy grassroots groups with like a bunch of teenagers, with no access to money. So there was that that. Uh, that was interesting. But I also think it gave, PGA gave an international, a different kind of international awareness I think to a lot of local movements. You got to see some similarities. Um, and even just putting all of these protests in one website, you’re like, wow.

Leen Amarin: Interesting. So I think you’ve spoken a little bit about the diversity that was celebrated maybe or really focused on in terms of PGA and the PGA hallmarks. You did also speak a little bit about some of those tensions. And I am curious if there is anything maybe you can share a little bit more about how those, any particular tensions, maybe arose from that diversity, maybe a diversity in ideology, maybe a diversity in how people were experiencing the different systems that the PGA was trying to fight. Did you sometimes see that? Because I imagine with a global movement where you have people from all over the world, there might be people that are maybe technically on opposite sides? Yeah. That are involved in the same organization.

Lesley Wood: The things that I know are often from my research and not from my direct experience because I didn’t, frankly, participate in the global. Um, I was a local activist on these, these things. But I think of three stories that I’ve heard through the interviews. One. Which was talking about the tensions around meetings and how to have a meeting. And this was in Bolivia. And they, there was a style that was coming from Europe or the US where people were very much about the agenda and getting things through things and the decision making and getting… and some of the Latin American delegates or participants were just like, Why are you rushing? You can’t rush this like we have. We have to build trust. So there’s that cultural difference also. And I’ve heard stories about when there was the Caravan of folks from India in Europe, and they were put, they were housed in these squats in Germany and Italy and where there was like everybody was a vegan and everybody was like there was a very different subculturally, dreadlocks and, you know, the style that and a lot of also gender norms that were very different to the Indian farmworkers. I think Olivier tells one story about being in a meeting where there was somebody had to explain to. This one farm worker leader, what a lesbian was. And he just he actually like I don’t know if he said he fainted, but he just he couldn’t handle it. Right. So you get that sort of thing.

But then and then also discussions of there’s some interesting conversations that happened around things like the definition of violence. So. In North America, property destruction is often understood to be violent, in other parts of the world. It’s not. And so the KRRS is a farm workers organization, had burned down a McDonald’s and had destroyed fields of Monsanto crops. And they said, this isn’t violent and this is, you know, the violence is destroying us. So there was discussions in the hallmarks of how to, they said, we are, we’re nonviolent. And, you know. Some of the folks in North America and in Europe are like, well, that, you know, violence is acceptable. And they said, no, no, we’re not violent. So there’s this sort of discussion. So in the end, instead of saying nonviolent direct action, which was I think would have been the framing if it had come from. It says, actions that maximize life?

Lesley Wood: This. It was a very it was a very particular framing because they could not get to agreement on what violence actually was. I think those are ones that I that I think about and the differences and then the hallmarks. So the hallmarks that were produced for the at the founding conference, then were changed whenever there was another international conference. And so there was, I know the addition of feudalism. Anti-feudalism happened because there was some groups were saying we’re not even in capitalism. We’re in a feudalist situation. We’re peasants. The addition of patriarchy as a problem was made clear because. Some of the groups who were starting to affiliate. We’re indeed anti-capitalist, anti neoliberal, but we’re very traditional in terms of gender relations. And so that needed to be made clear. In the formation. So there was a gradual kind of refining of what it meant. And it’s interesting. I, I want to look at the Wikipedia page for PGA because it is not the PGA I’ve ever heard, but of course, I want to be accountable about that. But it basically argues that PGA allowed for an alliance between right and left, and that is a framing I’ve never heard.

But today, who is anti-globalization is nationalists. At the time, that wasn’t the way it was understood and that was definitely not. It was globalization from below. So yeah, even just the term of anti-globalization created some strange bedfellows. So you would get people, you know, anti-Semitic folks who would show up and talk about, you know, the cabal of international financiers. You’re like, What? No, this is not what’s going on. This is, I’m talking about a Direct Action Network meeting in New York. So I think some of those things needed to be clarified through time as the movement evolved.

Leen Amarin: Did you find those same tensions were perpetuated in the local groups as well in New York, in the US and Canada, or not as much?

Lesley Wood: No, it was it was you get these people who would show up, but they were quickly shown the door.

Lesley Wood: At that moment, it was. It was very clear that this was a left formation. And being anti bank and anti corporate and anti government was a left project, not a right wing nationalist project. But I do think it is interesting and part of the story that we have to think about. What happened? How did some people see it as that? I think that that discussion and we can look at the Wikipedia page at some point, but is partly coming out of the Eastern European experience as well, where they understood the left as being with state socialism. And so, you know, it’s going to play out differently in different places.

Leen Amarin: Different definitions, of course, as well.

Lesley Wood: Yeah. Yeah.

