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./english/31.txt:2:Over 35,000 people attended the fourth European Social Forum in Athens from May 4-7. While the organisation was generally good and the event enjoyable, the open question remains: what is the point of this biennial carnival - apart from deepening divisions amongst the left in the host country? Tina Becker reports

./english/31.txt:7:These things aside, the event was in itself worthwhile. But surely such a carnival should be the cherry on the cake - the culmination of serious political work, not the only thing we do. The ESF is currently the only real avenue that exists for the cooperation of the European left. The European Left Party, on the contrary, is nothing more than a minimalist lash-up on the basis of the lowest common denominator, its main purpose being to secure extra funding from the European parliament.

./english/31.txt:13:The ASM evening meetings wasted hours haggling over a text that in reality will have very little or no impact at all. Why? Because our joint actions are so small and insignificant that they will have virtually no impact. Instead of deciding what kind of campaigns the left across Europe should organise, the ASM evening meetings fished around for events that are being organised anyway in one European country or another. We then simply put the ASM stamp on it.

./english/31.txt:14:A proposal by the CPGB’s Anne Mc Shane to organise a “day of action in support of migrants” was more or less ignored. She suggested that the European left could very effectively highlight its opposition to ‘fortress Europe’ by drawing attention to the plight of foreign workers and refugees and by pushing the campaign for ‘residence citizenship’ - a campaign that in effect fights for a Europe without borders.

./english/31.txt:22:Therefore it was very refreshing to finally see speakers from Rifondazione, the German Linkspartei.PDS and the Greek Synapsismos being advertised as such. This does symbolise a certain change in European politics: the buzz around the ‘social movements’ has certainly died down - in favour of a more honest turn towards the political parties of the left. That should facilitate a better examination of their role, rather than pretending they do not exist in our movement. For example, Rifondazione’s turn to government is highly problematic, to say the least - its leader, Fausto Bertinotti, was elected speaker of the chamber of deputies at the end of April. Other developments, like the formation of a new joint party in Germany, should be welcomed by all socialists across Europe.

./english/35.txt:2:considers successful the 4th European Social Forum held in Athens,

./english/35.txt:70:European Social Movement must defend itself phisically and

./english/35.txt:100:frame of the European Social Forum to organize the next ESF with new

./english/35.txt:107:efforts to directly integrate themselves into the european networks.

./english/36.txt:13:• The fact that almost every 6 months there is some kind of social forum (national, polycentric, Mediterranean, European etc) has created a certain fatigue.

./english/36.txt:20:6. The new form of the ESF program proved to be very productive. The abolition of plennaries facilitated the preparation of the ESF and at the same time prevented the creation of false impressions about the “representation” of the movement. Furthermore, in some cases we achieved very good mergers (p.e. the seminars of Euromarches, and the “Public services pool”) that included almost all the organizations that work on a specific issue. On the other hand, we couldn’t avoid repetitions and “one organization’s propaganda” seminars. We should all work harder to create more inclusive and better prepared seminars To achieve this goal it is vital to reduce the number of seminars (I think that 170 seminars are enough) and to use European Preparatory Assemblies as opportunities to work also on the content of ESF and not just on its structure. European networks should work in a collective way all the time and not just few weeks before the ESF. In addition to that, we really need a permanent European web site that could facilitate not only voluntary merger but also the centralized merger process elaborated by the European program group. After working for some months on the ESF program, I arrived to the conclusion that it will take many many years before central merger process stopped to be necessary.

./english/36.txt:28:• We should all work for a common European mobilization, a common appointment of all European movements. It seems that in addition to anti-war mobilizations, G8 in Germany gives this opportunity. This movement is based on the logic of “tous ensemble”. Without common mobilizations it will fade away

./english/36.txt:29:• We should keep on with the reform of ESF methodology. It is necessary to work together for a program with fewer but more inclusive and better prepared seminars. It is high time that European networks work more within and beyond the EPA.

./english/37.txt:33:Block is not the fellow fighter of the european social movement. We

./english/40.txt:3:[standfirst]The fourth European Social Forum, held in Athens in May, outstripped the modest expectations of the Greek organisers. Hilary Wainwright reports on what made the Athens forum special – and what might come next

./english/40.txt:6:In the build up to the European Social Forum (ESF) in Athens, the fourth since Florence in 2002, the Greek organisers were modest in their expectations of its political significance. ‘It will be a well organised event; but that’ll be it,’ said Panayotis Yulis from the Greek Social and Political Rights Network on the eve of the gathering that took place in the abandoned airport from 4-7 May.

./english/40.txt:17:The flow of new ideas coming from the ESF is something even Le Monde remarked upon in its leader on ‘Europe Day’ – a few days after the Athens forum. It pointed to the ESF as a source of alternatives at a time when the European elites are at an impasse. I found a widespread insistence on the importance of deepening our analysis. ‘It’s not enough just to be against Bolkestein [the EU directive introducing market forces to essential services]. We need specific analyses of how neoliberalism is being carried through in different countries, the impact of enlargement and what can be learnt from the UK,’ commented Kenny Bell, deputy convenor of the northern region of Unison. To this end a network of public service trade unions is organising not just action but a Europe-wide seminar in October.

./english/41.txt:28:On Saturday afternoon, I took place in the great demonstration together with French PCF activists as part of the EL block (as also my friends from Attac Berlin later on confirmed to me, Attac Europe was unfortunately not very visible at the demonstration). We only got to smell some tear gas, and once a shot was fired next to us, but we did not witness anything else of the fights. Estimated number of participants: 50,000-70,000 and great atmosphere. There was much evidence of European and world-wide solidarity, anti-fascism, posters against the looming war against Iran (also compare photos).

./english/41.txt:39:3. I think one should not underestimate the role the ESF plays in bringing the European movements and even those within a country that plan common performances closer to one another. But this role of a facilitator of communication should still be enlarged.

./english/42.txt:24:Inside the transporter were 27 people, amongst them one member of the European Parliament, one member of the Greek Parliament, some deputies of the local Athenian parliaments, three lawyers, six professors from different Greek universities, at least two journalists. We all were in a good mood. I don't think that anybody was really afraid. We shouted paroles and sang songs ("Bandiera Rossa").

./english/42.txt:82:In the seminar about criminalisation of migrant communities, we talked about the issue of how the migrants are harassed and humiliated in Europe, and suspected as enemies. We call it a system of European apartheid.

./english/42.txt:88:This idea of a European Fortress and the attempt to impose mind-control, criminalizing entire political, racial and cultural communities by branding anyone who dares to dissent as a “terrorist” must be stopped.

./english/44.txt:12:We artists against wars are participating for the second time in the European Social Forum. We continue the engagement of artists in the world social movement which began in Florence 2002 after the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre 2001. We are independent of political parties and trade unions.

./english/44.txt:39:The 4th European Social Forum

./english/44.txt:40:At the 4th European Social Forum in Athens, there were no official languages. The Organizing Committee of The European Social Forum (http:www.athens.fse-esf.org/) has tried to mobilize people from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Babels has also made an effort to mobilize interpreters from this region. This is why it was possible to listen to interpretation into Hungarian, Romanian, Serb-Croatian, Czech, Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Turkish and Arabic, for instance. Babels-el, the group of Babels members in Greece, has also called on immigrants living in Greece to participate in the process. Interpreters were chosen based on linguistic criteria, their experience, but also their geographical location: we have tried to bring some volunteers from all over the world, so that the social forum process can continue in other countries.

./english/44.txt:45:During this FSE, the network established around the Project “Charter of Principles for Another Europe” has been working on the elaboration of a project to be put forward to all European social networks and movements for discussion.

./english/44.txt:46:Europe must be the result of a combined participation of all people residing on European soil, whether they are native or not. Since the French and Dutch referendums, governments have been unable to resuscitate the Constitutional Treaty; this is indeed dead.

./english/44.txt:54:We call for a European week of common action against the commercialisation and privatisation of education in the third week of November 2006. In this context, we support a European Day of Action on 17th November 2006.

./english/44.txt:62:- The organisation of initiatives and steps for the whole of Europe by the G8 Summit and the European Council in June 2007 (Heigendan/Rostock).

./english/44.txt:66:We invite all European peoples and organizations to participate in and support the world campaign for the right to health including the defence of rights in Europe and international solidarity for the right to health of African People.

./english/44.txt:68:We propose two specific European campaigns:

./english/44.txt:74:European housing Networks (AIH, HIC, NO-VOX...) are calling for local and united mobilisations, around 2 October, to demand from public authorities the realisation of the right to decent and sustainable housing for all, without discrimination, an increase in public sector housing, the regulation of housing and land markets, an end to forced evictions and the destruction of popular districts.

./english/44.txt:77:The Latin American group of the Network Latin America and companions met in the framework of the European Social Forum:

./english/44.txt:81:- To look at common ways of organising initiatives against the catastrophic role of the multinationals that usurp the life of millions of people in Latin America. In particular, in one discussion about the privatisation of water, we drew attention to the fact that most of the companies involved are European, a fact that demands that European movements resist such processes;

./english/44.txt:90:The 4th ESF places a strong emphasis on European and transnational migration in terms of struggles, analyses and demands. We decided to propose a European day of action and mobilisation on 7th October 2006, not only because it commemorates the events in Ceuta and Melilla, the southern European border, but also because it will connect the European action with the international mobilisation proposed in Bamako, in the run up to the world social forum in Nairobi. We want to connect our initiative with the one promoted by the American migrants’ movement in September, in order to stress the global dimension of migrant struggles today.

./english/44.txt:92:The day of action will be directed against the denial of rights and criminalisation of migrants, claiming clear demands with respect to freedom of movement and the right to stay; for a European unconditional legalization and equal rights for all migrants; for the closure of all detention centres in Europe, an end to externalisation and deportations; against the precariousness of the migrants situation and for the uncoupling of the link between resident permit and the labour contract; for a residence citizenship.

./english/44.txt:101:In this ESF, more than 40 organisations shared their struggles against the commodification of common goods and the privatisation of public services, against the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) and the Bolkestein Directive and against the neoliberal policies of the EU, national and local governments. From here with the “Athens statement” we launch the European Network for Public Services. We will meet on 27th October 2006 in Geneva in order to launch a European Day of mobilization to defend and relaunch Public Services in Europe aiming at building the first European Forum of Social movements for Public Services in 2007.

./english/44.txt:116:In the seminar about criminalisation of migrant communities, we talked about the issue of how the migrants are harassed and humiliated in Europe, and suspected as enemies. We call it a system of European apartheid.

./english/44.txt:122:This idea of a European Fortress and the attempt to impose mind-control, criminalizing entire political, racial and cultural communities by branding anyone who dares to dissent as a “terrorist” must be stopped.

./english/44.txt:154:We must therefore unite and enlarge the mobilisation against free trade worldwide. We propose a conference with European networks working on migration, the casualisation of labour, public services, GMO’s, food sovereignty and the trade unions at the end of 2006.

./english/44.txt:161:- A European campaign and European law, as well as mass mobilization against violence towards women.

./english/44.txt:162:- Re poverty and precariousness: marches in June 2007 to the G8 with European social movements.

./english/44.txt:165:- A European coordinated campaign to promote and improve our conception of a feminist, equal and secular Europe.

./english/44.txt:176:One of the primary actions could be aimed at the European Directive obliging Member States to pass legislation on the surveillance of private means of communication within 2 years.

./english/44.txt:187:The 4th Social European Forum in Athens criticises and condemns not only the US embargo on Cuba but also the ”Communal Position” of the European Union which favours injustice, discrimination and prejudice against the people of Cuba and Europe.

./english/44.txt:191:Furthermore, the Forum recommends the elaboration of a “Communal Position” within Europe, which, in contrast to that of European governments, creates a reality of respect and solidarity in this time of awakened consciousness and emancipation in Latin America where Cuba is playing such a positive role.

./english/44.txt:193:This document will be put forward to the Assembly of Social Movements at the European Summit for Latin America and at the counter summit “Connection Alternatives” which will take place in Vienna from the 11th to the 13th May 2006.

./english/44.txt:195:It has also been proposed that this document be sent to the following institutions within the European Union:

./english/44.txt:196:European Parliament

./english/44.txt:197:European Commission

./english/44.txt:199:European Delegation in Havana

./english/44.txt:200:European Union Relations Seminar - Cuba

./english/44.txt:205:We, the participants of the European Social Forum, condemn anticommunist campaigns, as these campaigns limit and destroy political freedoms. We continue to fight to keep and extend political freedoms for the left.

./english/44.txt:220:3. Increasing the European civil missions.

./english/44.txt:241:Athens, European Social Forum, May 6th 2006

./english/44.txt:270:A European-wide day of Solidarity with the people of Nepal to take place throughout Europe on 2 September 2006 under the slogan “Support the people’s struggle. Hands off Nepal”.

./english/45.txt:1:Reaction to the EU / Green paper: Improving the mental health of the population: towards a strategy on mental health for the European Union.

./english/45.txt:31:This document is a reaction from several patient organisations to the European Commission Green Paper: Improving the mental health of the population: Towards a strategy on mental health for the European Union.

./english/45.txt:42:• European Network Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP)

./english/45.txt:87:Still, we see a coherence in the mental health care approach across all these countries within the European Union.

./english/45.txt:91:• In all European countries it seems that mental health care also still highly supports on “what you don’t see, does not exist”

./english/45.txt:138:So this "new" approach is just a disguised revival of old Nazi-times medical eugenicist approach to "society". This is not something new, it's traceable back to Plato's Republic. The manoeuvre is that after WW-II, in American European society, psychiatry started to claim exclusive rights over it's patients, leaving out "of the business" other professionals; but now psychiatry is "opening" to interaction with other professionals (psychologists, social workers, etc). So this opening is in reality a way to expand personal power over society in general (with the support of drug companies).

./english/45.txt:179:The need for a humane strategy on mental health in the European Union is very high.

./english/45.txt:376:Deputy Board Member for the North West Region of European Network Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (ENUSP)

./english/46.txt:3:Made at the WOMEN ASSEMBLY of the 4th European Social Forum, Athens, 6 May 2006

./english/46.txt:6:While we are facing increasing political intervention by churches and religious fundamentalisms are on the rise in Europe, leading to a dramatic undermining of women's rights and, in spite of the warnings from feminist organizations, such as the World March of Women, towards the organizing committee of the European Social Forum, some of the workshops gave the floor to organizations or speakers who support values contrary to the Porto Alegre Charter and to women's rights. The Women's Assembly of the 4th ESF which met in Athens protests vividly against this situation.

./english/47.txt:3:Call of the Women’s Assembly of the European Social Forum-Athens 6th May 2006

./english/47.txt:10:For this change, we, European Feminists, migrant women, workers and unemployed, young and older, lesbians, women >from all over Europe, women of different minorities, have worked in different seminars and workshops in order to build alternative policies. We therefore make the following proposals:

./english/47.txt:29:*European campaign and European law: mass mobilization against violence towards women.

./english/47.txt:31:*Poverty, precariousness: marches in June 2007 to the G8 with European social movements

./english/47.txt:44:European Campaign and European Law

./english/47.txt:48: European level.

./english/47.txt:50:• Construction of a European platform which could be launched at a European press conference on 25 November 2007.

./english/47.txt:51:• This platform is to serve as the starting point for a central mobilization before the European elections.

./english/47.txt:57:• Equal political representation in all national and European bodies. Lists not meeting this criterion will be considered invalid.

./english/47.txt:63:• Clause of the most favoured European woman that would oblige the States to implement the most favourable law in order to harmonize women rights according to the most advanced and progressive criteria.

./english/47.txt:68:• European minimum wages for all women.

./english/47.txt:72:• Going beyond the boundaries set by the political structures and the borders of the European Union, feminists of Western and Eastern Europe will reinforce their networks of exchange, experience and solidarity.

./english/47.txt:74:• Full access of women from Central and Eastern Europe to the European political arena.

./english/47.txt:78:• Creation of a European network of associations, trade unions and organisations of young feminists.

./english/47.txt:83:• Elaboration of a founding document on European secularism, on the basis of which we will launch a coordinated struggle in all countries in order to promote and enrich our conception of a feminist, egalitarian and secular Europe.

./english/54.txt:1:Article from www.fifthinternational.org on European Social Forum

./english/54.txt:3:Fourth European Social Forum a success

./english/54.txt:5:Around 30,000 people attended the fourth European Social Forum in Athens on

./english/54.txt:63:pan-European organisers of the ESF seem strangely reluctant to do.

./english/54.txt:109:speaker to the Italian parliament, than speaker to a forum of European

./english/54.txt:276:opportunity to fight against European exploitation and neo-colonialism.

./english/54.txt:278:* In June 2007, there will be a meeting of the European Union Council and a

./english/54.txt:285:nothing will come of these pledges. Indeed, with no European Preparatory

./english/54.txt:288:meeting of the European Preparatory Assembly in September however remains

./english/54.txt:374:European Social Forum is possible. If the unofficial leadership of the ESF

./english/54.txt:378:The rising tempo of the European class struggle, plus the revolutionary

./english/62.txt:39:Social movement scholarship constitutes a specific area of academic study of social movements usually undertaken in the disciplines of sociology and political science. In American sociology, the early movement theorists tended to view social movements as an irrational form of collective behavior, which could be explained by reference to the mobilizers’ ‘social strains’ or ‘grievances’ (LeBon, Kornhauser etc.). Much of the work after the 1970s sought to challenge this kind of thinking, in which social movements were seen in terms of ‘mob psychology’ or as an expression of social breakdown and anomie. Thus, the new dominant paradigm in the study of social movements was focusing on such concepts as ‘resource mobilization,’ ‘political opportunities,’ ‘networks of mobilization,’ ‘framing’ and ‘political contention’ (Jenkins, Zald, McAdam, Tilly, Tarrow, Snow, Benford etc.). As a critical reaction to this structuralistic way of theorizing social movements, some analysts turned to the study of ‘emotions,’ ‘biographies’ and ‘culture’ (Goodwin, Jasper etc.) with the mainstream approach of Tilly, Tarrow, McAdam and their collaborators eventually accepting to incorporate culture as one of the determinants of their structural effects. However, even from the 1960s, European scholars (Habermas, Touraine, Melucci etc.) were elaborating an alternative paradigm, that of the ‘new social movements,’ critically reflecting on the legacy of Marxism and motivated directly from the social struggles of that period (feminism, environmentalism, May 1968 etc.).

./english/147.txt:62:In Italy, ecology and environmentalism (movimento critical mass) have always been one step behind northern European countries. The translation of radical policy into everyday life has not always been successful. The problem is cultural. But the move- ment of critical mass—a term coined by ecologists and left libertarians from San Francisco—has recently begun developing at incredible speed and has become very popular in Italy.

./english/147.txt:86:n Amsterdam in 1997, during a huge summit against the European Union, about 40 activist projects established a network called “admission free.” The network gave way to the “Noborder” network in 1999, formed in front of the Finnish Tampere Conference Center, where the EU-Migation Summit was taking place. Actions and activities were developed and executed across national borders, most dramatically in July 1998 when a few hundred activists put up tents for a ten day stay near the border of the River Neise, leading to summer camps in the following years along the borders of the European Union. Instead of campfire romanticism the motto was, “hacking the borderline.” Characteristic of the border camps was a multiple strategy consisting of the exchange of experience and political debate, classical political education in the remote areas, and direct actions to disrupt the idea of the border regime.

./english/147.txt:117:European Social Consulta

./english/147.txt:119:The European Social Consulta has its origins in a Spanish experiment known as the Social Consulta for the abolition of external debt. In 2000, this Consulta turned into a vibrant and dynamic participatory exercise, successfully developing a working network. Without relying on any structure or acronym, 500 assemblies were formed in 500 communities and neighborhoods and around 10,000 people participated in an assembly-based structure, which led to more than 1,000,000 people voting 97 percent in favor of the abolition of the external debt. The Consulta was soon outlawed by the state, which turned it into a substantial experience in civil disobedience and rebellion through direct democracy.

./english/147.txt:121:The European Social Consulta represents a shift away from pure opposition towards constructive alternatives. It was conceived as a complement to the People’s Global Action, which is itself centered, first and foremost, on direct actions of resistance. The Consulta emphasizes the “transformation of society.”

./english/147.txt:147:In France there are now hundreds of grassroots committees in ATTAC, with some 25,000 members. Since last year, the organization began to develop elsewhere, helped by the international editions of Le Monde Diplomatique. New groups have been founded with their own platform and structure in many European countries (including Sweden and Denmark).

./english/150.txt:3:Cologne will play host this summer to the summits of both the European Union and the G8. For 3 weeks Cologne will be the centre of attention as world leaders meet to plan the next stage of their neo-liberal strategy and their opponents demonstrate resistance to these policies and themselves meet to develop alternatives to combat the increasing divide between rich and poor, between powerful and powerless. This resistance is increasingly manifest at local, regional and global levels and organisations are developing which express these tendencies. One such organisation is the pan - European Euromarch campaign against unemployment, job insecurity and social exclusion and this article aims to document its emergence and development and to begin to analyse its significance and potential.

./english/150.txt:5:The context for the development of organisations such as Euromarch is one in which global capitalist crisis has been met by attempts to restructure social relations and consequently economic, political and social institutions. Such restructuring has had regionalising and globalising dynamics of which the development of the European Union and recently of the European single currency are concrete manifestations.

./english/150.txt:8:The EU summit in Amsterdam in May 1997 was the rallying point for the series of European marches against unemployment, job insecurity and social exclusion, involving up to 5000 people, which had been snaking their way across the continent in the preceding weeks. The resulting demonstration saw 50,000 people march in support of the »Florence Demands« which had been formulated at the outset of the marches. This highpoint was the visible aspect of the embryonic pan-European movement which was beginning to organise itself at grass roots level. The contacts made as a result of the marches were strengthened and formalised and Euromarch as an ongoing organisation was born.

./english/150.txt:10:Euromarch has developed into a network of activists who are organised under the auspices of a pan-European secretariat based in Paris with liaison committees operating in countries throughout the continent. Policy is debated and demands are formulated at open »Assizes« which are held at approximately 6 monthly intervals. Regular coordination meetings are held at national and pan-European levels and these have tended to focus on declarations and organisational matters for the protest activities which have surrounded the EU summits in Amsterdam, Luxemburg (November 1997), Cardiff (June 1998), Vienna (December 1998) and in Cologne (June 1999).

./english/150.txt:16:With such a new movement and one so broad and diverse as Euromarch, encompassing people, campaigns and movements from across a continent, it is not surprising that the demands formulated to date, have been general ones. Euromarch has reasserted the right to work and has declared its opposition to the intoduction of »Workfare« style programmes. It argues for a drastic reduction in working hours without loss of pay and for the immediate introduction of a 35 hour working week. The idea of a guaranteed minimum income underpins the demand of a unified European social welfare system which would provide basic social rights to health, housing, education and welfare regardless of gender or nationality. Euromarch is campaigning for the imposition of a Tobin Tax on capital and speculation and for a uniform property tax. It declares itself in favour of equal rights for all and against any form of racism and social exclusion, including controls on immigration which restrict the right to the free movement of people. Such demands clearly have the potential to attract the support of the people of Europe but their translation into concrete policies is no easy matter as conditions in different countries vary so greatly and the debate around specifics may lead to divisions in the unity achieved around the general demands. There have also been claims that the outlook is too defensive and that minimalist demands have been shaped in order to maintain maximum unity but that the demands and resulting policies will not challenge the capitalist system which is at the root of neo-liberal restructuring.

./english/150.txt:18:As is the watchword of progressive movements, after the debate is over all actions need to have the unified activity of all participants. However it is the diversity of activities which has come to characterise the struggles of groups which come under the Euromarch umbrella. Action at a European level has also had a catalytic effect on national activities, for example the Amsterdam demonstration provided the impetus for the campaigns of the French unemployed movement in the winter of 1997, and this activity then fed back into the Euromarch organisation which has a strong French presence. The large number of occupations of unemployment offices played a central role in the French campaign and challenged the Labour Minister, Martine Aubry, who ridiculed the movement and claimed that the occupations were the actions of a tiny minority. In Germany there were fewer occupations but more regional and local demonstrations which coincided with the monthly publication of unemployment figures. This served to keep the issue of unemployment a prominent one, especially in the run up to the national elections. In Spain, the unemployed also took to the streets but this time to form blockades to draw attention to their situation and to the increasingly casualised nature of work where 90% of all new contracts are temporary. In Italy the unemployed and other people living in precarious situations, who have become known as the »Invisibles«, have asserted their right to free transport. In the run up to the 1997 demonstration this took the form of an occupation of trains and the successful demand to be taken to Amsterdam. Euromarch has also played a part in linking struggles and this was highlighted at the Cardiff summit where the demonstration was followed by a street party protest organised with the assistance of the »Reclaim the Streets« organisation.

./english/150.txt:20:However there is by no means unanimity over what form action should take. The last Euromarch »Assizes« saw a debate chiefly amongst the Italian delegates about whether another train occupation or a march linking up with people in their communities would be the best way to approach the Cologne demonstration. Behind this division is perhaps a difference in aims with one side attempting to further strengthen the grass roots campaign and the other more concerned with putting pressure on national and European leaders and institutions, especially through use of the media. The pan-national demonstrations which target the EU summits are also being accompanied by counter-summits which have been described as the »European Parliament of the Unemployed«. These provide a forum within which alternative policies can be developed. However here too there is a potential tension between shorter-term policy changes and longer-term social and political transformation.

./english/150.txt:22:In its opposition to the extension and broadening of neo-liberal style policies, Euromarch can be seen as part of a growing extra-parliamentary opposition to governments of any political persuasion which pursue these types of policies and to their adoption by the European Union. This opposition encompasses campaigns and struggles in a movement which spans highly organised political and pressure group type organisations which plan their actions carefully to display their opposition, and more spontaneous struggles which are more sporadically organised and focus around everyday resistance to neo-liberal policies. The differing perspectives of participants are not so easily identified but a contrast can be made between those who see such a movement as a source of social democratic renewal and those whose aim is to develop a more fundamental challenge to the existing order by building an explicitly anti-capitalist movement. In this sense key Euromarch demands like that for a minimum income can be viewed as the basis of a »Social Europe«, but the meaning of the word »Social« is itself subject to debate and its content will be an object of struggle.

./english/150.txt:25:In this wider struggle, building international, as well as European wide, links are seen as central to the development of Euromarch. Strong links have already been made with unemployed organisations in South Korea and with the land rights movement in Brazil. Euromarch will be raising money to bring over representatives of such movements to take part in the activities and demonstration in Cologne. Moreover the understanding of the global dimension of struggles has led to an extension of the actions surrounding the EU summit in Cologne in late May to include the G8 summit in June. Contact has been made with many organisations worldwide to ensure that joint actions can be organised to bridge the three weeks which separate the two summits. These three weeks will provide the opportunity for debate and action which will be truly global in character and will represent global resistance to the policies of neo-liberalism.

./english/162.txt:19:Autonoom Centrum bus, European Social Forum, Florence, 2002. Image: BH

./english/162.txt:61:The spectacle of these great gatherings, overflowing with freely given creations, could appear like a new form of the potlatch ceremonies described by Marcel Mauss, a gift-giving ritual where the demonstrators try to outdo their adversaries through open displays of generosity. No doubt there is something of that, which explains why the words "free" and "priceless" have been so important in these demonstrations. But what seems more interesting in the reference to Mauss is his way of perceiving gift-giving rituals as "total social facts," bringing all the different aspects of social life together in a system of complex and indivisible relations. Whoever saw the extraordinary symbolic transactions between pacifists, ecologists, unionists, anarchists, spirtualists, delinquents, reporters, by-passers, cops and politicians at the G8 summit in Genoa, in July of 2001, can find a real resonance in what Mauss says about the Melanesian gift-giving ceremonies, the American Indian potlatch rituals, and the "market-festivals of the Indo-European world":

./english/162.txt:70:Artistic practice has been one of the keys to the emergence of these "global social facts" – not least because artistic practice has also been one of the ways to hold off group violence, to open up a theatrical space that doesn't immediately become a war zone. This is obviously something that contemporary society risks forgetting, and that particular risk is reason enough in itself to go beyond the specialized, disciplinary definition of art, to try to relocate art within a much broader political economy. Before I do that, however, I want to draw one last group of ideas from Yochai Benkler. His paper closes with the problem of what he calls "threats to motivation." One of these comes from the failure to integrate the results of commons-based peer production into usable wholes which can make a project successful. Translated into political terms, this would mean the failure of the networked movements to change any tangible aspect of social life. That is a real threat to motivation; and I think it's vitally important to keep offering practical ideas and proposals about possible changes on all the scales of governance and existence, from the neighborhood to the world level, at every new demonstration. Benkler points to different strategies for putting together the results of common effort. These strategies range from self-organization of the integration process, to the delegation of this tricky point to a hierarchical structure or a commercial enterprise. Again the translation into our terms is obvious, and has become increasingly visible at events such as the European Social Forum, held in Florence in November of 2002. Just when the networked struggles get big enough to succeed, there is an enormous temptation to hand them over, in the name of efficiency, to a traditional politburo supported by professional media people. The problem with such expedient strategies is that they risk giving participants the impression that the voluntary production of political culture with their peers is being confiscated by somebody in a directive position. A fantastic example of this is the 30-thousand member ATTAC association in France, which, to the discontent of many members, is in fact a strictly controlled hierarchical organization at the national level. However, for ATTAC to have the social power it does, it has also had to produce a decentralized network of local committees, which operate very differently from the national bureau and regularly criticize or contradict its decisions. The tension you can see there in a very real situation, between collective process and effective decision, is at the heart of the democratic experiment today. You might even say that working though that kind of tension is the art of politics.

./english/172.txt:1:Declaration of the Assembly of the Movements of the 4th European Social Forum Athens 7th May 2006

./english/172.txt:5:This year has been significant in that a number of social struggles and campaigns have been successful in stopping neoliberal projects suck as the proposed European Constitution Treaty, the EU Ports Directive, and the CPE in France.

./english/172.txt:7:Movements of opposition to neoliberalism are growing and are clashing against the power of trans-national corporations, the G8 and organizations such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, as well the neo-liberal policies of the states and the European Union.

./english/172.txt:21:We emerge from the ESF in Athens having made a step towards a better coordination between Eastern and Western movements, with a common determination to fight for peace, jobs, and secure existence. We will promote our agenda of European campaigns and mobilization on the main issues of our common platform developed in the ESF networks.

./english/172.txt:25:We call on all the European movements to open a large debate in order to decide all together new common steps during the next months within the framework of the ESF process.

./english/172.txt:32:- We appeal for a international day of action and mobilization the 7th of October 2006 in Europe and Africa, for a European unconditional legalization and equal rights to all migrants; for the closure of all detention centers in Europe, for the stop to externalization, for the stop to deportations; against the precariousness and for the uncoupling of the link between resident permit and the labor contract, for a residence citizenship.

./english/172.txt:36:In January 2007, the ESF will meet in Nairobi. The growth of the African social movements is crucial for the world. Building for the WSF will be an opportunity to fight against European exploitation and neo-colonialism.

./english/172.txt:38:In June 2007, there will be a meeting of the European Union Council and a meeting of the G8 at Rostock in Germany after the one in St Petersburg in July this year. We will seize the opportunity of these occasions for a general convergence of our struggles.

./english/176.txt:2:Exploring the role of the internet in the ‘movement for alternative globalization’: The case of the Paris 2003 European Social Forum

./english/176.txt:8:Keywords: Social movements, internet, survey, mobilization, movement for alternative globalization, European Social Forum

./english/176.txt:10:This paper attempts to explore the role of the internet in the processes of organization and mobilization of the ‘movement for alternative globalization’, which is often characterized as an ‘internet-based movement’. It reports the findings of a survey undertaken in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum (ESF), which asked 257 respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the ESF (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university, news media), as well as the modes and methods of c72

./english/176.txt:11:Exploring the role of the internet in the ‘movement for alternative globalization’: The case of the Paris 2003 European Social Forum

./english/176.txt:15:Keywords: Social movements, internet, survey, mobilization, movement for alternative globalization, European Social Forum

./english/176.txt:17:This paper attempts to explore the role of the internet in the processes of organization and mobilization of the ‘movement for alternative globalization’, which is often characterized as an ‘internet-based movement’. It reports the findings of a survey undertaken in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum (ESF), which asked 257 respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the ESF (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university, news media), as well as the modes and methods of communication that were used in each context. The findings question the claims about the internet-based character of this movement, as face-to-face contact seems to be the predominant mode of communication. The survey also challenges the much discussed potential of the internet to mobilize politically indifferent or marginalized individuals, as a comparison between users and non-users of the internet revealed that users tended to be mobilized for the ESF through political or voluntary organizations.

