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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:8:So, measured by what the left in Europe actually needs - ie, the highest organisational unity in a party we can achieve - the event was rather disappointing. This is of course not the fault of the Greek Social Forum, the key organising force of this year’s ESF. Rather, the main working class organisations across Europe are criminally negligent in relation to our historic tasks.

./english/31.txt:11:The ASM was set up by our Italian comrades just before the first ESF in Florence 2002, in order to circumvent the ban on the ESF taking political decisions or organising united action. The coordinators of the World Social Forum imposed this measure on all regional forums - in order not to lose the support of the various NGOs, trade unions and other forces that are dependent on maintaining good relations with their governments. So it was an ASM that called for the massive anti-war demonstrations on February 15 2003 (undoubtedly, they would have taken place anyway, but the ASM helped spread them).

./english/31.txt:20:The ban on political parties was ‘ordered’ by the World Social Forum in 2001 in its ‘Charter of principles’ - which, rather ironically, was drawn up mainly by members of the Workers Party in Brazil. No distinction was made between revolutionary communist organisations on the one hand and on the other hand Tony Blair’s Labour Party or general Musharaf’s military government in Pakistan: “Neither party representations nor military organisations shall participate in the forum. Government leaders and members of legislatures who accept the commitments of this charter may be invited to participate in a personal capacity,” the paragraph in question reads.

./english/31.txt:21:This is of course daft, if one considers the role of socialist and communist parties and groups across Europe. They have been at the heart of many mass movements, especially in France, Spain and Italy. The foundations for the ESF were laid by the huge demonstrations that took place in Genoa and Rome. The first ESF was held in Florence, precisely because the Italian workers’ movement is so highly organised and political and has produced Rifondazione Comunista. The second was to a large extent organised by the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire and the Communist Party of France, while the Socialist Workers Party acted as loyal foot-soldiers for London mayor Ken Livingstone in putting on our third forum.

./english/31.txt:23:Interestingly though, not all political parties chose to openly participate in the forum. It will not come as a big surprise to readers of the Weekly Worker that members of the SWP’s International Socialist Tendency decided to continue hiding under various fig leaves - despite the fact that the SWP officially favours the open participation of parties.

./english/31.txt:25:The SEK has played a typically obstructive role in the organisation of the ESF. “Anything they cannot run they try to destroy” is how one member of the Greek Social Forum described it to me. The SEK formed a very small, but vocal minority in the ESF organising committee, which was dominated by a number of trade unions and particularly the Greek Social Forum (including the centre-left party Synapsismos, a large number of leftwing and socialist groups and various campaigns).

./english/31.txt:28:As can be expected, a handful of diehard defenders of the ‘social movements’ have demanded that parties be banned once more. On the ESF email discussion list, they have used the presence of a banner of Marx, Lenin and Stalin - which was hung rather prominently right above the entrance to the forum - to kick off a debate on the subject. At the first day of the ESF, a group of people actually climbed up the building and took down the banner. The Turkish Maoist group MLKP complained to the Greek organisers, who agreed that the banner could be hung.

./english/31.txt:31:That brings me to the delicate matter of the next, our fifth, forum. The bad news: there is still no venue. The ESF ‘leadership’ tried in its evening meetings to persuade members of the Belgian Social Forum to organise the next forum in Brussels. I venture to predict that this will not happen, for one simple reason: there is no big political party involved in the BSF that could actually pull it off. The Belgian comrades I have been speaking to seem similarly pessimistic.

./english/31.txt:32:However, comrades from Italy have indicated that they would be prepared to stage the next forum if no other host can be found.

./english/35.txt:1: The Coordination Working Group of the Hungarian Social Forum

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

./english/35.txt:5:the Greek Social Forum, to have guaranteed the success of this event

./english/35.txt:57: The Hungarian Social Forum cwg agrees with the final Declaration of

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

./english/36.txt:3:This text is a personal report of Athens ESF. It does express neither the Organizing Committee nor the Greek Social Forum. It was written directly in English so it contains many grammar mistakes. Please forgive me.

./english/36.txt:5:1. The success of the Athens ESF exceeded all hopes. Even the most optimists among us didn’t expect to have about 35.000 people in the Forum and about 100.000 demonstrators on May 6 (Police said that the number of demonstrators was 25.000, independent journalists estimated that there were about 70.000 people in the streets of Athens). This unexpected success showed the strength of no global movement and its potentiality to become even bigger. This international movement has opened a new space for social struggles that cannot be cancelled. Social competition has an international aspect which becomes more and more important.

./english/36.txt:7:3. The use of thousands of demonstrators as human shields by some groups of black block is an authoritarian act and shows that these groups think that the Forum is their enemy. Although the intensity of the events was lower than in the past, we as organizers we should have better informed international delegations about the possible dangers in the demo. On the other hand, the Organizing Committee assured that the demonstration ended as it was planned

./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:19:5. In addition to massive participation, we have to underline the significant presence of activists from Central-Eastern Europe and Turkey (more than 2.000). It was the biggest ever participation of these countries in an ESF. The political significance of this participation is obvious: ESF is a Forum of the whole continent and not just of Western Europe. This huge participation was the result of: a) a strong mobilization of no global activists in Eastern Europe and Turkey b) the initial political decision of the Organizing Committee to consider the geographical enlargement of the ESF as a primal priority c) the hard work done by the comrades of the enlargement group who worked day and night to obtain more than 2.000 Visas.

./english/36.txt:21:7. The Organizing Committee gave more importance than in the past to the cultural aspect of the Forum. In fact the response of the artists was impressive. About 150 cultural events took place in the ESF venue. We believe that this convergence between art and politics not only helps artists (specially the young) to present their work to massive public, but also contributes to the emerging of new forms of activism and political communication.

./english/36.txt:24:10. For once more Babels proved that they are a fundamental political component of the ESF and that non commercial practices can be very effective. Despite the very serious logistics problems, ALIS (Alternative Interpretation System) worked well and it will probably be the basic interpretation infrastructure for future Forums.

./english/36.txt:32:The success of the Athens ESF indicates that social forums have a great future. Under the condition, of course, that the ESF has the political will to change and to adapt to new realities.

./english/37.txt:5:Representative of the Hungarian Social Forum Coordination Working

./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:10:By the Monday after the ESF, however, members of the Greek Social Forum, the main grouping behind the event, could not believe what had happened. The forum’s 80,000-strong demonstration was ‘the largest demonstration ever called independently of the Communist Party’, said Sissy Vovou, one of the organisers of the forum’s women’s assembly. ‘Most notable were the many young people who were not members of any political organisation. It’s a sign of a subterranean radicalisation.’ The positive aftermath was spoiled only by the taste of tear gas after a group who call themselves anarchists chucked Molotov cocktails at the police with predictable consequences..

./english/40.txt:12:It wasn’t just the size and composition of the demonstration that made the concept of social movements likely, at last, to become a potent part of the language of public debate in Greece. It was also the forum itself, which was organised very consciously to illustrate that it is possible to run a 30,000-strong extravaganza of political discussion and cultural experience in a participatory, egalitarian and way illustrating the values of the society we are trying to create.

./english/40.txt:14:Out were big plenaries with endless lists of celebrity speakers; in were focused seminars involving networks whose roots were first put down in the previous forums in Florence or Paris and are now coming to maturity. Out were corporate sponsorship and high price entrance fees; in were solidarity funds, low entrance fees and thorough international organising work, enabling over 1,000 activists from Turkey and 3,000 from eastern Europe to participate..

./english/40.txt:15:A generally good-humoured `social movements assembly’ at the end of the forum heard of focal points for action over the next year. These include a Europe-wide week of action to campaign for complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, against the threat of a new war in Iran, against the occupation of Palestine, for nuclear disarmament, and to eliminate military bases in Europe; and a day of mobilisation across Europe and Africa in favour of an unconditional legalisation and equal rights for all migrants, and the closure of all detention centres in Europe.

./english/40.txt:16:There was a mood of satisfaction with the three days of intense, almost sleepless, international planning. ‘It’s been more focused than ever before. More new ideas have come up than ever before,’ said Alla Glinchikova, one of 100 Russian participants from the Moscow Social Forum.

./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/40.txt:24:For the next ESF, the talk is of holding it somewhere like Brussels and organising it on a Europe-wide basis, rather than it being nationally hosted as in the past. As indicated by the Eurotopia survey discussed on the following pages, there are still many tensions and disagreements and very uneven growth. How the social forum process responds to these challenges will determine whether it can build something of lasting influence on the foundations laid in its first four years.

