2018 PPI Report of the Board
- Content
- 1- Keynote
- 2- Scope of activities
- 3- Summary of goals for 2018
- 4- Budget 2018
- 5- Infrastructure & Logistics
- 6- Support to Members & Pirates at large
- 7- Activism – Support activities
- a. Global Campaigns
- b. SoMed Support for
- 8- Institutional Work
- a. UN ECOSOC
- 9- Conferences and Publications
- a. Think Twice
- b. Secon – Munich Pirate Security Conference
- c. RightsCon
- 10- Conclusion
1- Keynote
- The board of PPI has been working hard over the past year with a strong team of 7 board members and 4 alternates. As in the previous year, we met every two weeks. Minutes are available on our Wiki. We conducted the third Think Twice
conference, attended several events at the UN HQ in NY. We presented several documents as well to the UN in the name of PPI, which were accepted and published in relevant UN documents. Our activism group ran extensive social media campaigns and collaborated with other organizations to help with causes of whistleblowers, internet freedom, and other relevant campaigns. We had one board member who we needed to replace owing to an extended absence, Nikolay Voronov. Adam Wolf was promoted as a full board member in his absence.
2- Scope of activities
- PPI's board has engaged in the following categories of activities:
General Adminisration & Finance Logistics & Support Knowledge Development and Sharing Public Relations
3- Summary of goals for 2018
- The goals aimed to achieve in 2018 time period were-
- Finalizing the IT infrastructure migration and replace outdated tools
- Support the relaunch of the Think Twice Conferences
- Build and Develop PPI's presence within the UN
- Develop and Improve the General Assembly framework in order to enable a truly global participation
- Develop, and provide greater exposure via its SoMed infrastructure to increase PP activism visibility on a gloabl scale
4- Budget 2018
- The following details payments made for 2018 separately to our Postfinance bank and Paypal Accounts. The budget represents the period since our last GA in November 2017.
- All details of exact fees are located on our Wiki Finances page: https://wiki.pp-international.net/wiki/index.php?title=Finances
- Postfinance
- We began after the past GA in November 2017 with a balance of 2,156.89 CHF.
- The following fees were incurred since the last year.
- Bank fees: 120 CHF (60CHF/year + 5 CHF/month).
- TT2 repayments to PPNO: 372.28 CHF for 2017 repayment and 372.28 CHF for 2018 repayment <approximately 1,500 Euro of repayments are outstanding.>
- TT3 repayment: 915.76 CHF (full cost)
- IT costs for 2017 amounting to 1,000 € are donated.
- IT-costs for 2018 appr. 1,800,00 € are deferred
- 2017 GA repayment: 500 CHF
- PPDE affiliation fees: 402.43 CHF
- The following donations were received over the past year.
- PPCZ donation of affiliation fees: 457.18 CHF
- PPFR donation for TT3: 113.70 CHF
- PPCH donation for TT3: 250.00 CHF
- Individual membership fee: 11.43 CHF
:Final Balance updated as of August 13, 2018 (latest booking) is 1,147.69 CHF (appr. 1000 EUR)
- Paypal
- The balance as of Nov. 24, 2017 was 463.56 EUR
- 130 Euros were collected from individual membership fees.
- 35 Euros were used for the 2017 GA.
- The balance on July 29, 2017 (latest booking) was 538.79 EUR
- Summary
- Over the past year PPI has used approximately 2000 Euros.
- PPI gained over this period approximately 1060 Euros.
- Additional costs that were not reported are not included. Future repayments, such as the TT2 repayments, must be made in line with payments of fees in the coming years. Server costs are deferred.
- Budget for the upcoming year depends largely on the budget that we can allocate from affiliation fees and elsewhere.
- Payments for TT3 of approximately 300 EUR made by PPIL are not included in these spreadsheets, as those payments were made directly from their account for the event.
- Our final balance remaining in both accounts is approximately 1,543 EUR
- Outlook
- Over the coming year we must collect affiliation fees for 2018. Affiliation fees are collected for the prior year. We must also consider the repayments for TT2, and whether we will have enough funds to continue our repayments on schedule. Server costs and other tech fees have not been incurred but may be charged in the future. We must also consider how to raise and allocate funds for upcoming Think Twice conferences, the Pirate security conference, UN events, and this GA. :Please note that our UN representatives have paid all of their own costs to this point, but we should cover at least their within city transportation costs. :There are also some events with a registration fee, and we should pay that fee to encourage the representatives to attend. Finally, we should work on a plan for both crowdfunding and collecting grants or other fundraising for research, tech development, and other activities.
