[governance] First Draft of Statement on US CommerceDepartment/GACchair intervention

[Milton Mueller]

Izumi:
Thanks very much for making your views clear! I appreciate the time
spent and the honesty of your disagreements. I will send another message
responding to your points.

Let me first clear up one item of possible confusion. I quickly added
the header "DRAFT CIVIL SOCIETY STATEMENT" before sending it out. I did
not intend for the statement to claim to speak for all of "civil
society." Global civil society has no unified view on any issue. The
statement header was immediately followed by a statement referring to
"the following signatories," indicating that I always had in mind a
"sign on if you agree" model.

But it is a "civil society statement" because it will come from civil
society members who choose to support it. I use that term as an umbrella
term for people in NCUC, ALAC and WSIS-CS, and other public interest
groups who I expected to be supportive. There was no other convenient
label. I hope to find a modification that avoids the "we represent all
of civil society" confusion.

The final group of signatories, in my opinion, has as much right to
identify itself as "civil society" in the WSIS context as the 10-15
active people on the Internet Governance Caucus list who issued a "Civil
Society" response to the WGIG Report, because at the end of the day this
statement will achieve many more signatories than there are members of
the IGC list.

Hope you can forward this to ALAC.

>>> Izumi AIZU <aizu at anr.org> 08/18/05 8:17 PM >>>
Therefore, I  ask you not to try "represent" the Civil Society both
at WSIS and ICANN with this draft. Honestly, the views are far more
diverse than you have tried to put together, I am afraid. Of course,
you are free to call for support and put this forward, but I don't
think
it's fair to label this as generic "CIVIL SOCIETY STATEMENT " as
it stands.