./english/41.txt:17:Friday morning: Participation in the seminar and contact with the Foundation “Alternativy” (Aleksandr Buzgalin and assistant), very important in Russia, on “Neoliberal Developments in the Educational System” with Aleksandr Buzgalin (Russia) on General overview and university education: He as a full professor at the MGU earns 250€ a month, which shows that education is ailing, education was also not simply something that one could subject to commercial criteria (here it was a matter of very complex and artistic gardening, Buzgalin is the author of a very interesting paper according to which, in the 21st century, at the high state of productive forces achieved, the time should actually have come for the “realm of liberty” that Marx had striven for, moreover, he takes care in a really heart-warming way of his colleagues and students), a speaker on the school system, also from Russia, education is being “localised/communalised” (the central standards are getting lost), and sneaking privatisation is taking place, a Greek speaker (?, hardly understandable via radio), a British speaker, who gave examples for sneaking privatisation, for instance, contracts with private firms on the evaluation of teachers, canteen services, etc., Horst Bethge (on the German case: PISA syndrome, private schools, study fees), and a very eloquent French woman from the teacher’s trade union, who told, how in France the trade union was trying locally in cooperation with the parents to work out other, different creative educational models (this is an example of a social logic pushing through in the cracks of capitalism, compare the argument by Dieter Klein and Michael Brie, Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2002, presented several times already at the ESF). The questions were also aimed at that: the style of the seminars at the ESF was absolutely contra-productive, continuous frontal teaching by a podium; however, the Russians present, who had come with several busses, just as the Rumanians (I met a representative of the local Social Forum; from there, two busses had come with more than 100 participants) were happy to be there at all.

./english/41.txt:22:Friday evening: For the workshop “Governmental participation”, there then materialised, strangely enough, a Babels interpreter, even though the Greek hosts had explicitly granted that while the seminars had to be translated by BABELS/ALIS, the workshop organisers were allowed to bring their own collaborators. I feel demeaned by that, because it is a way to be able to say later on that I (or others in that situation) have not earned their fare. However, I then after all listened to part of the workshop: the speaker from the PCF stressed how the PCF was trying to create a broad alliance in view of the next elections and to also woo left-wingers from the PS, the Norwegian speaker emphasised the role of the trade unions in bringing about the left-wing government that they now have there, Jolanda Putz (from Italy and Germany) highlighted the victory over Berlusconi fascism as the basics for the new (somewhat more) left-wing government in Italy, my colleague Connie and the discussant from our partner party, the WASG (Electoral Initiative for Work and Social Justice), lost themselves in a futile dispute over petty details. I again went to the mike and asked the question whether it would not be possible to replace what Connie herself had called the “easily undermined” essentials of governmental participation by minimal standards to be enforced and not to be violated under any circumstances (for instance, no privatisations, defence of workers’ rights, no study fees etc.), as has been proposed in our German Left Party by Sahra Wagenknecht, Nele Hirsch and Tobias Pflüger et al., but the climate in the workshop was heavy, if you know what I want to say, and I switched to the seminar “Entry of Turkey into the EU”, where also my boss Michael Brie (rlf) had spoken. Here and in the seminar on war, I had the great revelation of the forum, namely the fact that the long-time bitter conflict between Turkey and Greece (and also Greece and Italy, due to the inheritance of fascism) really is a factor, which is why one felt tension again and again at the ESF.

./english/41.txt:26:On Saturday morning, I ran from one seminar to the other: At the seminar “From Marx by way of Poulantzas to Rosa Luxemburg”, there was, although apart from me also Michael Krätke had obtained no radio, and despite our clearly expressed wish, no consecutive translation from the Greek, so that first Krätke and then I had to leave. The seminar on G-8 took its expected course: Scots reported on their protests last year, Boris Kagarlitsky invited activists to Russia, Hugo Braun and Pedram Shayar (Attac) presented the campaign planned for next year on occasion of the G-8 meeting in Heiligendamm. Then to finish off, I still listened in on a seminar on the future of Europe with Elisabeth Gauthier (also from Transform!) who later on the way to the demonstration told me that a speaker from Turkey there had really been involved in acts of violence (following the Charta of Porto Alegre, activists advocating and practising violence are actually not allowed to speak at Social Forums).

./english/41.txt:63:Vendredi matin : Participation dans le séminaire et établissement de contact avec la Fondation « Alternativy » (Aleksandr Buzgalin et assistante), très importante en Russie, sur les « Développements néolibérales dans le système éducatif » avec Aleksandr Buzgalin (Russie) sur le sujet : Présentation générale et éducation universitaire : Lui en tant que plein professeur de la MGU touche 250€ par moi, ce qui montre comment l’éducation est maltraitée, l’éducation après tout n’étant pas quelque chose que l’on pourrait soumettre à des critères commerciaux (c’était ici un cas de « jardinage » très complexe et artistique, Buzgalin d’ailleurs est l’auteur d’un papier très intéressant suivant lequel, dans le 21e siècle et étant donné l’état très accompli des forces productives, le temps serait en fait venu pour le « royaume de la liberté » auquel Marx avait aspiré, de plus il prend soin d’une manière vraiment aimable de ses collèges et de ses étudiant/es), une oratrice sur le système scolaire, aussi de Russie, l’éducation est de plus en plus « communalisée/localisée » (les échelles centrales se perdent), et une privatisation furtive est en train de s’étendre, un orateur grec ( ?, très difficile à comprendre, via la radio), un orateur anglais, qui donnait des exemples de la privatisation furtive, par exemple, des contrats avec des firmes privées sur l’évaluation des instituteurs, les services de réfectoires etc., Horst Bethge (sur le cas allemand : syndrome de PISA, écoles privées, frais d’étudiants), et une femme très éloquente du syndicats des professeurs de collège et de lycée qui raconta comment en France, le syndicat était en train d’essayer localement en coopération avec les parents d’élaborer des autres modèles créatives d’éducation (ceci est un exemple d’une logique sociale poussant à travers les fissures du capitalisme, comparer l’argument par Dieter Klein et Michael Brie, Fondation Rosa Luxemburg, 2002, présenté déjà plusieurs fois au FSE). Les questions visaient aussi à cela : le style des séminaires au FSE était absolument contra- productif, c’était de l’enseignement frontal continuel par un podium ; pourtant les Russes, qui étaient venus dans plusieurs bus, de mêmes que les roumains (je rencontra un représentant de leur Forum social local ; de là-bas, deux bus étaient venus avec plus de 100 participants) étaient d’abord heureux d’être là.

./english/41.txt:68:Vendredi soir : Pour l’atelier « Participation gouvernementale », il apparût tout à fait étrangement une interprète Babels, bien que les hôtes grecs aient explicitement permis que contrairement aux séminaires, qui devaient être traduits par Babels/ALIS, les organisateurs d’ateliers avaient la permission d’amener leur collaborateurs. Je me sens humiliée par cela, car c’est un moyen pour pouvoir dire plus tard que moi (ou d’autres dans cette situation) n’ont pas gagné leurs frais. Néanmoins j’ai écouté une partie de l’atelier : l’oratrice du PCF souligna comment le PCF s’efforçait de créer une large alliance en vue des prochaines élections et aussi de d’attirer des gens de gauche du PS, l’orateur norvégien mis l’accent sur le rôle des syndicats dans la victoire du gouvernement de gauche qu’ils ont en ce moment là haut, Jolanda Putz (d’Italie et d’Allemagne) loua la victoire sur le fascisme à la Berlusconi en tant que base pour le nouveau gouvernement (un peu plus à gauche), ma collège Conny et le discutant de notre parti- partenaire, le WASG (Initiative électorale pour le Travail et la Justice sociale) se perdirent dans une dispute futile sur des détails mesquins. Je suis allée encore une fois au micro pour demander s’il ne serait pas possible de remplacer, ce que Conny elle-même avait appelé les essentiels facilement érodés de la participation gouvernementale par des critères minimaux (pas de privatisations, défense des droits des travailleurs, pas de frais d’étude etc.) à être réalisés et à ne pas être violés sous aucune circonstance, comme cela a été proposé dans notre Parti de Gauche allemand par Sahra Wagenknecht, Nele Hirsch et Tobias Pflüger et al., mais le climat dans l’atelier était lourd, si vous savez ce que je veux dire, et je suis passé dans un autre, « Entrée de la Turquie dans l’UE » où mon chef Michael Brie (frl) avait parlé aussi. Ici et dans le séminaire sur la guerre, j’avais la grande révélation du forum, c'est-à-dire le fait que le conflit long et amère entre la Turquie et la Grèce (et aussi la Grèce et l’Italie, à cause de l’héritage du fascisme) est vraiment un facteur, ce qui est une des raisons, pour laquelle l’on sentit encore et encore de la tension au forum.

./english/41.txt:72:Le samedi matin, je courus d’un séminaire à l’autre : Au séminaire « De Marx par Poulantzas à Rosa Luxemburg », il n’y avait pas, bien que Michael Krätke aussi à part moi n’avait pas obtenu de radio, et en dépit de notre demande clairement exprimée, pas d’interprétation consécutive du Grec, si bien que d’abord Krätke et puis moi étaient forcés de repartir. Le séminaire sur les G-8 prit son cours attendu : des Scots rapportaient de leurs protestations l’année dernière, Boris Kagarlitsky invita des activistes à venir en Russie, Hugo Braun et Pedram Shayar (Attac) présentèrent la campagne envisagée pour l’année prochaine en occasion de la rencontre des G-8 à Heiligendamm, puis à la fin, je écoutai encore un petit bout d’un séminaire sur l’avenir de l’Europe avec Élisabeth Gauthier (aussi de Transform !) qui après, en route à la manifestation, me raconta que l’un des orateurs de ce séminaire, de Turquie, avait réellement été impliqué dans des actes de violence (suivent la Charte de Porto Alegre, des activistes prêchant et pratiquant la violence n’ont à vrai dire pas la permission de parler à des Forums Sociaux).