./english/176.txt:24:above claims by investigating the use of the internet in the mobilization for the Paris 2003 European Social Forum (ESF), one of the most important events for the European part of the ‘movement for alternative globalization’. The results derive from a survey undertaken in the Paris 2003 ESF, which asked 257 respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the European Social Forum (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university, news media), as well as the means and methods of communication that were used in each context. This paper aims to present and interpret some of the preliminary results and situate them amongst the wider context of studies in social movements and communication. On a more general note, this study is part of wider effort to restore communication analysis in its rightful place within social movement theory, which even though implicitly or explicitly recognizes the importance of contacts and interactions for the identity, ideology and organization of social movements, has thus far failed to incorporate a more detailed study of communication within its research framework.

./english/176.txt:48:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 80Apart from the boundaries between public and private, mass and personal, I would argue that further inquiries into the role of the internet in social movement activity should also question the clear-cut distinctions between the offline and the online, the ‘virtual’ and the ‘real’. Such distinctions were a defining characteristic of early internet studies, which tended to conceive the internet as a space or a ‘new frontier’, as a virtual world which ‘actually removes heavy users from the exigencies of everyday life’ (Ibid, 15). This distinction is partly reflected in current theorizing concerning the role of the internet in social movement activity. For instance, in a recent article about social networks and movement participation, Diani proposes that further studies should examine ‘whether “virtual,” computer-mediated ties may replace “real” in the generation not only of practical opportunities, but of the shared understandings and – most important – the mutual trust, which have consistently been identified as important facilitators of collective action’ (2004, 352). This shows a concern over the substitution of ‘real’ ties with computer-mediated ones, echoing earlier criticisms of the internet as a virtual domain which has the power to replace the real one. However, this type of theorizing fails to acknowledge ‘the continuities between the offline and the online’, necessary in order to ‘understand and explain how the new potentials are actually used’ (Slater 2002, 542-543). In that respect, it is worth considering ‘virtuality’ or ‘reality’ not as the inherent properties of a specific medium but as the result of its social uses by people. As Slater notes, ‘[i]t is the making of the distinction that needs studying, rather than assuming that it exists and then studying its consequences’ (Ibid, 543). Furthermore, it is worth bearing in mind that the creation and maintenance of social relationships takes place through multiple communication media. For instance, a recent study of the social use of the internet by college students discovered that ‘the more people with whom students communicated using the internet, the more they communicated with face-to-face and on the telephone’ (Baym et al. 2004, 316). Therefore, the internet may reinforce rather than replace other forms of communication in the maintenance of social relationships. In the case of social movement ties and participation, these findings suggest that the distinction between ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ ties may indeed be misleading, as ties are constituted through various media. This should divert the focus of current research from the distinction and comparison between these different media and orient it towards their interplay and complex articulation. The survey Against this backdrop and as part of my PhD fieldwork, I undertook a survey of participants in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum exploring the mechanisms Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 81of mobilization for the ESF, as well as the

./english/176.txt:50: The event I decided to focus on, the European Social Forum, constitutes one of the most significant annual events for the European part of the ‘movement for alternative globalization’. Inspired by the World Social Forum, the first ESF was organized in Florence in (2002) The second one, which took place in Paris in November 2003, comprised several hundreds of seminars, workshops and plenary meetings spanning three days and reportedly attracting 40,000 participants. The main function of the ESF is to act as a space that brings different actors, organizations and individuals together to discuss the state of the world, to network and to form useful relationships. In other words, it is an event which helps this movement to define itself and what it is for, to attract new participants and also to identify, loosely and informally, its ‘membership’.

./english/176.txt:51: To an extent, this event is a reflection of the movement itself which can be better understood as a process facilitating the co-operation and networking of various actors (organizations, smaller groups and even individual activists) opposed to neoliberal globalization. And even though all social movements ‘tend to be fuzzy and fluid phenomena often without clear boundaries’ (van de Donk et al. 2004, 3), I would argue that this is even more the case for the ‘alter-globalization movement’, whose plurality and loose structure render it a fluid and mutable movement and hence a difficult object of study. In that respect, selecting a representative sample is an almost impossible task, as there is no exhaustive list of the groups or organizations involved in the movement. And even if there was, such a list would quickly become obsolete, as this movement is always in a state of flux, with existing actors withdrawing in order to focus on their specific campaigns and interests while new actors take their place. Thus, focusing on a specific event such as the European Social Forum, which is an expression of the movement as a networking and collaborative process, seemed to resolve the problems mentioned above.

./english/176.txt:71: Finally, in terms of nationality, and as it was expected, the highest percent of participants (30.4%) comes from France, the host country of the 2003 European Social Forum. In addition, 16.7% of the sample was from Spain and 14.8% from Italy. Overall, the sample included respondents from 24 different countries. Table 4 presents some of the countries with the largest percents.

./english/176.txt:88:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 84Mobilization Contexts and Modes of Communication The survey further asked respondents about the contexts that mobilized them to participate in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum. ‘Mobilization’ was defined in terms of obtaining information about the ESF and organizing attendance. The questionnaire distinguished between four mobilization contexts, political or voluntary organizations, friends or relatives, the workplace or the university, and the news media. Distinguishing between different contexts was considered necessary for reasons of analytical clarity, even though it tends to disregard the possible overlaps between the various contexts. For instance, one can be friends with people who belong in the same organization, or be mobilized through a political organization with a university branch. The survey also included some questions about the means of communication that were used in each mobilization context. For instance, did the communication with the political or voluntary organization take place through the telephone, an email list, face-to-face, or the organization’s website? Did respondents talk to friends or relatives face-to-face, on the phone, or via email? The respondents could select one or more means of communication, helping us gain a first insight into the range of media used in each context. An initial breakdown of results showed that 74.2% of the respondents were mobilized by a political or voluntary organization, 65.2% through friends or relatives, 34.1% through the workplace or the university and 36.1% through the news media. Out of the 190 respondents who were mobilized through a political or voluntary organization, 61.6% communicated with the organization face-to-face, 51.1% through email lists and 34.2% through the organization’s website. Table 5 also shows that 18.9% were contacted through mailings, 20% through leaflets and 27.4% through posters. Table 5. Mobilized through political/voluntary organizations Face-to-face 61.6% Email list(s) 51.1% Website 34.2% Mailings 18.9% Leaflets 20.0% Posters 27.4% Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 85Face-to-face contact was also the main

./english/176.txt:110:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 86Associations between communication methods What becomes apparent from this initial breakdown of results is that in each mobilization context respondents used a wide range of communication methods sin order to mobilize for the Paris 2003 European Social Forum. This raises interesting questions about the relationships between these different communication methods. Is face-to-face communication in one context associated with face-to-face contact in another? Is the use of the email negatively associated with face-to-face communication or the use of other media? In order to examine this interplay, I checked for statistically significant associations between the different communication methods used both within and across the various mobilization contexts.2 The crosstabulations produced only weak associations between the different communication media; some of them were hardly surprising, whereas others were quite unexpected and, therefore, interpreted with caution. Within the political or voluntary organizations’ mobilization context, a weak association was discovered between respondents using email lists and respondents getting information from the website of the organization. In addition, a stronger relationship was recorded between respondents being informed through leaflets and through posters. As for respondents mobilized by friends or relatives, a weak association was found between the use of email and use of the telephone. In addition, respondents using email to communicate with friends or relatives also used email to communicate with the workplace/university in order to mobilize for the European Social Forum. Furthermore, within the workplace/university mobilization context weak associations were recorded among almost all of the means of communication. In that respect, face-to-face contact is related with the use of email, the telephone as well as leaflets/posters. Apart from face-to-face communication, the use of email is also related with the use of the telephone and the web. Finally, the use of the web is also associated with the use of the telephone, as well as with leaflets/posters. Therefore, the workplace/university seems to constitute a much denser communicative universe than the contexts of friends and relatives or political and voluntary organizations. A possible interpretation of these results points to the nature of the workplace/university as a site of mobilization. In that respect, the workplace/university constitutes a prime location of daily face-to-face contact as, contrary to other contexts, it is a setting where individuals spend a significant part of their day. This may explain why face-to-face contact is by far the main mode of communication used by the respondents mobilized through this context. What is more, the need to perform certain work-related tasks daily, as well as the availability of communication media and resources, may indicate that work Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 87or university colleagues are regularly in

./english/176.txt:111:contact through various forms of media. These can be used in combination not only for instrumental (work or study) purposes, but also for other ‘extra-curricular’ activities, such as mobilizing for the European Social Forum.

./english/176.txt:112: In terms of the respondents mobilized through the news media, mobilization through newspapers was weakly related with mobilization through all of the other media, namely television, the radio and the web. In addition, a weak relationship was recorded between mobilization through the radio and through television. However, getting information about the European Social Forum through the web was not associated with either television or the radio, meaning that even though all the other news media are weakly related to each other, the use of the web is relatively isolated. This observation is reinforced after looking for associations between mobilization through the web as a news medium and the use of email or the web in all of the other mobilization contexts. This examination did not produce any statistically significant relationships, indicating that mobilization through news websites is an issue worthy of further research.

./english/176.txt:118:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 88with an organization. These represent 26.5% of the overall number of respondents mobilized by an organization face-to-face. The French represent 21.4% and the Italian 12.8%. A weak association was also discovered between the respondents’ age and their use of a political or voluntary organization’s email list. In that respect, 41.2% of the respondents who were mobilized through an organization’s email list was between 21 and 30 years old. This is hardly a surprise as this age category represents nearly 50% of the total sample. Thus, even though this percent is high, it is nonetheless not as significant within this age category, as respondents mobilized through an organization’s email list account for only 31.5% of the people between 21 and 30. On the contrary, more than half of the respondents over 40 years old were mobilized through an organization’s email list. The figures for each age category are as follows: 65.2% for the 41-50 category, 73.3% for the 51-60 and 61.1% for the respondents older than 60. Age is also associated, albeit weakly, with mobilization through an organization’s website. The patterns are nearly the same as with mobilization through email lists described previously. Thus, 33.8% of the respondents mobilized through an organization’s website belong to the 21 - 30 age category, but represent only 17.3% of that category. However, figures are much higher for the older respondents as 43.5% of 41 - 50 years old and 46.7% of the 51 - 60 age categories were mobilized through an organization’s website. Again, we can compare these figures with face-to-face contact, as age has a weak association with mobilization through face-to-face communication with friends or relatives. In that respect, 59.1% of the respondents belonging to 21 - 30 category, as well as 40% of the 31 - 40 and 55% of the younger than 20 years old were mobilized through face-to-face communication with friends and relatives. Figures are much lower for the older respondents, as only 13% of the 41 - 50, 33.3% of the 51 – 60 and 22.2% of the over 60 were mobilized through face-to-face contact with friends and relatives. Users versus Non-Users of the Internet In order to compare users with non-users of the internet, a new variable was constructed by grouping together respondents who have used an internet application (email, web or email lists) in any mobilization context and controlling for differences from respondents who have not used the Internet at all. Overall, 88 respondents have not used the internet in their mobilization for the 2003 European Social Forum, representing 34.2% of the sample, while 169 have, accounting for 65.8% of the sample. Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 89The crosstabulations with the

./english/176.txt:120: I further examined whether the use of the internet was related with any of the contexts that mobilized respondents to participate in the European Social Forum. In that respect, the only statistically significant, albeit weak, association was with mobilization through a political or voluntary organization. In that respect, 76.8% of the respondents who were mobilized through an organization have used one or more internet applications in one or more of the mobilization contexts, representing 86.4% of the internet-users category.

./english/176.txt:124:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 90Discussion of Results and Conclusions What the preceding analysis effectively demonstrated is that within every mobilization context a wide range of media and modes of communication have been used in order to bolster participation in the Paris 2003 European Social Forum. This raises interesting questions about the relationship between the different modes of communication, their interplay and articulation. Thus, instead of making simplistic distinctions and comparisons between these different modes, it is worth examining in greater detail their relationships and the ways in which one influences another. The existence of statistically significant associations between different types of communication both within and across different mobilization contexts constitutes a useful starting point. The inspection of possible associations revealed some expected and some counter-intuitive results. For instance, the fact that respondents mobilized through the email lists of political or voluntary organizations were also mobilized through the organization’s website is hardly surprising. The same can be said for the relationship between the use of email in the workplace/university and the use of email to communicate with friends and relatives. However, the finding that mobilization through news websites has a weak association only with newspapers is quite unexpected, as one would anticipate that this type of mobilization would relate to mobilization through at least one internet application (email, email lists, and especially websites) in any of the other three mobilization contexts (political/voluntary organizations, friends/relatives, workplace/university). This analysis further revealed that within the workplace/university mobilization context the use of one mode of communication is associated, albeit weakly, with nearly every other mode. Therefore, the workplace/university seems to be a very tight communicative realm, contrary to other contexts such as political or voluntary organizations and friends or relatives. As it was already mentioned, this can be attributed to the nature of the workplace/university as a mobilization context which constitutes a prime location of face-to-face contact as it is a site where individuals spend a significant part of their day. In addition, the use and availability of different communication media, necessary for the accomplishment of work- or study-related tasks, may also facilitate other activities, such as mobilizing for the European Social Forum. This effectively shows that the interplay between different means and modes of communication may be affected by the mobilization context where their use is located or with which they are associated. Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 91The initial breakdown of results further

./english/176.txt:125:demonstrated that mobilization through political or voluntary organizations, friends or relatives, and the workplace or the university takes place predominantly through face-to-face contact. Thus, rather than being replaced by mediated communication, face-to-face contact seems to co-exist with other modes of communication. This ubiquitous presence of face-to-face contact urges us to rethink and clarify our notion of the ‘alter-globalization movement’ as an internet-based movement. In this respect, the fact that internet communications are not prevalent among participants in the European Social Forum does not necessarily entail a rejection of these claims. Rather, it may be an indication that the changes brought by the internet are qualitative, not quantitative. Therefore, far from disproving these claims, the survey results call for a more in-depth understanding of possible qualitative changes and for a clearer definition of what we mean by ‘internet-based movement’. Does ‘internet-based’ signify a movement communicating predominantly through the internet? Or is it more the case of a movement with an electronic spine – in terms of the connections among key activists across different countries – but whose day-to-day organizing and mobilization takes place locally and through face-to-face communication? In any case it is worth keeping in mind that email comes second to face-to-face contact in all of the mobilization contexts where they were used in tandem.

./english/176.txt:134:Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture 2(1) 942 The statistical significance of these relationships was measured using the Chi-Square and the strength of the relationship was assessed using the Phi Coefficient, a measure suitable for establishing associations between nominal (and particularly dichotomous) variables. If the value of the Phi Coefficient was below 0.3 then the variables were considered independent. Values between 0.3 and 0.7 were indicative of a weak association between the two variables, while if Phi was above 0.7 then the association was considered strong. All of the reported associations were statistically significant with p<0.05, while in many cases p was 0.000. 3 The significance of the association was measured using again the Chi-Square, while the strength of the relationship was assessed using the Gamma measure in the case of an association between a nominal and an ordinal variable. The association between nominal and dichotomous variables was measured using Cramer’s V and the Phi Coefficient. References Baym, N.K., Y.B. Zhang and M.Lin. (2004) ‘Social interactions across media: Interpersonal communication on the internet, telephone and face-to-face’, New Media & Society 6(3): 299-318. Bennett, W.L. (2004) ‘Communicating global activism: strengths and vulnerabilities of networked politics’, in W. van de Donk, B.D. Loader, P.G. Nixon and D. Rucht (eds.) Cyberprotest: New media, citizens and social movements, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 123-146. Bennett, W.L., T.E. Givens and L.Willnat. (2004) ‘Crossing Political Divides: Internet Use and Political Identifications in Transnational Anti-War and Social Justice Activists in Eight Nations’. Paper for the European Consortium for Political Research Workshop. Uppsala, Sweden, April 14-18, 2004. Breiger, R.L. (2004) ‘The Analysis of Social Networks’, in M. Hardy and A. Bryman (eds.) Handbook of Data Analysis, London: Sage Publications, pp. 505-526. Burnett, R. and P.D. Marshall. (2003) Web Theory: An introduction, London and New York: Routledge. Castells, M. (2001) The Internet galaxy: reflections on the Internet, business, and society, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clemens, E.S. and D.C. Minkoff. (2004) ‘Beyond the Iron Law: Rethinking the Place of Organizations in Social Movement Research’, in D.A. Snow, S.A. Soule and H. Kriesi (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 155-169. Diani, M. (1992) ‘The concept of social movement’, The Sociological Review 40(1): 1-25. Kavada, Exploring the role of the internet… 95___. (2004) ‘Networks and Participation’,

./english/180.txt:1:A balance about the Euro-demonstration held in Brussels the 19th of March 2005 and promoted by the CES and the European Movements and Networks partcipating in the ESF

./english/180.txt:7:European level. The unions members or not of the ETUC, the social

./english/180.txt:14:occasion of the demo (the Bolkestein seminary in the European

./english/180.txt:15:Parliament, the GATS meeting on Saturday, the meeting on the European

./english/180.txt:27:Bolkestein (seminaries-networks-demos); the European mobilizations of

./english/180.txt:28:the ETF; the multiplication of European networks and campaigns around

./english/180.txt:34:first time, the social movements built a European demonstration from the

./english/180.txt:35:outset at the European level, to post itself as an alternative to

./english/180.txt:36:European neoliberalism; for the first time, and notwithstanding all the

./english/180.txt:44:European countries. The French mobilization was by far the most

./english/180.txt:68:(1) the lack of spaces for the social movements to build at the European

./english/180.txt:70:date was agreed in London, nothing happened. There was no European team

./english/180.txt:77:fraternal. But as soon as you switch to the European level, the unions

./english/180.txt:80:movements. His makes relations at the European level complicated,

./english/180.txt:85:asymmetry between unions and social movements at the European level,

./english/180.txt:93:confounding a European apparatus with the unions that are organized in

./english/180.txt:95:producing a crisis of the European Union (the referendums on the

./english/180.txt:96:European constitution…); etc…

./english/180.txt:114:- a European summit like the one on 22-23 March doe not produce

./english/180.txt:117:determined at the European level, but social policies (retirement,

./english/180.txt:120:movement to elevate itself at the European level. It is the core of the

./english/180.txt:124:as a direct attack from the European level against the social rights all

./english/180.txt:125:over the continent). This structural difficulty to act at the European

./english/180.txt:126:level against the neoliberal project of the European Union can only be

./english/180.txt:151:itself, support of the European mobilization and participation). The

./english/180.txt:171:facilitating the relations with “the Europeans”.

./english/187.txt:2: 1. Introduction and precursors to the European Social Consulta

./english/187.txt:3: 2. Objectives of the European Social Consulta and hallmarks

./english/187.txt:8: 5. Organization of the European Social Consulta

./english/187.txt:12: 7. First International European Social Consulta Gathering

./english/187.txt:17:1. Introduction and precursors to the European Social Consulta

./english/187.txt:25:The document which you have in your hands is the result of a collective effort by people who are involved or who collaborate with the promotion of the European Social Consulta (ESC). It is designed to communicate our ideas around this project.

./english/187.txt:31:2. Objectives of the European Social Consulta and Hallmarks

./english/187.txt:33:We propose that the European Social Consulta have one broad goal: Transform Society. In order to make this possible, the ESC should also have three specific objectives:

./english/187.txt:35:Deepen the analysis and critique of current economic, political and social system and build alternatives and proposals that allow us to transform society. We will do this through the creation of space at the European level, which integrates teh vision and action of the largest number of people and sectors.

./english/187.txt:36:Strengthen and widen the European social fabric that is critical of the system. The European Social Consulta will allow us to reinforce the work of local grouops and networks, and to connect these groups and networks with struggles at the global level. The connection between the different European social movements requires a project like the European Social Consulta, which will crytalize in a network-based organizing system, shaped by the grassroots and operating in a participatory, horizontal and decentralized fashion, as much in the taking of decisions as in the realization of actions.

./english/187.txt:38:2.2 Hallmarks of the European Social Consulta

./english/187.txt:39:With the goal of ensuring that the process of the European Social Consulta is as open, democratic and horizontal as possible, but always maintaining a very clear political framework and a spirit of respect toward all people, cultures and communities, we propose the following hallmarks to guide this process:

./english/187.txt:51:We propose that the process for the European Social Consulta be dvided into the following 4 parts:

./english/187.txt:54:Spaces of social debate: We will create local spaces of participation and discussion connected at the European level with as many people as possible. A multitude of dynamics might be useful for this: assemblies, seminars, gatherings, etc., around the questions, issues, objectives and with a methodology previously agreed upon through the Internal Consultation. From these spaces will emerge the critiques, analysis, proposals for transformation and the agreements that will be the starting points for the following stages. These spaces will be sustained and constitute teh nmost important part of the process.

./english/187.txt:55:Mass Consultation among the entire population. Around those issues decided upon in the spaces of debate at the European level, mass consultations will be carried out in order to extend the debate to the entire population. This consultation will be held around those themes decided upon in the European gatherings and the local assemblies can add other issues in their territories in an autonomous fashion. These actions do not mean ending the debates described above in section b), but rather just the opposite, widening and enriching those debates.

./english/187.txt:57:One concrete proposal involves making the first mass social consultation coordinated at the European level coincide with the European elections in 2004. This would be an exercise in participatory democracy that questions the current system, seeking the participation and opinion of the entire population.

./english/187.txt:58:Processes of Application: this involves moving forward in the application of the agreements around each aspect obtained in the spaces of social debate. This stage, as all others, would be subject to the agreements and consensus constructed throughout the entire process and would lead to initiatives coordinated at the European level that would create their own dynamics.

./english/187.txt:62:5. Organization of the European Social Consulta

./english/187.txt:63:We understand the ESC as a network-based organizational process, at the European level, whose different elements function in an autonomous and decentralized, yet coordinated fashion on the basis of agreements tpreviously consensed upon at various territorial gatherings (European, regional, etc.).

./english/187.txt:71:The main objective of the internal consultation is to ensure the active participation in the definition of the process itself from the various geografic and social contexts on the European content. That is to say that the first steps of the consulta and the initial decisions should be extremely participatory, transparent and should result form a process of debate and consensus, with the equal participation of all the groups involved.

./english/187.txt:85:Diffuse the internal consultation guide and explain the proposal for the European Social Consulta, encouraging all the collectives in thier territorial context of action (community, region, nation, state...) to participate in the process of debate, inviting them to attend the first European gathering.

./english/187.txt:86:Advance the elaboration of ideas and proposals through the Internal Consultation around the project’s objectives, organizational aspects, etc., in their region (not in a unilateral fashion, but coordinated with local and regional groups that become part of the project) in order to bring them to the First International Gathering of the European Consulta.

./english/187.txt:96:7. First International Gathering of the European Consulta

./english/187.txt:97:In order to put all the proposals and ideas that emerge through the Internal Consultation in common, we belive it is important to hold a gathering at the European level with the objective of reaching a consensus among all the people involved around the process to follow, methodology, organization, the issues to deal with...and ultimately, to give shape to the European Social Consulta.

./english/187.txt:107:European Social Consulta Objectives

./english/187.txt:108:European Social Consulta Issues and Themes

./english/187.txt:118:Homepage: http://www.europeanconsulta.org

./english/192.txt:4:1. The third European Social Forum in London (14-17 October 2004) provided further evidence - if more were needed - of the vitality of the altermondialiste movement. It also confirmed - after Porto Alegre and Paris, Mumbai and Florence - that the social forum remains an astonishingly dynamic and successful political form. The success of the London ESF can demonstrated in various dimensions:

./english/192.txt:5:-> First of all, the figures: approximately 25,000 took part in 500 plenaries, seminars, workshops, and cultural events, which were addressed by over 2,500 speakers: the figures for pre-registered delegates show that the participants came from right across the continent and beyond the boundaries of even the expanded European Union:

./english/192.txt:29:mainstream politicians are out of touch with both the spirit, content and the style of the inclusive non-party politics now emerging under the ESF umbrella. Any professional politician observing the audiences of 1,000 or more people raptly listening to debates on globalisation, the power of corporations, racism, food or the environment would do well to reflect on the narrowness of their own political agenda and the genuine transnationalism now clearly informing European youth…Out of the connections being made between radically different groups, it is possible to see in years to come the emergence of a genuine new politics of the European left.

./english/192.txt:38:The issue of the hejab is really a symptom of the real problem, which is how to expand our movement to embrace those at the bottom of European society who suffer both economic exploitation and racial oppression and many of whom, for that very reason, strongly attach themselves to their Muslim faith. Once again, this isn't a question on which we will reach rapid or easy agreement. But at least we should recognize the importance of the debate, rather than take refuge in arguments about how one seminar was organized.

./english/192.txt:44:Every effort was made to accommodate them: for example, the London ESF provided an Autonomous Space along the lines of those organized in Florence and Paris. As agreed at the European Preparatory Assembly, all meetings of the UK Organizing and Coordinating Committees were open. But many of those associated with the autonomists expressed hostility to the experience of the Social Forums as mass events and therefore to the participation of the unions and the NGOs. To have given way here would have led to an ESF in London dramatically smaller than any of its predecessors and confined to a self-selecting circle of the already converted.

./english/192.txt:52:But even if the criticisms that have been made of the British organizers were largely correct, this would not justify the introduction of violence inside the Forum. Violence and debate are antitheses: those who believe that diversity and discussion are among the greatest strengths of our movement cannot tolerate attempts to settle arguments by force. Moreover, those who bring violence into the movement bring the state in with them: the attacks in Trafalgar Square gave the police the pretext to intervene and arrest people. Those European comrades who have refused to condemn, or condoned, or even colluded in the disruption of the London ESF should reflect on the very dangerous precedent they are creating for the future.

./english/192.txt:54:But London also showed that combining radicality and diversity becomes harder, not easier, over time. Important divergences have crystallized over a variety of issues - the war, the European Constitution, the hejab, the role of the radical left. There are also differences over how to build the movement: some networks are much more ambivalent about involving the trade-union mainstream than others. This last difference cuts across others: for example, I suspect I am closer to some French comrades about bringing in the unions than I am to some Italian comrades with whom, however, I agree much more about the war. This makes holding together and expanding the coalitions we are trying to build much more complicated.

./english/192.txt:55:We must also confront the fact that the process itself is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. ATTAC France rightly points to the fact that attendance at the European Preparatory Assembly has stagnated since Florence and argues that 'the functioning of the EPA must be improved in a logic of democratization, of representativity and of enlargement'. This is easier said than done, particularly given the stress laid in our procedures on meetings being open to all and deciding by consensus, which can give great power to disruptive but unrepresentative minorities.

./english/193.txt:1:Antinomies: Relations between Social Movements, Left Political Parties and State. Reflections on the European Social Forum in London and beyond

./english/193.txt:9:Ever since the disruption of state socialism and the spread of neoliberal hegemony across the world we live under a far-reaching process of capitalist transformation. Its contradictions and the engagement of people all over the world had led to the emergence of a movement of movements – this time we keep the plural. In the last years we have seen a kind of consolidation of that process, and the World and the European Social Forum (like other fora) have a remarkable part in that consolidation. But there are very different ideas about how to continue and which political forms are appropriate for a new kind of radical social transformation. There is a consensus about plurality and the richness of diversity, but also a comprehension of the need for coherence. Very often the problem is discussed in the form of simple dichotomies like the opposition between institutional politics and autonomy, between movements and parties, between avant-garde thinking and basic democracy, between civil society and state and so on. But these essentialisations are false oppositions, because all these oppositions in concrete life are contradictions in motion.

./english/193.txt:56:Bertinotti, Fausto, ›The three challenges of the European elections‹, Manuscript 2004

./english/193.txt:73:Wainright, Hilary, ›The European social forum comes to London‹, in: La Revista del Manifesto, October 2004, TNI

./english/194.txt:4:Sunday afternoon's demo - one hundred thousand people against the war and liberalism - confirmed what we had written in the past few days: the European social Forum of London was a success. With many internal problems, with difficulties, delays and misunderstandings, but a success none the less, also shown by the twenty five thousand people attending in the end. How striking, therefore, the enormous lack of media attention by the Italian press. A lack of curiosity - perhaps due to the absence of violent clashes and teargas - that should make us reflect on the present system of media information but that at the same time reveals a political distance between an "establishment" that is increasingly entangled in the [alchemy/deception] of the "palace" [government bureaucracy], and the spirit that moves the young generations. In London we saw many young people, a lot of desire to participate - not always fulfilled - a great desire not to throw away the most interesting political novelty of the first few years of this century. The fact that we did not find any trace of this in the Italian newspapers, perhaps with some regular critiques, is a sign of the times.

./english/194.txt:8:But, indeed, the substance remains unchanged: this political space, a gigantic popular university, is still capable of being the engine of initiatives and mobilizations at the international scale. Especially important, therefore, is the proclamation of the European Day on 19 March because it responds to two fundamental requirements: ensuring that the original path of the movement, the critique of capitalist globalisation, and its subsequent phase, opposition to the war, are recomposed in a single vision. Thinking of ourselves, truly, as a European movement, capable that is to say of giving ourselves one appointment to represent the convergence of our objectives. Already it had happened in Amsterdam, in 1997, a date that is counted amongst the premonitory warning signs of the global movement. If it succeeds again it will be a new occasion.

./english/194.txt:10:The problems are not few on the road ahead, but indeed they are ahead and were not removed. The first one concerns the relations with European trade-unionism: will be really be able to make the necessary convergence or will the divisions prevail? The answer is totally in the hands of the CES [European trade union confederation] that has still not got an unambiguous position on war and neoliberalism. In London there was a strong British participation, a significant presence of the Cgil [Italian trade union confederation], however the convergence [of policies], as underlined in an article by Frances O'Grady of the British Unions, is still being built and must not be unidirectional, that is to say from the movement towards the unions, but also in the opposite direction.

./english/194.txt:14:Finally, there it is the political problem. A good editorial in yesterday's "Guardian" reproaches the British political elite for their absence from the forum and underlines how from the experience of the ESF we can expect "the emergence of a genuine new politics of the European left". The success of the Respect meeting, the presence of living forces of the alternate left within the Forum, tell us that this possibility is now there [the writing is on the wall]. And largely depends precisely on the behaviour of this left itself.

./english/197.txt:7:Bookmarks are publishing this collective volume to coincide with the European Social Forum of 2004 in London and they are right to set us this subject. It's the only one worth discussing because `taking the movement forward' simultaneously means `pushing our adversaries backward' until they fall over the edge of the cliff. Since I've recently had the opportunity to give my views elsewhere' on the global justice movement and to hold forth at some length on what to do and how to do it, let me concentrate here on four points which seem to me vital for the continuing success of the movement. For mnemonic convenience they all begin with `PR' but have nothing to do with Public Relations: they are PRogrammes, PRiorities and PRagmatism, ending with a warning about PRecautions. These categories are intermingled but I will try to separate them a little, at least at the beginning.

./english/197.txt:9:Let me first take the notion of `programme' in the narrow sense of the set of activities that take place during our Social Forums. These forums are high points of the movement year and ought to reflect both our evolution and the best we are capable of. I was heartened to learn that the 2005 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre will dispense with plenary sessions altogether in order to concentrate on seminars and workshops as these have the best chance o `take the movement forward'. I was disappointed, on the other hand, that the 2004 European Social Forum in London still clings to the supposed necessity of plenaries even though there will be fewer than in previous years. Sorting out who gets to speak on what platform on what subject and with whom; how many speakers are allotted to each country and to each organisation; mixing them carefully according to gender, hue, hemispheric origin and I suppose religious profession, sexual orientation, height, weight and God knows what else; requiring each year long and multiple meetings all over Europe-all this has proven, as far as I can tell, a colossal waste of everyone's time and money. Let's get serious, people.

./english/197.txt:17:I'm also surprised and distressed to note that the programmes of Social Forums tend not to focus on the truly key issue: power. If we're going to have all these plenary sessions, they should at least be geared to providing the audience with fresh insights into what the powerful have in store for us if we're not quick and smart enough to thwart and outwit them. We need to recognise the hard truth that they are much better organised than we are, at both the European and international levels. They've got the European Commission and UNICE (the European employers' union); the whole United States government, the Transatlantic Business Dialogue and the Paris and London Clubs (dealing with public and private Third World debt); the TNC's tax-dodges and mega-mergers; financial market freedom; the WTO and the GATS-you get my drift. What sorts of effective ripostes are we developing in our Social Forums to meet these challenges? Well, yes, we do regularly condemn war, poverty, human rights violations, obscene profits, etc, accompanied by soaring rhetoric. I'm sure that's got our adversaries positively trembling in their hand-made boots...

