II Simposio Spinelli

Spinelli after the creation of the European Union and in the State of Nature.

So as you may have noticed, my fb picture changed temporarily to the logo of the "Catedra Spinelli". If this is news to you because we aren't facebook friends you probably shouldn't be reading this blog because that would just be weird and creepy.

For the past month or so I've been helping helping organize the II Simposio Spinelli which is a series of talks on the regional integration of Latin America, based upon the model of the European Union. Altiero Spinelli is an Italian guy who was one of the founding fathers of the European Union, and don't worry if you have never heard of him, I sure as hell hadn't and I don't think anyone in Latin America has either. The panelists including our Argentinean Diputado guy, a Uruguayan Diputado, a German guy who is a member of the European Parliament, and some Italians.

My main role in all of this was to handle La Difusion Masiva. In English that translates directly to: get the word out and put asses in the seats by any means necessary, ie. facebook event, posters, emails, etc. I think in the long run this allowed me to contribute in a big way to DG. I was able to find a company in San Francisco, California called Vertical Response that basically serves as a secure way that assures delivery of emails to large lists of people. ie. if you have a huge email list and want to send everyone an email, gmail or hotmail or whatever will not allow you to send it because of spam protection. This service gets around that and in our case was perfect for sending a mass email.

Non-profit organizations can apply to get the service for free so they can reach their target audience and supporters. I had to apply and send in the official documents from the Congreso. It all was rather easy and we got approved. We can send 10,000 emails free per month, I now have all the email contacts on the server and am in the process of sorting by profession, institution, etc. (I also am still the only one that has the passwords and can access the service, so I am going to hold out until they give me the big bucks.

(I had to take one of the banners home with me one night, I had a little too much fun with it):

I made sure that Spinelli got a good night's rest before the event.

And I was even nice enough to give him my desk during the Symposium.

 And then was all said and done Spinelli let down his hair and then passed out in my bed. Can you believe the nerve?

Anyway the Simposium went pretty well and I guess I did a decent job about getting the word out. There were a couple of crazies that showed up, including a woimen stalker of Diputado Iglesias and also a pair of thieves who stole the German parliamentarians laptop before the first talk. However I don't feel too bad because he called in sick the second day but facebook showed him doing a bit of sight seeing in Buenos Aires.

I leave you with a quick point that I took away from the Symposium and hadn't really given much thought to as to why a Latin American Union would be an important step for the countries of Latin America:

Protection of the worker--> Latin America is comprised of largely third world countries and all of the economies are based in  production, agriculture, etc. When a multi-national company comes down here standard procedure is to shop around where to set-up shop based largely upon where they can find the cheapest labor and most lax government regulations. Because of that countries are competing over getting a company which causes them to make deals that sacrifice a lot of the worker's protections, including hours, wages, and safety in order to attract business. If there was a uniform, strong united front with universal workers' rights across Latin America, it could do a lot to prevent that type of behavior and create a minimum standard of working conditions.