./english/42.txt:61:We only have the problem that the subject of our Network is not mentioned in the "official" declarations of the Forum, e.g. in the declaration of the Assembly of the Movements. This is something that must be changed. (I wrote a separate mail to the ESF mailing list regarding this issue.) But this finally doesn't mean that this ESF wasn't a success also for our Network and the people we're working together with.

./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:33:Babels’ interpreters are activists and their participation is based on Babels’ principles and militancy. Babels is not a cheap service provider and its interpreters and translators are not a mere linguistic decoration. They are committed political actresses and actors who take part in the Social Forum process, and who seek to open the Social Forum to new thoughts and proposals originating from countries whose languages have rarely been represented in past Forums.

./english/44.txt:34:Languages are not only about transmitting ideas, but are also the cradle for new ideas. This is why we push for the presence of a much larger number of languages in Social Forums, allowing more and different people to express themselves and participate in the debates. Since the creation of Babels, the Social Forums have increased the number of languages with interpretation from 4 to over 20 different languages. This, in turn, has allowed more people to participate, and not only the fortunate intellectuals and activists who have been trained to speak and to understand the neo-colonial languages.

./english/44.txt:36:Involving volunteers in Social Forums therefore implies Babels getting involved and participating at all levels. The joint work of the volunteers and trained experts (whether professionals, retired professionals or non-professionals) and skilled people (whether translation students, bilingual activists, and so on...) is a conscious choice. The quality of interpreting and translating in Social Forums is also linked to the commitment of the volunteers through collaboration and cooperation inside and outside Babels, especially from Organizing Committees and participant organizations.

./english/44.txt:37:It must be made clear that Babels does not promote sub-standard work and does not wish to damage the reputation of freelance translators and interpreters. On the contrary, our commitment to the Social Forum goes hand in hand with our demand for respect for the work of translators and interpreters.

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

./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: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:138:This Forum should call on all people to fight for the abolition of isolation in prisons, especially in Abu-Graib, Guantanamo, F-type Prisons in Turkey and white cells in Europe. Isolation should end. The date of 19-22 December should be organized as a day of support for political prisoners.

./english/44.txt:178:CALL FOR AN ECOLOGICAL SOCIAL FORUM

./english/44.txt:179:In the light of global consciousness about the ecological threat and the responsibility we have to future generations, the Assembly of Social Movements decided to launch the Ecological Social Forum.

./english/44.txt:180:The agenda of this Ecological Social Forum, includes:

./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: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:223:As the G8 summit will take place in St. Petersburg, Russia, in July 2006, we call on social movements and militants for their support, by direct participation or by solidarity actions, for the 2nd Russian Social Forum that is to be held by Russian opponents to the neoliberal capitalism in St. Petersburg, parallel to the G8 Summit.

./english/44.txt:238:The worldwide social forum movement for global justice must become globally visible and show its vision, diversity and strength.

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

./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/46.txt:8:We are participating since the beginning in the construction process of all Social Forums and we are present at the ESF of Athens to build democratic, hence lay alternatives for a different Europe.

./english/46.txt:10:Considering the present challenges facing the Social Forums, the Women's Assembly wishes to stress once again that women should not serve as an alibi for any kind of manipulations. We reject political alliances that are concluded to the detriment of women and which establish priorities for our struggles, putting feminist demands behind anti-racist and anti-war demands. Such processes divide the anti-liberal forces and undermine the strength of the Social Forums. Because women's rights are universal, feminists are equally involved in the fight against racism and against war/

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

./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:12:The forum met against the background of a major upsurge in the class

./english/54.txt:19:The Forum took place in one of the Olympic sporting facilities on the site

./english/54.txt:40:unions provided most of the Greek Social Forum volunteers. The running of

./english/54.txt:48:migrants lent the forum a much greater air of radicalism than was the case

./english/54.txt:59:self-appointed International Secretariat of the World Social Forum scarcely

./english/54.txt:65:Forum debates

./english/54.txt:87:the forum. Much larger numbers attended from Eastern Europe and the Balkans,

./english/54.txt:88:including from Moldova, Ukraine and Russia, where the growing social forum

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

./english/54.txt:214:Haris Golemis (Synaspismos) Yannis Almpanis (Greek Social Forum), Petros

./english/54.txt:223:Forum), and from the Spanish state, Josu Erigeun (ESK, Basque trade union)

./english/54.txt:246:Social Forum in 2007 and the anti-G8 in Germany in June of that year.

./english/54.txt:286:Assembly taking place before September, unless the Greek Social Forum takes

./english/54.txt:303:which took place on the march between the Greek Social Forum and the

./english/54.txt:319:class, should press ahead with creating such a forum of struggle.

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

./english/54.txt:376:forum, others should step up and take the lead.

./english/62.txt:12:• Nicola Haeringer: Some thoughts on the memory of social forums. ESF Common memory project (English) (1 A4 page long)

./english/62.txt:62:Some thoughts on the memory of social forums. ESF Common memory project

./english/62.txt:65:Since the beginning of social forums, their organizers have been thinking about their memory.

./english/62.txt:66:All the actors of social forums' memory have a profile that is in itself significant : they are both in and out, at a distance of social forums/social movements; whether they are researchers (academical ones or not) ; artists ; documentalists/librarists ; actors of the freesoftware community.

./english/62.txt:68:- traces, the challenge being the forums in the time. The idea is to build a memory/material that could be used later by historian. We even speak about 'Building the memory of social forums'. However, 'building the memory' is more often a preoccupation of empires/dictatorships than of movements of social transformation.

./english/62.txt:69:- visibility, the challenge being the forums in the space. The idea is to enable those who are not at the right place in the right time to be aware of what's happening/what happened/what has been happening.

./english/62.txt:70:- effects/outputs, the challenge being the forums in the society and in ourselves. The aim is to be able to tell how do social forums change the world, transforme their participants, change the movement(s), etc.

./english/62.txt:71:- reflexivity, the challenge being building tools/processes that enables us to take distance from the forums/our activism, etc. This can aim at changing the forums themselves (while giving voices to the unheard, for example) or to be able to set ourselves outside of the forum when we deal with the forum. This reflexivity can be both individual and collectiv, and can lead to the emergence of common representations.

./english/62.txt:72:Indeed, the memory of social forums is a grey-zone, the product and the frame of a tension between different elements.

./english/62.txt:96:Interventi al Social Forum di Atene 2006.

./english/62.txt:100:In questo momento chi si sente legato allo studio di questo soggetto sociale e contemporaneamente ha l’ambizione teorica di poterlo comprendere a fondo forgiando strumenti d’analisi adeguati ed efficaci a cogliere una realtà così complessa, deve problematizzare prima di tutto il punto di vista da cui si mette ad osservare tale fenomeno. Ciò non vuol dire produrre un’analisi a-scientifica o non scientifica, ma fare propria la cultura della critica sociale che ha caratterizzato alcuni approcci all’analisi sociale nel novecento (come la scuola di Francoforte, ma non solo), e aver assorbito la lezione einsteiniana della relatività anche in ambito sociale. Ciò significa valorizzare questa storia dal proprio e originale punto di vista. Così da problematizzare la relazione costitutiva della ricerca, la dinamica soggetto-oggetto, per sostenere senza pudori l’evidente internità al movimento di quei ricercatori che per studiarlo si danno appuntamento in uno dei momenti del movimento stesso. Che lo vorrebbero trattare con la distanza tipica della catalogazione zoologica, non accorgendosi del proprio paradosso. Come è possibile infatti rivendicare la propria neutralità a partire da un incontro di movimento come il Social forum europeo? Da questa breve premessa, appena accennata a parole, ho voluto richiamare l’attenzione soprattutto su quello che mi sembra essere il problema principale di una tale posizione: l’illusione democratica. Lato oscuro che si cela nel movimento, indagine urgente e assolutamente necessaria per chi vuole che il proprio lavoro di osservazione non cada nell’ingenua visione descrittiva della realtà che, lungi dal chiarire i fenomeni, rischia di fraintenderli. La doppia condizione di riflettere sul movimento a partire da un luogo di movimento, è stato il riflesso di un’analisi e di un desiderio che dobbiamo tener ben distinti: se l’analisi del fenomeno “movimento sociale” (che sarebbe anche interessante da cercare di chiarire in quanto tale, ma forse solo da una prospettiva filosofica….forse) porta a un riconoscimento della sua tendenza democratica costitutiva e centrale, il desiderio democratico che muove i ricercatori a porsi all’interno del contesto del movimento non va sottovalutato (non a caso l’incontro in sé esprimeva fortemente la volontà politica di chi vi partecipava, benché questa non sia stata sottolineata da nessuno ed anzi si è rivendicato un contesto quasi accademico per il ciclo dei seminari di incontro tra i “ricercatori” che sono intervenuti). Se l’indagine non fa propria una nuova attitudine critica che indaghi ciò che sfugge alla democrazia, ciò che gli resiste, ciò che non è possibile nominare come democratico all’interno del movimento e nei rapporti tra il movimento e le istituzioni sociali rispetto alle quali esso, nella sua plurale e multiforme identità, produce cambiamento ed avanza pretese di trasformazione, allora il rischio si trasforma in reale ed inconsapevole deformazione della realtà.