./english/197.txt:19:I know I'm being too harsh. Some valuable ideas are bound to emerge from the plenary sessions at the European and other Social Forums and these forums are indispensable for bringing together social and political forces in the service of a shared ideal. But I just wish for once we could use our time together in European Social Forums to decide, as Europeans, what we are going to do about, say, the Bolkestein Directive-and if you don't know what that is, it's because the movement isn't doing a good enough job of educating and organising. This EU Directive (which I hope may have been killed by the time you read this) is another little reward for our service corporations. If successfully implemented, the Bolkestein Directive would introduce a new legal principle and allow firms to apply the social and labour laws of the `country of origin' to workers in all the European countries where the firms might happen to do business. A European (French, German, British, etc) company could set up its corporate headquarters in, say, Slovenia or Malta and its workers all over Europe would then have the great good fortune to receive Slovenian or Maltese wages and benefits.

./english/197.txt:23:Now let me combine the notions of PRogramme and PRiorities. In my view, if we are to take the global justice movement forward, it's time to define a minimum, common programme every activist in the world (or, when relevant, in Europe or another region) can agree on and in whose service political campaigning can be undertaken and pressure applied, right now. We need agreed-upon targets in the power structures both at European and world levels. Many activists already recognise the need for such a common programme whereas others claim it would condemn us to uniformity and consequent sterility. I disagree. Different people in different places would quite naturally continue to carry out their local and national struggles. But so long as our movement is about fighting neo-liberal globalisation and its destructive effects, it's almost tautological to state that we must determine what kind of globalisation we want instead and make clear what we are going to fight against and fight for. Otherwise, why should anyone bother listening to us, much less joining us?

./english/197.txt:25:As for Europe, I believe that if we want to save what's left of our public services and of the European social model, we've got to go after Bolke/Frankenstein-like measures and the GATS. The welfare state, although never perfectly achieved anywhere, is one of the greatest conquests of human history. It could serve as a beacon for the entire world. Why shouldn't all citizens of all countries enjoy rights-not charity but rights-including the right to work and to decent compensation if unemployed, to leisure and family time, to free education at all levels, to culture and to health care; to efficient public services and to the rule of law? Merely to list these is to show why the capitalist project must strike them down.

./english/197.txt:29:One of the most effective actions in decades was the worldwide protest on 15 February 2003 against the American war in Iraq. Possibly because we weren't actually able to stop the war (no one could have done that), people may have classed the day as a `failure' and not reflected enough on its huge significance-15 February was in fact a historic first. During the Vietnam War, thanks to arduous months of planning and expensive transatlantic phone calls, it was occasionally possible to stage simultaneous demos in Europe and the US, but never anything on the scale of 15 February. In 2003 it wasn't just Europeans and North Americans, but Latin Americans, Africans, Asians, Australians, citizens of many Muslim countries-every continent was involved, including Antarctica, where a scientific mission took part. This unified, organised outpouring of protest caused a reluctant New York Times to refer to the peace movement as `the second superpower', even if that statement (like much else of what one can read in the New York Times) turned out to be not quite true. We must now try to mobilise the same kind of strength and unity in the name of global justice and put them on the front page.

./english/199.txt:21:On Friday afternoon I went back to Beyond ESF, where I spent the afternoon meeting with PGA-inspired folks. Our most interesting discussion involved a new direct action concept: the "Chain Re-Flaction". While many of our friends were busy planning for the upcoming G8 actions in Scotland , we decided to take up a discussion that was begun at the last European PGA conference in Belgrade . The idea is to move beyond the Global Day of Action, which is in danger of becoming a tired cliche, toward a new vision of locally rooted, yet globally linked actions coordinated through a webpage. For example, the first action might be held in South America somewhere, say Cochabamba or Buenos Aires , and the torch of resistance would then be passed along to another continent, perhaps Asia , where an action might be organized in Mumbai. After each action, activists would send reports and reflections to the website, generating an accumulation of knowledge and experience: hence "Re-Flaction." Whether or not this particular concept works, the main point is the need for innovation. Either we begin to recreate ourselves, or the train will soon stall out.

./english/200.txt:2:While the short history of the World Social Forum has been connected almost exclusively to Porto Alegre, the European Social Forum was conceived as a "nomadic" event: After Florence and Paris, it fell to London to play host.

./english/200.txt:3:Being an annual gathering of left-wing activists and social movements, the European Social Forum inevitably depends on the political scene of the host country. On the continent, the British left has earned a reputation for being highly fractious. So other countries looked on with some concern as preparations got underway, wondering whether the quarrelsome islanders could work with one another.

./english/200.txt:6:John Rees, one of the organizers of the Respect coalition, which is fighting for seats in the European parliament, compared the situation to a flooding river. When the water level is low, there are numerous individual streams and rivulets; now the water level is high and there is a single current. But despite this, the forum organizers wasted much energy quarreling among themselves. The Russian delegation's organizers experienced this firsthand, spending several weeks resolving the simplest of problems. Muddle interspersed with bouts of terrible bureaucracy. First no invitation was sent for weeks, then requests were received for a stack of paperwork, which, as later transpired, was totally unnecessary.

./english/200.txt:9:The forum declared its intention of turning "corporate Europe" into "social Europe." But this can only be possible when the entire continent is redefined and the West realizes that Europe extends beyond the boundaries of the European Union, which is no longer the exclusive club it was 10 years ago. This is all a gift to the left, but the left still has a lot to learn before it can use it.

./english/201.txt:3:The European Social Forum: time to get serious

./english/201.txt:7:Will political and commercial dogma crush the liberating energies of the world's social justice movements? The European Social Forum in London leaves Paul Kingsnorth with mixed feelings.

./english/201.txt:11:A friendly young man had brought a kettle, cups and a few packets of tea bags into Alexandra Palace , site of the third European Social Forum (ESF), and had set himself up in one corner of its great hall, underneath an endearingly felt-tipped sign reading “Free Tea”. He was suggesting donations for his local peace group in exchange for the drinks. An enthusiastic queue had formed.

./english/201.txt:17:The 2004 European Social Forum was not a success. It was not quite a failure either, and it certainly wasn't a disaster. Nevertheless, there were deep, wide and widely-noticed problems with it, which many people commented on. The free-tea man's experience brought just one of them home to me, but it was by no means the only one.

./english/201.txt:37:“I've been in plenty of meetings where at least a third of those present are SWP members, in various different guises”, he explained. “It's always the same people, and they consistently packed meetings and voted their own people in as chairs, speakers and organisers. Often we would have meetings in the UK which would be stitched up by the SWP. Then we would take it to a European level and European activists would overturn all the decisions and complain about the lack of democracy in British activism.”

./english/201.txt:39:Timms is not alone. Leading NGOs in Britain and many European activist groups involved in the process of organising the 2004 ESF have made similar complaints. In June, the Italian mobilising committee for the ESF published a statement about how the SWP had behaved at a European meeting: “They … were constantly unwilling to enter into real dialogue, tried to impose their own way and were often arrogant or used blackmail, repeatedly refusing to accept decisions and titles which had already been decided hours before. The result was that many of the other delegations were exasperated and were frequently compelled to raise their voices or in turn threaten to leave.”

./english/201.txt:43:Nick Dearden from War on Want , who has been involved in social forum organising for years, told me that this one had been the worst yet. “It has sown real bitterness”, he told me. “The SWP have literally pissed off the whole movement in Europe. Even their former European allies won't work with them again. I think this event has actually set things backwards.” Whether Dearden is right or not in his pessimistic analysis, it has certainly not engendered the kind of atmosphere that social forums are supposed to about creating.

./english/201.txt:53:But there is a wider issue. This is not something that this forum, or even European social forums in general can be blamed for, but it is a problem encountered wherever radicals get together.

./english/201.txt:79:But it wasn't enough. The next European Social Forum, to be held in Greece in 2006, will have to work better. A question needs to be asked: do we want these events to be a serious display of alternatives to the current order? Do we want real, hard, difficult discussions about what to do and how to do it, together, with all the hard work, serious thinking, strategic disagreements and political battling that this involves? Or do we, instead, want a back-slapping display of our angry opposition to all the Bad Things in the world, after which we all hold a big march and then go home and do what we were doing before? The former path might lead to something big. The latter could lead to extinction for this movement.

./english/202.txt:11:The call for Europe-wide days of action was also positive. However, it is all too easy for enthusiasts to make such calls. Their political effectiveness will depend upon creative activist networks making several kinds of links: between local, national and European dimensions; between movements and mainstream organisations (beyond a formal coalition model); and likewise between apparently separate issues.

./english/202.txt:25:• European assemblies as a political process. These events should include an opportunity for exchanging experiences of struggles, discussing strategic implications and building networks which could act together. Perhaps plan these as a mini-ESF, back-to-back with the organisational meeting. For activists unable to attend, the internet could provide opportunities to participate.

./english/203.txt:7:Despite an overall success and some significant achievements at the European Social Forum (ESF) in London, the relationship between the peace and anti-globalisation movements and the trade unions seemed to crack under some controversial issues, like the EU constitutional treaty, new-born labour organisations in Iraq and the resistance to occupation.

./english/203.txt:9:At the first ESF in Florence two years ago, the unprecedented support of the Italian leftist trade union federation Cgil and, more widely, of the European confederation of trade unions (ETUC) gave the movement a decisive impact on public opinion. It strengthened the protests against the imminent attack on Iraq and contributed much to the debate on the alternatives to neo-liberalism and imperialism. In London , three of the main British labour organisations (Unison, GMB, RMT) played the same fundamental role in managing and sponsoring the event. But the ESF came just a few days after New Labour's party conference, where the unions ended up backing Tony Blair's party and general policy, even if officially opposing his alliance with the US and the occupation of Iraq .

./english/203.txt:11:The forum also came after the ETUC's general secretary John Monks approved the EU Constitutional Treaty, strongly rejected by the majority of the associations and groups that gathered in London. Monks' official position is that “despite shortcomings, the Constitution is still an improvement on the acquis” and that “it will bring real benefits for working people and citizens across the EU even if it is not as good as the one the unions proposed”. Even Cgil, which was initially against the Treaty, in the end supported it: “We cannot hide the limitations of a draft that does not ban the use of war and does not guarantee the right of citizenship to migrants” said Titti Di Salvo, Cgil's International Secretary, “But at the same time the treaty defines some values that belong to the European social model. That's why we propose now to re-open the debate with a campaign to collect a million signatures' calling for a referendum to modify the text”. However, in the final document issued by the Forum's organisers the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty was clear, and so was the fight against the widespread attack in Europe to public services, to labour and social rights.

./english/203.txt:13:Despite divisions on the Treaty, the London ESF gave some unions and associations the opportunity to elaborate and present common actions against European governments' neoliberal policies. The major British public services union Unison teamed up with its German counterpart Ver.di, which is 2.6 million members strong, in a significant and innovative project of cooperation. “This will increase our joint clout when it comes to dealing with transnational companies delivering public services” said Unison general secretary Dave Prentis. “Specific areas of co-ordination will be on tackling both public and private-sector companies operating in both the UK and Germany, on staff terms and conditions, lobbying the EU and the two national governments on areas of common interest, and working closer together through European works councils” explained Prentis and Ver.di leader Franck Bsirske.

./english/203.txt:15:Some other initiatives in defence of public services were planned at the end of the forum, like the fight against the so-called “Bolkenstein” draft directive on the free circulation of services within the Union, currently under discussion at the EU council. Issued by the former European commissioner Frits Bolkenstein, a Dutch liberal, the directive would result in the marketisation of all services, including some essential sectors such as culture, education, health care and all of those relating to national social welfare systems that can be exposed to economic competition. The obvious consequence of this is an inevitable deterioration of pension systems, social welfare and health care cover in favour of private insurance. Core workers' rights, as established by the national laws of the countries in the Union, would also be affected. “We are at the end of the neoliberal myth of growth and development” said ETUC Confederal Secretary Joel Decaillon during an ESF seminar on privatisation. “We, European unions and movements, should now focus and work together on the real alternatives to the American social model.” Regarding the Bolkenstein directive, John Monks asked the European Council “to have a pragmatic and well-balanced approach that reconciles the achievement of the internal market of services and the respect for the rights of employees, consumers and European citizens,” although he also stated that he “fully supports the aim to establish an internal market for services,” a position that is quite far from the criticisms, requests and appeals raised at the ESF.

./english/203.txt:17:But the strongest contrasts emerged on the issues of the war in Iraq, and the relationship between trade unions and the US-appointed Iraqi interim government. During a key Iraq debate in Alexandra Palace a few delegates – many of them Iraqis – interrupted (and ended) the meeting protesting against the decision to invite Sobhi Al-Mashadani, the general secretary of the Iraq federation of trade unions (IFTU), the only one recognised by the Iraqi interim government and also by the international and European confederations of trade unions. Mr Mashadani was denounced as a collaborator of the US, belonging to the Communist Party of Iraq, one of the forces represented in the Allawi government. The TUC and UNISON immediately condemned the action and, repeating their support for the IFTU, said “These attacks are unfair and must stop. The people who harassed Mr Mashadani and prevented the meeting from taking place have no interest in genuine debate or the peaceful, democratic future of the people of Iraq.” Ex-Labour MP George Galloway attacked the decision to invite the Iraqi unionist even if he said he didn't approve the method of protest: “There was a place for registering in a demonstrative way the disapproval of such a person representing a ‘puppet' regime, but no protest which actually stops a democratic meeting taking place should go that far.”

./english/205.txt:9:The path that led from the ESF in 2003 to the following edition in London was a lot less straightforward than a mere crossing of the channel; it went through a lot more detours and accidents, and raises important questions as to the present situation of European movements in their processes of deterritorialisaton and reterritorialisation.

./english/205.txt:11:The London bid for the ESF was presented in Paris during the second edition as the result of an agreement between the Socialist Worker's Party (SWP) and the Greater London Authority (GLA). It was discussed and approved at a closed meeting, one of those that still abound in Social Fora everywhere – like those that prepare the agenda of the Social Movements' Assemblies. The decision to present London as an alternative was never debated among British movements; in fact, the GLA (and the group behind, a small Labour tendency called Socialist Action, basically composed of advisers to the mayor, Ken Livingstone) had never shown any interest in the process at all, whilst the SWP, by means of its myriad front groups (Globalise Resistance, Stop the War Coalition, Project K etc.), although active in the WSF and the ESF, had made systematic efforts to stop the spontaneous process of organization of Local Social Fora, in places such as London, Manchester, Leeds and Cardiff. The GLA's involvement was a demand made by certain key actors in the European process, such as Attac France, to make sure the event was financially viable. The beginning of the organizing process in December in London came as a surprise to many.

./english/205.txt:15:One thing, however, would structurally prevent this from happening: the ‘open secret' that haunts the organization of Fora, that is, the disguised participation of political parties. The hegemonic groups in the UK refused to recognize the problem as a tension between parties and movements, because they refused to recognize themselves as parties. In the sad excuse for a ‘mobilization' process that ensued, this became scandalously clear: non-publicized meetings were organized with different sectors (black, Muslim, women's movements, …), all of them held inside the GLA, and including almost only groups whose leaders were in some way connected to the SWP or SA. Thus, the ‘horizontals' went on denouncing the lack of transparency, the ‘verticals' went on pretending it was not their problem, and most of the ‘Europeans', although in active support of the ‘horizontals', had two clear limits in their intervention: not wanting to run the risk of there not being a Forum (a constant threat used by the GLA and the trade unions, claiming to withdraw their financial support if they didn't have it their way), and not being able to go deeper into the discussion of the participation of political parties, since that would be a source of general discomfort. It was thus that the idea of the ‘English exception' came to be – that this process was abnormal, but had to be taken all the way.

./english/205.txt:17:It was, in fact, abnormal: the level of political and financial lack of transparency, administrative incompetence (to solve basic problems, such as visas and accommodation or the official website, that besides being little interactive and not working for a long time was hosted at the GLA server), and the sheer bullishness (in the intimidation and ‘expulsion' of groups and individuals and the rapport with the ‘Europeans') led things to a point, right before the Preparatory Assembly in Berlin in June, in which the Italian and French groups publicly ventilated the idea of withdrawing from the process altogether. The resulting climate, obviously extremely hostile to the ‘verticals', helped the ‘horizontals' score an important victory: all the self-organized spaces could require their inclusion in the official programme.

./english/205.txt:19:The last months, however, saw a substantial worsening: two attempts at stitching up the selection of official plenary speakers (the first of which eliciting a letter from various British NGOs threatening to withdraw from the process) and the fact that the two bodies of the organization process in England – the Organizing and Coordinating Committee – had clearly been sidelined by the GLA, and that all relevant administrative decisions were being made at closed meetings among GLA advisers. The definition of the main plenaries, the result of complex negotiations between ‘verticals' and ‘Europeans', made the intentions of the two hegemonic groups towards the Forum very clear: the SWP wanting to make exhaustive use of the theme of the war and the Middle East so as to breathe life into its Stop the War Coalition and fuel its new ‘front party', the Respect Coalition, itself a previous attempt to capitalize on the anti-war movement; Ken Livingstone looking for a platform to apply some new ‘red' varnish to an otherwise entirely liberal government, insisting in his image of the man behind a multicultural London (both him and his racial adviser Lee Jasper were appointed to speak at the anti-racism plenary). As a whole, the agenda corresponded to the provincialism of the process, and themes like the opposition to the European Constitution – which, incidentally, is supported by the British trade unions – were left in the background.

./english/205.txt:25:Had there been any effort to include the most creative and productive parts of the European movements, that could have obviously been different: couldn't Indymedia volunteers have set up more efficient media centres running on free software? Couldn't solidarity economy enterprises and the various ‘activist kitchens' have provided more adequate catering? Examples abound. The only ‘movement' service taken on board by the ESF, in the end, was Babels' volunteer interpretation; even that, however, proved to be a shaky relationship, to the point that the latter were threatening to pull out a week before the event due to the lack of solution to problems such as accommodation, transport and access to the website.

./english/205.txt:34:The accumulated tensions would surface on the Saturday, when a group of around 300 people occupied the plenary session where Ken Livingstone and Lee Jasper were supposed to speak (the former, possibly warned by the police, had cancelled shortly before); carried out by groups such as the Wombles, the North-European Anticapitalist Network, Xarxa de Mobilitzacio Global, Reseau Intergalactique, Indymedia UK and Babels, the action stormed the platform, hung banners saying ‘Another World is for Sale', criticized the GLA's control over the event, and read statements from Babels and Indymedia UK, the latter on the seizing of its servers by the FBI.

./english/205.txt:36:That meant an intensification in surveillance the following day: around twenty people were followed between Beyond the ESF and the centre of London, where they were going to join the Anticapitalist Bloc for the closing march. Surrounded by more than twice the number of policemen at King's Cross Station, four of them (from the UK, Italy and Greece) were put under arrest. At the closing event in Trafalgar Square, a group – annoyed by the fact that what had been defined as a strictly cultural event at the Brussels Preparatory Assembly had become a pageant of SWP, Respect and Stop the War Coalition leaders – tried to make their way onto the stage to denounce the ‘pre-emptive arrests'. The stewards from the Stop the War Coalition (to whom the march had been ‘subcontracted out'), even faced by the mediation of ‘Europeans' such as Piero Bernocchi, from COBAS, called the police and stood by watching as they arrested two more activists.

./english/205.txt:38:It's unnecessary to remark how bad a precedent the use of the police by the organization of the ESF against participants is; but an evaluation that concentrated on that too much would end up forgetting the most important thing about these two days: that the autonomous spaces were above all extremely productive. Be it the discussions around how to develop an ‘activist research' and a ‘research activism', at the Radical Theory Forum and elsewhere; the excellent debates on precariousness and migration at Beyond the ESF; the exploration of the idea of ‘the commons' at Life Despite Capitalism; the creative and joyous search for new ways of protesting at the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination; the debates on media and knowledge and the No Vox night at Camden Centre – there was a tangible feeling of convergence and creation of subjectivities; it was a ‘less ideological' opposition not because it had no ideas or alternatives to propose, but because it shunned facile binaries – the simplistic ‘us and them', ‘inside and outside' – and favoured the least reactive, most productive aspects of the new European movements.

./english/205.txt:40:4 – The new European movements between deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation

./english/205.txt:50:A criticism that has been made (for a while in the so-called ‘global South', more recently in the ‘North') is that despite its principles of horizontality and refusal of representation, the period of the great demos belied a return of representational politics: they took place in the ‘North', amidst a young, white majority that claimed that ‘resistance is everywhere', but in the end of the day dealt with problems that were not close to their protagonists. This is, on the one hand, an oversight of the specificities of the European context – things like squats and social centres are not simply demands of ‘spoiled white brats', but a struggle of a youth that has been made precarious by the structural transformation of capitalism and the welfare reforms, and a struggle that (at least potentially) opens up to those of migrants, sans papiers and the unemployed. On the other hand, it does have an element of truth: the emphasis of these demos seemed always to be on struggles elsewhere, where the dark side of capital was more immediately visible, and they lacked a clearer definition of what the lines of conflict ‘at home' were. The resistance to capital is indeed everywhere, even in its core areas (and it's never enough to repeat that the core-periphery dynamic is repeated like a fractal all across the globe, also in those areas generically thought of as peripheral); one of the subjectivities formed in that period, however, is especially concerned with grassroots organizing processes in places like Asia and Latin America, in which structures such as the PGA European support group, for obvious material reasons, have been playing a relevant role in helping establish links, opening up discussions and helping with fundraising.

./english/205.txt:52:A third subjectivity, however, turns itself precisely towards the question of the ‘struggle at home', and starts to concentrate on the immediate issues of the European context. This can be seen, for instance, among the groups who are mobilizing against the European Constitution. Other transversal, but immediately local, struggles that were highly visible were the ones around copyleft and intellectual property, something that (contrary to what some might think) is relevant not only for geeks developing softwares but for everyone insofar as it faces the immanent tendency of knowledge to become a common under its new forms of production, which bears obvious importance for any discussion on the future of knowledge – from the university to the pharmaceutical industry – and labour itself.

./english/205.txt:58:It's no exaggeration to say that this debate was one of the most successful at the ESF, resulting in a call out for the European-wide organization of a Mayday parade of the precariat in 2005 like the ones in Milan and Barcelona this year. It's also clear, however, that some problems remain: for example, the lack of a theoretical solution for the evident differences between immaterial and material precarious labour; or the question of how this new European movement identity relates to other struggles elsewhere (which is a central problem for a truly ‘global' resistance that goes beyond mere ‘international solidarity'). It also remains to be seen what the paths this transformation might take are – many possibilities, including neo-trade unionism, are open. One thing is certain, though: the intensity of the debate and attention doesn't mean per se the guarantee of the existence, or creation, of this new subjectivity; it should be observed that a few of the groups that signed the ‘Middlesex Declaration' have had little contact with the idea, let alone done any work on the area; therefore, for those who left London celebrating the victory of their position, the lesson of Bologna '77 should be applied to movement building as well: lavorare con lentezza.

./english/205.txt:64:We can imagine that the evaluation will be harsh, but we can also predict that some things won't change. It's hard to believe that, despite having had its most productive involvement ever, the new European movements will be less suspicious of the Forum after everything that went on. And it's true that the official event in London tried harder than ever to be a capture machine in its attempt to homogenise discourses with immediate political goals in sight.

./english/205.txt:78:A problem that remains is that of the closing of the process on itself; there seems to be, since the beginning, no remarkable renovation as regards the participants truly involved (a criticism that could be levelled at Social Fora pretty much everywhere), which results in an autistic and self-referential process. The consequence this year was obvious: the UK edition was taken over by the group that had been the most active until then and its partners of choice. The fact remains, however, that as long as there is any identifiable centre, like the plenaries and the thematic axes, it won't be enough to recite the ‘no locus of power' mantra to wish away the concentration of decision-making in a few, well-known hands. An interesting change has been tried out by the WSF this year, organizing an on-line consultation; why not a deeper, grassroots, de-centred process, like the one proposed by the European Social Consulta?

./english/205.txt:82:It could be the case that the transformations in the European context, plus the general feeling of dissatisfaction spawned by this year's edition, might create the conditions for transformations in this direction. On the one hand, we see the trade unions and political parties that have been involved so far with their social bases stabilized, with few possibilities of growing; on the other, the turn of the new movements towards struggles ‘at home' and specifically European questions opens up the possibility – necessity indeed – of dialogue, which can create not consensus nor mediations, but protocols that make for less tense and more productive contacts in the future.

./english/209.txt:3:The European Social Forum Comes to London

./english/209.txt:5:Let me try to explain the peculiarities and mysteries of left politics in Britain – essential to understanding the UK ESF ( www.fse-esf.org ). There has until recently been an unconscious `Little Englandism ' on parts of the left (occasionally it has been quite conscious, like the leading left MP of the 1970's and 80s who proudly declared that he did not have a passport). This has led to an almost complete disengagement from the debate and campaigns around the proposed European constitution. Some engage but only to defend national parliaments as the means of achieving democracy against a ‘bureaucratic Brussels '. But engagement with the Europe-wide thinking about different levels of democracy, from the local to the continental, is only just beginning. The hosting of the ESF is proving an important catalyst.

./english/209.txt:9:This new Europeanism is at two levels, which are in tension with each other. On the one hand, many trade union leaders now look towards Europe as if it was just about the social measures on labour rights. There is a blindness about the market-driven economics built into Giscard's constitution. On the other hand, in trade unions facing EU-led liberalisation , like the Communication Workers Union, or for public sector workers fighting privatisation at a local level, there is an eagerness to link up with workers across the continent to resist a common neo-liberal enemy. Here there is, as yet, little awareness about the constitution but there is a growing interest which will produce a real activist debate in the ESF about alternatives to the present proposals.

./english/209.txt:11:The fact that the ESF is coming to town is reinforcing and hopefully giving stronger political expression to this Europeanisation of British labour, stimulating more articulate debates about the form this should take. The trade union mobilisation for London has also ensured that issues arising from fighting neo-liberalism in its heartlands, such as privatisation , are high on the agenda.

./english/209.txt:17:Livingstone has an attractive charisma as an anti-politician politician, with a strong record at the GLC of working closely with social movements. In a typically low key way his personality and politics will be an important part of the London ESF, at least in terms of its presentation in London . He himself has long been unusually pro-European for a politician on the British left. In terms of British politics, the London ESF will enable Livingstone to associate himself with a high profile, alternative Europeanism, a confident contrast to the indecisive European stance of Tony Blair. The event then plays a part in Livingstone's long term game plan of presenting an alternative direction for Labour to Tony Blair.

./english/209.txt:21:While for the Workers Party in Southern Brazil, the way to carry through the mayor's democratic mandate is through strengthening the power of the people over the state apparatus through a participatory system, for the political managers of the GLA the way to implement the will of the democratically elected mayor is through tough professional management and a minimisation of the layers of mediation between the mayor's senior management and the delivery of the service. This is a method which might be very appropriate to running the London Underground, where the problem is countering the pressures of the private sector and mobilising a staff who have little recent experience of working for a democratically elected boss to meet politically agreed goals. (They have been effectively employed by a Thatcherite institution, a Quasi Governmental Organisation - QUANGO). But the role of a local authority in relation to the European Social Forum is not managerial , beyond managing the toilets. It is to provide physical space and resources. This the GLA has done, impressively, by guaranteeing the funds for Alexander Palace in North London as the main site of the ESF. But in the process it has effectively run the management of the ESF.

./english/209.txt:31:Another positive factor has been the creative way the ‘horizontals' have reacted to the negative aspects of the process. Instead of walking away they have put extra energy into organising ‘autonomous spaces' ( www.altspaces.net ) which will, de facto, be a welcome part of the diversity the weekends activities. The work of the European Preparatory Assembly has also been exemplary in building on the experience of Florence and Paris to give a lead and sometimes a gentle push to those in London unwilling to work in new ways.

./english/209.txt:33:The British left is in a state of extreme fluidity. It is searching, experimenting (and making many mistakes) with ways of building an alternative to Blair. A European space will provide a unique stimulus to new thinking, new ways of organising and seeing politics. People on all ‘sides' sense there is something big at stake, bigger than their own organisational or national interests. Maybe I'm over-optimistic but I think that this time next year we on the British left will see the London ESF as a turning point away from the restrictive politics of the British, and especially the English left. Potentially the London ESF will be historic. One of Europe 's historically most industrially powerful labour movements is struggling, clumsily, to remake itself and significant parts of it know they cannot do it alone.

./english/210.txt:3:To asses the 3rd ESF we must take into account that the two elements of which the ESF consists had drifted apart. If we look at the London ESF as a process it is not hard to agree that it was a European success. 25,000 anti-neoliberal-antiwar activists assembled in London , debated, exchanged experiences, built or strengthened networks, organized campaigns and had a good time. The Autonomous Spaces were better than ever. The Preparatory Meetings worked all year round guaranteeing in hard conditions enough transparency and democracy, the expansion of collective intellect networks like BABELS, NOMAD and the Memory Project, things are in a way getting less national and more collective.

./english/210.txt:5:But speaking of the ESF as an event connected to “internal relations” and balances of power we can't say the same. First of all the aim that was put down last year in Bobigny – to use the ESF to build a broad spectrum of anti-neoliberal powers inside the UK based on the antiwar movement – has failed. Anti-neoliberal forces are split between what was called the horizontal and the verticals. The event itself was organized under the influence of the Market: closed doors, a lack of transparency, a close relation to neoliberal powers, exclusions, “managerial” logistics, expensive, not collective and a close relation to the metropolitan police. It followed the “No Money, no honey” politics of the Mayor of London and, because he was the only one with the money, he could influence the way it was organized. And he never felt that he had to be accountable to anybody and especially to the European organizers – and he was helped for this by the left dominating powers of London . Things were so bad that activists thought that a specific seminar was a not a space to debate but a public relations operation of the Mayor.

./english/210.txt:9:Hijacking the Sunday Demo comes as a result of the lack of real discussion on the priorities of the Movement and behind that stand the lack of a methodology, the lack of discussion after the defeat of the antiwar movement, and a lack of theoretical practice from one hand and understanding and working with differences on the other. British politics may not be very inclusive but this is a European problem for most of our counties. And because inclusiveness is one of our core problems we must absolutely not repeat the British way.

./english/210.txt:19:The 19th of March was decided to be a day against European neoliberal politics. We support an international march that day in Brussels and wouldn't like to watch another attempt of forcing the Movement to demonstrate under slogans it did not choose and in ways against direct democracy that it does not live by.

./english/212.txt:3:The European Social Forum: Appraisal and Future Perspectives

./english/212.txt:10:The first European Social Forums (ESF) set the stage for the construction of the European alterglobalisation movement and successfully centred political debate on neoliberal globalisation. Since the first World Social Forum (WSF) held in Porto Alegre in January 2001, the Social Forums, and the ESF in particular, have become the most visible public expression of the alterglobalisation movement. Basing themselves on the Charter of Porto Alegre, which has become an indispensable reference, the Forums have become quasi-permanent processes of crystallization of new forces and struggles that were previously rather disparate. Prior to the Forums the latter acted in dispersed fashion, promoting alterglobalisation in a precocious albeit strategically unfocused way. Today, critical movements benefit from a wide array of tools of struggle and common objectives. This crystallization has been accompanied by geographic expansion. The first three WSFs in Brazil created the conditions for the incorporation into the alterglobalisation movement of powerful social forces from South America, notably the peasant and indigenous people’s movements. The Bombay WSF in 2004 likewise integrated Indian social movements into the global struggle. The geopolitics of alterglobalisation thus mirrors the process of neoliberal globalisation, though its scope is still less all encompassing. It is to be hoped that the WSF planned for 2007 in Africa will play a similar role to the 2004 WSF in India. The global movement still needs to expand its reach to Eastern Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. China remains outside of this process, for an undetermined period of time. Completing this geopolitical expansion of alterglobalisation will require the promotion and development of Local Social Forums in a number of countries. LSFs are prominent organising tools favouring the embedding of the Forum process. The same can be said of the National Social Forums that have emerged in a number of countries. This process constitutes a major step forward in the struggle against neoliberal globalisation. Nonetheless, its future development depends on moving forward to new stages, thereby avoiding the threat of exhaustion, immobility and lack of creativity. In this respect, self-criticism and criticism are indispensable components of the dynamic of the Forums. We have to be lucid about the state of the process. ATTAC, acting as a movement on an international level, has been committed since its inception to the construction of the Social Forums. As such, it has a double obligation. Firstly, to reflect lucidly and uncompromisingly on the insufficiencies and some of the recently witnessed drifts of the movement. Secondly, to stimulate new thinking and propose new forms of action designed to strengthen and amplify the global movement. The WSF has already undertaken to reinvent its formula in 2005. The success of this reshaping will be judged in January. The same kind of effort must occur on a European level.