Leen Amarin: So it is 11:40 now, which I think we only have about five minutes as far as what we are scheduled for. So I just want to check in with you and see how you’re feeling. If you want to maybe wrap up for now and take, you know, start the conversation up again either later today or at another time or if there’s anything else maybe you’d like to add today or would like to add to the interview, maybe something that we haven’t mentioned yet that you feel you want to talk about today before we take a pause.

Lesley Wood: What are the other questions?

Leen Amarin: So the other questions that we have, we’ve gone through a good chunk of them. Right now, what we’re going to be maybe talking about a little bit more specifically is certain challenges in organizing through the PGA framework, a little bit about how if the movement felt fast or slow and how the differences played out within your particular organization, um, lessons that the PGA experience has for movements today, how they’re, how it differs from or affects organizing work now um, how your experience with the PGA affected your own activism and networks. How do you think it affected other movements and networks? And then if there’s anything else that you would like to add that we haven’t discussed.

Lesley Wood: I don’t think we have a I don’t think I have a ton to say, but I probably should answer a couple of those. I’m fine to either do it this afternoon, like briefly at three or next week.

…

Leen Amarin: So awesome. So yeah, last – last week we talked a little bit about your experience with the PGA and how you kind of got involved with the PGA. You did share a little bit about some of the challenges and some of the merits of the PGA just generally. But I’d love to maybe get into a little bit more specific questions around your involvement with the particular organizing that you did, both in the US and in Canada, around whether there were particular challenges in organizing through the PGA framework? And if you could maybe speak to that a little bit.

Lesley Wood: Yeah, I would say that, because the PGA was a series of hallmarks and a way of linking movements, it wasn’t really part of the thinking of the day to day struggle, which is perhaps okay, but. I’ve been somebody who’s always been interested in networks and connections. And so I found much of the time that I’ve known about the PGA. I’m one of the only people in any group or project that’s talking about the connections and the links, because to a certain extent, if you’re doing the day to day work, it doesn’t matter that much.

It’s just a way of seeing the struggle, not necessarily influencing it. And that’s okay. It’s not – it’s not making decisions as a– as a massive group. There’ll be things like, okay, there’s an idea of doing a global day of action. How do we connect that to what we’re doing? And that’s the main link that you see it happening. Or there’s an event that we want to send people to, you know, who do we want to send? But I think that most activists, like most people, are interested in what’s in front of them, you know, because there’s work to be done. And so to a certain extent, the international networks are kind of gravy. Uh, on the day to day organizing. So in some ways that’s like a challenge, but in other ways that’s just I don’t know if it’s a challenge or a benefit. It’s a feature of internationally. There are things, though, that can be learned from other places. And so ideally, what things like the PGA are doing is to amplify the struggle. So that the movements in many small places are understood to pose a bigger threat to the system and also to share lessons and resources.

Leen Amarin: Did you feel like there was maybe sometimes a challenge in connecting to the direct issues that you were organizing around the local, or was it easy to find those connections?

Lesley Wood: I see connections everywhere. So, I find that relatively easy, but it’s not necessarily if people have limited amount of time and energy, it may not seem relevant to other folks. So I’m thinking here about this is less so in the global justice movement stuff in the United States and Direct Action Network. We were very aware that we were a global struggle, um, and that it was all about the connections and all about the international institutions and connecting the global to the local. When it came back to Toronto and we were doing anti-poverty work, it was– there was a sense that the global was a luxury because what we were involved with was the day to day struggle of people, and that was very local and very intense. And partly we understood but there was a way of talking about local as sort of authentic and urgent, and the global, I think some people saw it as something that was a little bit more privileged to engage with. The PGA, I think, though, offered a way to say no, this is all about the local as connected. Right? So this is urgent everywhere. This is people facing urgent struggles, you know, in in Brazil or in Attawapiskat or Rome or Johannesburg, and we are connecting that urgency. So, yeah, there’s, I think that’s what the PGA kind of offered. Um, was that sort of bridge between the local and the global. But I don’t know that it convinced everybody.

Leen Amarin: Fair. Do you feel that the Global Days of Action, specifically, were a good framework for connecting those, directly connecting that urgency?

Lesley Wood: Yeah.

Leen Amarin: Or do you feel that there may be some things that worked better than others?

Lesley Wood: I think that it gave people a sense that their struggles were connected. That the struggle around, say, like transit fares was tied to a struggle for access to water. And, you know, that there was. There is a way to see yourself as part of a larger struggle. I don’t feel like there’s that sense as much anymore, which is interesting given that we’re so connected digitally.

Leen Amarin: You feel that there’s more of like a division in movements now?

Lesley Wood: Yeah, I don’t know that. I think with the exception of perhaps the climate justice movement. Is that right? Do anti-racist struggles see themselves as part of an international anti-racist struggle? I don’t know.