./english/147.txt:68:The most important institutional props of the Italian movement are social centers, social forums, and magazines. Social centers represent an attempt to create autonomous spaces free from capitalist social and economic relations. They became vital for the survival of anti-capitalist movements by the end of the 1970s. There are dozens of social centers in Italy with different experiences and different political-ideological nuances, but they are all descendants of 1960s and 1970s revolts.

./english/147.txt:72:Social Forums

./english/147.txt:74:The Italian movement of movements has been mixing and forming coalitions for years and is now trying to take root in popular society. The new Social Forums are an attempt to bridge differences in ideology, practice, and theory to create an open plural space.

./english/147.txt:76:The first social forum was created before Genoa and was inspired by the spirit of Porto Alegre. There are now 140 social forums in Italy. While the “national” Italian Social Forum has had its spokespeople and hierarchy, local social forums act autonomously and represent a very important site of participation for citizens who have come closer to radical ideas after Genoa. The political map of social forums is complicated and intertwined. There are many who find this form outdated, but they have had impressive results, especially at the local level.

./english/147.txt:149:ATTAC is also one of the most important organizers of the World Social Forum. The critics of ATTAC most often warn of the differences in regional ATTAC groups, the reformist orientation, the almost dictator-like structure of the French ATTAC, including the isolation of the presidency from the base, rigged elections, and lack of democracy inside the organization.

./english/150.txt:12:A Euro-wide paper, »Marches-Europeenes-News« is produced regularly and this is supplemented by nationally based publications. Much communication takes place via e-mail and use of the internet as continent wide meetings are costly to arrange and incur sizeable travel expenses. However, the »Assizes« are well attended with 500 participants from many countries. These gatherings, together with the counter-summits, provide opportunities for the exchange of information, experiences of struggles and for debate over policies, demands, actions and ways of organising the movement. Although debate can become heated, there is a spirit of cooperation which is just as well with the large number of languages being spoken. The organisation of summer camps in Thessalonika (1998) and Cologne (1999) provides another forum of debate for activists from diverse movements.

./english/150.txt:14:Those involved in Euromarch range from rank and file trade unionists, through political activists to social movement campaigners, but the most numerous and prominent participants have so far been unemployed activists. This reflects Euromarch«s central focus on unemployment and its main task which has been the mobilisation of marches and marchers against unemployment. However even within this issue there is a diversity of organisations which come under the umbrella of the Euromarch organisation. For example in France there are several unemployed organisations like Action Chomage!, APEIS, CGT (Unemployed Workers Committee) and MNCP which organise together despite their differences. The political perspectives of Euromarch activists also vary from left-wing Social Democrats, Socialists, Greens, Communists, Trotskyists, Anarchists, non-aligned etc., all of whom find Euromarch a worthwhile forum within which to pursue their particular politics. Similarly there are activists from a wide range of social movement campaigns. A list of the groups represented at the recent Cologne »Assizes« included campaigns for the rights of women, Black people, migrants, asylumseekers, pensioners, the homeless, students, school students as well as environmental and anti-fascist campaigns. Such a broad range of involvement is encouraged by Euromarch and in this vain Euromarch activist, Gitti Goetz, in her appeal for the Vienna demonstration hoped that »organizations and groups of unemployed, women, trade unionists, asylumseekers, and homeless will not only take part, but also become active themselves with their own ideas, forms of action and demands.« Such a diversity of participants is reflected by the breadth of demands which have been formulated.

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

./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/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/180.txt:2:Author: Frank Slegers - Belgium Social Forum 23 Marc 2005

./english/180.txt:135:- the Social Forum of Belgium (SFoB) made a clear round. Let’s

./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:19:-> London also displayed the same interplay of mobilization and debate that has been the driving force of all the great social forums: the ESF culminated in a demonstration in central London of around 100,000, before which the Assembly of the Social Movements launched a call for international protests against neo-liberalism and war on the weekend of 19-20 March 2005.

./english/192.txt:21:-> The mainstream of the trade union movement in Britain was actively involved in both the preparatory process and the Forum itself: feedback from various unions has been overwhelmingly positive, with reports of highly successful seminars involving important networks of activists;

./english/192.txt:28:The London Forum, which involved the plentiful participation of young people and a broad coverage of all the issues of concern to the movement in the plenaries and seminars, should, together with the mobilization for the G8 summit in Gleneagles next July, help to transform this consciousness into much stronger organized networks in Britain. The corporate media in Britain are notoriously reluctant to provide serious coverage of the altermondialiste movement, but the Guardian (18 October 2004) acknowledged the significance of the Forum, warning that

./english/192.txt:30:Of course, there were weaknesses. No one comes to London for the food, but the food at Alexandra Palace was terrible, and terribly expensive. The experience of the preparatory work on the programme confirms Bernard Cassen's criticism of the first two ESFs that an enormous amount of time and energy is devoted to deciding the subjects of the plenaries and selecting the speakers. It will be interesting to see the experiment at the next World Social Forum at Porto Alegre of dispensing entirely with plenaries and having only self-organized events.

./english/192.txt:33:In part this disagreement reflects differences in national context. In Britain the war dominates politics and is far and away the biggest mobilizing issue. Without the prominence of the war and the leading involvement in the ESF of the British peace movement, the Forum would have been a far less dynamic affair, and the final demonstration would have been little larger than the participation in the Forum itself.

./english/192.txt:39:3. These disagreements spilled over into several attempts at disruption. Overall these incidents had very little impact on the ESF. The vast bulk of events went on completely unaffected by them, and most participants in the Forum and the final demonstration and concert didn't see them. But both because they received some attention in the media and on the net, and because this is the first time that an ESF has been successfully disrupted (an attempt to attack a Socialist Party representative in Paris was foiled by security guards), these attacks are worth discussing.

./english/192.txt:42:In Britain, by contrast, the altermondialiste networks that had participated in the earlier Forums were relatively weak. A coalition had to be created from scratch to organize the London ESF. This involved bringing together very diverse organizations with no history of working together and huge differences in political culture. Working together would have been hard in any circumstances.

./english/192.txt:43:Nevertheless, a very heavy responsibility for the difficulties that developed must rest with the autonomist circles. Their attitude towards the ESF varied between outright opposition (theorized by the Wombles in a critique of the Social Forums as inherently reformist) and variable but usually not very constructive participation in the process (often through the agency of various fellow travellers).

./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:46:The unwelcome presence of the IFTU at the ESF was thus a consequence of building a Forum that reached deep into the mainstream of the labour movement. The foolish decision by a handful of protestors (in this case mainly members of British and Middle Eastern far left sects) to shout down a platform mainly composed of the convenor of the Stop the War Coalition and Iraqis opposed to the occupation was thus a refusal to engage with this mainstream. It represented exactly the kind of sterile sectarian politics from which the rest of us are trying to escape.

./english/192.txt:47:4. The attacks made on the anti-fascist plenary and the stage in Trafalgar Square were the work largely of autonomists many of whom are in principle opposed to the Social Forums. In addition to claims of lack of democracy, two other excuses were given for these actions. First of all, the 'corporate ESF' and the support given by Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, were denounced.

./english/192.txt:49:The pattern has been the same with the ESF. Florence received support from the regional government. In addition to help from the municipalities of Paris, St Denis, Bobigny and Ivry, the Paris ESF received €1 million from the office of the right-wing Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. No one criticized the French comrades for this, presumably because we all understood that a mass Social Forum needs money and money means compromises. In the case of London this money was provided by a mayor who, despite his mistaken decision to rejoin the Labour Party, has consistently supported the anti-war movement. Why are different standards applied to London than to the other Social Forums?

./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:56:Hence the strains that became visible in London. We need to understand this when we prepare for Athens. The divisions in the British process tended to polarize between a coalition of significant social movements and a disruptive but socially weak autonomist fringe. But there are some four powerful forces that will need to be brought into the ESF - the Greek Social Forum, the Genoa 2001 Campaign, the Greek Communist Party, and the trade unions, whose leadership tend to be linked to PASOK. Only the first two have been involved in the ESF process, and all four have a history of mutual conflict. Bringing them together will be a big challenge for us all.