./english/212.txt:16:The ESFs have generated mixed results regarding their three main missions: The ideational debate, the elaboration of programmatic proposals, and decision making for common action. The ideational debates occurred mostly during the preparatory phases of the Forums and were reflected in the programs of the plenary sessions. Being based on consensus, decision making is inevitably the result of compromises reached by the different forces involved in Forum preparation. This sometimes leads to apparently unsatisfying outcomes. Thus during the three ESFs held until now, the space given to war and racism was particularly important, leaving aside other major issues such as economic, environmental and social questions, or the problem of European construction. It is far from clear that the resulting thematic hierarchy reflects the views of the majority of the social movements involved in the Forum. This can be empirically verified by comparing requests (for seminars and workshops) with the final programme of the plenary sessions. The contrast between requests and outcomes questions the functioning and the modes of discussion of the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA), which manifestly finds it difficult to sustain political debate concerning the strategic priorities of the movement. True, this assembly is ’open’ in the sense that all can participate in it. However, it has become apparent that some organisations are far more active than others are because they benefit from permanent memberships, financial means and political determination. This fact should push the EPA to promote greater representation of all the organisations involved. Moreover, the EPA’s most active core organisations have remained the same over the past three years. This highlights faithfulness and continuity. However, it also points to limits given that the movement requires expansion and the integration of new organisations into the core. The EPA being the essential locus of political construction of the ESF it is essential to enrich its democratic character, its representation and its participation. This will no doubt require setting up a system of financial solidarity. This is also true for the ‘Assembly of Social Movements’. In the course of the Forums themselves, some useful debates occur during the seminars and workshops. However, the plenary sessions are often reduced to a juxtaposition of speeches prepared in advance and to media focused rhetorical exercises designed to enhance the organisations, which fought their way to the podium. Despite the real substantive debates that occurred during the ESFs, the Forums had three failings. The first, which became apparent after the fact, is the lack of guidance for the plenary seminars and workshops. This muddles the event for participants who don’t know if the objective is to confront analyses, exchange experiences or build programmatic alternatives. The second drawback is a total absence of knowledge accumulation. While minutes of various sessions are inconsistently drawn up, no method exists as yet to identify key points raised, to broaden public debate around them, or to deepen work in a sustained fashion. Hence, we have no means to ensure continuity and to measure progress. This situation is unquestionably fuelling a feeling that the Forums are repetitive. The third failing, made apparent in London, is ideological drift. Preceding Forums had successfully avoided this but there were expressions of intolerance, exchanges of insults, and pseudo debates without democratic contradiction in London. Responsibility for this lies with some sectarian political groups and religious organisations, as highlighted during the seminars on Iraq or in debates over the French law on religious signs in schools. These drifts threaten the ESF’s existence and cannot be allowed to continue.

./english/212.txt:20:Decision making on common actions has largely been reduced to setting the dates of common global events (15 February 2003, 19 March 2005). Setting dates is obviously important but clearly insufficient. The compilation by the ‘Assembly of Social Movements’ of all the other international gatherings decided upon by the seminars is useful (though no one verifies their implementation) but not essential. The ESFs have not as yet created the conditions for the launch and implementation of real European-wide mobilisations.

./english/212.txt:29:First, the European Social Forum should have a European and social focus. This does not in anyway mean that it should ignore the rest of the world. However, the Forum must have an operational character for the Europeans and take into account their national and continental contexts. Otherwise the Forum merely becomes a well-intentioned gathering.

./english/212.txt:37:The above implies a necessary reform of the process of preparation of the ESFs, with three major objectives. First, the EPAs must become a real locus of decision making. Second, political debate must occur over the orientations to be implemented during the Forums. Lastly, the EPA’s functioning must be improved through democratisation, better representation, and expansion. The creation of democratic and representative national committees may be a means to favour these objectives. In this regard, we have to question the usefulness of the Assembly of Social Movements, since the EPA is already supposed to encompass the whole social movement. The EPA should be the locus for deepening the debate, for the construction of permanent logistic tools (financing, computerisation, etc.), and for articulation with the national preparatory committee of the host country. As far as the timing of ESFs is concerned, a biannual rhythm, alternating with the WSF, is appropriate to avoid the dissipation of militant energies and the exhaustion of the financial resources of the various organisations. A European gathering of the different ongoing campaigns could be held between two ESFs. Its aim would be to discuss the main mobilisations of the movement a year ahead. ATTAC France believes that the future of the ESF depends on the acknowledgement of these imperatives and their translation into action through adequate preparatory structures.

./english/216.txt:8:The fourteen Attac organisations present at the European Attac meeting in Innsbruck December 3-5 would like to make the following contribution to the ongoing discussion as regards the future development of the ESF process, and the European meeting of December 18-19 in Paris.

./english/216.txt:18:5. It has to be recognised that the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA) is the space where the political orientation of the ESF is forged. Therefore, it is absolutely essential that its functioning is democratic. Until now, democracy in the EPA context has largely been a matter of assuring openness and inclusivity, while transparency and accountability for decision-making has been neglected. Improving this state of affairs would in a first step mean creating or reorganising the basic infrastructure for the meetings (for example documents must be made available before meetings, facilitation must be properly prepared and rotated during meetings, participant lists and minutes must be made available after meetings).

./english/218.txt:10:3) In order to reflect more the specific concerns of each country and in order to improve the organisation of the European Preparatory Meetings, it would be desirable to think about a stable international facilitation group that would support next ESF'S national organising committees.

./english/218.txt:12:4) We support the proposal to allow a priority to speak during the European Preparatory Meetings to people who represent a country or to delegates of a network relatively to persons representing only one organisation.

./english/218.txt:16:6) We request that a mechanism would be designed to facilitate the co-organisation of the seminars by several organisations from various countries (i.e. securing spaces and time during European Preparatory Meeting for such consultations)

./english/219.txt:3:European Social Forum 2004: The Call of the Assembly of Social Movements

./english/219.txt:7:We come from all the campaigns and social movements, “no vox” organisations, trade unions, human rights organisations, international solidarity organisations, anti-war and peace and feminist movements. We come from every region in Europe to gather in London for the third European Social Forum. We are many, and our strength is our diversity.

./english/219.txt:13:We support the Palestinian and Israeli movements fighting for a just and lasting peace. Following the judgement of the UN International Court of Justice and the unanimous vote of the European countries in the UN General Assembly we call for an end to the Israeli occupation and the dismantling of the apartheid wall. We call for political and economic sanctions on the Israeli government as long as they continue to violate international law and the human rights of the Palestinian people. For these reasons we will mobilise for the international week of action against the apartheid wall from 9 to 16 November, and for European days of action on December 10 and 11, the anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights.

./english/219.txt:19:We want another Europe , which rejects sexism and violence against women and recognises the right to choose an abortion. We support the international day of mobilisation against violence against women on 25 November and the European initiative. We support mobilisation to celebrate International Women's Day on 8 March. We support the European initiative on 27/28 May in Marseilles proposed by the World March for Women.

./english/219.txt:29:At a time when the draft for the European Constitutional treaty is about to be ratified, we must state that the peoples of Europe need to be consulted directly. The draft does not meet our aspirations. This constitution treaty consecrates neo-liberalism as the official doctrine of the EU; it makes competition the basis for European community law, and indeed for all human activity; it completely ignores the objectives of ecologically sustainable society. This constitutional treaty does not grant equal rights, the free movement of people and citizenship for everyone in the country they live in, whatever their nationality; it gives NATO a role in European foreign policy and defence, and pushes for the militarisation of the EU. Finally it puts the market first by marginalising the social sphere, and hence accelerating the destruction of public services.

./english/219.txt:35:The European Social Movement supports the national mobilisation of the Italian movement on 30 October to mark the signing of the European Constitutional Treaty - against war, liberalisation and racism, to get the troops out of Iraq and for another Europe . The European Social Movement supports the national mobilisation in Barcelona against the summit of Zapatero, Chirac and Schroeder on the European constitution in January 2005. We support the mobilisation on November 11, 2004 against the Bolkestein directive.

./english/219.txt:37:At a time when the new European Commission shamelessly boasts a high profile of laissez-faire politics, we must start a process of mobilisation in all European countries in order to impose the recognition of both collective and individual social, political, economic, cultural and ecological rights for men and women alike. To enable all the peoples of Europe to join this process, we must build a movement that overrides our differences and groups all the forces of the peoples of Europe ready to be involved in the struggle against European neo-liberalism.

./english/219.txt:39:20th March 2005 marks the second anniversary of the start of the war against Iraq . On 22 and 23 March the European Council meets in Brussels. We call for national mobilisations in all European countries. We call for a central demonstration in Brussels on 19 March against war, racism, and against a neo-liberal Europe, against privatisation, against the Bolkestein project and against the attacks on working time; for a Europe of rights and solidarity between the peoples. We call all the social movements and the European trade union movements to take to the streets on this day.

./english/221.txt:13:We will act to assert the rights of first-generation Europeans and freedom of migration into the EU.

./english/221.txt:17:We agree to shape a transeuropean network of movements and collectives determined to agitate against freemarketeers for social rights valid for all human beings living in Europe .

./english/221.txt:23:We call onto all our European sisters and brothers, be they autonomous marxists, postindustrial anarchists, syndicalists, feminists, antifas, queers, anarchogreens, hacktivists, cognitive workers, casualized laborers, outsourced and/or subcontracted employees and the like, to network and organize for a common social and political action in Europe.

./english/224.txt:27:- We should adopt a biennial frequency for the ESF, alternating with the WSF. In between two ESFs, some of us propose to hold a European meeting to have an update on and review the ongoing campaigns, and networking activities, and to discuss convergent mobilisations.

./english/224.txt:29:- To foresee specific self-organised spaces in order to allow for the development of alternative practices and/or debate on specific topics of interest for one or another actor. The global coherence of all activities is to be discussed by the European Preparatory Assembly.

./english/224.txt:31:- Political parties are not ESF organisers, but should find a place within it. It is necessary to think of ways to let them express themselves and dialogue (specific spaces, discussion tables). This has to be discussed by the European Preparatory Assembly.

./english/224.txt:41:- The political and decisional role of the European Preparatory Assembly should be strengthened, its representativeness enlarged and its democratic nature improved. The EPA should be the place for all decisions concerning the ESF process. It should allow the effective participation of all forces involved in the process and discuss the shared tools (Internet tools, solidarity funds) which it has developed. It is the role of the organisation committee of the welcoming country to implement the decision made at the EPA.

./english/226.txt:8:• The French organizers of the extraordinary European session in Paris are asked to devise the agenda and the by laws in such a way as to ensure two separate rounds of dialogue for all country delegates, one on the issue of the present state of the ESF process, and the other on future perspectives and needed changes. This should happen before the general debate is started, to enable a general opinion to form on these two issues within the European movement and, at the same time, to prevent country delegations who are stronger in numbers to dominate the rest of the session.

./english/226.txt:10:During the general debate it should be ensured to keep to the gender balance and also to enable a balanced participation of speakers from participating countries. In order to prevent social exclusion of specific groups, the organizers have been requested not to limit the interpretation any longer to English, French and Italian. We should really try to set some basic rules for the by laws during the European sessions. In particular these concern: speaker time, order of speakers and the interpretation needs.

./english/226.txt:18:The main problem seems to be the inability or the unwillingness of the groups of the far end of the political spectrum of the movement to seek consensus. In London, to put it simply, the opponents were unions and autonomous groups. Potential mediators, crudely put, took sides of the opponents, Socialist Workers Party, CP Britain, CND and Tobin Tax Initiative, some NGO's held with the unions. Attac, local Social Forums and other NGO's and Anarchist groups held with the Autonomous groups. A lack of willingness to seek consensus had revealed itself earlier and in different contexts. For example, in Paris it proved very difficult to convince the Italian basic unions to agree to a common European day of mobilisation on the 3 April 2004 together with the Europeans Trade Union Association, demonstrating against the dismantling of the welfare state.

./english/226.txt:22:It is part of the demand for transparency and to prevent a political dominance of any group, to have open access to the preparatory committees of the European assembly. On many important meetings provision is regularly made only for interpretation into Italian, French and English. This fact alone limits the participation to a small elite, and a depressing dominance of the native speakers is programmed. In future it has to be assured to provide interpretation according to attendance.

./english/226.txt:24:Of course every country has its own political priorities. This should be regarded as an enrichment of the movement. This results in a certain political dominance of the specific event. The European character of such meetings is not always guarantied. In the future the organizers will have to vouch for this.

./english/226.txt:26:Many participants of the latest European meeting in London are in their statements now criticizing the dominance of certain political groups the ESF. At the same time the choice of Athens for the next location for the ESF is being criticised. The decision for Athens was a difficult one. But it confirmed at the same time the agreement which had already been reached in Bobigny to continue the movement of the ESF with the Forum in Greece. The debate in London on this issue expressed the following objection: the preparation of the ESF in Athens could be dominated by a quarrelling political coalition which would exclude the participation of a number of unions and peace- and student organisations. In this way the confirmation for Athens as a location is connected with the request to the Greek groups to find consensus and to broaden the basis of supporting organisations significantly.

./english/228.txt:8:Our goal is that the 4th ESF in spring 2006 in Athens becomes a major political event and a process for the Greek and European movement against neoliberal capitalist globalization. We will attempt to widen the already open space of Forums for all social movements, campaigns, acts of resistance, organizations and collectives in Greece , the Balkan area and Europe . We aim to connect this process with mobilizations on specific matters those days on which the 4rth ESF will take place, so in this way we can have a strong grassroots emphasis to the Forum.

./english/228.txt:10:We believe that its success depends on our capability to bring forward and debate in the European and Greek societies Resistance to war, neoliberalism, racism, the attack against political and social rights, environmental disaster and at the same time focusing on our governments that apply these politics of fear and poverty. We can see fragments of this world “that is possible” through denying neoliberal world and debating in our Forum.

./english/228.txt:14:To achieve all these goals we must start today moving towards this direction and work collectively through the European Prepatory Assemblies this way too. On the same occasions we discuss the matters of organizing the ESF we must give time and space to discuss mobilizations and networking (like this of the so called EuroConstittution).

./english/228.txt:21:2. Contacting again political spaces that do not participate today in the European Movement against Globalization; like antiauthotarian collectives and the left that has harsh relations with the Forum process. Of course we must bring back to normal our relation with the activists and groups that work together with us through “Autonomous Spaces”

./english/228.txt:23:3. We must offer very heavy support to the European Networks and integrate them in to the process.

./english/228.txt:39:Our NOC must be democratic enough so anybody or any group can find a way to access the process even if in the beginning they feel reluctant. These groups can participate as observers but with the right to speak and propose or they can have special roles. But we must start almost at once our work because of the February European Assembly in Athens .

./english/229.txt:8:The following notes, based on a collective debate that took place in Rome on November 8th, aim at disseminating a number of considerations and proposals of change regarding the organization and development process of the European Social Forum, prior to the extraordinary meeting of the European social movements, which will be held in Paris on December 18th and 19th.

./english/229.txt:11:The London Social Forum has already been a matter of debate and its events have already been discussed in great depth and length; the overall conclusion derived from both positive and negative feedback is that there is a necessity to reassess the whole preparatory phase as well as the final one. The list of targets, as defined during the London Social Movement, against war, neo-liberalism and racism cannot be achieved alone by the regular meetings, they need to be incorporated into activities as part of the European networks with the scope of creating an ‘auto-reform’ within the boundaries of the Social Forum. The preparation and the “managing” of the European initiatives - already decided in London - must be brought to common responsibility and, in Paris, we need to define methods, contents and workshops to achieve these goals.

./english/229.txt:13:Until now we highlitghted the “event” of the Forum, which is still a fundamental element, and the prapatory process has been considered as a mere organisational matter; this must not be the case, the preparatory meetings should be the place where networks and their members become protagonists of the Forum’s development, and decide and coordinate the European campaigns. The boundaries of the Forum are there not only to provide a platform for ‘public speech’ but also to work on objectives, campaigns, plans for implementation and mobilisation of strategies: in short put words into actions and practise what we preach.

./english/229.txt:15:What we have witnessed up to now, is a decision-making process based on meetings that represented national realities only. As a consequence, the European networks had little influence, while the role of the “local” delegates and organizing committee was excessively predominant; the obsessive attention toward the speakers, as if they were issues of high relevance and prestige; a deadline of meeting which is too short (yearly) are an obstacle to the project and the effective organization.

./english/229.txt:18:The process of organisation and management of the forum must be European and not “delegated” to the guest organizing committee, except for the inevitable “national” features; this must involve all the realities, which share values and goals and want to set up debates and exchange their expertise. The method of approval in the decision-making process must be preserved; our relation with the authorities cannot influence any stage of the preparation and development of the Forum.

./english/229.txt:31:The introduction of various forces in single countries cannot be delegated only to the structures of the organizing country, whose “grievances” make sometimes the decisional and organizing phase difficult. This appears decisive also in Greece, where important TU, political and social areas are still out of the ESF process, and we have to act so as to have them in the “Athens process”. In this sense, it is important to bring the proposal made in London in again, i.e. to create – and we need to start ritgh now, on the occasion of the Paris meeting - an European delegation of the ESF, which is able to involve the most significant greek components that aren’t included in the ESF, into this process.

./english/229.txt:36:More than a hundred thousand people were present at the three European Social Forums: events such as these do not often occur in the political history. They have created new spaces and ways of participation, in which the old differences between elaboration and social practice, between political, TU and social areas have gradually disappeared, making room for values, ideas and participation, and creating communally new expressions of “making politics”. It’s our common responsibility not to squander all of it.

./english/233.txt:9:• The official UK ESF organising committee was not accountable to anyone except the European Assembly, which did not and obviously cannot meet very often. Anyway the committee did not take much notice of what the Assembly said.

./english/233.txt:25:· Also very successful was the ‘European Cultural Forum' bus which took the ESF to the streets, going around London with politics and performance for the general public

./english/234.txt:5:The third European Social Forum has shown the necessity of a change in the organizing formula and process of the forum itself. After Paris-Saint Denis, the European global-movement entered into a new phase. We have to report, on one side, the still positive presence of the constitutive elements of its "birth act" - the crisis of the consensus on the war and liberal politics, the tendency towards the coordination of initiatives on an European scale, criticism of the political representation of social struggles – but also, on the other side, that we did not reflect enough on the social composition of the movement and on the motivations of practice.

./english/234.txt:7:In Florence , and partially in Paris/Saint Denis, the movement represented itself as it was, it was a snapshot of the existing. A reach set of aspirations, experiences, differences, crossed by the will to cover new ways for social transformation, in an attempt to anticipate the future. The difficulties met in London and in the several meetings of the European Preparatory Assembly have been determined only partially by the "specificity" of the national organizing committees. In fact, the relationship between the Forum and the national and European social dynamics has entered into a tension. It is no longer sufficient to locate a "public space" in which the different sensibilities, networks, associations, committees and so on, could meet each other and discuss about the possible alternatives to the present world. The "social issue" is moving contradictorily towards the discovery of converging points between a material condition and moments of common initiatives which could be able to make a step ahead with respect to the modalities that we have known in the past.

./english/234.txt:9:Even if the Forum's "formula" and the thematic axis which characterize it is still significant, the building process is also important, and the interlace between these two aspects has become crucial. It is necessary to reconsider, during the Forum, the relationship between plenaries/seminars/thematic assemblies/social movements assembly, assigning a greater relief to the moments of aggregation and constitution of European networks around the different initiatives; it is also crucial the way in which the thematic merging process is qualified. The process which brought to the call for a second day of action of the migrants' movement - subscribed by tens of actors involved in their struggles, who met inside but also outside the ESF, in the autonomous spaces - is the best example of the way in which it should be possible to build up a political process on a European scale not only merging "similar issues", but around the assumption of common political contents and passwords.

./english/234.txt:11:The ESF has to preserve the aspect of the popular University without reducing itself to this. The centrality of seminars and thematic assemblies (i.e. war, precariety, migrants, common goods) should be posed also inside the meetings of the European Preparatory Assembly. Not reproducing there a little Forum, but deepening every time the contents - not only the organizing aspect - of single issues. Enlargement and inclusion are not only democratic tendencies - although necessary - but they also depend from the attitude to connect different political spaces and social times, trying to exceed the simple merging process. Social movements are strange animals, whose destiny is to spring up again without dying.

./english/237.txt:9:Living elements of newly emergent political cultures ebb and flow through the city alongside remnants of past visions and action. Perspectives progress and mature, merging with influences from the global southern movements and the restless movements and borders of Europe. So when the European Social Forum (ESF) was solicited to come to London back in 2003, despite initial concerns, many activists and social movements in the UK lent optimism to a project that would enrich and diversify our existing movements. Perhaps as well as intimating that “another world is possible” we could hear it knocking at the door.

./english/237.txt:55:Some of the clear differences between the ESF and the AS emerged out of the months of preparation. Many different political groups answered the AS call out for participation and were able to suggest seminars they would like to partake in and self-organise without speculating whether they’d survive an official cull or forced merger. Groups like the Dissent network, which had issues of non-representation in ‘official’ seminar panels and indecision on its participation in the ESF, were able to hold a ‘Day of Dissent’ at the AS in a much more lateral position. The issue of work was also taken up from a completely different angle. At the ESF, union officials were trying to find out how to survive in the wake of the waning of Fordist modes of production: how to organise globally, how to engage the younger generation. At the AS, those young people from all over who attended the Assembly of the European Precariat were reclaiming Flexicurity and trying to make sense of their own life conditions as some of the first European generations without pensions since war times.

./english/238.txt:61:To begin with, we must all accept and attempt to address the fact that the ideals of diversity and inclusion within the Porto Alegre Charter still remain largely unrealised in many Social Forums, especially the ESF. Like Florence and Paris before it, the large majority of the 20,000 participants – and interpreters – at this year's London ESF were again mainly white, able-bodied Western Europeans. This failure over three years to significantly expand popular participation of those either living in or originating from Central and Eastern Europe and the global South, not to mention from the disabled and deaf communities, cannot be simply explained away by the systematic refusal of visas (the disgrace of London), problems of disability access or the gargantuan cost of international travel from outside the EU – the ‘politics of language' has also played a central part.

./english/238.txt:63:Witness the London ESF. Although the official language hierarchy was dropped, informally the same old colonial languages of English, French, Spanish, German and Italian dominated the outreach materials, website, press releases, platforms, and programmes. This means that since its inception in 2002, the ESF has been almost exclusively communicated as a Western European event, contributing hugely to the fact that it generally remains so. How do we explain the continuation of this ‘language elite' at the London ESF? In general, this year's ESF organisers, steered by the controlling influence of the Greater London Authority (GLA), saw language through the prism of market economics, as a simple matter of ‘supply and demand'. This is a familiar story. All too often, language is treated as ‘something that interpreters and translators provide' to those who say they need it, and not as either a political right to self-expression and democratic participation, or as a means of pro-actively including and expanding out to people and movements traditionally marginalised.

./english/238.txt:65:While it is true that language hierarchisation is a reflection of the continued dominance of West European political movements in the ESF process, the ESF organisers also heavily influenced the ‘demand' for languages through restricting the supply. From an early stage, it was decided that the London ESF would be a much smaller event than those witnessed in Florence and Paris . The main organisers effectively made sure of this by setting very high entry fees and only planning for around 20,000. They also believed that in such circumstances, most of the participants would come from Western Europe and thus began to communicate almost exclusively in English whilst asking Babels to translate important documents for the website into the other main languages. This inevitably acted as a major outreach barrier to the social movements of ‘majority Europe ' and beyond because many people did not believe that their languages would be spoken. This was reinforced by the huge travel costs and the failure of the ESF organisers to put into place an adequate system for helping participants – including interpreters – to receive Visas to enter Britain .

./english/238.txt:75:If we are serious about creating spaces for exchange between people from a diversity of social, ethnic, cultural and political backgrounds and contexts, with a multiplicity of needs, then all of us in the ESF process must collectively address head on the issues and politics of language and communication within our movement. Babels cannot obviously do this alone. Trade unions, NGO, social movements, networks and individuals must from now on work hand-in-hand with Babels to make connections with social movements and actors in marginalised countries and communities in the process help pass on knowledge to create new Babels coordinations. This is especially urgent for the next ESF scheduled for Athens in Spring 2006 due to the severe shortage of Greek interpreters within Babels. Without a genuine commitment by everyone to an unprecedented process of linguistic and popular outreach – and to the necessary resources this implies – the ESF is destined to remain centred around the Western European left and risks having the microphones turned off altogether.

./english/240.txt:7:Over the past few years, many networks and groups have been established around Europe to promote campaigns around refugee issues. A pre-ESF conference in September in London brought together 70 people from a large range of migration related networks, including British groups. The European Social Forum (ESF) was seen as one step in the wider process of migration as a social movement, an opportunity to address a new audience. The meeting was designed to bring about more cohesiveness among the Europen networks in the long term, and to discuss joint proposals for seminars and workshops for the official ESF programme as well as for the alternative spaces.

./english/240.txt:9:As a result, a second European day of action was launched at the ESF for 2 April 05, claiming freedom of movement and the right to stay as an alternative to the european constitutional process based on exclusion and exploitation. A number of seminars and workshops were held both in the official ESF and the alternative spaces. Speakers from migration related European grassroots groups and migrant self organisations participated, in many panels, discussing work, precariousness, information technologies.

./english/240.txt:17:The ESF Organising Committee set the entrance fees for asylum-seekers at the extraordianarily high level of £20. In addition to entrance fees and travel expenses, many migrants had to fork out £70 for a visa. Only British organisations and networks affiliated to the refugee forum could get free entrance tickets. Individual asylum seekers who may have been encouraged to visit the ESF could not do so unless they had the good fortune of having heard of or belonging to one of the affiliated groups. The RN refused to challenge this decision on the basis that it was decided by the Organising Committee. Following furious critique by almost all European migration related groups, the RN raised money from trade unions and other donors in order to buy entrance tickets for asylum seekers or migrants, but again these funds were only available for asylum seekers connected to the RN.

./english/240.txt:19:The RN had a fund of £10,000 to be used to outreach to migrants and refugee groups in Britain only. This was challenged at a European ESF meeting in Berlin by Sans Papiers, Kein Mench ist illegal and particularly the No Vox network, an organisation specifically set up to gain access to the ESF for Sans Papiers, migrants, refugees and unemployed as well as low waged people from across the world. In this battle the fund was suddenly reduced to £5,000, and networks from other countries were told to raise their own funds.

./english/241.txt:15:Concerning the Social Forums process specifically, the question is starting to be addressed with the appearance of new actors. Concretely, there now exists an active Social Forum (SF) Memory working group depending on the World Social Forum International Council. This is a global space to coordinate and facilitate the archiving and systematization initiatives of Social Forums and to establish a protocol of memory coming from each forum. A European partner to this process has also emerged in the guise of the European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the European Social Forum (ESF) process. This is a working group depending on the ESF European Preparatory Assembly. There is also the work developed to systematize the contents of debates and seminars at the Paris ESF 2003 and the Florence one. Unfortunately, the London ESF organizational system doesn’t allow us to have many expectations about the documenting of the London ESF by the UK organising committee and the ESF office, as a lack of attention paid to archiving, systematization or participative communication has created difficulties or disrupted several initiatives.

./english/241.txt:40:It is a piece of research explicitly tailored to action for the critical transformation of the current reality. The research pursues the creation of a knowledge that is valued for its practical effectiveness in generating changes, as opposed to an objective and contemplative theoretical knowledge, as in the traditional academic manner; knowledge that generates and maximizes action and whose fruits serve the process of constituting new antagonistic subjectivities through social movement convergence processes. In the sense of practical effectiveness the core of the Guide is to build useful “networking tools” such as a Directory and contact details of the collectives and organisations which have participated to the ESFs of Florence, Paris, London, organized thematically and by region; and a Map of the European networks developed within and around the ESF process. The level of utility is defined by the capacity of the use-builders of the Guide itself to make it grow through the identification of actors with the networking process, of resources for the action, of reflection for social transformation.

./english/241.txt:42:It also aims to reinforce action research/investigation as a new antagonistic commitment. Another aim of the Guide is the creation of a convergence space for common action amongst activist researchers/investigators operating within the social movements at the European level. For this reason it is and it will be carried out by an open network of groups and research centres, called the Action research network for the ESF confluence process. Moreover, the Guide will contain a specific Map/directory of groups which are producing research within and around the new movements in Europe too.

./english/241.txt:47:• A chronological basic map of European mobilisations

./english/241.txt:48:• A map of web-bibliographic articles on the European confluence processes, articles of reflection about the new social movements and the new confluence spaces in Europe and articles on the data and the new knowledge generated by the Guide itself, as a tool of reflection and debate

./english/241.txt:51:The main methods are questionnaires to organizations, web searches and the systematization of information sources generated by the ESFs: for example, the main information source for the European directory is the registration databases for the ESFs and the parallel spaces surrounding them.

./english/241.txt:55:It is a tool at the service first of all of the ESF confluence process: aiming to help the self-organization of the ESF itself as well as the creation of European and transnational networks. And it will produce knowledge, more self-consciousness among the protagonists of the ESF process; and more focused actions and strategies for the future.

./english/241.txt:79:European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the ESF process working group of the European ESF assembly

./english/243.txt:7:This workshop on Neo-Marxisms was just one in a long day at the Radical Theory Forum , organised as an autonomous space during the European Social Forum in London . It was originated by young, politically active academics, who wanted to create a space where education and activism could be interlinked. The well-kept social centre 491 gallery , which served as the venue, helped this to be not only a successful but also an enjoyable event. The workshops covered ‘Anti-Consumerism', ‘Feminist Theory' and ‘Practice at the ESF/WSF', as well as the philosophical and explosive question who the ‘we' in the Social Movements is. The discussions were at the highest level, but not exclusionary.

./english/245.txt:28:At the most basic level there should be a concerted effort to embrace communication technologies and locate them in the centre of the ESF organising process. This is essential both at the European level with the preparatory process and domestically within in the host countries.

./english/245.txt:38:Indeed several meetings took place in the Autonomous Spaces during the ESF that discussed communication tools and memory projects in relation to the Social Forums. Two of these were held at the European Forum of Communications Rights and Indymedia Centre which was a collaboration between various progressive electronic media networks, community media

./english/245.txt:41:One positive development during the ESF 2004 preparatory process was the agreement at a European Assembly meeting to set up an ongoing European working group on web technologies, to try and ensure some continuity from one year to the next, to develop appropriate tools to support the ESF process, and to offer advice within these areas. It’s certainly true that there have been many problems in continuity, for example the handing over of the fse-esf website from one country to another. Related to this is the area of intellectual property and concept of ownership of information gathered, from email addresses to written reports and audio and video material. Problems have already been encountered with such data since there are laws and different frameworks to govern their usage. While attempts were made in London to avoid similar problems occurring again, for example with opt in permission for email addresses to be used in the future for ESF related contacts, this was a result of dealing with specific problems as they arose and not of a political recognition that these issues are part of our struggle for another world. This is an area that campaigners are working on globally to develop alternatives, both in practice and at a government and international institutional lobbying level, and certainly should be an area embraced by the ESF.

./english/248.txt:9:Bringing the European Social Forum (ESF) to London was never going to be an easy option. The Thatcher legacy, continued by Tony Blair, has made London one of the most thoroughly marketised, privatised and expensive cities in Europe . But when the ESF itself started to mirror these tendencies, many activists suspected something was up. Babels ( www.babels.org ), the international network of volunteer interpreters, used the occasion of a meeting where Ken Livingstone was scheduled to speak (he did not turn up) to deliver a statement accusing the Greater London Authority (GLA) of following “classical neo-liberal practices of organisation, management and service delivery… with the result that the Forum has been entirely dependent on the state.” Others, such as Anne Scargill and the network of women in mining or ex-mining areas in the UK , didn't even get that far: “No way could we afford the fees, transport and accommodation.”

