A tale of two summits

Wednesday 10 May, late

This is turning into the tale of two summits. This morning I went to pick up my accreditation for the official event. The tram pulled up alongside an open plaza lined with tall brightly-coloured banners, symbol of the Austrian presidency of the European Union. The modern glass Messe Wien conference centre glinted in the sun, as did the motorbikes of the policemen lining up to be photographed by an early journalist. A couple of sniffer-dogs investigated the undersides of the unoccupied benches.

Inside was equally shiny. Last-minute floor polishing, piles of welcome packs, ranks of unoccupied computers, lots of welcoming attendants in matching blue and yellow suits. The espresso machine was hissing in the corner and the big screens bore welcome messages in lots of different languages. I collected my information and took advantage of the speedy internet connection to check my email. The foreign ministers don’t arrive till tomorrow, and the heads of state and government not till Friday. Everything is waiting and ready for them.

I returned back across town via a rickety old tram to the alternative summit, Enlazando Alternativas 2 (EA2). What a contrast! A grim concrete 1960s building plastered with fly-posters, and rather ironically situated next to Nestlé's offices.  Inside, the atmosphere was exactly the opposite of the ambient calm of the Messe Wien. People everywhere: in slogan-bearing t-shirts and knitted hats, a woman with her baby tied to her chest with a woven cloth. There were paper cups half-filled with instant coffee abandoned on wooden trestle-tables; flyers of all sizes, shapes and colours - on and underfoot the tables - denouncing any number of outrages and celebrating an equal number of heroes.  

Inside the main room the tribunal on transnational corporations was underway. A Colombian was talking about the wrongdoings of a Spanish electricity company, his companions listening from a table next to him on stage. The bench of judges sat across from him, also listening. The hall was pretty full. The audience was patient, respectful, taking in the details, some nodding, others taking notes.

On the wall there was a series of beautiful photographs taken in Espirito Santo, northeast Brazil. They told the story of the struggles of the Quilombola community against a private company intent on planting their land with eucalyptus trees to make paper, thereby depriving them of their traditional livelihoods and allegedly causing pollution of the water sources.

There is a lot of anger at the alternative summit, as well as a lot of energy and a profound belief in the potential for change. The passion is admirable. At times, the presentation seems a little chaotic, the coordination of all the myriad claims and causes somewhat lacking. But given the relatively limited resources available to this gathering, and compared to the almost complacent orchestration of the early stages of the official event, the passion - in many cases born from personal experience - is refreshing.

At EA2 on Thursday, there will be more tribunal hearings and the beginning of the plenary sessions. I might go in the afternoon to a debate on alternatives to free-trade agreements, at which a woman I know from the Institute for Agricultue and Trade Policy (IATP) in Geneva is speaking. Across town in the shiny conference centre, the foreign ministers will be arriving and preparing for the big day on Friday. In the evening, the summit delegates will have dinner at the Hapsburg palace, and the journalists a reception in the city hall.

Meanwhile, the EA2 crowd will get down to some samba, rumba and Latin gypsy patxanka in the Vienna arena.