./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:5:Between 14 and 17 October, more than 25,000 participants came together at the ESF in London, located at the wonderful Alexandra Palace, as well as at several other locations in Northern and Central London where several ‘autonomous spaces’, ranging from a ‘radical theory forum’ to ‘tactical media’ and ‘beyond the ESF’, were also held. It is impossible to grasp all the issues discussed at the ESF, reaching from ‘life after capitalism’ to ‘life despite capitalism’, from ‘against privatisation’ to the ‘experience of the commons’, from the ‘women’s assembly’ to the ‘no border network’, from ‘organising for workers rights’ to the ‘first assembly of the Precariat in Europe’ (a theme barely present on the official ESF) and so on and so forth. The supply of seminars and workshops was enormous, but the process of merging seminars in the run up to the ESF in many cases had led to the bringing together of things that do not fit.

./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:37:This link to concrete situations of resistance in time and space on the ESF is sometimes difficult to achieve. In many seminars and workshops you just get flat, already known analyses, simple propaganda and wishful thinking. Again and again the common enemy (neoliberalism, transnational corporations, the US, the WTO etc.) is condemned – in this sense the perspective on the ESF seems too unified; the few times debates became concrete consensus was melting away – the different approaches and goals were too diverse: a necessary result emerging from the contradiction of the ESF (and WSF) process itself as open space for discussion and self-education, without a real attempt to develop some applicable and visible alternatives. Therefore the Forum is no movement in itself (in contrast to Thomas Ponniah’s view8), but maybe a space for a new political consciousness and sovereignty, the modern form of articulation and association of structurally fragmented groups, classes and movements. However, because there is no alternative social project formed, the actual representative crisis of neoliberalism does not lead to a weakening of its hegemonic position. Pierre Khalfa supposes that diversity paralyses. 9 But its not diversity as such – which might enrich the movements – but a lack of deep analysis, including the production of neoliberal hegemony from below, in combination with non-committal plurality. This undermines a generalization of experiences, views and understandings (without closed unification under one primary force) preventing us from achieving coherent approaches and strategies. On the one hand there are more or less successful local social movements, creating autonomous spaces and transforming subjectivities, sometimes re-appropriating the essential means of reproduction from below, but hardly touching the relations of power on national or even transnational level. On the other there are global events for the altermondialist, national and transnational NGOs, some national parties, getting some media presence, shaping the public discourse, but far away from the everyday experience of the people, acting in some kind of representative vacuum without really questioning the ruling political form (Brand 2004). There is a need for intermediate political forms. At the heart of the problem lies the relation between representation and participation. A permanent movement (in the strict sense of the word) is difficult to sustain, movements are fragile forms with periods of higher or lesser activity, they develop out of concrete situations of dissent with the ruling mode of production and living, with a perspective of (molecular) social transformation, while the struggle for this transformation has to be a very long-standing one. Out of this results a need for institutionalisation to bridge times of less activity, disintegration, defensive situations and to overcome defeats, save experience and knowledge for the next generation of activists etc. A renewed concept for left political parties could be one possibility to create intermediate institutionalised political forms.

./english/193.txt:70:des dritten Europäischen Sozialforums‹, in: Junge Welt, 25.10.2004,

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

./english/193.txt:91:8. In his analyses of the Social Forum process at the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation Berlin, October 19.

./english/194.txt:1:The success of the London Forum

./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:6:Our positive judgment, obviously, does not hide the difficulties that did agitate this Forum. An organization that was not up to the standard of the event, a certain rigidity, gave rise to small disputes that were strongly emphasised in some circles and that Haidi Giuliani, interviewed by our newspaper, defines as «a lot of noise over nothing» In the sense that the essence of the event does not change: the movement still centres around the search for one's political space and, with this strong tool in hand, equips itself with the means by which to launch its own initiative. Then there are the contradictions: for example, speakers in the assemblies are always male, white and fifty-year olds - a thing that provokes unease in young people and women; trade unions are sometimes committed and sometimes not; the inclusion [or otherwise] of a variety of experiences is not always exemplary - and it must be said that the representatives of the Italian movement always know how to say the right words about this, as shown by the handling of the final assembly. All this is a push towards the self-reforming of the Forum: it will be discussed on 18 and 19 December in an assembly in Paris and, presumably, also at the various national levels.

./english/194.txt:12:Secondly there it is a problem of democracy, and of effectiveness, inside the movement itself. The proclamation of the assembly of Paris in December is an awareness of this problem: the people making the decisions are still few and this can create a detachment, a dispersal. The political space designed by the Forum should be followed by many other spaces, thematic, local, transversal, centred on permanent campaigns that allow the different subjects to intervene and to make more decisions.

./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/195.txt:11:On the other hand, there is also a sense in which the process of the ESF in London has not been a way forward for our movement, but a serious set back. The degree of subcontracting of the various processes of the “official” events, culminating with the hiring of an “event management” company, the environmental unawareness of its practices, the vertical control freakery that has dominated all moments of its production, suspicious of all productive networks from the movement that did not match the “way of doing” template of union bureaucracies and socialist parties, the contractual “terms and conditions” email sent to anyone purchasing tickets, the petty self-promoting splashing of UK union names on the walls of meeting rooms instead of reaching out to symbols that belong to all movements across the globe, not to mention the bullying, the trade unions’ and Greater London Authority’s financial blackmails and the monopolization of platforms such as the final rally, are just an indication that in terms of these practices, we have a long way to go to make another world possible. In the effort to “build” the movement, to “outreach” to people who have not yet heard about the horrors of the world, the organizers have forgotten that a process of radical social transformation takes much more than an increasing number of people laid down as “building bricks”. This relational incompetence is a heavy political liability in our movement, and cannot be justified by the ends of “educating” more people or outreaching into the mainstream union organizations, as Alex Callinicos argues in a recent posting to the ESF-UK email list. We cannot overcome this by choosing between the false polarity posed on us by those who portray the Social Forum as a space or as a movement of movements. We move beyond the impasse if we understand it to be both. Because to be radically transformative, the movement of movements must strive to set a limit to the voraciousness of capital, to be its true insurmountable barrier, and at the same time to constitute new social relations, new modes of producing and doing, including producing politics. The practice of this articulation is what constitutes an open space. Without this articulation and the efforts necessary for it, our collective political subjectivity as a transformative force is, simply, lost.

./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:11:Social forums have the great advantage of bringing together many forces in a given country not necessarily used to working together and obliging them to do so, for a common cause. Perhaps some of these individuals or some of these organisations are still immature (vain?) enough to require the kind of public exposure and approbation that plenary sessions can convey (and, as an invited guest of the London ESF organising committee, I will myself perform if required to do so) but star turns are no longer what we need if indeed they ever were.

./english/197.txt:15:If people, even quite young and/or inexperienced people, really don't know anything at all about these issues, which I seriously doubt, we can and should give them reading lists and set up courses and summer universities for them, but in future Social Forums I would hope we could stop the silly jockeying for speech slots, refrain from endless repetition and ceremonial condemnation, determine what issues we really need to talk about, get organised beforehand to do so, then hit the ground running.

./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:21:My postulate about forums is that travelling somewhere for three or four days ought to be intellectually and politically profitable both to the person making the investment and to the movement itself. If this statement is valid, then it should logically follow that our time would be best spent in seminars and workshops genuinely oriented towards gaining the closest possible knowledge of our adversaries and to defining the collective strategies and actions most likely to make their lives miserable. As an out of fashion 19th century political philosopher might have said, `We have identified and interpreted the targets: the point, however, is to hit them.

./english/197.txt:27:I'm quite willing to discuss other priorities. Global ills require global remedies and only international campaigning led by the international movement can provide the power to impose them. Our adversaries are all too often global in scope too and, once more, they act coherently, whereas we generally do not. The World Bank, the IMF and the WTO have a universal strategy; so do transnational corporations and banks (at least taken individually); even the Davos World Economic Forum, though made up of many disparate individuals, marches to the beat of the same neo-liberal drummer. How can the movement possibly score points off such powerful institutions if it remains dispersed, working on a thousand different issues, never really uniting in a single struggle around any of them?

./english/197.txt:39:Let me repeat: such a conscious choice wouldn't mean abandoning all our other ongoing campaignssimply that everyone understands that when there's an action push to be carried out and demos to be planned, officials to be besieged and governments harassed, then those activities really are priorities for everyone at that particular time. For such an endeavour to work, we would need some sort of elected international steering committee. Couldn't we try to develop such an idea at the coming Social Forums on different continents, call for candidates, organise an election system and secure a budget? Naturally no one can guarantee that a more sharply focused strategic choice would bring us victory but it seems clear that our adversaries savour every moment we remain dispersed and, for most practical purposes, off their backs.