Leen Amarin: I think it probably depends on who you ask. Yeah, I definitely think it definitely depends on who you ask. I think especially in North America, I think that’s where maybe things can get a little bit muddy, because I feel like race relations in North America and the US especially are so distinct from how race is understood or even experienced in other parts of the world that I think it can sometimes cause a disconnect.

Lesley Wood: Yes. Yeah, I think that’s right. I wonder about sort of like anti-colonial struggles, whether they feel connected. Sometimes they do. I mean, there’s some very good work around the connections between Palestine and Indigenous struggle in Turtle Island.

Leen Amarin: Yeah.

Lesley Wood: And, you know, does it see itself as global or does it see itself as having some similarities? And is that different? I’m not sure.

Leen Amarin: That’s a very good question.

Lesley Wood: Does it matter?

Leen Amarin: Hmm.

Leen Amarin: Yeah, that’s a good question. Does it really matter or does the result, the end goal matter more?

Lesley Wood: Well, I think it’s interesting because, you know, you think what is the benefit of seeing yourselves as part of a shared struggle, like the Zapatista model. You know, the Zapatistas created this model of, you know, ‘a world in which many worlds fit,’ all these things, these phrases we use, ‘one no many yeses.’ You don’t want to oversimplify the particularities that people are facing and say it’s all the same. I mean, that’s what they were trying to do is say it’s not the same. But there’s a system, there’s a there’s an overall world system of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy that is being challenged. Which the PGA was good at doing. Maybe people are reluctant to say it these days because there is a sense that it falls into this trap of kind of universalized narrative.

Leen Amarin: I definitely think that that does happen, that tension between universalist versus very divided. And like, I do think that it comes down to, in my opinion, I think it comes down to the political, a lot about, you know, identity, identity politics and like how. Particular we’ve gotten about that in some places, especially I think in North America where, especially with cancel culture, where a lot of people are just afraid to talk about things. Yeah.

Lesley Wood: And afraid to say that we have something in common.

Leen Amarin: Yeah. exactly. Exactly. And they’re constantly, you know, and it’s a constant, I feel like argument almost of like, who has it worse and who gets to speak more because of it. Rather than recognizing that it really is still the same system. So I definitely do agree with you there. I think I’ve personally seen it and a lot of movements I’ve been a part of. Even just like reading things online or even like seeing how people engage with some content around that. Like there’s a lot of “what aboutism” in comments.Whenever somebody decides to speak on one issue, there’s constant “What about ism” about a lot of other issues.

Lesley Wood: Yeah.

Lesley Wood: Yeah. So that’s so that’s I wonder what the lesson that the PGA had. What lessons PGA offers in response to that, you know, and a different kind of what about ism. But you know, the fact that people are you see sometimes in particular issues so like, uh, access to clean drinking water, you know, you can talk about it in Michigan, you can talk about it in Indigenous communities in the North. You can talk about it in Palestine, you can talk about it in sub-Saharan Africa. And say, all right, the water corporations and the governments and the climate stuff like those are all connected and there – but I do think that fragmentation is a barrier to some really useful potential collaborations to say, No, it’s Bechtel, it’s, you know, it’s the fact that governments are, you know, whatever not doing what they need to be doing around the climate that politicians are not stepping up. Not accountable.

Leen Amarin: Yeah.

Leen Amarin: I personally sometimes wonder how much of that fragmentation is purposeful. Like how much of it is coming from, as a direct challenge to the fact that if we decided to come together, things would be a lot harder for the people making decisions.

Lesley Wood: I think this is a useful conversation because I’m, like, thinking about how to explain its relevance to the current moment.

Leen Amarin: Yeah.

Leen Amarin: Actually, I think one thing that I’ve been thinking a lot about, and even as I was going over the interview from last week, one thing that I’ve been thinking about that I think would be really great to talk about here is if you could talk a little bit more about how you feel the Internet plays into organizing for the PGA, because you did mention that quite a bit of the people in North America, as far as they were engaged with the PGA, were mainly getting their information from the Internet. There may have been a few people that had actually been involved in Europe, but many of them were really getting their information from the Internet and through all of these different online resources. So I’m wondering if you could maybe speak to that and whether that affected how the PGA was able to organize.

Leen Amarin: Or even whether the local were able to organize. Yeah.

Lesley Wood: Yeah. I mean, it’s funny how it’s hard to remember earlier, technical or digital landscapes. It’s like when there’s been, you’re in a city and a building is gone and you’re like. Uh, because I think we were on listservs and there were communication messages coming out. About what was happening elsewhere and ideas, calls to action. That people saw that they could take up. Yeah, once. I mean, once I’m stepping back slightly. One, when we were getting the messages from the Zapatistas in 94, this was. I don’t know if I spoke about this. They were sending out their communiques and then we were, because there were very few people on the Internet at this point, people would print them out, I did this in London, and then bring them to people who had radio shows where they were read on the radio. And I was talking to somebody the other day who did it in Toronto or in Guelph actually, Guelph Community Radio. She, she was getting these and then reading them on the, the radio show. So yeah, that was very early. But so by the time the PGA was starting in 96, 97, we were getting these communiques and messages and calls to global days of action. And that was, that was really it. We didn’t know anybody involved in these, I think many of us, in these struggles. I think that people like Dave Blakeney and the postal workers played an incredibly important role in Canada and sharing the news and. Because they went to the founding meeting in Europe, came back with these stories. So it was the combination, I guess, of and it was the fact that they were sending out the messages amongst the Canadian networks and the North American networks.

