October 2007 will be the 40th anniversary of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death in the mountains of Bolivia. It will also be the occasion of what will hopefully be the biggest anti-imperialist convergence Australia has seen in decades — the Latin American and Asia Pacific International Solidarity Forum.
This conference has been made possible because three Australian international solidarity organisations with a record of building successful conferences have decided to pool their resources: the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN), the Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference (APISC) and the Latin American Solidarity Network (LASNET).
Their joint initiative aims to bring together as many anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, socialist and progressive activists as possible to advance a goal that's clearly expressed in the forum title, "Fighting and organising globally against neoliberalism".
Conference guest speakers are expected to come from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, El Salvador, Indonesia, the Philippines, East Timor, Fiji, West Papua, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and New Zealand, as well as other countries.
The conference call describes the forum's two main aims as facilitating "the sharing of ideas and experiences and generating political discussions between Latin American, Asia-Pacific and Australian social movements, political organisations and individual activists".
It also aims to build "support for and solidarity with grassroots movements and political organisations fighting neoliberalism and resisting the plunder of natural resources by capitalist transnationals and governments".
The goal of the initiating organisations is maximum participation from campaign organisations, trade unions, NGOs, progressive political parties, social movements, academics and individual activists. All will be encouraged to submit proposals for workshops and papers and "the conference will have an open door policy on workshops — space permitting".
For more information phone Jorge Jorquera (AVSN) on 0431 720 787, Lisa Macdonald (APISC) on 0413 031 108 or Lucho Riquelme (LASNET) 0402 754 818.