Report from Porto Alegre
Yesterday (07/05/2005) [May 7, 2005], in Porto Alegre, we took the first step to the effective construction of the local anti-prohibitionist movement. During a cold and rainy afternoon we gathered, at the auditorium of the Central Academic Directory of Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (DCE-UFRGS), about 70 people, most of them young people on their early 20's. The number outcame the expectations of the "organizers", due to the lame ad campaign done basically through the internet, and half a dozen posters.
The meeting begun at 15:30, with a brief report of the national and international anti-prohibitionist situation. Soon after, the debate was open. Since it was the first meeting, there wasn't an agenda, properly saying, and the debate was about several questions related to the problems lived by drug users, due the prohibitionist policy; violence; agression towards individual freedom(s); precariety and disrepect in health care services and education; lack of a quality control on consumed substances; barely inexistence of quality orientation to the user, about means to reduct risks and harms.
It was also discussed different perspectives about possible ways to lead the anti-prohibitionist movement. Should we go for legalisation or "descriminalization"? Should we go to mainstream press, or indie press? Should we fight for the production and selling get vinculated to the so called solidary economy nets, or should we embrace the neoliberal logic? Should we legalise only for personal use and personal plantation (private culture)? And so was the debate, free, making of this first encounter, above all, a moment of checking possible agendas that we'll follow through the next months.
By the end of the meeting, so that energy wouldn't be dissipated, we discussed strategies and directed efforts in order to guarantee the continuity of this movement. We established a few workgroups to discuss and elaborate a letter of principles, to get finantial aid, to elaborate a website and all the graphics designs of the movement. Also, was created a law comission, gathering mainly Law students, responsable to verify both drug laws, as other aspects that can guarantee that our fight won't be taken as an encouragement of the use of drugs, considered as a felony in our country. By the way, the composition of general meeting was completely heretogenic: Law, Social Sciences, Biology, Psichology, Arts and Pedagogics students, plus high schoolers, people related to the Public Health School of Porto Alegre (Escola de Saúde Pública de Porto Alegre), and many, many other people.
All workgroups should hurry their specific work, keeping in touch through an e-group that will be created for all the people who attended the first meeting. In a month, there will be a second meeting, and a key note speaker will attend, one that we'll choose after further discussion through our e-group. We'll also premiere a documentary that's being produced by Journalism students of UFRGS, that registered the meeting and collected statements of the people who were there.
I feel it was a golden beginning.