Lesley Wood: And then organizing caravans. So there was the caravan across Canada that went to many, many communities across the country. Um. Sharing news about the Peoples Global Action, but primarily about the problem. Corporate globalization, as it was framed at the time. And the one in the, I think the one in Canada was mostly Canadians on the– the caravan. The one in the US was definitely organizers from around the world that went to different cities.

Lesley Wood: And so that combination of like, messages on the Internet, plus face to face caravans, plus, some key brokers legitimizing and you know. Yeah. This idea that the struggle was global allowed people to see in it something that they could connect what they were experiencing to.

Lesley Wood: I think that we weren’t going to meetings about it. It wasn’t that it was– we weren’t necessarily part of organizations. It was as individuals that were getting this information. And then because of the Internet. And then bringing it to their groups. So that was like, there’s a guy named Jeff Juris who was involved and he’s in the US and he wrote a book about kind of networking logics and militant ethnography. And he talked about how the, the structure of organizing changed with the rise of the Internet to a networked logic. And I think that that was, that’s right. ‘Cause you didn’t have to necessarily get the information through any sort of group.

Leen Amarin: Do you feel like there was any kind of like fear or maybe any kind of tension around like whether the information you were getting was accurate or was it almost just like a general trust that what was being kind of moved around the globe in what felt what feels in a lot of ways kind of like a ginormous game of telephone. Um, so that’s.

Lesley Wood: That’s so interesting.

Lesley Wood: Uh, no, we did. Well, I trusted it. Um. Yeah. And. And it’s funny because I was getting it through kind of anarchist networks and it was, it felt like it was a marginal enough– Like you could tell the kind of the shitposters, you know, you didn’t necessarily believe what they were saying, but if it was somebody who had a certain amount of legitimacy on a listserv, then you from an accumulation, and they were passing it on, then you trusted it. So there’s still some, you know, reputational stuff that happened there. Um. I’m sure having it come through the postal workers also gave it some legitimacy in the Canadian context. I think back and this is a little look back, so I was, I think I said earlier that I was at, in the UK in 93 and 94, and I went to a meeting that was the Counter Infos Conference. So there were these spaces called infoshops, and these were physical storefronts usually where people would distribute zines and had events, political events, but also artistic events. And you’d go and get information. The ones in Europe were often in squats and they had so they had this conference in 93 I guess. I went to the one in London and there was a meeting there of people who were setting up Internet networks. And I, the bar was pretty low, but you needed to know, I had an email account, so I went to this thing and they were talking. It was the real glory days of freedom of information on the Internet. This was a totally non corporate space, this space where you could communicate even if you had no money. And so I think that’s partly why there was such trust in a way, is it was like a space that it was like you only participated if you really wanted to be participating and communicating. We had no idea what was going to happen. But those spaces were very much tied to the emergence of PGA counter infos. I’m even curious. I think it still exists, but maybe not. Let’s look it up.

Leen Amarin: That’s really, really interesting.

Leen Amarin: I feel like that even in itself would be really interesting to kind of interrogate a little bit further and see how these particular networks worked together to make something like the PGA even possible.

Lesley Wood: Yeah. Yeah.

Leen Amarin: Like little tiny little bits that had to come together for it to be.

Lesley Wood: Yeah. And like, I think that that story is a little hidden because people don’t want to. I don’t know, I don’t know why, but people want to talk about it as authentic or something, you know, amongst people and not necessarily tied to Internet stuff. But yeah, there’s a romantic idea that I have because I haven’t heard many people talk too much about the tech side of it. But of course.

Leen Amarin: I mean, it’s gotta, it definitely made a big difference if it’s, it allowed you to connect in ways that maybe were not possible before that. Right?

Lesley Wood: Yeah, and I mean to a certain extent. So Brian is building our website and he’s part of, he was one of the founders of Tao, TAO.ca. And there’s that wave. So there’s riseup.net. There’s all of these early Internet providers that were at – Mayday, that’s a little bit later. Um. That were creating an infrastructure of non-commercial, free. There were freenets in different cities that helped to connect.

