Communications

      The Communication Working Group operated on the same
principles as the P7 itself: as a decentralized structure of
support for effective communication around the themes of the
annual Alternative Economic Summit.  

      It has been literally true that everyone who participated
in the P7 had some significant role in communication. For the
Website and documentation projects alone, some fifty people and
twenty organizations made direct contributions to the effort:
writers, actors, musicians, print and Internet publishers,
videographers, co- and contributing producers.  

      Most important, we were all working from personal
conviction, some passion, around human rights, or about an
increasingly destroyed and plundered World, or about ways of
doing things that are not exploitive or destructive.  

     We found ourselves able to create together in an environment
of trust, without dominance, without heirarchy, and we made our
voices heard, not loudly, but clearly, around the world.  

Co-ordination was as much by direct contact among individuals as
by meetings or reports. As expected, sub-groups evolved focussing
on "internal communication": articulation of themes, meeting
process; establishing and maintaining a P7 Website on the
Chebucto Community Net and encouraging the use of e-mail;
providing sound, staging and documentation services; operating a
successful media relations office.  

As well, other P7 committees produced critical elements of our
communication program (such as the two mass-circulation event
programs produced by the Program Ctte.)  

Participant indivi- duals and organizations with involvement in
commu- nications (like the high-school student-run Auburn
Air/Cole Harbour media service, who had their material broadcast
across Canada) operated and produced independently of the P7
organization.  

Those who organized events did so with the intent to attract
media attention, and the number of TV cameras that showed up
indicated they were very successful in doing so.  

In the end, the process extended to the "pink ribbon" campaign,
in which individuals directly participated in a public statement
by wearing a ribbon.  

We demonstrated communication "From the ground up!" Each and
every person who participated can be proud of our accomplishment
together.