5- Infrastructure & Logistics
6- Support to Members & Pirates at large
We were having monthly membership meetings for international coordination and activism. However, attendence became very low after the first couple of meetings so they stopped getting organized. We would like to get these going again in the new year because it is important that we try to meet regularly, not just at GAs, so that we can actually work together on causes and keep communication open. We can better support PPI members and the Pirate movement this way. I suggest we pick one day per month, a consistent date (perhaps the 3rd Saturday of each month, for example), for these meetings. That way everybody knows where and when they can come and talk to someone from the PPI board specifically about their needs and about activism-related stuff.
7- Activism – Support activities
- What is an activist? The dictionary definition of "activist" is "a person who campaigns to bring about political or social change."
Oftentimes when we think about or discuss activism, we tend to make a distinction between those who become politicians and work for a political party, and those who go and raise hell in the streets, either in the form of peaceful protest or involving some kind of civil disobedience. One of the interesting things about the global Pirate movement is that a lot of us do both, and we do not see these things as incompatible. A person can advocate for radical ideas like complete systemic overhaul of the political and economic system, while also working towards smaller victories that are practical and achievable, sometimes under the banner of a political party, such as your national Pirate Party. It's all important work and it's absolutely crucial to the larger goal of social and economic justice, digital rights and civil liberties for all.
- Because of what Pirates stand for, we have placed ourselves directly at the intersection of human rights and digital rights...in fact, there really is no separating these two. We all know that in today's world, the whole concept of human rights is incomplete if they do not apply to the digital sphere...things like the right to privacy, as well as transparency for the powerful (such as governments); free and open access to the internet and to information, media and culture; freedom of speech; REAL democracy where people are included in the democratic process, not just in the form of voting every few years but where those who are most affected by a particular legislative decision are the ones who influence that decision the most; and the list goes on.
- Quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson, “We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.” Well, we are also connected digitally, meaning that through the internet and technological progress over the years, humans have made political contructs such as borders in many ways obsolete. We don't even need to live on the same continent to know, love and collaborate with each other. That is the beautiful thing about having a global movement such as this one, we all care about the same things and we work towards the same goals and wherever possible, we work on these together, no matter where we are from and what languages we speak and regardless of the political/social contexts we are dealing with individually. The same rings true for world issues in general...every single problem we can point out is connected to the other ones. The fact that a large portion of the human population does not have access to the same technology as us, including the internet, speaks to issues of imperialism, poverty and exploitation. Just like governments will not hesitate to take away our rights such as privacy and repress our voices in the form of censorship, largely in the digital sphere, in order to further their own imperialist, exploitative agendas locally and globally.
- However you are doing this work, whether it's through the political system or outside of it, your contributions are shaping the future as we speak.
- For the last three years or so activists in general, and Pirates in particular, have been slacking. Every time we have tried to get something going we have had to work really hard to get a few dozen to rise to the occation. This is not a critisim of Pirates but more a description of the times we live in. With everything that is happening it seems The Apathy Party has been the only movement that has increased their membership.
- In this the big lull, as some of us call this period of inactivity now behind us, we have tried our best to make sure that more an more people know about us or at least hear our name. Have we been successful? Well, that is up to you to decide. We have, despite everything, tried our hardest. Every single day we have used our networks to promote the movement as best we could. We use social media, media network, our own network of people and pirate services to make our voice matter.
- a. Global Campaigns
- PPI has supported, taken part in or run many global ops and campaigns,
- That said, some of the campaigns that Pirates have participated in over the last couple of years include but are not limited to:
-Free Reality Winner -WikiLeaks/Julian Assange support -The Pursuance Project -
- b. SoMed Support for
8- Institutional Work
a. UN ECOSOC
9- Conferences and Publications
- a. Think Twice Three
- b. Secon – Munich Pirate Security Conference
- c. RightsCon
- d. UN High-Level Panel on Migration and Structural Transformation in Africa, UNHQ NY Sept. 25
- e. UN 6th Biennial High-level Meeting of the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF). UNHQ NY, May 21-30
- f. Report on "the right to privacy in the digital age" Document submitted on 9 April 2018
- g. Report for UN Commission for Social Development. Document submitted on Oct. 22 2018.
10- Conclusion
- With the given means, both in human capital and financialy speaking, the board of PPI was able to achieve its goals for 2018:
[Enumerate achievements]
- Finalizing the IT infrastructure migration and replace outdated tools
- Support the relaunch of the Think Twice Conferences
- Build and Develop PPI's presence within the UN
- Develop and Improve the General Assembly framework in order to enable a truly global participation
- Develop, and provide greater exposure via its SoMed infrastructure to increase PP activism visibility on a gloabl scale
- In order to pursue its development PPI and achieve more ambitious goals requires more resources and financial means.