Leen Amarin: I find that really fascinating. Maybe it’s just like my own little bias from having organized through the Internet a lot of times or even like hearing, for example, about this other movement that I was speaking to, speaking about with my friend. They did all of their organizing on Zoom because it was during the pandemic, right? So I think it’s like, really interesting to kind of interrogate that because I do think that that is something that would be interesting and would make the PGA that much more relevant for how movements can kind of learn.

Leen Amarin: Yeah. And learn how to leverage these kinds of resources in a way that’s actually going to help direct action.

Lesley Wood: Absolutely. I do think that there’s something to this story also, though, about that, you know, especially early digital divides and how they played out. And so, you know, we can we can critique the rise of the European support Network group as kind of taking power, but it was definitely facilitated by digital divides, right? So you had groups in and especially South Asia, but Africa as well, where you only had maybe one person with like a low bandwidth ability to participate online. And then you had these pockets where there was much more developed Internet infrastructure. So people, you know, there was a connection between these different continents, but it was much more centralized on a few people in some continents and in others, individuals had access. I mean, this is a period where people didn’t have Internet at home. It was like you’d go to a thing.

Lesley Wood: And use it even in, even in Europe. This is an interesting project here. I think, another interesting project.

Leen Amarin: Super interesting, my god! I’m just like, so okay, let’s maybe let’s move on to the next question. Could you. Yeah, so let’s get into the time piece if that’s okay. I feel like that’s relevant to what we’re talking about as well. So some people have said that some movements move faster and others slower. Some expect change to come quickly and others expect slowness, maybe gradual change, incremental change with little tiny baby steps. How did such differences play out for you or your organization when it came to organizing around or within the PGA?

Lesley Wood: I mean, this question comes out of a comment from an interview that I did with folks who were at the conference in Bolivia where they were talking about the Europeans and North Americans wanting to go so fast and structure their time in a particular way. And the groups from Latin America – this is wild generalizations, and I don’t want to make this too crude – were saying, you know, we have to build trust and go slower because the struggle is long. And so that was kind of the insight that that is behind the question. But in terms of my own experience. Um. My experience of the PGA was very much tied to the global days of action. And this sense of kind of punctuated urgency. There’s something coming up. There’s a day we have to get ready. And so there would be like kind of rush, rush, rush, rush, rush, protest and then relax. So and those summits are often tied, or those days are often tied to summits of international financial institutions. So it was an external temporality to a certain extent, right? Like we had to get ready for the IMF-World Bank, or we had to get ready for the G8 or the G7 summit.

Lesley Wood: Those summit protests were intoxicating because they were so intense. And this moment of like, see how far, how much we can get together? Um, how many cities, how much energy, how much action, and then the collapse. So it was a little bit of almost like an addiction cycle of intensity. But the concern was that this is that the struggle is actually long and needs to be more consistent if we’re going to build trust in communities for organizing. So there was this relationship, I think, between this intensity of the waves tied to a summit, and grassroots local organizing. And so at a certain, there started to be an increasing critique of focusing around the summits and more about like going slow and building. But the slow building risked some of the intensity and the connection. So the way I think about it is that you’ve got multiple temporalities operating within the movement simultaneously, and sometimes they intersect and amplify one another, and sometimes they intersect and diminish each other. I’m taking this a little bit from, because I’ve been reading a bunch of stuff on physics and wave theory, and I think that that makes some sense. So because you have, so you have these, these cycles around the summits, you have the, the longer slower cycles around grassroots organizing. And then you have also cycles around movements. Uh. That are, that are, that become bigger. So you can think about, say, the climate justice struggle and its relationship to the struggle around Black Lives Matter and how they sometimes intersect in order to build and sometimes they get into competition. That’s the way I think about these different temporal patterns and how they’re playing out today. With PGA, I guess I would say something about how 9/11 that kind of a was an eventful event that really disrupted organizing that was direct action and anti-corporate. And anti-capitalist. In Canada and the US. Then transforming the movement into a new cycle of struggle that was far more about responding to securitization and repression and attacks on Immigrants and Muslims, and people of colour. So there was this change in the temporality at that point. That didn’t destroy the PGA, the networks that had emerged from PGA, but converted them to something different, with a different rhythm.

Lesley Wood: I don’t want to overstate the importance of PGA, but you had the emergence of groups like No One is Illegal in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. That were all people who’d been connected to the anti-globalization movement, global justice movement. Who became. And put their energy into doing immigrant justice work After 9/11.

Leen Amarin: So how do you find that these temporal differences affecting the organizing work itself?

Lesley Wood: Well.

Leen Amarin: You mentioned, like, a high and a low and almost like an addiction cycle of it. Could you maybe speak a little bit more to that?