./english/251.txt:4:European Social Forum Processes

./english/251.txt:8:“So, what is the point of these meetings?” a first-time participant asked me at one of the European Preparatory Assemblies (EPA) for the London European Social Forum (ESF) 2004. And for a moment I had to pause and ask myself; which answer should I give, the official answer or the unofficial one? I chose the route of compromise. “Well, the EPA is the highest decision making body of the ESF. The host country has to bring all the important decisions to this meeting for approval and/or amendment. The decisions taken here are binding for the host country and they must be followed. These meetings are therefore rather important and can shape central aspects of the ESF itself. However, in reality, certain people within the host country have a near complete decision making power irrespective of what is decided here or at the national level meetings. If any of the decisions taken here are implemented, it will be because the key people in the host country want to see them implemented, not because it was what the EPA decided.”

./english/251.txt:16:The European Social Forum was born in 2002 at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre where the decision was taken to set up regional social forums. Originally there were three countries interested in hosting the ESF: Italy, France and Greece. It was decided that Italy would host the ESF in November 2002 and Paris would host it the year after. The semi-official structures that arose out of these two ESFs created three or four loci of decision-making power. First, there is a local committee set up in the city where the ESF will take place. In the UK this was the UK Coordinating Committee (UKCC), which met every Thursday at City Hall. This is where all practical matters involved in organising the event can be discussed and hopefully resolved on a regular basis. Anyone who is involved in political organising or campaigning can be a part of this committee. This committee answers to the national organising committee, which is the second highest decision making body of the ESF. In the UK, this was the UK Organising Committee (UKOC). Meetings of the UKOC were held approximately once a month. In the ESF process, this committee is open to anyone in the country who wishes to be involved. This is in contrast to the WSF process where the membership of the Brazilian Organising Committee (BOC) was originally closed to all except the eight founding member organisations. In the India WSF 2004, the Indian Organising Committee was larger and organisations earned their position on the committee by officially affiliating to the WSF. This more open structure is now being mimicked by the BOC for the WSF in 2005. Despite these differences, wherever the forum takes place, all decision taken locally are expected to be reported to this national organising committee to be approved of and/or amended. Finally, and most importantly, there is the European Preparatory Assembly (EPA), the highest decision making body of the ESF. These meetings are held approximately every other month in various cities across Europe and are open to all who can afford to get to them. These meetings create an opening for people from all over Europe to input into the ESF process, thereby making it a European process and not just a local event.

./english/251.txt:18:There is however another locus of power in the official ESF organising process: the office. For every ESF an office space is obtained (either by paying for it or by donation or a mix of both) and several people are hired to staff the office. In London there were two offices, one for the ESF and one for Babels. In all, nine people were employed full time by the ESF company and many others who were employed by the Greater London Authority (GLA) were working on the ESF in and out of the two offices. In Paris, several people were paid by their organisations or trade unions to work full time for the ESF. In addition to these full time staff there are also many full time and part time volunteers who work in the ESF office unpaid. The office staff is officially there to carry out the decisions taken by the local, national and European meetings.

./english/251.txt:20:These structures are the official macrostructures through which the ESF is meant to be organised. However, after actively having helped organise two ESFs and one WSF, it has rarely been my experience that these structures function entirely as they are meant to. This sometimes results in a gap arising between the official (or formal) and unofficial (or informal) structures of the ESF organising process. Even under ideal circumstances, in the day-to-day practice of organising an ESF there is no one body which has final decision-making power over everything. Nor could or should there be. Regardless of any decision-making structures that are set up, decisions will always be taken through a variety of different groups and people, and through a process of negotiation between these groups and people, be it at a local, national or European level. This has been the case in Italy, Paris and London. Nevertheless, the London ESF 2004 witnessed a stark shift in decision-making power, where it was not only the case that ESF structures were being adjusted for the day-to-day organising requirements (as they have always been to varying degrees), but also that alternative structures were being created.

./english/251.txt:62:Is there any hope for consensus in the European Social Forum process?

./english/251.txt:70:In London the biggest impediment to consensus was the lack of understanding and motivation to use consensus decision-making methods by those who had the power within the London ESF 2004 process. This lack of commitment to the principles of the ESF led to distrust and deep divisions across Europe. Implementing the above structures would go a long way to improving our meetings, but no structures can save us from an environment of hostility and selfish intentions. Our only real hope is if everyone commits to treating each other with respect. If this commitment cannot be reaffirmed by the European process in 2005 and beyond, consensus will indeed remain a waste of time and we should make our first priority redefining what decision-making procedures we would like to use instead. Perhaps we should just flip coins.

./english/252.txt:3:European assembly: Could we have better meetings?

./english/252.txt:7:Editor's note: The following letter was circulated to the European Social Forum email list ( fse-esf@fse-esf.org ) on 29 March 2004. Although it makes reference to a specific time and place, the problems described still remain and the suggestions that it contains are of continuing relevance today.

./english/252.txt:11:We, participants to the meeting of the European assembly in London on the 6th & 7th of March 2004, want to congratulate the assembly on making good progress towards hosting the European Social Forum 2004 in London. We believe we managed to make some pretty important decisions, crucial to the advancement of the ESF process.

./english/252.txt:13:But, we must say that the experience of the meeting itself was negative. Frankly; those of us who attended their first European assembly were shocked. We are afraid that what we experienced as an unstructured, noisy, aggressive and confused culture of discussion will be a major obstacle to furthering our common process. But, that being said, we also believe that many of our problems can be mended without too much effort.

./english/252.txt:41:and it tends to exclude those who lack these specific qualities. This is not to say that all those who know their way around a European assembly are all aggressive and self-promoting; on the contrary, many play very constructive roles. But the (culturally) excluded might be people who are new to the process (exactly those we most need to include!), people from smaller countries and organisations (who don't have a large delegation of allies to support them), and women. Women? Yes, if we were to do the statistics on who took the floor at our meeting in London, we're quite convinced it will emerge that this aggressive, laissez-faire political culture of ours benefits men at the expense of women.

./english/252.txt:49:So, we think we must be able to make the meetings of the European Assembly work better, for all of us. How? We will suggest a few guidelines. (Yes, we know we must strive for openness! Yes, we know we don't take majority decisions! Yes, we are suspicious of excessive formalisation, BUT: When we have put aside the formal constraints of traditional organisational democracy, all we are left with is self-constraint: We must all constrain ourselves at some points during the meeting, if it is to be a good and constructive one. So the process needs guidelines, agreed upon by consensus, that can help us develop the ability of self-constraint, together.)

./english/252.txt:53:Guidelines for the meeting of the european assembly:

./english/252.txt:71:After the experience in London, we truly believe that some sort of improvement is urgently needed. Dear friends, if we really wish to create the movement that makes another, better and more civilised world possible, our first step should be to prove that another, better and slightly civilised form of European preparatory assembly is possible. Our meetings, like the European Social Forum, should be an open space, not a battleground.

./english/253.txt:20:Obviously applying this to the ESF needs work. But this process could be very important to both unifying and Europeanising the organisation of the ESF and ensuring it reaches out to the widest range of networks and movements across Europe and internationally.

./english/259.txt:39:It seems to me that this meeting was indicative of a current zeitgeist and effervescence of the theory:practice:praxis nexus. It is part of a number of new and emerging initiatives – some of which have bubbled up in isolation but which are overlapping, coalescing and re-constituting in novel ways. CSGR is linked in several ways to this activity in the UK context. For example, I was part of a group of six people who registered a Radical Theory Workshop at the November 2003 European Social Forum in Paris - a workshop which attracted an unexpectedly high number of participants. This effort is continuing via an e-list and plans to organise a one-day Radical Theory Forum to coincide with the next European Social Forum, as well as to register possibly more Workshops within the Forum process itself.

./english/272.txt:37:It became self-consciously part of their/our work. Mayo Fuster’s paper maps out very well, the different forms this takes. The implication, however, of my stress on the interactive connection between knowledge and action this would imply a special emphasis on the various forms of co-research in which I would include the organisations like State Research, European Corporate Observatory, many of the researchers connected to the TNI and many small research centres working closely with different social and trade union movements, following their struggles and working with them to research the power structures their actions reveal and resisting and collaborating on the development of strategy and alternatives.

./english/274.txt:43:the call to take over the factories mean if you live somewhere where there aren’t any factories? What if you don’t want factories at all? This criticism can be directed at much of the “canon” of anarchist theory, which for the large part is from the 19th to early 20th century European thinkers. Not surprisingly, we live in a much different and more complex world then 1890s Europe – so it would be absurd to think that our notions of social change and strategy for working for such might not need some radical rethinking. Kropotkin, for instance, outlined a number of important principles to consider in radical economic visioning: the integration of manual and mental labor in the organization of production, the importance of space and decentralization in the reduction and elimination of hierarchy, and so on. (1985) Although it makes a great deal of sense to continue to draw ideas and inspiration from such works, it is important to realize that the principles drawn from such need to be reworked to be practically applicable in today’s world.

./english/277.txt:18:The paradox in question is that of the Marxist theory of social movements, or more accurately the lack of such a theory. It is not, of course, that Marxist writing on social movements does not exist; but rather that to the best of my knowledge no systematic attempt has been made to formulate a Marxist theory of social movements. What is by now the standard analysis of the field identifies an “American” mode of theorising, with roots in rational choice theory, and a “European” mode of theorising, normally seen as “post-Marxist” in its stress on the development of “new social movements” (cf. Cohen 1985, Diani 1992); it is commonly argued that these perspectives are now converging, though what this means theoretically is far from clear (Melucci 1989). These are not, of course, the only options on offer; recent years have seen the publication of Weberian (Scott 1990), cognitivist (Eyerman and Jamison 1991), culturalist (Eder 1993) and state-centred (Foweraker 1995) analyses, among others. Yet, acknowledging a steady stream of Marxist critiques of the concept of “new social movements” (Bagguley 1992, Barker and Dale 1997), the only systematic theoretical formulation on social movements from anything like a Marxist position would seem to be the body of writing associated with contemporary critical theory (Habermas 1984, 1987, Offe 1985, Cohen 1982, 1996), which asserts an essentially liberal view of social movements as the defence of civil society and of the life-world.

./english/277.txt:127:One published a selection from his ongoing research as an explicit contribution to the discussions of that time (Raschke 1991). Over a somewhat longer period, members of the party elite (Antje Vollmer, Wolfgang Thierse) were and are involved in the journal of new social movement research, the Forschungsjournal neue soziale Bewegungen. This situation is perhaps unusual in terms of the level of competence and the scale of resources available to the party, but not otherwise. As Tomás Jones has pointed out, there are strong dangers in a situation where research is guided by purely external criteria: the politics of European social movements research - and its funding - has shifted rightwards over the last two decades (1993: 7 - 8). To take the most alarming example, Diani and Eyerman’s otherwise fascinating volume (1992) on the methodology of social movements research came out of a European Consortium for Political Research session jointly sponsored by the Italian Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and ... the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a fact mentioned without comment in the introduction to the volume.

./english/277.txt:148:Returning to Dublin, the distancing of my theoretical understanding from the local intellectual forms of the milieu was paralleled by increased involvement with the Irish Green Party: running the college branch, editing the party’s theoretical journal and eventually coming to act as the party’s European representative8. There is, the, at least a structural parallel between the theoretical and organising relationships involved at each point in time, and one which suggests that an account of the latter is by no means irrelevant to the discussion of the former.

./english/278.txt:23:But perhaps the most influential non-Marxist approach to studying class consciousness is one that uses cross-cultural data to answer the question, "Why no socialism in the U.S.?" In this case, what workers think is deduced from what they have achieved, especially politically, and what American workers have achieved in this regard is considerably less impressive than the powerful socialist and communist parties and trade unions thrown up by the European working class. By concentrating on what there is in European history and conditions that contributed to these developments (such as a feudal past), and what there is in the U.S that restricted them (such as greater social mobility), this comparative approach tries to show not only that class consciousness does not exist here, but that it could not have come about and—by implication—will never come about. For the classic statement of this position, see Sombart (1976; first published 1906).

./english/278.txt:25:The assumption here, of course, is that there is only one way of becoming class conscious. This is clearly disproved, however, not only by the variety of paths taken by the working class in different European countries but also by the degree of class consciousness that relatively large numbers of American workers achieved in the period just before World War 1 and again in the 1930s. The point is that capitalism, just like any complex organism, contains many compensating mechanisms, so that the absence of any one of them is not sufficient reason for believing that its function will not find expression through some other form. Conversely, the presence of conditions that exist only in the United States is no guarantee that the sum of capitalism's other conditions will not sooner or later produce a class-consciousness equal to, or even greater than, that found in Europe. Besides their conservative implications and the questionable methods adopted by all these non-Marxist studies, they can also be faulted for focusing on only part of class consciousness, which narrowness is also largely responsible for their conservative implications.

./english/281.txt:9:world’ a new surge of radical theory. As a result within academia, especially in Northern Europe and USA, there is apparently more space for critical debate. When I began to get in touch with the ‘first side of the first world academe’, this process seemed to me, as a South-European PhD student, very impressive. However, as an activist, I very soon came across many people theorising Social Movements (SM) who were only familiar with the work being done within academia. Thus the initial optimism soon disappeared. Some questions then presented themselves: What is the meaning of our radicalism? Who is our critique for? Are we really in a radical age or is it becoming fashionable to be radical? This article provides me with the opportunity to reflect on these themes. Still I have to admit to a certain trepidation since I don’t see myself as a political theorist and writing in a foreign language will limit my ability to express myself clearly1. But I’ll try to write to the best of my ability, eroding academic jargons and talking not from the perspective of an abstract Knowledge but from my experiences (including all the voices who debate issues of relevance with me from time by time). I hope my reflections2 will be of interest to some of this journal’s readers. This paper aims to look at us. To me, being critical must start from self-criticism. ‘Self-criticism and personal change are not apolitical- refusing to be what the system requires you to be is a profound and powerful form of direct actions’ (Subbuswamy & Patel, 2001, 541-543). …Situating myself In truth, responding to the initial questionnaire was very hard for me, since I hate giving rapid judgements and I am acutely aware that a short response cannot escape generalisation. I did fill in the questionnaire at the end because as I understand the idea was for us to permit the reader to know where we are coming from (politically), in order to comprehend and critique our work more easily. But I feel I need to spend some more time elaborating my answers since some of the terms used in the questionnaire seem ambiguous to me.

./english/281.txt:18:5 Later on in the article I will explain what I mean by reabsorption. 6 The two widely utilised theories in this regard are the American Resource Mobilisation Theory (RTM), which emphasizes the cost-benefit model of SM participation, and the European New Social Movement (NSM) theory, which concentrates more on group identities.

./english/281.txt:29:professionals and other intellectual anti-psychiatry sympathisers with marginalized individuals suffering psychiatric abuse (Antonucci, 1993). Unfortunately the situation is enormously different nowadays since most large demonstrations are often depoliticised. The spontaneous reaction against oppression (globalisation, war, etc.) are supported and frequently manipulated by the institutional left in a desperate attempt to recover some credibility within right-drifting European governments.12 Contemporary institutional powers reconvert the potentiality of protests to their own advantage. A clear example was the Barcelona Summit (2002) where the institutional powers declared, from the outset, their desire to be sympathetic to the marchers’ wishes. Thereby urban space was both militarised and at the same time some local space was conceded by the regional authorities for protest meetings. These zones were protected spaces where NGO and union bureaucrats could express their reformist point of view in collaboration with the manipulative wing of the movement. In this farcical game intellectuals acquired a prominent role, giving papers in the University to show to the rest of us that ‘another word is possible’. The ‘threat’ of an imagined ‘riotous violence’ was then used to justify the burdensome military presence that was deployed to ‘protect’ the city and its peoples (for a debate on that see Miguel Amoroso, 2002). At the same time we find ex-radicals are using the situation to gain recognition as future official negotiators with institutional power. Maybe they are bored of having a marginalized paper and no influence on unfolding events; they use their position to increase their kudos in exchange for future ‘quotas of formal power’ (cotas de poder formal). To this end, most of them deviously call for the ‘democratisation of the protest’ and claim that any form of direct action is violent and will inevitably undermine the subversiveness of Radical Social Movements. As I will describe below, constitutional powers systematically use the strategy of ‘divide and rule’ to create false dichotomies (e.g., the dichotomy between peaceful and violent protestors). They are aided in their efforts by the media who designate ‘responsible’ individuals as the

./english/282.txt:163:Secondly, the 'field' of social movements theory was expanded considerably (on a practical level, this enabled its construction as an 'international' field, since RMT was held to be 'American' and NSMT to be 'European') by the construction of a synthesis on the basis of the belated recognition that the two theories were in fact talking about different things. As Cohen (1985) put it, NSMT offered a 'why' and RMT a 'how'.

./english/282.txt:217:There is then an extent to which Eyerman and Jamison's compartmentalization reproduces - to take an example not entirely at random - much of the postwar history of European Social Democracy, with its attempt to juggle internal 'machine politics' with the 'media gurus' deemed necessary to attract the floating voter.

./english/284.txt:27:The author argues that the asymmetry of the colonial encounter had profoundly influence the “practicality” of the discipline, since it was at the service of the dominant side. The issues of colonial patronage, powerful funders, European audience, etc were the basis for an epistemology that reinforces the authority of the anthropologist and the objectification of the people studied. The anthropological approach was mainly functionalist trusting “a totalizing method (…) and ethnographic holism” (1973:13). Politically, under a façade of scientific neutrality, anthropological material was not subversive but submissive to the colonial enterprise.

./english/284.txt:71:Spivak’s call for a deep engagement with the subaltern leads to a strong epistemological shift. She insists on the persistence of the “epistemic violence” product of the colonial process where Europe is erected as the undetermined Subject holding the explanatory power, and the colonized are relegated to be the Others –the Objects waiting to be explained- whose voice and agency have been stolen. Through recognizing the international division of labor and power, one is able to perceive its impact on the current ‘epistemological world order’. She is offering an epistemology that takes the subaltern into account not only as a case study, but as a source of knowledge and ‘expert’ production-the subaltern must be heard. Among global resistance movements in North America and Europe there is a lot of internal discussion about this topic. Mainly due to the mass media, the ‘spearheading role of southern social movements has been obscured, portraying the ‘anti-globalization movement’ as a negligible affair of ‘white-US and European-middle class kids’. However, in much movement discourse there exists an explicit attempt to recognize the role of grassroots communities from ‘poor’ countries as referential examples of movement building –from the Zapatistas in Chiapas, to the unemployed/piqueteros in Argentina, to peasant women in India- showing a similar effort to revert the canons of expertise. In this process, civil society from Europe and the US become the ‘students’ of their southern ‘teachers’ challenging colonial patterns.

./english/291.txt:3:Provisional European lexicon for free copy, modification, and distribution by the jugglers of life by some precarias a la deriva

./english/291.txt:55:Precarization affects all of us, and however, axes of stratification traverse it. Axes that have to do with gender, ethnicity, age, and with other things. In the first place, with the resources monetary (patrimony) and cognitive (education) that we count on. In second place, with the networks of contacts and of support in which we participate, in order confront unforeseen events, in order to ease uncertainty. In third place, with the capacity for mobility: just as with businesses, the more mobile we are the more possibilities we will have to take advantage of comparative advantages in changing from one position to another, but it's trouble for us, if - due to physical or mental condition, dependents that we care for, lack of material or cognitive resources or roots - we don't know to move at the exact moment, like a lightning bolt! Finally, the degree of precarization has to do with our place of origin and our legal situation: those who have come to Europe from the East and the South of the world in search of a better life, fleeing from situations of exploitation and/or oppression, not only have to cross ever more militarized borders, but also traverse a veritable legal obstacle course (from their status of being "without papers", that is to say, without rights, to achieving full citizenship) imposed by the European policies of immigration control.

./english/291.txt:59:The borders are among the principal enemies of any struggle against the precarization of existence, because they generate veritable local laboral and social apartheids that enclose and precarize the social bond and impregnate it with fear of the other. Creating spaces of mixture, of alliance between precarious with and without papers, from here and from there, is to challenge these borders, subtract their command from them, to produce the common. The European action day of 2April of this year for freedom movement and right of residence is an example of this sense: see madiaq.indymedia.org, www.globalproject.info, and pajol.eu.org.

./english/291.txt:67:Once precarity became a key word for explaining our existence in post modernity and the tensions that traverse it, typologies also began to spring up, that attempted to establish some type of coherence within the galaxy of atypical laboral figures in precarious conditions. One of them, perhaps the most well heard, is that enunciated by the Milanese "chainworkers" (www.chainworkers.org) and, more recently, the Italian pre-cog network - under this perspective, there existed three key figures within the condition of precarity: on one side, the "chainworkers" (or properly precarious), that is to say, all those atypical workers contracted in services and the fordist chains of the commercial public and private tertiary sector, as with flexible material production, who live in conditions of continual blackmail imposed by uncertainty due to the changes in the work contract; on the other side, the "brainworkers" or cognitarios, that is to say, all those that, with low salaries and ever longer work hours, loan their knowledges to the firms of immaterial labor (programming, semiotic production, relational activities, logistics, etc); finally, immigrants, that is, subject to whom the European immigration policies force into totally deregulated frequently illegal and probably informal labor relations, and which constitute, as such, the extreme figure of precarity.

./english/291.txt:93:Because today that monolithic antagonistic subject has been replaced by a diffuse multiplicity of singularities that some dare to call the precariat. In the year 2001, a Milanese colelletive of precarious of the large service sector chains, the Chainworkers (www.chainworkers.org), issued a call for May first what was baptized the Mayday Parade. Its protagonists were atypical workers, remunerated and non-remunerated, with and without papers: these professionals of geographic and vital flights, fixers of temporality, experts in metamorphis who, linked by multiplicity, sought, in the difficult times of existential precarization, to celebrate and visibilize our struggles and dreams. The initiative caught on and was repeated year after year with increasing numbers and increasing expressiveness. Three years later, it was put on in the city of Barcelona as well, and this year anticipates these Maydays in no less than 16 cities European cities (see www.euromayday.org).

./english/291.txt:235:1. This section makes use of a play on words that is not directly translatable into English. The word "ciudadania" means citizenship, as well as having resonances with the word for city, "ciudad." The word for care, "cuidado," is spelled vary similarly. The authors of the text use these similarities to craft the neologism "cuidadania", referring to proposed rights to care analogous to the citizenship rights demanded by some sectors of the European precarity and immigrant/asylum seeker movements. Phrased in terms of a probably outmoded and problematic distinction, it can be said that "ciudadania" is a demand for public recognition and rights and "cuidadania" is a demand for private recognition and rights, though at the same time "cuidadania" is an attack on the separation between public and private. - Tr.

./english/292.txt:207:the European nation-states. In these configurations of the body and of

./english/295.txt:35:That's why I feel we have to fight this. I don't think it would be all that hard for me to find another job. My CV and publications kind of speak for themselves. But if you let something like this stand, it hurts everyone. So when people asked me whether they should start mobilizing for me, I said, go right ahead. And the outpouring of support has been just amazing. We already have 1400 signatures from Argentina to Singapore and the petition has only been up for a couple days now. I hear that the European parliament is about to pass a bill specifically about my case. The teacher's union in the UK is going to consider placing Yale on their "gray list." People are mobilizing all over the world.

./english/298.txt:42:Getting beyond either schizophrenia is a hazardous project that ultimately threatens the faculty’s ‘directorial’ position. In the US, for instance, more than half of tenured faculty in public higher education are unionised. This is not impressive by European standards, but it’s three times the average level of worker organisation in the US. I bring it up because – with a few exceptions – it has thus far been very much an old-style craft unionism, a labour aristocracy that preserves workplace hierarchy, and has been very much complicit in the perma-temping of the university workforce, preserving their own jobs while selling out the future. While those unions are moving slowly to address casualisation, the kind of dramatic change implicit in the notion of a mass intellectuality or even the smaller fraction of mental labourers off the campus, would really imply a reverse of the trajectory we usually imagine: not, ‘how can the university serve as a platform for changing society on behalf of the casualised,’ but ‘how can the casualised hijack the university in their own interest?’

./english/298.txt:77:MB: Well, the classic strategy of creating a ‘surplus’ of workers that has finally hit the American and European professional-managerial class, and the expansion of higher ed – not just internally, but globally – is a big part of that, isn’t it? The US business papers have been full of panicky articles about the ‘new’ outsourcing ‘crisis’ of white-collar work (engineering, programming, design). It wasn’t a ‘crisis’ when outsourcing referred only to manufacturing. The outsourcing of professional and managerial labour (even the reading of CAT scans performed in the US or UK by Indian physicians) puts a lot of pressure on the (formerly) national frames of higher ed/cultural capitalism.

./english/299.txt:213:The second aspect of this crisis, the absence of public service, has to do with the development of the so-called ≥Mediterranean≤ welfare State, called åMediterraneanπ because it sounds nicer than årudimentaryπ or åfamilyistπ. This means that reproduction is in the hands of women, frequently in the ådouble work-dayπ regime, and that only in the absence of a woman will the State intervene. Services are, especially in the field of care, a complement to the action of women. Homes with resources will contract another woman, probably immigrant, to externalize part of this work. And this is where other dimensions enter into play, like immigration regulations: the fact, for example, that migration law rests upon discriminatory phenomena that are unjustifiable from any Euro-orthodox point of view such as the pre-assignation by law of certain jobs (domestic service) to certain population groups (foreign women) in function of their sex and their condition as aliens. If all those European declarations really held any water these phenomena would be considered attacks against human rights.

./english/303.txt:30:My own research explores the cultural logic and politics of transnational networking among anti-corporate globalization activists based in Barcelona. I am interested in how transnational networks like Peoples Global Action or the World Social Forum are built and constructed, and how activists generate emotional energy, while physically representing alternative networks through embodied political praxis during mass direct actions. Through militant ethnography I hope to shed light on the concrete processes through which activists can build more effective and sustainable movement networks. My specific project thus involved long-term participant observation with the international working group of the Barcelona-based Movement for Global Resistance (MRG), a broad network involving squatters, Zapatista support activists, anti-debt campaigners, radical ecologists, and other collectives. Between June 2001 and September 2002, I actively participated in action planning and coordination around mobilizations in Barcelona, Genoa, Brussels, Madrid, and Seville, while I had previously taken part in mass actions in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Prague. Moreover, since MRG was a European convener of PGA and many activists were also actively involved in the Social Forum process, I was also able to help organize PGA and WSF-related gatherings in Barcelona, Leiden, and Porto Alegre.

./english/306.txt:6:Presented at Gender and Power in the New Europe, the 5th European Feminist Research Conference. August 20-24, 2003 Lund University, Sweden

./english/312.txt:4:A call for a European network of precarious/temporary researchers and for the free circulation of knowledge

./english/312.txt:26:Second, the internationalisation of the higher education system proceeds relentlessly at the level of the European Union. This process takes place, on the one hand, through the increasing relevance of the European research projects and the emphasis laid on ‘networking’ amongst research centres and university departments at a supra-national level (cf. the periodical Framework Programmes; the Research Training Networks, the European doctorates etc.). Institutional collaboration is established among the abovementioned ‘centres of excellence’, while those that are excluded from these networks are considered as ‘marginal’ or, simply, the ‘Others’. On the other hand, the Europeanisation of the higher education system takes place through a more intense co-operation amongst national governments in the realm of higher education policies (see the inter-governmental conferences held in Paris, Prague and Bologna since 1998 onwards) . This co-operation has had particularly relevant effects on the standardisation of university degrees (i.e. the 3+2 degree and the ‘credit system’). These developments have strongly affected learning mechanisms in European universities, forcing university students to improve their productivity and to conform their personal attitudes and values to an increasingly ‘competitive environment’.

./english/312.txt:30:The last months have seen the development of movements asserting the right to public research in many European countries. The movement of ‘precarious researchers’ in Italy and the ‘sauvons la recherche movement’ in France have been the most visible in Europe, but there has been some form of mobilisation also in other European countries such as Britain and Spain. What is new and especially noteworthy in all these mobilisations is the central role played in them by the younger generations of researchers. However, what is still missing in such movements is the formulation of a supra-national, European perspective on the issue of scientific research. Europe appears to be viewed as a space of constrictions and limitations, a perception that can be explained in light of the developments described above, rather than as a space of self-organisation and collective mobilisation for the less powerful actors within the scholarly and academic community.

./english/312.txt:32:For all these reasons, we particularly feel the urgency of creating a European Network of Precarious/Temporary Researchers. A network of this kind would be committed:

./english/312.txt:38:- to defending and asserting the rights of temporary researchers, students and, generally, of knowledge workers at European level.

./english/312.txt:40:The London Social Forum represents a challenging opportunity for a first exchange of experiences and contacts, from which a future meeting (in December or January) might arise in the form of a European Forum specially dedicated to the issues of research and knowledge. We thus propose to set up a web mailing-list to debate and prepare this forum. We strongly believe, however, that the building of a post-national space of mobilisation and debate is a goal that has to be pursued now, hic et nunc, without waiting for the ‘great event’ and starting instead from the day-to-day relationships that have been already established amongst individuals and groups at the European level. For this reason, we ask everybody to make these pages circulate freely amongst all those that are or might be interested in the accomplishment of such a project.

./english/313.txt:57:Concerning the Social Forums process specifically the question start to be faced appearing new subjects. Concretely, there is active the Social Forums (SF) Memory working group depending on the World social forum International committee. A global space to coordinate and facilitate the Social Forums archive and systematize initiatives and to establish a protocol of memory coming from each forum. It had developed a rich process of “consulta”/survey to define the V WSF main themes of the program, exploring on the participant methodologist to the organization of the Forum. And its recent European partner, the European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the European Social Forum (ESF) process, that it is a working group depending on the European ESF assembly. There is also the work developed to systematize the contents of debates and seminars at the Paris ESF 2003 and the Florence one. Unfortunately the London ESF organizational system doesn’t allows to have many expectative on the documenting of the London ESF by the UK organisers committee and the ESF office.

./english/313.txt:78:The Guide core is build useful “networking tools” such as a Directory and addresses of the collectives and organisations which have participated to the ESFs of Florence, Paris, London, organized by ambits of actuation and regions and a Map of the European networks developed within and around the ESF process. The level of utility could be defining as the capacity to grown the identification of actors and resources for the action and reflection for social transformation of the use-builders of the Guide.

./english/313.txt:79:It also aimed to reinforce the action research/investigaction as a new antagonistic commitment through finalised to the creation of a confluence space for common action of the activist research/investigaction within the social movements at the European level. For this reason it will be curried out by a network of groups and centres of research, the Action research network for the ESF confluence process, which develop the research. The Guide will also contain a specific Map/directory of groups which are producing research within and around the new movements in Europe.

./english/313.txt:84:Chronological basic map of European mobilisations

./english/313.txt:85:Map of web-bibliographic articles on the European confluence processes, articles of reflection about the new social movements and the new confluence spaces in Europe and articles on the data and the new knowledge generated by the Guide itself, as a tool of reflection and debate

./english/313.txt:88:The main methods are questionnaires to organizations, web search and systematizing of information sources generated by the ESFs, for example, the main information source for the European directory is the registration databases for the ESFs and the parallel spaces.

./english/313.txt:89:It is a tool in the service first of all of the ESF confluence process: helping the self-organization of the ESF themselves as well as the creation of European and transnational networks. It mean to produce knowledge and more self-consciousness among the protagonists of the ESF process; and more focused actions and strategies for the future.

./english/313.txt:115:There are many research groups keeping awake on the globalizations mechanism on the political institutions, like the reach develop by State Watch and also putting the accent into economical aspects, like Corporate European Observatory CEO, or the effects of the GMO, convening campaigns with the research, like ASEED, or the research for the denounce of regions doing very hard structural violence.

./english/313.txt:165:European group for systematization and archiving the information, knowledge and communication generated by the ESF process working group depending on the European ESF assembly:

./english/315.txt:3:Radical Theory Workshop @ the 2nd European Social Forum: some notes

./english/315.txt:11:As part of the European Social Forum, we hope to establish an international network of intellectuals/activists who are interested in the relationship between new theories and new forms of politics. How can we move beyond a simplistic opposition to representative politics? How can the network form contaminate the institutional spaces in which a vast number of people live and work? How can we relate the analysis of new forms of power with experimentation in political practice?

./english/315.txt:15:But people kept on coming. By an hour later all the chairs were taken, and our intimate circle had expanded to fill the periphery of the room. The last time I took a note of numbers there were more than 50 people (37 men, 24 women), from a range of European countries (Finland, Denmark, Italy, France, Germany, Holland, the UK, Yugoslavia – apologies if I’ve missed any), as well as a few folk from North America. That such a diverse collection of individuals - streetwise activists, university lecturers, performance artists, students – should be drawn to a meeting entitled ‘Radical Theory’ in itself reflects a contemporary blurring of boundaries between the conventional (and impossible) theory/practice divide. Add to that the range of academic disciplinary backgrounds represented – cultural studies, organisation studies, anthropology, ecology, geography, media studies, political science, art, performance, critical theory (anything else?) - and we were at the brink of finding ourselves either a melting pot of radical intellectual activist potential, or an incoherent mess.