./english/199.txt:7:The third ESF has officially ended, but the barrage of attacks and counter-attacks around the autonomous actions and arrests continues to rage. The simmering conflict between the horizonal and verticals became fully visible when a group of activists from Beyond ESF, including the Wombles and many others, rushed the stage during an anti-Racism plenary Saturday night to denounce Ken Livingstone and the lack of democracy within the forum. Tensions grew after several activists were arrested on the way out, and resurfaced yet again when a highly respected Indymedia activist, who happened to have also played a key role in NOMAD and the broader ESF process, was dragged away by police after trying to make a statement following the march on Sunday afternoon. Things have since come to a boil as SWP members, the mayor's allies, and others dismiss such direct actions as violent, anti-democratic, and even racist, while their critics continue to defend the right to take direct action to publicly voice their concerns. Debates once pitting activists against mainstream politicians and bureaucrats in the WTO, World Bank, and IMF now rage within the very heart of the Global Justice Movement itself.

./english/199.txt:9:Before making too much of this situation, it is important to take a step back and reflect on the London ESF experience and the broader politics of autonomous space. Although perhaps more exaggerated this time around because of the nature of London's political culture- most notably the presence of SWP and Socialist Action- the tension between grassroots network-based movements and their more traditional organizational counterparts has been a constant since the beginning of the forums, and was present within earlier mass direct action mobilizations, including Seattle, as well. Intense struggles over political vision, tactics, and organizational form are not cause for alarm; indeed, they are constitutive of the convergence process that characterizes the forums and the broader movement from which they emerged. The important question is thus how to best manage such conflicts, rather than erase them entirely. And this is precisely where the politics of autonomous space has the most to offer.

./english/199.txt:11:Before describing my own experience in London , I should confess that I fully side with the horizontals. Not in the sense of an unrealistic utopia, but rather as a guiding vision, an ideal we should always aspire to. Horizontalism does not ignore informal hierarchies, but rather seeks mechanisms to control them, without reinscribing vertical structures into our formal organizational architectures. At the same time, horizontalism means always remaining open and flexible to diversity and difference- within certain limits, of course. Whereas those with divergent organizational practices may be welcome, those who support war and neoliberalism are not. I consider myself left libertarian and anti-capitalist, but I realize I form part of a much larger, complex, and contradictory whole. Building autonomous spaces, "separate, yet connected" as we used to say in Barcelona , becomes a way to manage conflict, respecting differences while sometimes acting together, and at other times taking critical action apart. Such a politics recognizes the importance of open space, but radically questions boundaries and clear demarcations. Rather than open space, we need to start thinking about multiple spaces, open not just internally, but also with respect to one another. Open space thus becomes networked space, physically manifest within and around the forum.

./english/199.txt:13:With respect to the politics of autonomous space, the London ESF was a tremendous success. Never before have there been so many diverse, disjunctive, yet complementary initiatives not entirely within or without, but rather straddling various mobile and often elusive boundaries. Some, like Beyond ESF, were more confrontational, while others, like the Indymedia Center or Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination were neither for or against, but rather involved their own innovative forms of political and cultural production across the terrain of the forum and, indeed, the entire city itself. Although autonomous, these spaces were not entirely cut off from official events. In addition to the highly public oppositional actions, many of us moved fluidly- as much as London 's expansive Underground system would allow- from Alexander Palace to Middlesex University , from the Camden Center to the LSE, and back again.

./english/199.txt:15:For me the London Forum began with Beyond ESF's opening of plenary on Wednesday night at Middlesex University , where spokespeople from each of the autonomous spaces presented their projects to an enthusiastic group of 200 grassroots activists. Over the next several days, Beyond ESF would be transformed into an electric hive of activity and encounter, involving thematic sessions, direct action planning, tactical workshops, and project coordination. Even more important were the informal exchanges among hundreds of activists gathered in the bar and canteen, or waiting on line at the vegan kitchen. I noticed a certain glow on the faces of old friends and comrades, which I instantly recognized from previous convergence centers, No Border camps, and PGA meetings. However, whereas such spaces often create a sense of living in a radical ghetto, this time we were mobile, reaching thousands of others within the official forum, while tactically intervening within the broader city as well.

./english/199.txt:17:I spent all day on Thursday at the Radical Theory Forum. Although the formal discussions were somewhat disappointing, the opportunity to meet dozens of others struggling to unite theory and practice, thus moving beyond anti-intellectualism within our movements and the lack of critical engagement within the academy, was extremely exciting. On Friday I made my first and only appearance at Alexander Palace . Although I was mainly interested in the parallel initiatives, I did not want to miss out on the main spectacle, which I do not mean in a derogatory sense. The value of the forums in a world where mass actions are increasingly difficult to pull off is that they allow us to come together to physically represent ourselves, embody our networks, generate affective ties, and perform our politics. It is perhaps too easy to dismiss such collective rituals in critical-rational terms, but how else to explain why they remain such important poles of attraction? Indeed, there have been calls for non-authoritarians and anti-capitalists to abandon the forums since the first World Social Forum in 2000. Yet we continue to show up along the margins, and if this year is any indication, in ever greater numbers. Will London be the definitive break?

./english/199.txt:19:The overall feeling of the official forum this year did leave a lot to be desired. It was not so much the massive cathedral dimensions of the Palace, which can actually be quite stimulating, but the way the internal space was organized. It felt more like a massive trade fair, with political ideologies, study programs, and volunteer opportunities on offer, rather than a true space of dialogue, encounter, and exchange. Not that previous forums lived up to this ideal either, but this was perhaps the furthest away. Whether the forum's commercial feel was a direct result of the influence of the GLA or the SWP, I'll leave for others to decide. On a positive note, however, the bitter conflict within the organizing process was certainly a major factor in the proliferation of autonomous spaces. As for the panel I attended on the future of the ESF, there was a definite sense of having arrived at a Crossroads, that we are beginning to reproduce the same events and actions, year after year. I sensed nostalgia for the excitement and novelty of Genoa or Florence , and a distinct lack of ability to envision an alternative path. Perhaps it is time to let go, and reinvent the forum as something entirely new.

./english/199.txt:25:On Saturday and Sunday, although I also attended workshops and discussions at Bloomsbury , including an informal discussion about activist research, I spent most of my time at the Life Desite Capitalism conference. Together with several hundred friends and colleagues, many of whom had also moved between and among different locales, we explored the concept of the Commons in different spheres: land, labor, communication, etc. Although the opening and closing plenaries reproduced some of the hierarchical structure many of us criticize within the main forum, the smaller workshop discussions were interesting and worthwhile. I particularly enjoyed the Saturday afternoon session on moments of excess, where our conversation ranged from mass direct actions to collaborative networking within open source development models. That evening I translated for a small group of Spanish activists at an ESF seminar discussion with Michael Hardt, who had just come from a gathering at Beyond ESF to found the first ever Assembly of Precarious Workers. Indeed, autonomous spaces are also excessive, bursting through the boundaries of the official forum, and the boundaries dividing one another.

./english/199.txt:27:Despite the vast number of innovative discussions, projects, and initiatives that came out of the numerous autonomous spaces, the focus of most post-Forum discussions has returned to the conflict between horizontals and verticals, and in particular, the direct actions and arrests at the Saturday evening plenary and Sunday's march. Once again, this is not entirely negative. Indeed, the aim of direct action is precisely to make conflicts visible, provoke discomfort, and challenge commonly accepted ideas. Direct Action is transformative, both for the targets and participants alike. The important thing is what happens between now and the next ESF.

./english/199.txt:29:This isn't the first time an autonomous action has stirred up controversy among the ranks of forum organizers and participants. During the WSF in 2002 in Porto Alegre a large group of international activists from the Intergalactic Laboratory of Disobedience in the youth camp and Brazilian anarchists occupied the VIP room at the Catholic University . Although we clearly articulated that our action was not against the forum, but rather the top-down way it had been organized, Brazilian Organizing Committee members were livid. Luckily, our strategically situated allies were able to calm their nerves, and conflict with the police was avoided. Unfortunately, the same did not happen this time around.

./english/199.txt:31:Moreover, the 2002 action had a concrete impact. At the International Commission meeting that spring in Barcelona , we learned there were no plans for a VIP room the following year. On our side, many of us in the Movement for Global Resistance in Barcelona realized we could have a positive effect by creatively engaging the forum from the outside. Thus began our part in a series of discussions at the Strasbourg Border Camp, Leiden PGA conference, and elsewhere around creating an autonomous space in Florence with "one foot in, and one foot out." Several different spaces ultimately emerged, including the Hub and projects organized by the Disobedientes and Cobas. Although the Hub in particular was perhaps more outside than inside, and was also widely criticized for its marginality, the autonomous space concept had caught on, and would be reproduced in different guises and to varying degrees at subsequent forums in Porto Alegre , Paris , and Mumbai. The autonomous space model has perhaps come to its fullest fruition this year in London .