Lesley Wood: Yeah, it’s. I would say there’s something about the appropriate pace of action that is happening is like how urgent, you know, like the need to do it right now, the valuing of fast, valuing versus of slow, that changes. I think there’s also something about the temporal orientation, how, and the horizon. So how far are you looking into the future? Are you reacting? Or are you, are you building for the future? Uh, how much can you focus on? How much are you focusing on the present versus the future? And I think that there’s, when you know, 9/11 happened, it was definitely like a contraction into the present. We gotta. We gotta defend. We gotta keep. We gotta protect. Right. The global justice movement was focused. Partly on that, but also very much talking about another world is possible. Building a different logic. Um, of we are, you know, ‘against neoliberalism and for humanity.’ And so it was definitely about competing visions that shrunk down after 9/11 where it was, we need to, I mean, there was still we need to stop because we needed to stop global capitalism. We needed to stop, you know, the war on terror. And so there was that transition there or that alignment between those two different logics. But I think it became harder to talk about the kind of prefigurative models, at least for a minute of thinking building the world that we want in the movement that we do, that is kind of eased. And I think that there’s like, it’s been a long time now, 20 years or whatever, and people over the last decade or so I think are much more about kind of mutual aid and building care networks and talking about building just relations.

Lesley Wood: And not just reacting. And shrinking down. So thinking into the future, a lot more. Maybe also because the present seems so fucked.

Leen Amarin: Right. Yeah.

Lesley Wood: That was incoherent. But I think that what I guess I’m just trying to point out that there’s these fluctuations in the way that we organize and the way that we understand time. Um.

Leen Amarin: Yeah, that’s great.

Leen Amarin: That was that was excellent. I’m curious, though, because you did mention 9/11 a couple of times, and I’m wondering if you feel that the change that kind of came out of 9/11 and maybe in the aftermath of 9/11, whether that was maybe centered in North America or if you felt the change happened differently in different parts of the PGA globally as well?

Lesley Wood: Yeah, I mean, I think it had the most dramatic effect in North America. I mean, obviously it had the most dramatic effect in the Middle East. 100%. In terms of the PGA the area where the PGA was particularly active, I think it had more of an effect in North America than it did in Europe and, and more in North America than in Latin America, where the movements. there was not as much fear and not as much like rampant patriotism. That made it very difficult to do protest, especially in like 2001. I have a datasets of like what happened with in terms of the number of protests and it just like. There were supposed to be a big action, In October 20th, 2001, in Toronto, Ontario Common Front. And it was bringing together all these different movements and almost, most of them just dropped out. They just were like, No, it’s not the time to protest. So you see that change, which you did not see other places. But I do think what you see with. Built on the connections in part through the internationalism of PGA is the connection to what was going on in Palestine and what was going on in Afghanistan as being part of the movement’s concerns. So I know New York is a particular lens of what happened with 9/11, but, you know, the idea of no blood for oil, right? So bringing the and then like protests against Caterpillar and some of the corporations that were like the defense industry corporations, banks, Citibank.

That was one of the ways to, that the movement started to really engage with. I have the sticker here from New York. “All war, all the time!” mobilized New York Antiwar Action Alerts “United for Peace and Justice.” So these were networks. That brought together the Global justice movement connection. Movements with earlier iterations of peace movements and antiwar movements. Those were those was okay this is worth actually capturing, I think a little bit. There was a big international global day of action against the war on Iraq. That happened. And I’m looking at the stickers. I’m like, no, it was not that date. It was February 15th, 2000 and –, 2002. Is that right? Yes. And it was the largest global day of action, I think still, maybe with the exception of the women’s protests, ever. And it was building on. What had happened with PGA and the global justice movement in these global days of action around international financial institutions. But it was definitely the biggest one that had ever happened. Um, if I’m remembering correctly, it was 600 cities around the world mobilized against the war in Iraq.

In New York the Direct Action Network. We already had an infrastructure. I was a bike scout. We had bike scouts and comms. So we had a communication setup with radios that, we were very good at radios, but also starting to use cell phones. And then and, we had this kind of decentralized way of communication that we had kind of honed through Days of Action and around the IMF and World Bank, but also the Republican convention and the Democratic convention. And we were trying to work with this United for Peace and Justice Network, which came out of anti-Vietnam War organizing and the 80s. And they had a much more hierarchical structure. And we were like very avowed, like, consensus based, decentralized networks. And there was some interesting tension. We asked them to fund our radios because we knew how to how to do it. We were set up and we were used to cooperating and they didn’t trust us. We, partly, we said, Well, we’re going to get these radios. We wanted to buy them, right? We wanted to buy them and then make them available to the antiwar movement in general. They wanted to keep them anyway. There’s some silly things like turf wars that were happening there, but also intergenerational challenges of how to organize.

Lesley Wood: They had like a board of directors and we wanted to have like a spokes council. So there was like these interesting tensions that were happening. But we did have an incredibly large day of action in New York. We wanted to shut down the city. They wanted to get a permit with anyway. There was like, there were some real interesting tensions there. I actually have notes about that period. Um, but so what happens after 9/11, at least in, definitely in New York, is earlier movements re-emerge because of the war and the global justice movement is sort of trying to interact with them. And then we don’t win. So George Bush says, I don’t listen to special interest groups, which is, of course, a hilarious lie. He listens to special interest groups all the time. And then the war started. And it was like, wow, we just had the largest global day of action in human history and the war continued, that demoralized people.