./english/315.txt:61:‘This list was born during the European Social Forum in Paris. The group intends to publish a "Radical Theory Journal" which will be neither academic, nor activist. It will try to create a tension laden and dynamic new form of theory informed by action that arises from, helps to understand and bring benefit to the altermondialiste movements. This list is the working forum for the journal.’

./english/315.txt:67:An explicit intention is to establish a space for a longer and more structured ‘Radical Theory Forum’ to coincide with, or be part of, the next European Social Forum, which is to be held in London in 2004. Possibilities for participation in the organising process of the next ESF were also raised, and details for the next preparatory meeting were flagged up at the workshop (13th-14th December).

./english/316.txt:84:If we compare the last major wave of worldwide protest, symbolised by 1968, we have to recognise that the movements of that period were parallel rather than linked. Despite all the similarities, there appears to have been little direct contact or movement communication between Paris and Prague, between the European protests/uprisings and those of Dakar, Tokyo or Mexico City. Neither participant accounts nor contemporary ones really claim such. (Ali and Watkins 1998, Carr 1998, Erickson 2002, Halliday 1969, Koning 1988:192).

./english/316.txt:92:What was needed, for a meaningfully alternative internationalism to take shape was the revolution within capitalism caused by the combination of globalisation and informatisation. The nature of this alternative may be at least suggested by the world’s biggest and most widespread (if unsuccessful) protest demonstration, the anti-war protest of February 15-16, 2003. This had been called for at the European Social Forum of 2002 and echoed at WSF 2003. The provocation here was clearly the new kind of global war, launched by the most conservative powers in the North. But the coordination of the protest was now largely dependent on dozens of ‘alternative’ websites and lists. It may have been further supported by traditional anti-war and anti-imperialist elements within the movement, but it would surely have been impossible without the web. (Ashman 2003, Boyd 2003, Castells 1996-8).

./english/316.txt:106:Marx and Engels were excited by the communicational impact of national railways and of the telegraph as it became trans-European. In power, Lenin declared that ‘Cinema for us is the most important of arts’: silent film could communicate across the literacy and language barriers. 20th century Communist internationalism was sensitive to the area of communications and culture, one of its most creative spirits declaring, notably, that ‘communications are the nervous system of ...internationalism and human solidarity’ (Mariátegui 1973/1923). In the 1920s, the Moscow-based Third International sponsored a multitude of often-innovatory cultural and communicational forms, both popular and avantgarde, from Germany to India and Japan. (Billington 1980, Mattelart and Siegelbaum 1983)

./english/319.txt:19:The European Preparatory Assembly

./english/319.txt:20:While sharing the concerns about the role of Local Social Fora, we must not forget that the ESF is not a national event/process and it is on the European level that decisions are taken. Quite often in the run up to London, decisions were taken here, only to be overturned in the European assembly. I don’t see the choice of the host country as particularly important, and I could also argue that having the ESF in a country without a high level of grassroots mobilization could kick-start and facilitate such a development (even within the wider region, e.g. the Balkans, Central Europe etc).

./english/319.txt:21: The point, therefore, is to enhance democracy, representation and diversity on the European level and enable grassroots groups to get fully involved. Big organizations are advantageously resourced to participate consistently while smaller groups miss out on that empowering process. On-line discussion and consultation can go some way in addressing this imbalance, as could a more inclusive co-ordination on the national level.

./english/323.txt:6:theory’, as it took place on the mailing list of the NextGENDERation–a European network of students

./english/323.txt:15:European Social Forum in Florence, for a recuperation of feminist, antiracist and queer genealogies

./english/323.txt:26:focused on, but not limited to, the European context, a mailing list, set up in 1998, provided a

./english/323.txt:91:resonate in a similar way in a European context, where Women’s Studies as a field of critical

./english/323.txt:173:well as European contexts, and needs to be addressed critically, is the perseverance of the

./english/323.txt:210:us to make a feminist intervention at the European Social Forum (ESF) in Florence last year.

./english/323.txt:246:Borders Make: (Il)legality, Migration and Trafficking in Italy among ‘Eastern’ European Women in

./english/323.txt:250:NextGENDERation workshop ‘Missing Links’ at the European Social Forum in Florence, 2002. For

./english/323.txt:254:the Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies and The European Journal of Women's Studies, and has recently

./english/323.txt:258:organisers of the NextGENDERation workshop ‘Missing Links’ at the European Social Forum in

./english/325.txt:18:When the important role of the student movement and the autonomous women’s movement diminished in the 1980’s in Europe –from this time on the feminist (and gay and lesbian) movements became more and more institutionalised -, the role of the squatters movement increased. Marxist ideas disappeared and anarchists’ notions got the upper hand. Especially in the Netherlands, the government bought different squat buildings after 1982, by which the threat of eviction disappeared and all kinds of alternative cultural and political initiatives could arise (Duivenvoorden 2000). Projects, little industries and services started which form the basis of the typical squat subculture: grocery stores, bookshops, clothes shops, hairdressers, tool rentals, bike repair shops, health projects, feminist centres, galleries, music studios, free radios etc. ‘Back then it was no problem at all to live in what might be called a squatted zone for almost 24 hours a day; even on holiday you could travel to squats in other European countries’ (Kallenberg, 2001: 92-93). But by the end of the 1980s things changed. Because of new ‘anti-squat’ legislation, from this time on house owners could easily evict the squatters, and so nowadays a lot of squats exist for a few months only. Therefore it is harder to create concert halls, restaurants, shops and other provisions. Some groups choose to move into legalized squats, organizing in these their cooperative of the ‘Volkskeuken’ (People’s Kitchen, vegan food for a few euros), their squatting consulting centres, info café’s etc. Another reason why most of the workshops and other provisions quitted or chose a legal format is that the social services no longer tolerate extended unemployment, nor useful or pleasant voluntary work being done on full unemployment benefit. Squatters are idealistic but also ‘strategic’: in order to survive, they constantly have to use the possibilities the system unintentionally offers them.

./english/325.txt:75:In November 1999, after the big struggles in Seattle, a social movement came into the limelight that in the media was quickly labelled as the anti-globalisation movement and was described as something totally new. But it is a myth to think this movement suddenly descended from the sky in Seattle, just as it is a myth that the activists had suddenly discovered a new theme, that the movement only consists of people from the rich Western countries and that the activists are against globalisation (Van Stokrom 2002: 37). Before Seattle all kinds of action groups, started in the ‘developing’ world of the South (Kingsnorth 2003: 172-173; 312) and connected with movements in the North, were fighting against the global powers of the World Bank (Berlin 1988, Madrid 1994), the IMF, the European Union (1989-1992, 1997) etc. Older activists, particularly those mobilized around “Jubilee 2000” or affiliated with peace movement organizations like the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, traced their opposition back to the 1980s mobilizations around third-world debt and its relations to conflict and economic justice in Central America and other developing regions (Smith, 2001: 4).

./english/331.txt:76:Europe has mature and stable economies built on a long history of social democracy. Hutton argues that beneath European political values lies a conception of religion and morality that is crucially different to the evangelical, personalised Protestant morality of US conservatism: it is reconciled with the twin forces of reason and science to underpin an ‘infrastructure of justice’ (2002:45). In Europe, morality in the public sphere is about fairness and cannot be reduced merely to a function of personal choice.

./english/332.txt:1:European Social Forum: A crisis of direction

./english/332.txt:9:So why has the ESF failed to create a fighting body, a trans-European co-ordination, to bring together the struggles and encourage the setting up organs of struggle – locally and nationally - throughout Europe? Why has it failed to make itself into a consciously anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist assembly?

./english/332.txt:11:The answer is straightforward. It was blocked by the informal and unaccountable leadership of the “process”. This leadership is made up of thinly disguised representatives of the European Left Parties and members of the Fourth International, the International Socialist Tendency and other far-left groups.

./english/332.txt:13:Since the Italian elections Rifondazione Comunista has entered a bourgeois government - a government headed by Romano Prodi - one of the central architects of the Lisbon Agenda and the whole project of building a strengthened European imperialist super state. Hence the sending of Italian troops to Lebanon and their continued presence in Afghanistan with the full and enthusiastic support of Rifondazione Comunista.

./english/332.txt:15:The most important sections of the European Left Party like the PDS in Germany and the PCF in France are exercising or seeking office on the same basis - i.e. a coalition with the “social liberal” parties and we would add social imperialist parties, like the SPD (Germany), DS (Italy), SP (France), to take forward the European super state project.

./english/332.txt:18:That is why these parties consciously and deliberately want to prevent the ESF becoming a fighting body, which could fight their “reform” policies, their support for imperialist intervention and occupation if only it can be given a United Nations fig leaf. Allied to the reformist apparatuses of the European Left are the bureaucracy’s of the European Trade Unions and NGOs like ATTAC, who want to rescue the existing capitalist system via reforms, rather than fight it to overthrow it.

./english/332.txt:24:The Fourth International hoped that they could “regroup” with the left reformists, who could be cajoled into an electoral block (the European Anticapitalist Left) with diplomatic phrases, plus their services as grassroots organisers and campaigners. This block, they believed, would win substantial numbers of seats in the European and national parliaments. Alas the ELP sections wanted the spoils of office not the duties of opposition. Now the Fourth International’s hopes lie in ruins – even in France. The left reformists of the RC have entered a bourgeois government, continuing the occupation and butchering of the Iraqi and Afghan people, disarming Hezbollah and pressing on with a neo-liberal cuts budget against the working class at home. The PCF will do exactly the same, if it can form a government with the Socialist Party.

./english/332.txt:34:No to European Imperialism. No to fortress Europe. For the right of self-determination – including independent statehood- for all peoples in Europe. For full citizens rights for all who live in Europe. Down the European Military Union. Not a Euro, not a person for the EU-army. Down with the security laws of the EU. Scrap the “terrorist” list of the EU!

./english/332.txt:35:No to the European neoliberal offensive on the working class. For co-ordinated action against the implementation of the Lisbon agenda. For a European wide campaign and working class action to raise workers rights to the highest standard ensure a 35-hour week throughout the continent. For co-ordinated strike action against closures and neo-liberal attacks by the EU and the bosses.

./english/332.txt:37:In order create this united struggle, the EPA has to take the initiative to bring together a co-ordination of the already existing struggles and initiatives. It has to invite them for a European assembly early in 2007 and make this a central focus of the counter summit in Rostock against the G8.

./english/332.txt:41:But obviously the EPA and the ESF have to go beyond this if they want to have a future. They have to address what we fight for. Another European reformism, which will end up in another neo-liberal government or another round of rotten compromises with the bosses? Or for a United Socialist States of Europe, fighting for the over-through of the capitalist and imperialist system via world revolution?

./english/332.txt:43:We propose that the EPA mobilises on a European level against the G8 in Rostock in June 2007. We propose it does so in order to get the largest and most militant action possible against the summit with the aim of shutting it down.

./english/337.txt:1:Attac European Network

./english/337.txt:4:Contribution to the European Preparatory Assembly of the European Social Forum

./english/337.txt:15:First of all, we would like to stress the fact that we consider the ESF process to be one of the most important and indispensable spaces for European networking activities. The ESF process supports the building of a European space for « social movements ». In this space, our collective actors can exchange knowledge and weave links in order to elaborate alternatives to the neoliberal agenda. This space is also a privileged tool – not the only one - to build common mobilizations (G8, European Summit for 2007…). It stimulates the convergence of diversity. This process is clearly enriching for all of us (at least, for those of us who can directly take part in this process). There's hardly any other space that is capable of bringing together so many heterogeneous political actors, and without the ESF process political discussions would continue to be restricted either in an exclusively national framework or in the rather formal networks of traditional political parties, unions, large NGOs and their international co-operation.

./english/337.txt:17:The fourth ESF took place in Athens. From our point of view, this Forum was a good one: well organised, it has shown that the end of the « traditional » big plenaries (let’s say big meetings) had a positive effect on the event. This battle was useful. Another one has to be led : how to deal with the presence of political parties ? At this stage, the situation is still a caricature. We will come back later to this crucial point. Among the positive points of this Forum, we would like to underline the fact that the European issues and economic and social ones seem to be increasingly debated in the different activities.

./english/337.txt:24:A very encouraging development within the ESF process is the increasing ability of the different networks to cooperate on a European level. This development indicates a change in the process. It must be taken into account.

./english/337.txt:67:European Social Forum

./english/337.txt:80:Each European preparatory assembly is organised by a European working group including the EPA host country, the ESF host country (Greece), and the host country of the previous EPA. This group is commissioned to draw up beforehand and circulate on ESF electronic lists a draft agenda for the EPA meetings, to organise the chairing and the moderating of the EPA meetings, to ensure that the decisions are reported and circulated (including the list of attending organisations).

./english/337.txt:145:Georgios Karatsioubanis (European Network of Democratic Youth Left)

./english/339.txt:1:Assessing the program of 4th European Social Forum

./english/339.txt:3:The fact that approximately 300 meetings were held in Athens from 4th-7th May 2006 and were organised by hundreds collectives from all over Europe shows that the European Social Forum is the biggest and most pluralist European laboratory of radical ideas. The variety of the topics that were discussed in the European Social Forum proves not only the vigour, but also the depth of its reflections. Therefore, it is confirmed that the European Social Forum is neither a meeting point of various resistance groups nor a body for the international co-ordination of movements. Having contributed to the collective process of the configuration of its program and having a clear view of the way it was materialised we have to make the following observations:

./english/339.txt:4:1.The overall program of 4th European Social Forum reflected a movement that is mass and radical. The seminars and the workshops of the Forum demonstrated the anger and the hope of the people who fight in Europe against war, neoliberalism and racism.

./english/339.txt:5:2.We consider that the program of Athens respected the pluralist character of the European Social Forum. After a long period of disputes and criticisms, it was proved again that the Forum is open to all the viewpoints that are developed in the movements. Moreover, it was evident that it constitutes a process where every collective is given the space it needs independently of its size.

./english/339.txt:7:4.In Athens, we made small, albeit important, steps towards building truly European resistance networks. Furthermore, there were seminars that were attended by the majority of the people who dealt with a specific matter (e.g. precarious employment) and for the first time there were concrete results (e.g. public services).

./english/339.txt:9:6.The national particularities and the current political occurence in each country were again underestimated when the time had come for the European mobilisations. Neither the Forum in his totality, nor the individual networks can function ignoring the fact that a European mobilisation cannot be organised with an administrative decision from above without a prior consultation process in a national level.

./english/339.txt:10:7.Although at this moment it is impossible to organise the so-called "assemblies", every national organising committee should be given the chance to shape the events that would facilitate the connection of the European Social Forum with the local society.

./english/340.txt:3:For all of us who worked in the Logistics Committee it was a great challenge to organise the 4th European Social Forum. With a view to confirm our initial argument that a small country, “far away” from the centre of Europe, can and should try to organise successfully the European Forum, we worked for months with the aim to organise a hospitable, open, mass and radical Social Forum, that in terms of "social territory" will bear in all its aspects the constituents of the "other" world we fight for.

./english/340.txt:9:To sum up, one of the most important accomplishments of the 4th European Social Forum was the success of Babels Greece in providing translation and interpretation as well as the success of the ALIS group that overcoming even the last minute difficulties collaborated with us and managed to operate an original anti-commercial system of simultaneous translation, proving thus the positive value of such a step.

./english/340.txt:10:Last but not least, we estimate that the work and the effort of the Network of Culture, with which we collaborated closely throughout the process, played a major role in the free participation of artists from all the fields of art and gave new features in the process by showing that the culture is a field of equivalent priority in the European movements.

./english/341.txt:6:A European network was built for providing an alternative response of the Trade Unions to the Lisboa criteria as far as employment and the working relations are concerned, which has already met.

./english/341.txt:8:A European network was built for the defence of civil services, which already met in Geniva on 26th –27th October 2006 and is currently preparing a European meeting for the defence of civil services that will be held in 2007 in Thessaloniki or in Newscastle.

./english/341.txt:9:The European Trade-Union Confederation (ETUC) and forty more confederations and sectory federations from Europe participated in the seminars or had a stand in the 4th ESF.

./english/341.txt:10:One day before the beginning of the 4th ESF, ETUC carried out a meeting concerning the consequences of globalization for the workers and all the European Confederations that are its members participated in it.

./english/342.txt:3: Some of the objectives that the European Assembly had put forward for the social and geographical enlargement of the forums were met in the 4th ESF. In more detail, the mass participation of —more than 2,0001— activists from the countries of the former Eastern Europe and from Turkey, the social profile of the participants from the above-mentioned countries (members of social and political organizations, ecological movements and workers’ associations, feminists, unemployed, people who experienced the Forum for the first time), as well as the “average age” of the delegations prove that the Forum might not only concern westerners, “citizens of the world” with the financial means to travel and to intervene, but also socially, politically and culturally wider groups. This orientation was given great importance by the overall political framework, which was the axis of the forum —although its building process was not always “peaceful”—, a framework that functioned as a beacon for the planning of the Program group, the Logistics group and the Finance’s group. To make a long story short, the decision to organize a Forum, that would be cheap, independent from state authorities, pluralist and open, with the aim to enlarge the participation in the movements formed the political point of the 4th ESF.

./english/342.txt:7:1.Solidarity Fund (S.F.). The Solidarity fund motivated all those people who wished to participate but were unable to do so, either because they lacked the financial means or because they could not find the necessary funds. There were no criteria (political or of any other kind) for the financial support of delegations and individuals, who wished to be included in the solidarity fund. Every person who asked us to cover the expenses —either full or by half— of their transport, accommodation (in hotels or in other spaces) and free feeding within the Forum was included in the S.F. Furthermore, there was provision for free feeding and accommodation for those people who arrived at the forum and were not included in the delegations or in those who had already registered. The total ammount that was allocated to these delegations was 69,280 euros (Eastern/ Central European countries) and about 20,000 euros to the participants from the Middle East. Undoubtedly, the undertaking of the S.F. has a long way to go. It is crucial to investigate and to systematize the raising of resources, not only in view of a ESF; such a practice should be the constant concern of a movement, avoiding though the financial involvement of state. Moreover, it is worthwhile to find ways to make the S.F. widely known so that not only those who have participated in the Forum process know about it. Finally, through the process of exchange and mingling with our companions it would be advisable to transfer the message that the “western organizing committees” are not committees of the “financially robust”, but of ordinary activists against the neo-liberal globalization.

./english/342.txt:8:2.Meetings in the countries of Eastern Europe, Turkey and Middle East. The organizations of ESF meetings and events with the collaboration of the local forums or other movements in the above-mentioned countries, apart from the political and personal benefits that provided to those who participated, are major and decisive steps towards the relative success of the following: a. The connection of the local resistances with the European mobilizations against neo-liberal globalization. b. The essential political dialogue and the effort to lay out common political initiatives among countries that have followed different paces and courses of integration in E.U. and among movements with different political traditions. Of course, such an effort of compatibility and accord in a political level seems extremely difficult even to the movements of “Western Europe”.

./english/343.txt:65:European March Against Unemployment

./english/343.txt:198:Party of the european left

./english/343.txt:199:info@european-left.org

./english/343.txt:228:Endyl- European Network of Democratic Young Left

./english/343.txt:251:liberte.gregorio@european-left.org

./english/344.txt:17:Firstly, what is taking place here represents a largely administrative unification between two Western European-based international trade union centres of the social-reformist tradition. These are the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions/Global Unions (ICFTU/GU) and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL).

./english/344.txt:19:Given the serious effects on them of neo-liberalism and globalisation – in both membership and financial terms – this makes managerial sense. The ICFTU (1949), inheritor of the international Social-Democratic tradition, is here the major partner, claiming some 150 million members. The WCL (1968) descends from the International Federation of Christian Trade Unions (1920), is of Social-Catholic inspiration, and claims some 26 million – largely in Latin America. (The WCL wildly exaggerates its own membership figures. It has one or two major West European affiliates, but in the South is to a large extent a development project of West-European Christian Democracy, without whose funding it would collapse).

./english/344.txt:21:Other international organisations involved, such as the European Trade Union Confederation (1974) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (TUAC 1948). are similarly social-reformist and based in Western Europe. The unification also involves the trade-specific internationals (e.g. public service or agriculture) of the ICFTU and WCL. Some of these have already merged. However, these further complicate the merger. The Global Union Federations associated with the ICFTU in the Global Unions network, are much older than, and autonomous from, the ICFTU. Those of the WCL are merely departments. The WCL, moreover, seems reluctant to have the global or regional merger reaching down to national level. The role of the ETUC in the whole process needs emphasis for two reasons. Firstly, it provides an explicit or implicit model of a unified union body, being formally autonomous from the existing international centres and having long included national unions of both the Communist and Catholic tradition (Moreno 2005). Secondly, however, it is itself self-subordinated to the European Union and thus to an elite social accord of problematic value. This has been extensively argued by veteran left labour specialist, Richard Hyman:

./english/344.txt:23:With the advent of labour diplomacy, a distinctive model of international trade union bureaucratisation became the line of least resistance. We may note, in this context, that the double-edged certification of labour as a 'social partner' within the institutions of the European Union has had analogous effects: providing recognition and material resources, but incorporating the ETUC within an elite policy community largely detached from those it claims to represent. (Hyman 2002)

./english/344.txt:55:And a highly-experienced and qualified European observer commented:

./english/344.txt:59:I eventually found the proposed politics of the new international, along with its proposed name, in a document buried on the website of the World Confederation of Labour (2006). I would characterise this policy as somewhat broader, though hardly more radical, than a human rights policy. I characterise it as a ‘global neo-Keynesianism’. By this I mean the promotion at global level of the old West-European model of national welfare capitalism. Two immediate and obvious challenges to this are: 1) In so far as Keynesianism was successful within nation states, what argument or evidence (as contrasted with a hope or dream) is there for its possible success at global level? and 2) given that even powerful unions were unable to prevent the destruction of this model at national level, what evidence or argument is there that a dramatically weakened international movement could establish it at global level? The answer that its promoters might provide lie, perhaps, in an even greater dependency on the ILO (itself seriously marginalised by neo-liberal globalisation) than I had previously thought. Reference to the global justice movement, on the other hand, is both brief and obscure. This new international, in other words, appears to be appealing less to the world’s workers, major new social movements and global civil society than to hypothetical patrons above.

./english/344.txt:85:Hyman, Richard. 2005. ‘Trade Unions and the Politics of the European Social Model’, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 9-40

./english/347.txt:1:European Social Forum Preparatory Assembly- the Left Organises

./english/347.txt:4:On November 3 -5 150 delegates from all over Europe met in Frankfurt for the first meeting of the “Preparatory Assembly” of the European Social Forum. Martin Suchanek of Arbeitermacht, German section of the League for the Fifth International, was there. The EPA was assembled to discuss the results of the fourth European Social Forum held in Athens in June this year and the way forward for the anti capitalist movement. Though as usual the main organisations from France, Italy and Germany talked-out any serious proposals for change in its structure, its capacity to take concerted action against neoliberalism and war, the growth of forces calling for change and willing to fight for it was a real step forward.

./english/347.txt:8:All the major forces in the ESF were present. On the right wing, the European Left Party, the trade union bureaucrats, the NGOs and Attac, There were also the more unions like COBAS from Italy.

./english/347.txt:26:Speakers from the “European Confederation of Oppressed Immigrants” or the Turkish newspaper “Revolutionary Proletariat” also argued that the ESF (and the EPA) had to become organs to co-ordinate struggles and take them forward rather than remain just talking shops.

./english/347.txt:42:Here one could see, the real existing balance of forces in the EPAs and ESFs on show. The whole question of transparency is used to avoid political conflict and bore people to death with vacuous debates on “method”. So an open “preparatory meeting” for the next Preparatory Assembly will take place in January. It will decide the exact date and venue of the EPA. This will meet again at the end of March 2007 to decide on the location of the next European Social Forum. The three candidates for holding its are Austria, Denmark-Sweden and Portugal.

./english/347.txt:54:The problem is that as the crisis for European imperialist project, in part caused by the anti-globalist and anticapitalist movement, deepens the call has gone out from sections of the European ruling class to co-opt some of the “left” reformist parties that have played a big role in the ESF. The capitalists support new versions of the popular front – like L’Unione in Italy - and use them to derail, contain or split the resistance and radicalisation of the masses. Obviously, one cannot have a “united” movement, with one part in government attacking the other part on the street resisting.

./english/356.txt:1:Report from the European local Social Forum network meeting in Frankfurt

./english/356.txt:29:to discuss, elaborate, decide actions at the European and World level if we

./english/356.txt:62:decisions of the global and European assembly of movements can be

./english/358.txt:16:A European Assembly will be held in Paris on February 10/11 2007, at which a final discussion on the Charter will be held if some points remain outstanding (on Saturday afternoon). On Sunday morning, the Assembly will adopt the project of the Charter.

./english/359.txt:95:(4) Have the decision-making leadership at each higher level chosen, at least in considerable part, by the local forums that are within the higher entity. Italy's national forum leadership is chosen by the smaller local forums in Italy. The European forum's leadership is chosen by the national forums within Europe, and similarly elsewhere.

./english/360.txt:95:(4) Have the decision-making leadership at each higher level chosen, at least in considerable part, by the local forums that are within the higher entity. Italy's national forum leadership is chosen by the smaller local forums in Italy. The European forum's leadership is chosen by the national forums within Europe, and similarly elsewhere.

./english/362.txt:83:I am suggesting - as I said at the WSF in Porto Allegre, at the Egyptian Social Forum in Cairo, and at the ASF - that capitalism has entered a new phase, of a higher level of centralisation of capital. This has laid the basis for the solidarity of capitalist interests at the global level. During Lenin's time, before the First World War, and continuing till about 30 to 40 years ago (I shall not put a date to it), monopoly capital needed a large market that could be accessed as an empire. A capitalist centre or metropolis with a number of colonies or areas of interests was thus the norm. That was the basis on which rivalries among the imperialist powers existed - on the sharing or re-shaping of colonies and the control of the global system. Now it is being said - not only by us, but by the bosses of big business - that in order to be efficient, transnational corporations (TNC) need to access markets on a global scale. They cannot be successful even if they enjoy overwhelming market shares of even the big regional markets such as the European Union or in North America or other parts of the global market. Therefore, the globe is the terrain on which competition among them is fought out.

./english/362.txt:91:I would like to think I am right, without appearing to be arrogant. But yes, the centre of gravity has moved from inside nations to somewhere else. This has happened to all the nations - to the U.S., the European nations, and to the big and small nations of the Third World. This change is related to the size of dominant capital, which is global in scale. Since these are major decision makers, they cannot be submitted to a national logic. That creates problems. The issue was discussed at the European Social Forum, in Florence. Many people felt that a new Europe should be built. They said that a political Europe was needed, not necessarily with a unified state because, for historical reasons, there are nations with a long history of a common language and culture. Some suggested a kind of confederation. The point is that such a Europe cannot be based only on a common market; it also has to have a common political reality. Another Europe, like another Asia, is possible. This new Europe ought to be based on a social compromise between capital (because we cannot imagine the end of capital immediately) and labour and other popular classes. But I also believe we cannot achieve this other Europe without changing its relationship to the South. Europe cannot change if it continues to be a partner in the collective imperialist system.

./english/363.txt:41:These "world-revolutionary moments" would include the "Atlantic Revolutions" that gave birth to the USA and republican France in the late 18th century; the independence movements of Latin America in the early 19th century; that "proto-1968" which happened in 1848 and underlies much of contemporary European nationalism; the revolutionary flowering at the end of World War II in which the Soviet Union and independent Ireland were born, and far more was attempted (Mitchell 1970); the "high tide" of the European Resistance in 1944 (Thompson 1982); 1968 itself, and perhaps, too, the present moment, or one not too far off.

./english/363.txt:53:These three programmes, in the long years of defeat, have very different histories and very different spaces of survival: very schematically, these were found in alternative cultures oscillating between criminalisation (McKay 1996) and co-optation (Storey 1994) for the "1967 project"; in urban "temporary autonomous zones" (Bey 1991) where the "1968 project" could still generate concrete anti-authoritarian projects, particularly in west European metropoles (Katsiaficas 1997, Ruggiero 2001); and ultimately in a certain kind of left intelligentsia for the "1969 project", which could turn its hard-won skills into academic cultural capital and the skills of institutional infighting.

./english/363.txt:131:That would not of course be a universal perception of what is happening among community activists (not all of whom see themselves as activists), and of course there are widespread forms of "consensual" community development in other parts of Irish society which are much less radical. But the fact remains that across working-class Ireland something remarkable is happening, not just in Irish terms but in European and perhaps global terms. If "the new movement" is to have an effect in Ireland it will need to make links here; but it is hard to envisage what that might mean in practice.

./english/364.txt:27:Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city. Located in one of Brazil’s more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and populated by people mainly of European stock, this city of 1.2 million people is First World when it comes to infrastructure and social services. In fact, it ranks near the very top of the country’s "quality of life" index.

./english/365.txt:66:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 18 Both the strengths and weaknesses of loosely linked, ideologically thin networks are illustrated in the permanent campaign against Microsoft. This campaign began with labor activism in the early 1990s, and has since expanded to include trade, consumer protection, product innovation and many other issues, with campaign fronts in North America, Japan, and the European Union. During the years of the most rapid growth in the network (1997-2001), an important hub was Netaction (www.netaction.org), an organization created explicitly as an Internet campaign hub to archive information and mobilize activists (Manheim, 2001; Bennett, 2003c). The richness of Netaction reports and papers reflects the rise of epistemic communities promoting diverse causes of consumer protection, product innovation, electronic privacy, business ethics and practices, and open source software and Internet architecture, among others. Netaction later evolved to occupy similar hub positions in other digital democracy campaigns, and it has reappeared as a hub in the Microsoft network as the campaign entered different phases.

./english/365.txt:102:Based on the flood of responses he received, Peretti tracked the message as it first circulated through the culture jamming community, then the labor activist community, and then, “…something interesting happened. The micromedia message worked its way into the mass media…” (Peretti, 2003). First it reached middle media sites such as weblogs (slashdot, plastic and others) where is began to resemble news. From there, it was picked up by more conventional middle media sites such as Salon, which are read by journalists. At that point, it was a short journalistic step to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, NBC’s Today Show, and dozens of prominent North American and European

./english/365.txt:106:Bennett Communicating Global Activism 31 valid concerns, and there was a strong presence of labor and church organizations which provided credible media sources. Since Seattle, it seems that a more familiar press pattern has emerged in both U.S. and European media coverage of demonstrations: protesters have generally been cast as violent and anarchistic, and even equated with soccer hooligans in some European accounts. (My preliminary impressions will surely be tested and refined by the great volume of research in progress by scholars around the world).

./english/365.txt:134:George, S. (2001) “The Global Citizen’s Movement: A New Actor for a New Politics”. Conference on reshaping globalization. Central European University. Budapest. October. (Posted on the World Social Forum site www.portoalegre2002.org )

./english/367.txt:117:There are two souls of the NGOs, as we discussed earlier. On one hand they represent a desire to break out of the entirely party-dominated political culture, a desire to find or create space within civil society. On the other hand they also reveal major weaknesses — not merely because they are funded organizations, but also because, as single issue organizations, overall social transformation as an idea gets diluted, and struggle for a very specific aim takes such precedence that as long as that specific goal will be advanced, they are often willing to settle happily for lobbying bourgeois politicians and capitalists. The 65,000 whom I witnessed at the European Social Forum were mostly young, mostly committed to radical social transformation. The over 20,000 who thronged to Hyderabad likewise contained many who desire real social change. The way forward consists of trying to seriously link up with their concerns and, to paraphrase the Communist Manifesto, of raising within these struggles the historic goals of the toiling people.

./english/367.txt:153:As outsiders to the WSF process, the RUPE ideologues and their cothinkers use labels on those who do participate in the WSF. It is certainly true that huge numbers of reformist, or nonrevolutionary, organizations participate in the Social Forums. They include well-meaning reform-minded groups like those fighting for housing for all, and so on, to sheer cranks. But on November 9, 2002, when Florence was brought to a standstill by a million-strong demonstration against the planned imperialist war on Iraq, that too was associated with the European Social Forum, the European regional version of the WSF. It was quite an experience to be marching in that demonstration! Are we to suppose that those who called that march are also subtle agents of imperialism? In that case, at least they provide more support to the revolutionary cause by such huge mobilizations than anything they provide imperialism.

