I’ve just returned from the “Report Back from Cochabamba” meeting in Toronto. It was by every standard a huge success.
I hope one of the meeting organizers from Toronto Bolivia Solidarity will write a summary report. These are just quick impressions, subject to revision …
There were about 225 people in the room. That’s about double the number that the organizers told me a couple of weeks ago that they were hoping for. There were impressive numbers of young people from climate and ecology groups, of Latin Americans and solidarity activists, and of First Nations people.
The talks were uniformly excellent. All of them were video recorded, so they should be available online soon. If possible C&C will publish transcripts. Watch this space for details.
Also excellent … the Bolivian food and the musical opening by Red Slam Collective, a hiphop/powwow/spoken word group that got me, at least, up and in the mood.
Thanks to all … more to come
Frank: You seem to think that in this article I wrote that the Cochabamba conference was a huge success. Climate & Capitalism has indeed published many articles arguing just that. You can find a full list HERE.
But in this case, what I said was that the Toronto Report Back meeting was a huge success. Its goal was to report the results of the Cochabamba conference: the speakers did that, and the attendance was far greater than anticipated.
Good food, good music, good discussion, good participation. A huge success.
The author(?) writes: “It was by every standard a huge success.”
Just out of curiosity, what are the key standards by which organizers are evaluating the outcomes?
To put it another way, what were the primary goals of the conference, to what extent were they achieved and what’s next in the planning process?
I hope that we will eventually see some details that reveal how we get from where we are to where we want to go. The devil, as always, is in the details.