Lesley Wood: And so then there was a quite a period of reflection.

Lesley Wood: And like, what do we do now?

Lesley Wood: And so that then led to detentions work, immigrant support work and a bunch of direct action activists going to Palestine through international solidarity movement. So have you heard of International Solidarity Movement?

Lesley Wood: Have you heard of the International Solidarity Movement?

Leen Amarin: I feel like it sounds familiar? I’m not sure if I am thinking of the exact same thing that you are mentioning.

Lesley Wood: This is a group, I guess. It. I’m like looking up my, my history here. So this is a Palestinian led movement committed to ending the occupation, and through nonviolent direct action. And look at that, it still exists. So this, like I think out of our New York group, at least a dozen people went in the next couple months over to Palestine to try and support using the tactics of direct action that we had been honing in.

Lesley Wood: In the States. And in Canada. And so that connection should be– we should look at that connection.

Leen Amarin: For sure. Yeah.

Lesley Wood: That would be very much up your alley.

Leen Amarin: Was the ISM, are they the ones that are behind the Freedom Flotillas?

Lesley Wood: I don’t think so, but if you, it’s palsolidarity.org.

Leen Amarin: Yeah, I found it.

Lesley Wood: Yeah.

Leen Amarin: Interesting.

Lesley Wood: And so.

Lesley Wood: Um.

Lesley Wood: So yeah, there started to be. I actually was about to go and then I got pregnant and I did not go. Doesn’t talk about too much the history, but my understanding that it was a couple of people like. Uh. Anyway, that were somehow connected. We should find them. Um.

Leen Amarin: I wonder if the ISM would have any record of that. Maybe they’d be worth reaching out to.

Lesley Wood: Yeah, I definitely have zines and stuff. Okay, let’s look into that. Or do you want to look into that?

Leen Amarin: Sure. Yeah, I’d be happy to.

Lesley Wood: So yeah, it is interesting to think about how that that moment transformed. But the PGA in North America really, never was really ever talked about again, Honestly, at least in the US. In Canada, yes. With this PGA block became an idea. But it was never a thing that you kind of organized things around, but you did in Europe and Latin America and in Asia.

Leen Amarin: That’s really interesting.

Leen Amarin: So I guess that kind of dovetails so perfectly into the next question, which is what lessons do you think the PGA experience has for movements today?

Lesley Wood: I think it really has a lesson that you can and should, your movement is stronger if you are paying attention to what’s happening in other places and that. You can be a small group in a local struggle, but be part be part of something that’s much bigger. And that you don’t need to fall into NGO logics of worrying about grant writing. You can you can do it and it can be scrappy and yet powerful. And that also, I mean especially, I’d say, a lesson for groups in, in the Global North or the privileged parts of the world that you can learn so much from movements, in other, and from the global South. Some people have said that this is one of the big lessons of the PGA, was that this was the first time, and I don’t know if that’s really true, but it’s the first time that movements in the global north were really taking the lead from movements in the global South. I would like that to be true (?)

Leen Amarin: Maybe the first time actively doing so?

Lesley Wood: What’s that?

Leen Amarin: Maybe the first time actively, or intentionally doing so?

Lesley Wood: Potentially, yeah. Perhaps. I don’t know if that’s entirely true. Like you can I could I could argue counter to that that like movements in definitely also parts sorts of parts of the world learned from like the Indian independence struggle and like you know but definitely there was a period where it was like the. There was definitely a sense of understanding how international financial institutions worked, debt being used as a weapon that, um, I think those two actually are almost enough right there. That allowed. Groups in the Global North to say, oh yeah, neoliberalism is not the, you know sweet thing it’s being proposed. Like, it’s not freedom. Because we’ve seen what’s happening here. And what’s happening is anybody who borrows money from the IMF, the World Bank is being pressured to cut their education and their health care and their human rights and their democracy. And, um. And we’ve learned those lessons from watching, like, what happens in Chile and what happens in Argentina and what happens and that there’s like.

Lesley Wood: And to a certain extent, like people like Naomi Klein articulated this very well, that there is a shock doctrine and that that, that it was tried it was tried out in the, in the Global South first and then, and that movements in the Global North needed to understand that.

Lesley Wood: Yeah this was, this was going to be really relevant.

Lesley Wood: The lessons, what was going on elsewhere.

Leen Amarin: Yeah. Do you feel that movement work like the PGA is possible today?

Lesley Wood: I do.

Lesley Wood: I do. Absolutely.

Lesley Wood: Um. I’d like to think about what the conditions are that would allow it to happen.