./english/367.txt:159:If we expect the WSF itself to become the focal point for anti-imperialist struggles, we would be suffering from illusions. But if we think that we can ignore this, one of the world’s major anti-imperialist gatherings, we would simply be handing the thing over to reformist politicians. They come in droves. They come as CPI(M) leaders, and as European Social Democrats. And by the way, it is not quite correct that parties can have no role. One of the key debates around the European Social Forum was over whether and how to build a party of the European left, and the temperature suddenly mounted in Florence when the representatives of the French Communist Party and of the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, French Section of the Fourth International, crossed swords. The WSF is a real event. Revolutionaries have to go in there, be a part of the real movement, and thereby seek to influence others in the movement. Forces like the NAPM, and others, have clearly taken a dual-track approach, building the movement and at the same time criticizing the NGO dependence. This alone shows the way ahead. Will the Indian left grasp this unique opportunity?

./english/369.txt:4:European Anti-Capitalist Left meets again

./english/369.txt:9:Following earlier conferences in Lisbon, Paris and Brussels, the Conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left took place for the fourth time this year in Madrid on June 18-19. The organisations present were: the Red Green Alliance (RGA, Denmark), the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), the Socialist Alliance (SA, England), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, Britain), La Gauche/Déi Linke (the Left, Luxemburg), the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, France), the Left Bloc (BdE, Portugal), the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC, Italy), SolidaritieS (Switzerland), the Party of Solidarity and Freedom (ÖDP, Turkey), the Alternative Space (Espacio Alternativo, Spain), Zutik (Basque Country); and as observers: the Red Current (Corriente Roja, formerly the Plataforma de Izquierda, inside Izquierda Unida, Spain) and the United Left (Izquierda Unida, Spain). The German Communist Party (DKP) attended the meeting without being part of the conference. The Socialist Party (SP, Netherlands), absent this time, had sent a message expressing its interest in the conference and its desire to continue working with it.

./english/369.txt:13:The conference noted major progress during this fourth meeting, including: strengthening of most of the participating organisations in their respective countries; Rifondazione Comunista's entry into the conference (without its having left the GUE/NLG [European United Left/Nordic Green Left], which includes most of the European Communist parties); the participating organisations' substantial involvement in the social movement against capitalist globalisation, the anti-war movement and the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people; and a basic consensus on the analysis of the political situation and the role of the anti-capitalist left.

./english/369.txt:15:The conference took a stand in favour of a process leading to the establishment of a European anti-capitalist formation that would constitute a credible alternative to the social-liberal left in government. In this spirit, the conference supports the PRC's call to organise a Forum of the Alternative Left next October.

./english/369.txt:17:The conference will contribute to the formation of the European Social Forum, which is a major development for the social, trade union and citizens' movement on a continental scale. It will support the ESF's foundation, central activities and objectives in all European countries.

./english/369.txt:19:The conference decided to coordinate its work better, particularly in the struggle against any new war waged by US imperialism and its allies, in solidarity with immigrants and in the struggle for "European-wide social rights". It will take this opportunity to adopt a common logo in order to underscore its political identity as a European anti-capitalist current.

./english/369.txt:26:Declaration of the Conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left, Madrid, June 18-19, 2002

./english/369.txt:31:Since 1998-99, social democracy had led twelve of the fifteen member states and the main EU institutions (the Council, European Central Bank, semi-annual summits and Intergovernmental Conferences). It did not use this exceptional power position in Europe, in particular in the three "pure left" governments in the EU's three key countries (the UK, France and Germany), to break with neo-liberal policies. On the contrary, it made them even worse. The EFTU (European Federation of Trade Unions) and the national majority union federations maintained their allegiance to the EU and made no serious attempt to stop the bosses' offensive. Social democracy bears the responsibility for the synchronised return of right-wing parties to government in almost every country and at the head of the EU.

./english/369.txt:35:Fascist and far right demagogues are exploiting this reactionary terrain. Traditional bourgeois parties are using it as well for their political manoeuvres. For the moment, it is not the advent of fascism which is on the agenda but "class struggle" bourgeois governments, whose main difference with "left" governments is that they will have their hands free to launch a new "European neo-liberal" offensive: ongoing privatisations and antisocial measures; EU involvement in the international arena ("the war on terrorism" and eastwards enlargement); and putting in place the coherent, efficient core of a European proto-state apparatus.

./english/369.txt:37:But for the first time in twenty years, the ruling classes' political offensive is running up against a significant new social movement, borne by a new generation of youth, which is global, offensive, internationalist and against the system from the start. Defensive social battles, which have never ceased, are losing their "rearguard" aspect, because the movement against capitalist globalisation has provided them with a new political framework, an offensive spirit, a perspective and an alternative. The centre of gravity for political initiatives and mass mobilisation is located at the moment outside the traditional labour movement. Although weakened, the European trade union movement still brings together, according to national statistics, millions of workers and thousands of activists. As long as the wage-earning class, which is a majority social force, does not become active, as long as it does not struggle massively for its own immediate demands and broad aspirations, as long as it does not organise itself on an ever widening scale, neither the ongoing globalisation of the market nor neo-liberal and pro-war policies will be stopped. The general strikes and gigantic citizens' mobilisations in Italy, the Spanish general strike, the recurrent social struggles in Greece and the renewal of sectoral strikes in Germany (particularly among metal and construction workers) clearly herald a stronger resistance to the bosses and governments' ongoing offensive.

./english/369.txt:45:The EU has chosen to line up behind the policy of the Bush government. It aspires to join in US hegemony on a world scale, while putting itself forward as a rival. The EU accepts the US's general orientation ("the global fight against international terrorism"), its organisation (full commitment to and consistent reform of NATO) and its means (increasing military budgets and militarisation). But at the moment the EU does not share the rhetoric, the will to take the offensive or the announced key objectives of US policy (war against Iraq—or Iran). This reflects both divisions within the EU and the private interests of the big European financial-industrial conglomerates, at a time when trans-Atlantic conflicts are multiplying and intensifying on the economic level. The mythology of a "peaceful "and "generous" EU is breaking down. What the ruling classes want is a European great power.

./english/369.txt:51:unconditional withdrawal of the troops and navies of US and European imperialism;

./english/369.txt:53:no increase in our countries' military budgets; no European army (and immediate dissolution of the already existing Euro-brigades); and

./english/369.txt:59:The EU's "solution" consists in developing and coordinating its special border police, transit camps, collective expulsions, sped-up "justice" and financial sanctions against immigrants' countries of origin on a European scale. For our part, we reaffirm the right for all to freedom of movement, the right to asylum, the right to live in our countries with all the same rights as the native EU populations: in short, opening the borders and granting full citizenship to all.

./english/369.txt:77:d) The market annexation of the eastern European countries, which is a genuine "periphery" dominated by the imperialist EU, will reinforce these developments even more. This absorption will not occur without a major crisis in the countryside and a considerable social regression in the cities, with a massive rise in inequality in each of these countries—all the more so because the EU will impose its neo-liberal prescriptions without ensuring the promised transfers that are indispensable to relaunching these economies (the EU's agricultural policy, structural funds and grants). It is up to the eastern countries' own peoples to decide whether they want to join the EU under these conditions. We will struggle inside the EU to ensure that they get the same social, environmental, political and democratic rights and norms that we have. We propose to the world of labour, women and youth to join in a single struggle for a different Europe. We will struggle for a trade unionism that unites male and female workers as well as all the emancipatory social movements throughout the European continent. The anti-capitalist left commits itself to developing the best possible contacts and collaboration with the east European left, which is active in social, political, trade unionist, feminist, environmentalist, anti-racist, pro-peace and anti-war and citizens' movements.

./english/369.txt:83:The EU's structure was despotic from the very beginning. The bulk of the executive, legislative and constituent power is now more than ever in the hands of the EU governments (especially those of the biggest countries), meeting in the European Councils of Ministers, the European Council of heads of state and government and the Intergovernmental Conference. The EU thus does not even reach the level of bourgeois parliamentary democracy that is left in its member states. This is how neo-liberal Europe escapes from the pressure of the working classes, who are being put in competition with each other, country by country, through unequal working conditions and social legislation. This is how it is trying to settle the multiple material conflicts of interest amongst its ruling classes, behind and on the people's backs.

./english/369.txt:85:The European bourgeoisies have set major objectives for themselves for the near future, all related to their search for a European great power: market annexation of the eastern European countries; incorporating the UK, Denmark and Sweden into the monetary union (the euro); creating a single European financial market (related in particular to the privatisation of the retirement system); creating an "economic government", essential to synchronising monetary and economic management with the European Central Bank; rapid activation of a European armed force, which could also be used to intervene in the major social crises that are looming in Europe; and reinforcing EU diplomatic, political and military intervention in the world arena.

./english/369.txt:87:All of this makes more necessary a profound reform that would make the institutions of the European proto-state more coherent, complete and strong.

./english/369.txt:89:This explains the mad rush forward that produced the Convention, whose selection, composition, method and objective are a simulacrum of democracy. Its only real objective is to equip the EU quickly with a small but strong and efficient executive, capable of confronting the growing financial, political and military instability in the world. This executive would dominate all other EU institutions. It will be directly subordinated to the European Council of member states' governments, and in the service of the big European corporations. In short, it will also be a more effective machine for waging war on the people and the wage earners, here and abroad.

./english/369.txt:95:The neo-liberal offensive is based directly on the institutionalised coordination of the supranational European proto-state. It enjoys two considerable advantages: the EU treaties prohibit the world of labour from imposing its own social legislation (on wages, social security, the right to strike, hiring and firing, working time and pensions) on a European level. But on the other hand, the European governments, united in the Council of Ministers or the EU summits (as well as the European Central Bank), take the liberty of making illicit decisions on these social topics, in the name of the priority of the (monetarist) criteria of the Maastricht Treaty and the Stability Pact.

./english/369.txt:97:The battle to privatise and liberalise is about to enter a new stage. The number one short-term priority is the liberalisation/privatisation of pensions, which have supposedly become "unaffordable". That would bring billions of euros into European "pension funds" and would supply the indispensable foundation for the difficult constitution of a single financial market on the European level.

./english/369.txt:109:5. A different-anti-capitalist, European-left is necessary!

./english/369.txt:123:Facing the EU, its structures and policies, facing the advanced Europeanisation of the instruments at the disposal of the ruling classes, and the pitiful incapacity of the social-liberal leaderships of the labour and trade union movements, this anti-capitalist left must urgently adopt and propose a European-wide perspective. For it is at this level that the anti-capitalist battles, demands, perspectives and solutions are increasingly posed.

./english/369.txt:125:This is why the conference considers the European Social Forum that will take place in November 2002 a major event for the rebirth of a combative workers and social movement. We will contribute as much as we can to making the ESF the rallying point for all the live forces in Europe, and a springboard for rooting the ESF in each of our countries. We commit ourselves to support its objectives and campaigns.

./english/369.txt:127:One of our major difficulties at this stage is reflecting social demands and the social relationship of forces on the political level in order to defeat neo-liberal policies. Our conclusion is that we urgently need to develop the perspective of a European political formation as a space and process in which social and political, anti-capitalist and alternative lefts engage in discussion so as to move forward.

./english/369.txt:131:The organisations that come together in the conferences of the European Anti-Capitalist Left are moving ahead. First, we are staking out our own political identity, made concrete through a "common logo". Second, we are setting to work on more detailed positions on immigrant issues and on the Charter of Social Rights, as a basis for joint activities. Finally, the next Conference of the EACL, the fifth one, will take place in Copenhagen, in December 2002. It will be organised by the RGA.

./english/371.txt:38:For me, this third World Social Forum tore the veil off the face of the neo-liberal capitalism which dominates the world. Nafta and the European Union are not democratic. They are key players in corporate globalisation. The European Referendum campaign has been launched in order to build real democracy and ensure the full participation of women and young people in the European Union. For it is the old men who still dominate the politics of the world (whether left or right, whether in the west or east, in the north or south). Across the globe, capitalist globalisation is still riding triumphant. The shadows of imperialism and neo-colonialism are very evident, especially in our region, the so-called Middle East (middle to whom, by the way?). The leaders of the so-called ‘free world’ who met at Davos are moving steadily to the right, hiding their economic interests behind a religious veil, whether Christian or Jewish, using Islamic fundamentalism or post-modern terrorism to reinforce and expand their domination. The so-called ‘War against Terrorism’ has devastated Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq, and is relentlessly building up plans to devastate Iran, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Sudan, Korea and others.

./english/374.txt:70:Asia is a continent with many different characteristics. The struggle for liberation waged against a series of European colonial powers resulted in the establishment of more or less progressive governments, whose ulterior evolution have brought about, in some cases, the deepening of the primary objectives of national liberation and in others, a setback towards the adoption of pro-imperialist positions.

./english/374.txt:138:And let us develop a true proletarian internationalism; with international proletarian armies; the flag under which we fight would be the sacred cause of redeeming humanity. To die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil -- to name only a few scenes of today's armed struggle -- would be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, even a European.

./english/375.txt:35:It is true that if you talk about some European countries the picture is slightly different. The number of workers in manufacturing industry in Britain, for example, was halved during the last three recessions. The number of people in manufacturing jobs in France has fallen by about a third, in Italy by about 20 per cent. But a fall of 20 per cent is not a disappearance of this category. There is continual growth of the number of people in ‘traditional’ industries world wide.

./english/375.txt:100:Let me give you one more, even more philosophical point. Let me explain how we see multitude in the history of the concepts of European philosophy.

./english/375.txt:196:Empire idealises the progress towards a world without national frontiers. In a recent interview, Toni Negri responded to the unilateralist offensive against Iraq, as a clear counter tendency towards empire’. His answer was that it seems to represent a resolution to the contradictions of empire, a passive revolution that progresses in a reactionary way. The solution was a consolidation of a European bloc, an alliance of the European powers. What do you think our response should be in the face of this new offensive?

./english/376.txt:59:[This list is currently mostly limited to European and U.S. events. Please circulate information about other relevant events on ]

./english/378.txt:5:First came the fear. For several months most of the Italian newspapers had been telling their readers about the terrible antiglobalists who were about to gather from all Europe to destroy Florence. The day before the European Social Forum opened, the journal Panorama appeared with a cover depicting Michelangelo's David, his face concealed behind an anarchist bandanna.

./english/378.txt:9:Not surprisingly, the main sensation of the European Social Forum was the complete absence of violence. Everything passed off smoothly, peacefully and happily. Otherwise, it could not have happened at all; in Florence, as in Porto Alegre, the radical youth were assembling not in order to wreck some government event, but to hold their own.

./english/378.txt:61:The anti-war movement in Russia and the West has little choice but to take up the banner of civil rights and liberties as well. It would be naive, however, to think that issues of this magnitude could be resolved by parading around the streets of a few European cities. The anti-war movement must prepare itself for a long, hard fight.

./english/379.txt:186:[8] For an overview of the use of electronic communication technology by labor, see the studies by Moody 1988, Waterman 1990, 1992, Brecher and Costello 1994, Dyer-Witheford 1999 and Drew 1999. Labor projects using the new technologies include the US based Labornet, the European Geonet, the Canadian LaborL, the South African WorkNet, the Asia Labour Monitor Resource Centre, Mujer a Mujer -- representing Latina women's groups, and the Third World Network, while PeaceNet in the United States is devoted to a variety of progressive peace and justice issues.

./english/379.txt:258:Waterman, P. (1990) åCommunicating labor internationalism: a review of relevant literature and resourcesπ, Communications: European Journal of Communications 15 (1/2): 85-103.

./english/380.txt:57: A negative version of technological determinism, by contrast, portrays the new world system as constituted by a monolithic or homogenizing technological system of domination. The German philosopher and Nazi supporter Martin Heidegger talked of the "complete Europeanisation of the earth and man" (1971: 15), claiming that Western science and technology were creating a new organization or framework, which he called Gestell (or "enframing"), and that was encompassing ever more realms of experience. French theorist Jacques Ellul (1967) depicted a totalitarian expansion of technology, or what he called la technique, imposing its logic on ever more domains of life and human practices. More recently, a large number of technophobic critics argue that new technologies and global cyberspace are a realm of alienation and reification where humans are alienated from our bodies, other people, nature, tradition, and lived communities (Borgmann 1994 and 1999; Slouka 1995; Stoll 1995; Shenk 1998; and Virilio 1998).

./english/390.txt:9:When we speak of confronting "Empire," we need to identify what "Empire" means. Does it mean the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that?

./english/395.txt:245:second European Social Forums, the World Social Thematic Forum on Democracy, Human Rights,

./english/395.txt:511:the rules for the organising committee for the European Social Forum, but the WSF India

./english/395.txt:713:struggle for control over it as it spreads. This is as true of the European Social Forum as of the

./english/400.txt:17:Three aspects of these developments are of particular relevance here. Firstly, the growing power of multinational corporations and increasing integration of global economic activity has raised the profile of international dimensions of organising labour (e.g. Ramsay, 1997; Waterman, 1998; Wills, 1998; Thorpe, 1999). In the European Union, legislation to establish European Works Councils in larger companies working in several member states, has established a potential focal point for transnational union co-operation (Turner, 1996; Ramsay, 1997; Wills, 1998). More widely, unions have been attempting (and in some cases succeeding) to engage employers in negotiation at a global level (Thorpe, 1999).

./english/400.txt:26:The development of such networks has been echoed in discussion of international labour organising (e.g. Lee, 1997; ICEM, 1996; Waterman, 1998, 1999; Mazur, 2000). Historically, international trade union organisation has tended to be both hierarchic and bureaucratic. International union structures have acted as vehicles for communications among senior trade union officers, apparently remote from the concerns of many trade unionists. Globalisation of economic activity, alongside the falling cost and increased availability of both ICTs and international travel, have opened up the possibility for new (and potentially competing) channels of communication among trade unionists. A number of possible outcomes of these developments have been identified. For example, the existing global sectoral trade union federations (known collectively as the International Trade Secretariats, ITS), can establish more decentralised regional structures, and develop networks of trade union officers and representatives in industrial sectors and transnational corporations. The development of trade union networks in particular multinational corporations has been discussed in the contexts both of EU legislation covering the establishment of European Works Councils (Turner, 1996; Ramsay, 1997; Wills, 1998) and globally (ICEM, 1996; Thorpe, 1999). These developments reduce the distance between the international organisation and the workplace organisation (ICEM, 1996; 1999). Alternatively, it has become straightforward for staff in national unions to communicate with peers internationally independently of existing international structures, potentially rendering them redundant (MacShane, 1992). On occasion, international networks of trade union members and activists may use the Internet to circumvent both national and international organisations altogether. One of the more widely reported examples of transnational labour networking during the 1990s, that of the lockout of Liverpool dockworkers, demonstrated how such networks can also allow trade union members to communicate directly with peers around the world to build solidarity and avoid obstacles of reluctant national and international organisations (Lavalette & Kennedy, 1996).

./english/400.txt:181:Turner, L. (1996) The Europeanization of Labour: Structure Before Action, European Journal of Industrial Relations, 2(3) pp.325-344

./english/400.txt:185:Walker, S. & Creanor, L.. (2000), European Trade Union Distance Education: Problems and Potential, Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Networked Learning, University of Lancaster, 17th-19th April

./english/400.txt:187:Waterman, P. (1998) The Second Coming of Proletarian Internationalism? A Review of Recent Resources, European Journal of Industrial Relations 4(3), pp. 349-377

./english/401.txt:90:In the post-cold-war period and as a response to the more aggressive bouts of hegemonic globalization, new as yet very precarious forms of labor internationalism have emerged: the debate on labor standards; exchanges, agreements or even institutional congregation among labor unions of different countries integrating the same economic regional bloc (NAFTA, European Union, Mercosul); articulation among struggles, claims, and demands of the different labor unions representing the workers working for the same multinational corporation in different countries, etc.

./english/401.txt:104:· Hermes Augusto Costa on European Works Councils and Portuguese Unionism (Costa, Portugal and EWCs),

./english/401.txt:118:Costa/Portugal and European Works Councils. The focus of Costa's piece is divided between the EWCs and Portuguese union response to such. The EWCs come out of 1994 legislation at European level, the intention of which was to allow for worker/union consultation within larger multinationals (1,000+ employees) and with at least 150 employees in two or more member states. They thus come out of various European national traditions of consultation and bargaining, and the general European tradition of social partnership. Their establishment was, of course, provoked by the internationalization of capital (non-European companies are covered) on the one hand, and the development of the European Union on the other. The EWCs were argued for by the European Trade Union Confederation, with the aim of protecting and furthering labor and union rights across frontiers, and of establishing industrial relations and collective bargaining at a European level. Whilst almost 2,000 such companies (predominantly German, US and British, in that order) do have such EWCs, their establishment and powers are a matter of negotiation, thus differing by company and country, and sometimes within companies according to country concerned.

./english/401.txt:120:Costa deals with the problems and possibilities for Portugal, as a small and peripheral European country with an authoritarian history, and with two major national union confederations - one of the social-democratic and one of the communist tradition. There have been problems concerning the 'more-European' UGT, and the 'more-Portuguese' GCTP, insofar as the social-democratic UGT has been more incorporated into the social-democratic European structures, and the communist CGTP has been stronger on the ground in Portugal. This tension seems, however, have been attenuated along with the traditional ideological distinctions, as well as by the opportunities both see for using advanced European unions and legislation to defend and improve worker conditions in backward Portugal. Costa also considers that, in confronting obstacles to the development of the EWCs, the worker cause can be advanced. These obstacles include: employer imposition of worker representatives; the logic of union competition (UGT v. CGTP); worker skepticism toward unions and participation at company level; the understanding of EWCs in an economistic and instrumental manner instead of as a means for increasing information, solidarity and influence. Costa sees the main advantages won through EWCs for Portuguese workers as follows:

./english/401.txt:140: Oliveira argues that whilst, in the period of 'peripheral Fordism' (1950s-80s), there was a certain interest and support from Europe, sometimes from oriented-oriented NGOs, the European unions organizing Fiat, Volvo and Volkswagen workers made little if any impact on these companies in their home countries:

./english/401.txt:160:These international alliances between Sintrainagro and progressive European unions, and the labor activism of Sintrainagro beyond the regional borders of Urabá, seem to contrast with the local public agendas, focused on order and security. This is the context in which the union has to operate though it appears contradictory. Knowing the strategic capabilities of the Sintrainagro leadership and their allies, the possibility can not be dismissed that this international activism is being used to counteract the relative isolation of Sintrainagro on the national union scene, and to construct alliances and supports vis-a-vis eventual changes in the national political arena as a result of the peace process with the FARC. Likewise, these international links can give Sintrainagro autonomy in the face of dominant local powers supported by the paramilitary groups.

./english/401.txt:167:Estanque reveals the dramatic historical development of contradictory class and communal relations that seem to have permitted this exception to the rule of national-industrial unionism in Portugal (as elsewhere!). Beginning as a region of pre-industrial shoe production, where the putting-out system was practiced alongside farming, the Sao João de Madeira (SJM) traders/capitalists were early involved with Brazil. As the area industrialized in the 20th century, it became highly dependent on export production, and Portugal itself the second-largest shoe exporting country in Europe. Most recently SJM footwear has found (or been given) its place as an unlabelled subcontractor to major North European multinationals. At the same time, whether under liberal or authoritarian national conditions, the region appears to have developed a sharp sense of local identity, through the paternalism of local entrepreneurs and/or autonomous associational self-activity. It has been involved in major historical class and democratic struggles, industrial and national. And, most recently, the union has had to juggle the tensions between 1) practical and effective defense/advance of member's immediate interests, and 2) those of a growing radical-democratic local, national, European and global community of which it considers itself to be a constituent part.

./english/401.txt:169:The union takes part in the collective-bargaining-oriented European Works Councils (Costa 2001) for unions in the shoe sector. It seems to have been in advance of the Communist-aligned national CGTP-IN in joining European solidarity demonstrations (union supported but not union controlled, precursors of what some are now calling the Global Justice Movement or GJM). And, internationally, it has links with a dozen or more organizations and networks, union or other, associated with the GJM. The latter include union and rural labor organizations in Brazil, human rights and peace organizations, solidarity networks for homeworkers and the unemployed (with contacts also involving such countries as the UK, Spain, Australia, Thailand, Chile):

./english/401.txt:227:Costa: Portugal &European WCs Trade union North/W. Europe National toRegional Urbanindustrial Industrial relations,Labor studies

./english/401.txt:240:· World (Sub)Region: The (ex)Communist, North American, North European, African, East Asian.

./english/403.txt:131:Day, R. (2001b) ‘Totality and Representation. A History of Knowledge Management Through European Documentation, Critical Modernity, and Post-Fordism’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 52 (9), June.

./english/403.txt:161:Lacey, A. (2001) Networks of Protest, Communities of Resistance: Autonomous Activism in Contemporary Britain. Ph.D thesis, Centre for European Studies, Monash University, currently submitted for examination.

./english/405.txt:13:Within a little more than a decade, alterglobalisation has decisively contributed to transforming the ideological environment of the planet, by rescuing the possibility of social emancipation. In the late nineties, the vision of an end of capitalism was seen as an outdated idea, and even a dangerous one. The collapse of Eastern European and Asiatic bureaucratic regimes (even though self-styled "socialist") had spread the idea that democracy and respect for freedom could only exist in societies that accepted being ruled by market forces ? meaning the relentless search for profit and the idea that individuals should only aspire for the satisfaction of their selfish interests. Privatisation, the deconstruction of laws and social rules that "prevent" investments, and the

./english/408.txt:6:Everyone agrees that the WSF has been the most enormous success. How right it was to move from Porto Alegre! Staying there for a fourth year might have led to a routinized and bureaucratic Forum. And by going to India the WSF has ceased to be a Latin American-European affair. It wasnt just the wealth of Indian movements that made the Bombay WSF such a success - it was the very strong presence from the rest of Asia. Tibetan monks, South Korean socialists, Nepalese Dalits jostled in the dusty cheerful lanes of the WSF site.

./english/408.txt:22:In this context, Id like to comment on Milan Rais posting Neolibalism, war and the significance of the WSF. Here he endorses the view, put forward by two of the Forums originators, Chico Whittaker from Brazil and Bernard Cassen from ATTAC France, that the Social Forums should confine themselves to serving as a space for discussion and education, and should therefore keep the social movements at arms length. Like them, Milan is critical of the Assembly of the Social Movements, which has issued calls to action at the end of each World and European Social Forum.

./english/410.txt:14:Yet in the midst of this firework of activities and initiatives, one must ask a crucial question: Can the World Social Forum truly amount to a global voice for the people and by the people? Except for presenters and panelists, almost all participants were high school and university students from Brazil. Since the translation equipment hardly ever functioned, communication between international visitors and the bulk of the audience proved difficult. As one panelist from Africa pointed out, a striking feature of the crowds was their racial homogeneity. Except for a few visitors from East Asia, India, and Africa, the World Social Forum was almost exclusively attended by people of European origin. This general trend was certainly aggravated by choosing one Brazil's "whitest" cities as a venue. In fact, beer and food vendors "of color" may have outnumbered the participants of African or Asian descent.

./english/416.txt:15:We should be occupied with the (anti-)terrorist laws in Europe. We should compare the different laws in European countries. We need a specified synopsis, which compares these laws article for article.

./english/416.txt:17:Related to the practical consequences of the "War on Terror" we should put in the centre of our political activities during the coming period the efforts of the Turkish state to apply its terrorist laws and methods inside and outside of Turkey. The new law was applied in the persecution of Turkish trade-unionists and anti-imperialist organi­zations and at least the relating methods also against the struggle of the Kurdish people for self-determination. In parallel efforts the EU and some European countries helped Turkey by banning these organizations and putting them on the EU Black Lists.

./english/417.txt:1: Minutes from the European Preparatory Assembly in Frankfurt/Main, Germany

./english/417.txt:5:the 4th European Social Forum in Athens, a list of reporting networks (the minutes circulated

./english/417.txt:13:II. Reports and evaluation from the 4th ESF in Athens, proposals for next European Social

./english/417.txt:32:II. Reports and Evaluation from the 4 th European Social Forum, Athens

./english/417.txt:36:  The ESF in Athens was a success since nobody would have believed that a European

./english/417.txt:40: ern but an All European movement. Athens was one of the most inclusive Forums in

./english/417.txt:41: regards to the various European regions, it also dealt much more than other Forums

./english/417.txt:68: of European regions and thematic concerns. Another goal was to remobilize those for-

./english/417.txt:114:Elena (European Initiative on Women and Power)

./english/417.txt:118:be a main focus, through which a European women’s movement will be supported

./english/417.txt:132:+ The ESF was a success in terms of participation from various Eastern European countries

./english/417.txt:135:-> Eastern Europe should be included in all events and networks as a question of European

./english/417.txt:137:-> For each ESF process there should be a structure responsible for Eastern European inclu-

./english/417.txt:159:- Political situation within the Greek left was difficult for the forum; the European political

./english/417.txt:209:European Association against the repression/oppression of Migration

./english/417.txt:265:and imbalance in terms of non European speakers, there is too little participation from Eastern

./english/417.txt:348:  For each ESF process there should be a structure responsible for Eastern European in-

./english/417.txt:401:  European Feminist initiative - Contact: ife@efi-europa.org

./english/418.txt:4:The 32nd European Coordination Conference of Support to the Saharawi People (EUCOCO) has taken place in Vitoria-Gasteiz on 3, 4 and 5 of November. More than 600 participants of the five continents have attended the congress: from Africa (Algeria, SADR, Swaziland, Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, South Africa, Morocco), from Europe (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain, Austria, Luxemburg, Sweden, Portugal, Hungary, Norway, Slovenia), America (Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, USA...), Australia and Asia (Japan).

./english/418.txt:10:The Conference denounces the political repression and the black out imposed by Morocco in the occupied territories of the Western Sahara. In fact, Moroccan occupiers put the territory under embargo and keep the international community uninformed of the inadmissible situation that the Saharawi People is living through police force. The Conference also calls for the concerned institutions of the UN, European Union (EU) and different NGOs in order to confront the situation, and take responsibility on the protection of the Saharawi population and against those who commit crime against humanity with efficacy.

./english/418.txt:13:In the meanwhile, the Spanish state, former occupant of Western Sahara, cannot abdicate its responsibility in the tragedy. In order to make it remember its historical and moral responsibilities, the conference deplores the abstention of the Spanish government in the resolution of UN 4th Commission, approved by the majority of the European States.

./english/418.txt:15:The conference feels glad of the individual opinions against the agreement of the UN about the exploitation of fishing resources in Western Sahara expressed by some European countries and will take them into account. However, the conference cannot express the disappointment for the global policies of the EU concerning to the Western Sahara.

./english/419.txt:19:IG. 16. There is not enough debates on Europe / European Union political strategies

./english/419.txt:22:IM. 2. Difficulty to articulate local, European and global dynamics (think globally act locally and act locally in a global alternative framework)

./english/419.txt:28:IM. 8. What is the role of the assembly of social movements : what’s the link with the struggles in different countries, how to improve the visibility of an European strength? Why the actions decided aren’t carried on? Do we need more flexibility? What about its representativity as some org.s participating in the ESF don’t recognize the Assembly of Social Movements as the place where having political discussions and co-ordinating decisions?

./english/419.txt:44:IE. 6. Not yet a space during the EPAs to debate on European political issues, to confront different point of views, co-ordinate campaign and actions

./english/420.txt:2:Jürgen Habermas on immigration as the key to European unity

./english/420.txt:12:only achieved national unity within the European framework.The genius loci

./english/420.txt:13:invites us to consider the irritating fact that this benedictory European

./english/420.txt:26:European institutions is neither necessary nor possible. It is being claimed

./english/420.txt:27:that the drive behind European unification has vanished and for good reason,

./english/420.txt:28:since the objectives of peace between the European peoples and the creation

./english/420.txt:38:half-heartedness: the European member states have lost democratic substance

./english/420.txt:39:as a result of European unification. Decisions, ever greater in number and

./english/420.txt:42:the member states, even though European citizens can only place their votes

./english/420.txt:43:here - there is no European public space. This democratic deficit can be

./english/420.txt:45:problem is European's inability to present themselves to the world as one.

./english/420.txt:48:the international community is turning to the European Union with

./english/420.txt:51:on a third party with a robust UN mandate, the European governments, envious

./english/420.txt:55:the UN. If anyone, it will be the Europeans that will prevent their American

./english/420.txt:67:European Union with a cogent foreign policy to influence the course of the

./english/420.txt:90:the European Union, since every national society must deal with it in its

./english/420.txt:95:trans-nationally, across Europe. At the same time, a common European

./english/420.txt:103:other European citizens - from the Portuguese winegrower to the Polish

./english/420.txt:107:The integration problem hits a raw nerve in European nation-states. These

./english/420.txt:123:painful cognitive dissonances. In addition, Western and Northern European

./english/470.txt:83:(4) Have the decision-making leadership at each higher level chosen, at least in considerable part, by the local forums that are within the higher entity. Italy's national forum leadership is chosen by the smaller local forums in Italy. The European forum's leadership is chosen by the national forums within Europe, and similarly elsewhere.