./english/199.txt:33:Unfortunately, rather than accept the basic legitimacy of direct action to make publicly visible contradictions and disagreements within the forum process, some ESF organizers have chosen instead to denounce the recent actions as undemocratic and, even more alarming, racist. Their discourse sounds eerily like past statements from James Wolfensohn, George Bush, or Tony Blair. Why do they support direct action only when directed against others? On the other hand, it is unfortunate that activists chose an anti-Racist workshop to make their demands heard on Saturday night, although this has more to do with the fact that Ken Livingstone was speaking than anything else. There is simply no justification for the arrests on Saturday night or Sunday, and even less for the subsequent campaign of delegitimation. Yet all is not lost. There is still plenty of time for ESF organizers to react more constructively, and begin to incorporate the lessons learned leading up the next forum in Athens . On the other side, before the inevitable calls for abandoning the forum come again, we might wait and see, recognizing that the politics of autonomous space allow us to remain true to our own values, forms, and practices, while tactically intervening within the official forum to move out from our radical ghettos and simultaneously spark constructive change.

./english/199.txt:35:What I am ultimately suggesting is that we renew our vision of the forum itself, recognizing that our movements are too diverse, even contradictory, to be contained within a single space, however open it may be. This does not mean abandoning the process, but rather building on the London experience to recast the forum as a network of interconnected, yet autonomous spaces converging across a single urban terrain at a particular point in time. Some spaces may be larger, and thus generate more gravity than others, while the boundaries are always blurry, diffuse, and permeable. Moreover, there will necessarily be contradiction and struggle, even within and between our networks. Such conflict should not be feared, but rather recognized as an integral part of the forum itself. In places like Prague and Genoa urban space was divided among diverse forms of direct action practice. In London we finally began to incorporate a similar logic on our own terms, without reacting to an enemy. As for we critics, rather than return to our bunkers to recreate an imagined state of pure horizontality, we would do better to recognize that mass movements are always conflictual and contradictory, that horizontalism is about learning to manage conflict without reintroducing formal centers of command. This is the lesson I learned in London , and why I support the politics of autonomous space.

./english/200.txt:1:Social Forum Does London

./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:7:Various autonomous and anarchistic organizations were terribly afraid the forum's organization committee would be dominated by Trotskyites; the Trotskyites were wary of the involvement of the London mayor's office in forum preparations. Such an event is practically impossible to hold without municipal support. However, radical-left groups and others suspected the mayor's office, headed by the charismatic and ambitious Ken Livingstone, of wanting to reap maximum political gain from the event for itself and complained that city officials just wanted to organize some big conference without having any understanding of the forum's specifics. The mayor's office, on the other hand, was indignant at the activists' ineffectiveness.

./english/200.txt:8:The biggest surprise, though, was that everything went off without a hitch. The delegations arrived, discussions were held, people and representatives from all political walks of life had a chance to speak up and be heard. For the Russian delegation, London was a success, and in some sense, a turning point. Until the forum, Russia and Eastern Europe had been represented only by a few intellectuals famous in the West or small unknown youth groups, who acted as observers and supporting cast members. This time the situation was changed. Not only was the delegation larger than before, but its members participated in the discussions and had a noticeable influence on the course of events.

./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/200.txt:10:The main problem of the social forums is the threat of them becoming routine, an annual ritual, an anti-globalist parade. The thoughts and ideas discussed at the forums need to become political reality, best summed up by Susan George, one of the movement's inspirers: "We have to concentrate on something we can win now. If we don't do it, I see no point in coming here anymore."

./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:19:In this article I'll seek to lay out honestly and starkly what, in my opinion, were the strengths and weaknesses of the London event. Whatever others think of my analysis, it's important that everyone is able to openly debate this – because only that way will the fast-snowballing phenomenon that is the social forum movement be able to grow in the right direction, and avoid some of the mistakes of the past.

./english/201.txt:23:Let's start with the problems that the event encountered. The free-tea man's story was indicative of a larger problem with the organisation of the whole forum – not just the way it was organised, but the principles on which it was organised.

./english/201.txt:25:Previous social forums have been largely open events. Entrance prices, where they existed, were kept deliberately low, spaces were provided for all to participate, free accommodation was provided and organising committees were deeply, even if often frustratingly, democratic. All this is in keeping with the overall principles of the social forum movement, dedicated to creating open, free, largely non-hierarchical and democratic spaces for serious debate about the future.

./english/201.txt:29:Food – most of it terrible, incidentally – was provided by commercial organisations who employed low-paid workers on long shifts. The whole event seemed commercial, centrally-organised and strangely antithetical to what much of this movement has always been about. It had, overall, more of the feel of a large trade-fair (or a Labour party conference, as one disgruntled activist put it to me, ironically) than an open and open-minded forum.

./english/201.txt:35:Dave Timms, press officer for the World Development Movement , was involved in the long process of organising the London ESF. He explained to me how the SWP in particular had worked from the very start to make the London forum “their event”, run to “their agenda”.

./english/201.txt:41:There is no doubt that the SWP and the GLA worked hard to ensure that the focus of the event, from the themes chosen for discussion to the people selected to speak and chair meetings, was in their hands as much as possible. The consequence was that many activists refused even to come – holding an “alternative ESF” elsewhere in London – and many who did were disappointed. So much so that 300 people invaded a speaker meeting on the Saturday night at which Ken Livingstone had been due to speak to protest about the “undemocratic” nature of the forum.

./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:47:In 2003, Susan Richards wrote on openDemocracy about the hard left's attempts to seize the agenda at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Such attempts, she wrote, misunderstood the nature of social forums: they are not “events” to be controlled from the top, but happenings, which gain their strength from below. She was right about that: in London, again, the hard left showed that they had no idea what this was really supposed to be about, and that they weren't particularly interested.

./english/201.txt:51:This organisational problem is partly, though by no means wholly, responsible for another. Many people commented on how many of the speaker meetings and plenary sessions had a “samey” feel to them. One attendee told me, glumly, that it seemed as if every panel was made up of “two boring trade unionists and a Trot.” This was an exaggeration, but one which summed up, somehow, the atmosphere of a forum the main events of which, at least, seemed coloured by the dead hand of the old left.

./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:57:This leads neatly onto the second aspect of the problem: why do so many people here agree on so much? It might seem a strange thing to ask of a forum in which Trots, anarchists and NGO moderates were often at each others' throats, but it is a valid one.

./english/201.txt:63:I'm not sure I know the answers. I know there'll always be a fair smattering of unthinking raving at any event dedicated to radical politics. But I know, too, that my patience is wearing thin with it, and that I'm not the only one . Would I, I asked myself several times over the weekend, bring a non-political or uncommitted friend here and try and convert them? No. Why not? Because I'd be too embarrassed at much of the paper-selling, flag-waving, chanting, unthinking grandstanding that was on display in far too many parts of the forum. This movement needs to move on to serious thought and action pretty fast: events like this should be showing the way. Overall, this one didn't.

./english/201.txt:67:But they can. So before I, or anyone reading this, gets too depressed about it all, let's look at what did work about the London event, and about the social forum model in general and at what might be improved in future .

./english/201.txt:69:First, it's always worth reiterating an obvious but overlooked point: it is a wonder that events like this happen at all. The social forum movement began life at Porto Alegre just four years ago. It was a single, tentative event. Nobody knew what would come of it. What has come of it is a mass explosion of forums, all over the world, from international to city level and everything in-between. Every event is – or at least is supposed to be – a positive, forward-looking occasion. Social forums are not about protest – they are about change and how to achieve it. In less than five years, they have become a global phenomenon, and one which testifies better than anything else to a real and growing appetite for significant change amongst many of the world's people.

./english/201.txt:71:Making this forum happen, then, was a hell of an achievement in itself. And despite the far-from-perfect way it was organised, it was still an occasion on which a huge diversity of people from across Europe and further afield could get together, talk, debate and, perhaps most importantly, plan how to work together in the future.

./english/201.txt:73:Which leads onto the second positive aspect of the event: its diversity. No matter how hard the SWP tried, they couldn't limit the forum to Trots alone, and a huge variety of people and causes were there. An estimated 25,000 people attended, and many would have had the chance to hear about things they had never encountered before. The ongoing oppression of the people of Iran by its Islamist regime, for example: a number of Iranian exiles were at the forum with a disturbing display of the brutality of the mullahs. A similar stall highlighted the reality of life in Burma, while trade unionists from Colombia spoke about the repression of their fellows by the military regime and called for solidarity.

./english/201.txt:75:Then there was the “assembly of the social movements”, a large and growing part of all social forums, in which grassroots groups from across Europe gathered to discuss pooling resources and campaigning on common topics for 2005. Where else could such a meeting be held?

./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/201.txt:83:The veteran activist Susan George put this starkly to the audience in one of the Forum's best events – and one which summed up, for me, both the strengths and weaknesses of the whole weekend. It was a debate entitled “Life After Capitalism”, and she was on the panel.

./english/201.txt:91:The difference was stark, and it was one which contained within it a telling lesson about the whole event. For this social forum was a showcase for the dual nature of this movement . On one side there is the old left, barren of ideas, wilting in numbers and influence and drawing all its lessons from the past. In the absence of mass support it is forced to turn to underhand tactics to maintain its influence.