Leen Amarin: Interesting. So our next question is, how did your experience with the PGA affect your own activism and your own networks?

Lesley Wood: I feel responsible for trying to pay attention what goes on elsewhere and that. That’s been consistent in the way that I think about politics. That I’m looking for the moments of convergence, and looking for the shared enemies. As an opportunity. To organize. I also do value. Yeah. Convergences and summits. Maybe that was before that. But I do like those spaces where people come together across difference. And try and act. I hear stories about especially PGA convergences and conferences, the global ones for sure. Um, but where, you know, there’s like eight languages being spoken and people were trying to understand each other’s struggles and think about, okay, what does that mean? And getting inspiration. You know that.

Lesley Wood: That to me, like honestly, although I didn’t experience it directly. I went to the social forum, which was related but different. Because I think some of these slogans of like, you know, they are. “We are 6 million or 6 billion and they you know, they are few.” Like that. The idea of the 99% that’s Occupy, but it was coming from earlier. That is something we have to remember, right? This world is going in the wrong direction. But almost everybody knows that. And like, we need to coordinate, we need to connect, if we’re going to make a different world. And if we you know, there’s longer histories to that idea.

Lesley Wood: But absolutely.

Lesley Wood: We can’t we can’t have.

Lesley Wood: Uh.

Lesley Wood: I don’t know if I always love the language of revolution, except kind of ironically. But you can’t have a revolution in one country anymore. Like if we ever could. It has to be connected. It’s going to be different in different places. If it wasn’t. I mean, it was apparent then, but it’s even more apparent now.

Leen Amarin: You know, I think it’s really interesting what you’re what you’re saying is definitely bringing up a lot of things for me and that I’ve been reflecting on a lot. Even in, for example, like the Jam, I feel like that was a space where there were some there was some kind of, you know, coming together sometimes across differences. But definitely sometimes there were moments where like, maybe this is not the best idea. Like there was, like times when, you know, somebody seemed to be really, really trying to push for the fact that there needs to be like a reconciliation between like millionaires and billionaires and poor people for something, for the future to be better. That’s like, okay. Like poor people. No, like millionaires and billionaires don’t give a shit. Like, it’s not.

Lesley Wood: No, honestly, it’s not personal. Right? It’s like. No, no, it’s systemic.

Leen Amarin: Exactly.

Lesley Wood: To get rid of your money, we can. I mean, it’s not like. Yeah, whatever. Get rid of it is not even enough. It’s just like the system is not working.

Leen Amarin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Leen Amarin: Awesome. How do you feel? Or. I feel like we’ve kind of talked a little bit about this already, but if you feel that there’s anything to add that we haven’t really touched on in specific, how do you feel that the PGA affected other movements and networks or even your experience with the PGA has affected other networks?

Lesley Wood: Honestly, that’s why I’m doing this project. You know, Yeah. So I mean, like that’s a particular angle I have on this. I think it clearly many people. It affected many groups. It. As a set of ideas in many places and in some cases through actual formations. It’s hard to know ever causality around influence. But at the minimum. The idea of being able to do a global day of action. And an international gathering. And be able to come to an agreement about the need to take on systems of power through direct action. That idea has been influential and continues to influence, although it’s not necessarily understood and known. And I’m not saying it’s important necessarily that it has to be the PGA that’s understood. That’s not them the critical piece. But the story of the PGA does put a name to something that happened that I think people can take inspiration from.

Leen Amarin: Awesome. I think we’re about to wrap up here, but is there anything that we didn’t ask that you feel is important to cover or maybe any questions or issues that you are reflecting on or that are on your mind now that we’re having this conversation?

Lesley Wood: Mm. Um. I just hope that these stories can be helpful for people and that they’re not lost. Right? Because even if they’re not helpful right now, hopefully they will be helpful in the future. That’s all. I mean, I have a chance to influence this to a certain extent just because I’m asking other people questions, too. But. But I hope it, yeah, I think it matters.

Leen Amarin: Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.

Leen Amarin: I mean, I feel like the last question doesn’t really apply here, but is there someone you think we should interview?

Lesley Wood: Okay.

Lesley Wood: The people that think we, I really would love to get, I’d love to get somebody from ISM if they were influenced by PGA. I would love to get somebody from South Africa, actually. And I’ve tried to get. I’ve tried to get them, but they. And they did do a brief interview with me many years ago.

Lesley Wood: Virginia. I think there wasn’t as much PGA activism in sub-Saharan Africa. And this is not going to be a project that’s fully representative, obviously, but I hope we don’t just reproduce the biases within the network, within the archive. So I’m aware of that. More folks in India, and I’m curious to see whether we can find somebody in Jordan.

Lesley Wood: Uh. Or from Eastern Europe. But, you know, whatever. We’re getting something. So let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s see. And I think, you know, once we get it out there, we’ll be more. All right, I’m going to stop recording.