San Francisco         Last year the Organizers’ Forum marked more than 20 years by returning to Brazil, where we had inaugurated the Forum initially.  We had grabbed the opportunity to have be there on the eve of Lula’s first election and then book ended with his return once for another term.  This year we’re flipping the script and heading far to the east and following the headlines and our curiosity to Taiwan.

We’ll be embedded pretty deeply this year.  The thirteen-hour difference between Taipei and New Orleans will mean catching up with emails and the day’s work, as I wake up and others wind down.  We’ve been east with the Forum before in Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, and, even, Australia.  It’s life on a split screen because of the time zones.  We’re able to fully concentrate on the whole experience in a different country with new comrades who share our mission in a different context and sometimes with different organizational tools and styles.  At the end of the day, what’s leftover is keeping the balls up in the air elsewhere.  Sometimes there are crises, like waking up to find that the office in British Columbia went up in flames, but mostly many things either fix themselves or are ably fixed by many others on the team.  These are key work and life lessons about our own interchangeability and breed confidence in our future in a strange way.

This trip wasn’t easy to put together.  Language was part of it, but not really the obstacle.  Some 30% of the Taiwanese speak English.  No special visas are required.  The electric plugs are the same as we have in the US and Canada.  A Taiwanese dollar is about three cents to the US dollar.  It’s vastly more expensive to fly to Europe than to Taiwan.  Still, it often took multiple contacts to make the connections and fix the meetings.  We had trouble finding our special version of a “Forum fixer.”  Someone on the ground who would get excited and help us find our way and beat a path forward.  It came together in the end, but there were moments, even after all of these trips, that I wondered if this would be the one where rather than running from meeting to meeting, we would be twiddling our thumbs.

We have some great meetings on the environment, climate, labor, and community fronts, as usual.  Thanks to the work of my colleague, Rachel Nelson, we’re also going to find out what Hungry Ghost Night is, the Taiwanese equivalent of Halloween, we think.  We are also going to the botanical garden, which is always a personal treat.  We’re going to visit the oldest feminist bookstore in Taipei, as well as attend an evening panel on feminism and labor.  A well-known artist is giving us a presentation.  We’re traveling to the north of the island to meet with an internationally recognized technology expert who was also active in the Sunflower Movement and was the first governmental minister of digital affairs.

This Forum is shaping up to be one of those, “you should have been there when….”  Stay ready for our reports, so we can share the experience.