./english/472.txt:35:The founders created an Organizing Committee with representatives from six leading Brazilian NGOs and the country’s largest labor federation, the Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT), as well as the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST). The NGOs are broadly progressive but nevertheless part of the national and international civil society establishment; the CUT hews closely to the moderate, pro-Lula line in the PT; only the MST is distinctly on the left within Brazilian politics. This composition puts the Organizing Committee on the center-left of the political spectrum. It later created an International Council of leading activists and intellectuals, mostly European and mostly to the left of the Organizing Committee. The two bodies have not always agreed.

./english/472.txt:66:These distinctions are visibly present at the conference. In 2003 name tags clearly labeled people in bold capital letters as “invitees,” “delegates” (those who had registered in the name of an organization) or “participants.” Invitees enjoyed a VIP lounge, while mere participants were excluded from some sessions. And most of the leadership and the visible speakers are from the white, northern (mainly European) left elite, with the debates disproportionately reflecting their issues.

./english/473.txt:33:This was the case at the European Social Forum in London in 2004 which was so dominated by the Socialist Workers Party that people left in frustration, and it has been difficult to find backing for a new European Forum since then, says Whitaker.

./english/475.txt:22:* Although there have been earlier years when more than one OWorld Social Forum¹ meetings have taken place within the same year (if we take into account not just the so-called Oworld¹ meetings but also the so-called Oregional¹ ones, like the European Social Forum and the Asian Social Forum, and also the Othematic¹ ones, as was held in Colombia in 2003), this is the first time when a specific and presumably strategic decision was taken to hold a polycentric world meeting ie several meetings at the same time, spread across the world. One consideration was logistical meaning that more people across the world will therefore have access to the Forum (since it will be taking place closer to everybody in the world); another, perhaps, was to have an even greater and more widespread impact, across the world. This latter dream is spoiled a little by the necessity of having to postpone the Karachi Forum (because of the outfall of the earthquake last year), but the concept remains. But for this to happen, this presumably will require some degree of coordination between the Fora that are taking place at the same time, for synergy to take place towards a more global assertion of civil (if not actually Opopular¹) power; and at the minimum, some consciousness that Othe other¹ is also taking place at the same time (almost). So we need to ask at least the following questions / assess the Fora in at least these terms : Is the Forum this year in fact going to help a much larger number of people to gain access to the World Social Forum ? What ways are there for this synergy to take shape ? And will this polycentric design in fact create a greater impact than the single world meetings ?

./english/475.txt:25:continental / regional Fora (the SWP Socialist Workers Party in the case of the London European Social Forum in November 2004, and to a somewhat lesser extent, the Communist parties in the case of the WSF in Mumbai) and all this despite the fact the WSF¹s Charter specifically prohibits the participation of political parties in the Forum - there is very little discussion of the fact that the Caracas Forum seems to be virtually being sponsored by Hugo Chávez and his government and to be completely dominated by them, and where the Caracas Forum will quite obviously be used by him as a platform and as a way of promoting his understanding of the Forum. (For a glimpse, see his speech to the Forum in 2005 - Mario Dujisin, January 2005 OHugo Chávez, President of Venezuela : "The WSF Should Have A Strategy Of Power"¹, January 31 2005, on

./english/500.txt:24:When the WSF was first launched in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, its activities were largely shaped by the founding WSF organising committee, made up of a string of Brazilian organisations. The event was also given impetus by a range of progressive European NGOs.

./english/502.txt:13:Within a little more than a decade, alterglobalisation has decisively contributed to transforming the ideological environment of the planet, by rescuing the possibility of social emancipation. In the late nineties, the vision of an end of capitalism was seen as an outdated idea, and even a dangerous one. The collapse of Eastern European and Asiatic bureaucratic regimes (even though self-styled "socialist") had spread the idea that democracy and respect for freedom could only exist in societies that accepted being ruled by market forces ? meaning the relentless search for profit and the idea that individuals should only aspire for the satisfaction of their selfish interests. Privatisation, the deconstruction of laws and social rules that "prevent" investments, and the

./english/519.txt:16:In Europe, the defeat of the European Constitution proposal in referendums in France and Holland represents an important obstacle for the Maastricht project’s fulfillment, because a political renewal would be given to the neo liberal construction of the European Union as a big market, a problem to which, up to now, there is no solution – with the poor youth protesting in France showing the latent risks contained in the present path. In the United States, in spite of the repressive and defensive con-text, many important social mobilizations have recovered themselves, such as the transportation strike in New York. The same is happening with political struggles, particularly within peaceful movements and movements for the withdrawal in Iraq. However, the predominance of a very con-servative political atmosphere remains within central capitalist countries (including Japan, Australia and Canada) and within the great performers of the global system (Russia, China, and, to a certain extent, India).

./english/519.txt:18:The initiatives to deepen the free-trade, after the failure of FTTA and the temporary stagnation of the Mercosul-European Union treaty, have been canalized to WTO’s negotiations, which tries to systematize a series of bilateral or regional agreements (such as the Central-American Free Trade Zone and the Andean Free Trade Agreement, in Latin America, both of them with the United States, and many treaties in Asia and Africa). In Hong Kong, in spite of the rough divergences be-tween the Triade’s axes, the incorporation of Brazil and India to the negotiation tables, allowed some improvement – which is, up to now, merely symbolic. This has to be accomplished until April 2006, in Geneva. This represents, as the military offensive, a greater risk to the movements and to the leftist at an international level.

./english/519.txt:22:The World Social Forum process has decided, in this scenario of fragmenta-tion regarding the international left wing’s initiatives, to have a polycentric 4th edition, with three events of Global South continental reach. In the beginning, the idea was to have them taking place simultaneously, but they ended up happening in different dates, the first was in Bamako (in Mali), followed by the one in Caracas (Venezuela), both in January, 2006 and in Karachi (Pakistan) in March 2006 (postponed due to the earthquake that hit the country). Afterwards, the Forum in Bang-kok, which should take place on October 21st and 22nd, was added to the polycentric process. There will also be the Brazilian Social Forum, in Recife, from April 21st to 23rd and the European Social Forum, in Athens, from May 4th to 7th.

./english/519.txt:61:Another discussed issue in the WSF since its creation is the relation-ship between the Forum and governments and parties. We went on these problems in Porto Alegre in 2002 when PT and the French social-democracy tried to emphasize their presence in the Forum aiming the electoral dispute and again in 2003 when Lula went to the Gigantinho to justify his trip to Davos the following day. In 2005 the WSF watched Lula’s efforts again trying to make the PT government the best ever and Chavez presenting himself as the most authentic left leadership in the continent. In Mumbai the dispute engaged by an Asian communism sector led to the Mumbai Resis-tance parallel realization. In the European Social Forum process each event had to deal with prob-lems in the relationship with the left parties in the countries that were holding the events — wid-ened in the London edition because of the relationship with the London Authority. We did not build the WSF process separated from the party and government disputes but we have always tried to weaken the impact of these disputes preserving the process authonomy in a way that it would not link the process with any specific project, no matter how worthy it is.

./english/519.txt:75:Another civilization, one superior to capitalism, will need to be qualitatively more democratic than the most democratic experiences in progress nowadays. The defense of the pluralism and autono-mous protagonism of civil society are an important aspect of this democracy. Part of the WSF his-torical role is also to stimulate the real leftist sectors’ acceptance of an environment which is favor-able “self thought”, critic and self-critic, also in the presence of its government and parties. None of the parties or politic regimes that claim themselves socialists could intend a protagonism in the wide fight movement for another world if they do not take at least this warn not only from the “real so-cialism” collapse, but also from the incorporation of social-democracy by the neo liberalism. This is a candescent issue, strongly present in Latin American and European politics.

./english/522.txt:57:1. The functionality of the forums. With the emigration of the WSF outside of its Latino-European countries of origin - after Mumbaï (2004), Bamako and Karachi (2005) - the utility of the forums (of this type of forum) has now been tested positively in very varied contexts. Nothing is universal or eternal, but the adaptability of this form of action (and of the process which supports it) has proved remarkable. It has been tested on the international level in countries where the social movements are strong or weak, in favourable and unfavourable political situations, in highly defensive or counter-offensive conjunctures.

./english/522.txt:73:4. Globalisation of resistance. The process of internationalisation of forums began from 2002 with the European Social Forum in Florence. It experienced a qualitative leap with Hyderabad (India) and Mumbai in 2003-2004. It is today again the case with Bamako and Karachi (Caracas occupies a specific place in the deepening of political themes). That will again be true in 2007 with Nairobi.

./english/527.txt:8:2006 is also the year of the fourth European Social Forum in Athens. Many countries, like Belgium and Holland, will have a national social forum. One might wonder whether all these fora can have an added-value or whether they just keep repeating themselves? Do any of the fora ever have results?

./english/527.txt:48:The argument that movements should only talk with governments and parties of the left is not always acceptable, since governments, necessarily, are holding power. It is ‘power over’, as Jai Sen observes, and not ‘power to’, the power that civil society wants to have. The Forum has to try to dismantle power relations and offer alternatives. In this context the example of the European Social Forum in London is mentioned, where one political party of the left apparently dominated.

./english/550.txt:1:Toward an European network for exchanges, think and struggle against the precarisation of job and lives

./english/550.txt:12:workshops of Athens FSE about the need of a European network against the

./english/550.txt:21:Nobody has contested the usefulness or even the necessity of an European

./english/553.txt:27:On 4 October 2006 the European Commission unveiled a new Communication entitled Global Europe: Competing in the world,[1] which outlines how Brussels will pursue bilateral free trade agreements with major emerging economies in order to secure new and profitable markets for EU companies. The EU will also push for stronger intellectual property rights and reduced non-tariff barriers in its trading partners – and for even more business-friendly ‘domestic reforms’ within Europe itself.

./english/553.txt:31:The Communication sets out an aggressive so-called ‘external competitiveness’ strategy. As EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson puts it: "What do we mean by external aspects of competitiveness? We mean ensuring that competitive European companies, supported by the right internal policies, must be enabled to gain access to, and to operate securely in, world markets. That is our agenda.”[2]

./english/553.txt:51:Breaking down the regulatory environment seems to be the most important strategy for increasing the EU’s external competitiveness. This includes SPS and TBT requirements, regulations on services, public procurement but also IPR, investment and competition policy regimes of third countries. What is to be expected is more competition, more flexibility, more deregulation. Goodbye to the European social model; here’s to naked globalisation for all.

./english/553.txt:120:While the Commission uses REACH as a positive example, NGOs argue that, on the contrary, REACH demonstrates how the lobbying activities of the chemical industry have undermined legislation that was designed to protect people and the environment.[4] It was the European business lobby that called on non-European companies to intervene as well. Interestingly, the European Parliament found that large TNCs exporting a few bulk chemicals would mostly bear the costs.[5] But clearly the pressure of the giant corporate lobby industry is not sufficient for the Commission; in future the Commission will call in non-EU corporate interests to take part in the decision-making process. The Commission wants to be more transparent (to foreign business, not to its own civil society) and wants to listen to foreign corporate grievances before making decisions “affecting the market” – decisions such as those on environment, health or social regulations. This will make the EU even more undemocratic. Finally, the Commission also wants to equip people for change. The Commission is aware that if it wants ambitious agreements serving EU corporate interests, then it will also have to offer something in return. The Commission is prepared to open up sensitive sectors of the EU economy while admitting this will bring about “transformations which are disruptive to some in the EU”.

./english/553.txt:139:In practice this means launching a new generation of trade deals with developing countries such as Brazil, China, India and Korea – precisely those markets that European business needs to conquer if it is to thrive. Mandelson’s code word here is “activism” - using bilateral negotiations to force open new markets - and the stated aim is to win EU companies the right to exploit these new opportunities and the natural resources of the developing world.

./english/553.txt:143:Access to the services, industrial and public procurement markets of emerging economies is the central element of the new vision, despite the acknowledged problems that this causes poorer countries’ own development efforts, and the consequential poverty when local businesses collapse under unfair competition. Perhaps the clearest throwback to colonial times is the demand for open access to natural resources. Mandelson has heeded the calls of the Brussels business lobby by making European access to the resources of developing countries a “high priority” and by promising to oppose any attempts by such countries to defend their resources for their own use.

./english/553.txt:147:This self-interest extends to energy sources too, with Mandelson calling for a “coherent policy” to secure European access to the planet’s oil and gas reserves. Furthermore, a new set of investment agreements will allow multinational corporations to start up production in cheap labour economies free from the regulations or performance requirements that could dent their profit margins. At the same time, new intellectual property rules will ensure that local firms are prevented from copying the designs and technology which they could use for their own development purposes.

./english/553.txt:159:So how has Mandelson’s vision failed so spectacularly? There are two main reasons for this: one external and one home-grown. The first reason is that developing countries are no longer willing to submit to the neo-colonial ambitions of the European business community. Countries such as Brazil, China and India have made clear that they will not be pushed around in world trade talks, and even the former colonies of Africa are refusing to lie down quietly in their economic partnership agreements (EPAs) with the EU.

./english/553.txt:167:So the home front is where Mandelson wishes to redouble his efforts, and where the true threat he poses becomes clear. All those European groups opposing the free market model on social, environmental or developmental grounds must be overcome through a new concentration on “competitiveness”, the favoured EU code word for the neoliberal agenda. Anyone concerned with agricultural sustainability, workers’ rights, climate change or the European social model itself stands in the way of the Mandelson vision. The defenders of such interests threaten the EU’s capacity to compete with Japan and the USA today, or with India and China tomorrow.

./english/553.txt:175:Mandelson has spelled out in his recent speeches what lies unsaid in the vision paper: that this assault on the European model is to be brought about through “regulatory convergence” with the USA. In place of the European model of high standards won through decades of public pressure and committed campaigns, Mandelson offers us a future remodelled along US lines, where corporate interests come first and people’s needs come nowhere. And the reason? “The greater the consistency in rules and practices with our main partners,” says the vision, “the better for EU business.”

./english/554.txt:26:eipcp - european institute for progressive cultural policies

./english/565.txt:225:across countries. Against economic discrimination, European activist

./english/565.txt:439:tradition and disseminate its magic outdoors: a European-wide

./english/565.txt:552:As in most other European countries, France has recently suffered from a

./english/565.txt:728:Bank, European Union or WTO have been shaken and sometimes partly

./english/569.txt:9:2. Let's start with the most obvious thing. The famous 'Porto Alegre Charter' - the Charter of Principles of the World Social Forum - is much invoked in controversies within the movement because it bans 'party representations' from participating and forbids social forums to take decisions. The prominence of the parties of the radical left at the European Social Forums in Florence and London was strongly criticized for violating the Charter.

./english/569.txt:27:This is, in our view, a potentially disastrous development. One of the great beauties of our movement - and of the forums that have emerged from and helped to sustain it - is the way in which people from all sorts of backgrounds and with the most diverse preoccupations come and mix together, participating in a process of mutual contamination in which we learn and gain confidence from one another. This dynamic was greatly weakened by the thematic fragmentation and vast size of the WSF site in Porto Alegre this year - all the more so because there were no generalizing events to compare with the magical opening ceremony at Mumbai, when 100,000 sat listening to speakers like Arundhati Roy, Chico Whitaker, and Jeremy Corbyn against the velvet backdrop of an Indian night. We know from the experience of the European Social Forum in London that putting together collectively organized plenaries is painstaking work. But it is work that helps to hammer out priorities for the movement, and to give the forum focus and direction.

./english/571.txt:21:The WSF 2004 in Mumbai, India, made the social forum process more truly world-wide (5). In fact, Mumbai meant opening up the space of the forum in two distinct ways. Firstly, since most participants tend to come from the region surrounding the venue, the flavour of Mumbai was rather different from Porto Alegre. In the previous three forums, Latin Americans and Europeans dominated the scene, and therefore the move to India was a symbolic opening towards the world as whole. Secondly, this time a significant portion of the participants were dalits, i.e. the casteless people of India, and other marginalized groups. Academic intellectuals and NGOs were in minority, with the exception of the workshops, panels and roundtables in English (simultaneous interpretation facilities were not available to the same extent as in Porto Alegre).

./english/571.txt:61:Political parties emerged in modern Europe and Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries. Although there were parties of opinion and cliques in the ancient city-communities of Hellas, the metaphor of body politic dominated political imagination until early European modernity. The idea was that in one organism or body, it is not healthy to have conflicts or contradictions. Organised political parties were invented only when this metaphor was replaced with the individualist idea of social contract (see Ball 1988). The idea of a party representing the universal interests of humanity also emerged in the 19th century, which led, after the Russian revolution of 1917, to the construction of totalitarian one-party states. During and since the Cold War, the model of polyarchy (competitive elitism) has prevailed in the West.

./english/574.txt:35:At its best, the new self-organised Forum provides an opportunity for developing the mutual understanding across cultures, generations and political traditions that is a precondition of sustained common action. The co-ordinated demonstrations against the Iraq war on February 15th 2003 was the first proof that the Social Forums – both the WSF and continental forums like the European Social Forum – can act as a catalysts for a power greater than the sum of those who attend their meetings. Next year, the WSF will be held in three different continents, the year after in . This decentralisation and new location will be a test of whether the cohesion of Feb 15th was a `one off’ or whether the experiments at this year’s World Forum stimulated a further maturing of an new, innovative source of political power.

./english/579.txt:14:Nonetheless, after allowing for all reservations and qualifications, the end result justified the decision to hold the 4th WSF in India. Asian presence and involvement in the Social Forum project, hitherto marked by a strong Latin American and European ‘face’, has taken a leap forward. Africa and North America remain laggards. Porto Alegre last year brought together for the first time the two great global streams – the movement against neoliberalism and that against US imperialism. This confluence has been sustained and further consolidated in Mumbai. The introduction of newer themes and a stronger emphasis on some older ones also took place enhancing the awareness-raising aspect of the WSF. The Indian organizers gave some shape to the otherwise amorphous character of the ‘politics of the open space’ by holding a series of WSF-sponsored events focusing on five broad themes – imperialist globalisation; patriarchy, gender and sexuality; militarism and peace; casteism and racism, work and descent-based exclusions and discriminations; religious fanaticism, sectarian violence – themselves subdivided to include issues of ecologically sustainable development; matters of food, land and water sovereignty; media culture and knowledge; labour and the world of work; health, education and social security.

./english/586.txt:4:The fourth edition of the World Social Forum (WSF), which took place in Mumbai (India) this past January (16-21), was a very significant step towards consolidating the WSF process. The three previous editions, having taken place in Porto Alegre (Brazil) and attracting only a modest number of African and Asian delegates, led many to believe that the WSF, even though allegedly world-wide, was indeed a Latin-American and European initiative. The success of the Mumbai WSF signifies that the spirit of Porto Alegre — the “Porto Alegre Consensus” that a more just and solidary world is possible, as is the political will to fight for it — constitutes a universal aspiration. If the WSF could be recreated in Asia, there is no reason why it couldn’t be recreated in Africa or in any other part of the world. As a matter of fact, the decision has already been made that the WSF following the one in 2005 — set for Porto Alegre since last year — will take place in Africa. Whether in 2006 or 2007 depends on whether the WSF continues to be an annual event or becomes biennial, a decision to be taken at the next meeting of the WSF International Council (IC) this coming April.

./english/587.txt:10:More than 20,000 dalits took part, giving a really grassroots dimension to the World Social Forum. Indians were joined by an abundant sampling of other Asian peoples, along with Europeans, North Americans, Africans and Latin Americans. Worth mentioning is that there were more Brazilians – upward of 480 – at WSF 2004 in Mumbai than Asians at WSF 2003 in Porto Alegre. The Nesco Grounds – the premises of a bankrupt iron and steelworks on the outskirts of Mumbai adapted for the World Social Forum by improvising rooms with bamboo and partitions, ceiling and floors of rustic fabrics –became the full expression of all that, one way or another, stands outside globalisation: people in flesh and blood sharing the same ideal of human freedom and dignity over and above the market.

./english/594.txt:18:DEPRESSION VS HOPE: Even within the WSF there were those who talked of another world, but could not imagine such a world. The speaker from the European Green party, who spoke at the large meeting on parties and social movements, could not imagine any other form of political party other than one which “had to compromise” inside parliament. But at the smaller meeting on “Life after capitalism” speakers discussed how we could organise society in a completely different manner from today.

./english/595.txt:8:1. The Mumbai Forum was above all a popular demonstration for and by the people. In comparison to Porto Alegre, but above all in comparison to the European Social Forums which have mainly mobilised the middle classes. At Mumbai the great majority of the people present were untouchables, peasants, and members of women’s and young people’s organisations. Not only has the Forum become more “global” it is now also more “social”.

./english/598.txt:13:When it comes to organising an international social forum (apart from the WSF, there are also African, Asian and European forums), its not just a case of the trade unions having to open up their smoke-filled rooms. In many countries the anarchist-inclined movements for global justice have also had to depart from traditional practice: they have warily and conditionally agreed to participate in the representative assemblies and committees that are responsible for organising the forums. The local social forums that are springing up in towns and cities across the world operate on the principle of direct forms of democracy. But while the meetings that coordinate the international social forums are open to contributions from anyone who shares the basic principles underpinning the forum idea, their decisions are finally agreed by representatives.

./english/598.txt:17:Events can change the meaning and nature of representation, however. Thus, the brutality with which Italian police attacked protesters at the G8 summit at Genoa in 2002 set the pace for bringing the social movements and trade unions together. It created a desire to cooperate, which made it possible to build trust and organise the [November 2002] Florence European Social Forum in a way that involved everyone, the Italian forum spokesperson and Aids campaigner Vittorio Agnoletto explained in Mumbai. Thus, after experimenting with creating autonomous spaces, many Italian social movements now often work alongside the cautiously left trade unionists of the CGIL.

./english/598.txt:44:So, this is what the social forum movement aspires to: it seeks to provide a purposeful space in which activists can create new alliances and extend their networks of resistance, and help them turn their organisations into the sources of alternative policies, stronger strategies and more convincing visions. And this is our task in hosting the next European Social Forum in London: we must develop the forum so that it is not only a celebration of diversity and international solidarity, but also an innovative collective intellect nourished by peoples daily resistance to the pressures of the global market. First, as the Indians managed to do in Mumbai, we have to break from the old closed ways that so irritated Gautam Mody. But, again like the Indians, and the Italians, the Brazilians and the French, we also have to find a way of developing new ways of organising that build on whats left of the foundations of democratic organisation and collective strength that the trade unions historically laid.

./english/605.txt:4:IV World Social Forum (WSF) held in Mumbai, India, from January 16th to January 21st 2004 has proved the vitality of the“WSF-Format”, from the “open space” method that gradually has been built in the three Porto Alegre forums, in the two European Social Forums (Florence and Paris) and in the Asiatic Social Forum (Hyderabad), as well as countless another forums. The Mumbai Forum has renewed and expanded the achieve of the proposal, generating a wave of vitality in the process. But, after three years, there is a general perception that it needs a change in its directions, focusing specially on the articulation of actions capable of having an impact in the balance of world power. This was the focus in the discussion in the International Council (IC), gathered in Mumbai in January 15th, January 22nd and 23rd in order to prepare the process towards V WSF to be held in Porto Alegre, in January 2005.

./english/605.txt:8:There is an estimative that 135,000 to 150,000 people took part in the 1,200 WSF activities. The WSF 2004 has done a great impact in Indian left sectors. This country is marked by regionalism, communalism and diversity in languages, religions and cultures. It has been prepared since 2002 – in fact, the Asian Social Forum in January 2003 was its first rehearsal. It was done in a more plural and demanding context than the former WSFs, stimulated by a more heterogeneous left sector than the Latin American or European ones. It was the result of the unitary action of organizations who come from very distant political traditions – from Gandhism to the more traditional Communist Parties, from various Maoist organizations to NGOs. This unity was carefully built thanks to a wide preparation and mobilization process in the different regions in the country. That explains why the Forum was marked – respecting its Charter of Principles – by a less reticent posture towards the political parties, eliminating the image, for times raised, that they are strange to the Forum and to the wider struggle that makes sense to it.

./english/605.txt:21:Mumbai is a microcosmos from India, surely the mos diverse society in the world. A society spread in population of every color, who speak 18 official languages, and 1 600 languages and dialects. The Forum had to adopt English as a language in the great events (with translation into five other Indian languages and also the foreign languages). That was so because the indo-european-speaking population (hindi, spoken by only 20% of the Indians, marathi, dominant in Mumbai region, and Bengali) is not understood by ones who speak Dravidian languages and vice-versa.

./english/605.txt:55:The translation was made by a net of volunteers, Indian for the local languages and international for the other languages – Spanish, French, Korean, Japanese, Thailandese, Malay and Indonesian (Bahasa). This international net, Babels, formed in the European Social Forum and today comprehending more than 4,500 interpreters and 1,500 translators, represents a great advance in the issue of translation, allowing that different actors of the movement can express themselves in their own idioms.180 translators have worked with Babels in India.

./english/605.txt:68:But the relation between social movements and political parties had had an important step with the IV Forum. Until now, it was Brazilian reality – where most of participants had supported PT and meant that the best option was to let the party away of the process as institution – which had informed, in a good measure, the perception of this relation. The political culture dominant in some European countries, such as Italy or England, had brought to the process some inquiries on the “form” posed by the Charter of Principles (which naturally conditions its results). These inquiries were administrated in the European Social Forum. Now, Mumbai experience had introduced new elements.

./english/605.txt:74:However, most revealing of the incidence of the global movement and of the WSF on the political recomposing processes, was the meeting carried out in January 20th in Mumbai among “radical” political parties (convoked by initiative of the European Meeting of Anti-Capitalist Parties and the political streams of Asia-Pacific, with highline to Indian Maoists engaged with support to Mumbai Forum. For the very first time, streams so distinct – from Trotskism to Maoism, from the official communist to the critic Marxist – met, debated the new situation of the left in the world and created a net to continue this dialogue.

./english/605.txt:87:In this field, the balance is much less clear. The role of the Forum is more indirect and unequal. An interesting dynamics seems to have been established in the relation between the regional and national plan in Western Europe, through the European Social Forum, although it is too early to a definitive evaluation. Sometime in the next future, we can study also the strategic results of the process for India. But after three years it seems clear that we have a problem of enrootment to be overcome in Brazil and Latin America case – although the continental campaign against ALCA has been empowered by the Forum process. TheV WSF must sediment its vocation of creating a new political culture in the country and region.

./english/611.txt:4:WSF 4 in Mumbai was a quite different experience than prior Porto Alegre WSFs. In many respects it was better organized. Women were far more visible, empowered, and empowering - often providing the most important as well as the best presented material. The attendee composition altered dramatically from being overwhelmingly South American with a significant U.S. and European presence, to being overwhelmingly Asian with a significant African and some U.S. and European presence.

./english/614.txt:5:The World Social Forum emerged as a result of the mobilizations against neoliberal globalization and as an international space for reflection and organization of those who oppose to neoliberal polices or are building alternatives to prioritize human development and the overcoming of market supremacy in each country and in the international relations and, at the same time, a space for the coordination of struggles and movements. Four years later, both the WSF development and the coordination of struggles and movements have put on the table the need for reflection on the WSF itself and its relation to the social movements. A reflection that, though it has been part of the debates at the International Council, has gained public projection both in the last European Social Forum and the WSF celebrated in Mumbai.

./english/614.txt:51:For all this reasons we consider that the WSF should be celebrated from 3 to 3 years. It would allow us to approach in better conditions the Forums objectives, it would avoid that in some continents (Europe) in few months we have to attend three Forums (European, Mediterranean and World) and would allow to coordinate an integrated agenda of Forums, from the WSF to the Forums in each country. It’s clear that this alternative includes the need to promote these spaces both in the continental and in the many national levels.

./english/620.txt:27:The second concern is regarding the organisational structure of the Forum. There are fears that it can be dominated by large groups and does not provide adequate space to small groups and individuals. This has come up in many forms, with smaller groups always worried that larger, more well organised groups can take the Forum over and run it for their partisan ends. The reverse criticism has also been expressed: that WSF tends to get hegemonised by rich NGOs and attempts to sideline movements. Both theses sets of criticism have come up in India. Internationally some groups have raised the issue of dominance of large formations with respect to the European Social Forum, while in Africa some movements have raised their concern about few NGOs taking control of the Africa Social Forum.

./english/620.txt:32:As already identified in the accompanying note, two changes from the WSF Brazilian/European process in India were:

./english/620.txt:42:a) Multiple centres: the WSF should be seen to be a polycentric event. For example, Europeans can take the initiative on Anti-war programs as also an anti-war activists assembly, Africans on privatisation of State infrastructure, Latin Americans on WTO and Asians on religious/sectarian nationalism and globalisation. The groups would not only take responsibility for the content of some of the major conferences/panels but would also then think about how to concretise these through activities and what should be the follow up.

./english/634.txt:23:The WEF’s relative failure at Davos in turn reflected upon a third “triumph” at Porto Alegre III: the impetus and leadership given by the WSF to a nascent international antiwar movement, which two weeks later (February 15) exploded on the international scene and has been shaking world leaders and events ever since. Indeed, the main message coming out of Porto Alegre III was “No war!” A year earlier, Porto Alegre II had called for regional social forums. The European Social Forum held in Florence, Italy, in November 2002 and attended by 50,000 delegates (plus up to a million in the streets), developed the first plans for a February 15-type day of international protests (the date later became set as February 15). The WSF at Porto Alegre III finalized plans for February 15 and concluded its meetings with a spirited anti-war march. Truth to tell, the organizers of February 15 in every nation were caught by surprise when so many millions turned out (from 12 to 30 million globally, depending on your source). Organizers now openly acknowledge that no single group or coalition of groups can possibly lead this new anti-war movement – the movement is leading them!

./english/646.txt:16:Some observers, such as Camilo Guevara, characterise Seattle and other similar media events in the US and Europe as irrelevant for the great majorities of the world, expressions of the delusions of alienated western youth. While I do not fully agree with his observation, it is undoubtedly true that in the poorer regions of the world a lot was going on long before Seattle; middle-class youth protesting in a European or North American city are much more attractive to global media networks than impoverished peasants campaigning against structural adjustment programmes in the south.

./english/646.txt:80:It has become increasingly clear that the WSF is much more than a series of increasingly large annual events. Indeed the main mechanism for the globalisation of the WSF process has been the holding of regional and thematic forums in various parts of the world. Among the most impactful of these events was a forum on neoliberalism organised in Argentina in August 2002, the European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002 and the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad in January 2003. These forums have formed part of the semi-official forum calendar, maintained and controlled jointly by the Organising Committee/Secretariat and the International Council.

./english/646.txt:84:Unsurprisingly, tensions have sometimes emerged between leading WSF bodies and regional forum organisers. For example, Italian organisers of European Social Forum 2002 wanted to use a social movements declaration drafted by WSF participants as the foundation-stone of their own forum. The Brazilian Organising Committee objected that the Charter of Principles is the only official basis for such events organised within the WSF umbrella.

./english/646.txt:86:Further debate ensued in Bangkok in August 2002 when the Brazilians strongly opposed the plans of the Italians to invite political parties to take part officially in the European Social Forum. According to the Charter of Principles, the WSF process is “non-party”, but the Italian delegates responded by accusing the Brazilian Organising Committee of hypocrisy, since the PT was so visibly present in all the Porto Alegre forums. The Italians claimed that the open violation of the Charter by the Brazilians had been always accepted by WSF participants and that therefore the Brazilians should not get upset when minor political parties play a small role in a regional forum.

./english/646.txt:112:Internal politics in the WSF has often been played out in the space different groups have been given during the main annual events. In the first forum, racial tensions created some internal conflict. Brazil may don the public face of racial harmony during Carnival or the (soccer) World Cup, but racism is present in most walks of life, including progressive intellectuals’ ranks. For many observers, both forums have been surprisingly “white” events due not only to the lack of large delegations from Africa, Asia and other parts of Latin America, but also to the fact that the average Brazilian participating in the forum is clearly “whiter” than the average Brazilian. (Rio Grande do Sul is one of the rare parts of Brazil, Latin America and the whole ‘third world’ where many locals are light-skinned people of European, including Germanic, origin.)