./english/202.txt:15:Indeed, we can speak of the official ESF as a privatised space, in several senses of the word. Key tasks were contracted out on terms set by the GLA. More generally, financial control bought political control, partly because party members used the opportunity to do so, often using blackmail arguments to dismiss alternative proposals. As an obvious case of privatisation, the monopoly of mal bouffe excluded the alternative culinary delights and migrant cultures of London. The food catering symbolised how the entire structure precluded the use – much less the development – of alternative capacities within social movements. (See my previous article, ‘Making Another World Possible?’, www.londonsocialforum.org/wiki/agenda28november2004)

./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: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: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:19:The dissent on Iraqi armed resistance (simple ‘terrorism' for some) seems to be another current matter of division. At the 70,000-strong anti-war demonstration in Rome two weeks after the Forum, some parts of the peace movement, like community centres and the direct action group ‘Disobedienti' did not take part because they don't agree with the criticisms that many make of Iraqi armed resistance, while they only want protests to oppose foreign military invasion. “We are facing a lack of positive, reciprocal contamination on basic social matters” observed Gianfranco Benzi, who is responsible for Cgil's relations with social movements. “We have to start a new dialogue” he added, “Otherwise without some concrete projects we risk losing the common ground of action and the achievements we have made so far.”

./english/205.txt:13:From then on, things couldn't have gone worse. In a first period, because the SWP and the GLA posed as fundamentally antithetic the participation of ‘serious organizations' – basically the British trade unions, still siding with the Blair government despite the odd criticism – and networks and groups based on ad hoc and horizontal ways of organizing, without administrative hierarchies and decision-making centres. This is where it began: a process of denial of all the potency shown by movements since the mid-90s, in favour of a provincial political pragmatism strictly concerned with the immediate agenda of the main groups involved. This problem was made brought to the attention of the ‘continental' actors involved (COBAS, Transnational Institute, different national Attac groups, Greek Social Forum, …), and the Preparatory Assembly that took place in London in February produced a document demanding that the British groups worked towards some sort of composition between the ‘verticals' – SWP, Socialist Action and trade unions – and the ‘horizontals' – all the others.

./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: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:31:The exclusion of conflict from the inside caused its proliferation and concentration on the surroundings: London had not one, but various alternative spaces, almost a Forum in their own right. The proliferation was the consequence, to a certain extent, of the lack of public spaces; not surprisingly, three of these events took place in squatted social centres; that was also the ‘autonomous' solution for the accommodation crisis the official event still hadn't solved a week before the event (when the mayor rented the huge and useless Millennium Dome and made it available to all of those who paid £10 on top of the £30 registration fee).

./english/205.txt:32:It is interesting to highlight that this year's ESF probably had its least ‘ideological' ‘opposition' ever: even at the conference of People's Global Action – anticapitalist network whose existence predates the Social Forum process and is very critical of it – in July there was a great number of groups interested in taking the ‘one foot in, one foot out' approach. It was above all a matter of occupying space and making oneself heard; that this should end the way it did was much less the result of a ‘principled opposition' than a consequence of the specific circumstances of the British process, and the fact that the London lives under a police State in disguise: Beyond the ESF (the largest) and a few other autonomous spaces were under permanent surveillance, with helicopters flying overhead and policemen at the door to take pictures and monitor the flow of people.

./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:62:The path leading from London 2004 to Athens 2006 begins in Paris, in November, with the Preparatory Assembly of evaluation of the process just finished and the beginning of the one to come. It shouldn't be much to expect it to be a burial of the British stage: it is highly unlikely that Socialist Action will remain involved after this, and the SWP will be left alone in the role of justifying the unjustifiable. However, to turn it into a simple condemnation of ‘the British exception' will mean that a significant opportunity to discuss the future of the ESF and the Social Forum process as a whole will be lost.

./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:68:First of all, the inside/outside discussion, ore than ever, has proved to be empty. What was the ESF? Alexandra Palace or Beyond the ESF, Life Despite Capitalism, the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination? In what seems to me to be the most correct sense, all of them. If Fora will be capable of expressing the diversity of the movement(s) they say to bring together and serve as a public arena, it'll be because of their capacity to incorporate conflict, not to subsume it under a semblance of false consensus. To that extent, the British process, with all its many flaws, points to a promising possibility in its recognition (tacit or explicit, in the form of inclusion in the official programme) of other spaces; the Forum as a constellation of related self-organized convergence spaces without a centre seems a lot more interesting than the present format.

./english/205.txt:70:Format-wise, this edition shows the possibility of transcending the obvious limits that Fora – so far built around plenaries with the ‘big names', normally resulting in generic analyses and platitudes with no visible impact, or the two-hour seminars and workshops in which any true convergence or common action are unlikely results – so far have shown. Let's take, for instance, the experience of Life Despite Capitalism, in its many interlocked sessions that lasted for a day and a half, or the whole programme (not explicitly organized as such, but effective none the same) around the issue of the precariat, in which there was a sense of build up leading to the Assembly of the Europrecariat. To this day the organizers have asked themselves the questions of how to make Fora less diagnostic and more constructive, without challenging the basic assumptions of the format. The plenaries, for instance, are living dead left-overs from the first WSF in Brazil, which was clearly planned as a one-off talkshop rather than a political ‘process'. The London experience points to yet new ways, although these have always been explored in the ‘periphery' of the Social Forum process (in the Youth Camp in Porto Alegre, in the Argentinean Social Forum etc.), without receiving the proper attention of its key players.

./english/205.txt:74:A serious issue that remains is that of finances: everyone saw the negative effect of this year's ‘selling' of the ESF to the GLA, the only entity able of sustaining the event in the terms in which it had been thought. If this is the price to pay, the question is not one of condemning the GLA, but of seriously rethinking the whole structure and format of the Forum – which leads us back to the two previous points.

./english/205.txt:76:As strange as it may seem, the great lesson this year offers us is still the one everyone has heard a thousand times, without really seeing it in practice: the Forum seen as an event is useless, an empty spectacle with no practical results; as a process, it opens up to new deterritorialisations and reterritorialisations, combinations and recombinations, which should be the whole reason why they are organized in the first place.

./english/205.txt:80:The so-called ‘Social Forum process' doesn't exist in the ether; it can only be as productive as the existing social processes, but it can also be a lot less powerful, and even destructive to previously existing relations and connections. It can only become what it' supposed to be if it functions as a feedback loop between political processes in progress and the organization itself; in other words, it can only be the open space it set out to be if its organization is diffuse in ongoing political struggles, not an invariant that comes to movements ‘from the outside', pre-structured by the efforts (however well-intentioned they may be) of a few actors. As long as it tries to produce a movement that is bigger and more united than it actually is, it's more likely to breed disaffection.

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

./english/209.txt:13:Another peculiarity of British politics which has presented a challenge to the organisation of the ESF in London is the democratic weakness of local government. In Florence and Paris it was, after all, the support of left dominated municipalities to the tune of millions of Euros which made the Forum possible. Paradoxically, the weakness of local government in London became a source of undue local authority control of important aspects of the ESF process. The peculiar politics of London and its relation to national politics is another essential part of any guide to the London ESF.

./english/209.txt:19:Getting tied up with the ambitions of local politicians is a risk that Social Forums take when they accept the support of a political authority. No doubt Olivio Dutra , governor of Rio Grande Do Sul and Tarso Genro , mayor of Port Alegre , had their own political agendas in hosting the World Social Forum. The problem with the GLA is not so much Livingstone but the methodology with which his political staff at the GLA carry out his will. They are led by a small group of people from Socialist Action, one of the somewhat conservative factions of the Fourth International. They work according to an explicit managerial philosophy and an interpretation of democracy which is in many ways quite the opposite of the participatory democracy of Porto Alegre . This small group - no more than around 12 - of political managers has disproportionate power because, although Livingstone is formally a member of the Labour Party, he is not under any live democratic party pressure like the mayors of Florence , Paris and Porto Alegre . Democracy is simply the four yearly, electoral relation between himself and the voters of London .

./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:35:The ESF as a whole is at a moment of consolidation, moving beyond the euphoria of Florence and Paris . Through the challenges that London presents, the ESF will have become more self aware of the principles which make it so novel and how practically to make then effective. The organisation of the Forum in Greece will present a wholly different set of problems to test and develop those principles once again!

./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:19:The programmatic dimension (elaboration of proposals) was presented by some networks, which are progressing in their forum work, thanks to some carefully prepared seminars during preliminary meetings. However, the ESF is generally not the central locus of their elaboration. The ESF could be used to give them public visibility. Yet this doesn’t generally occur because of the insufficient attention given to this dimension of forum work in the conception and structuring of the ESF’s. There are no moments when alternatives can be given political visibility. Among some organisers there is very limited interest, sometimes none at all, in the establishment of a ‘memory’ of the forums. This serious insufficiency is presently being partially dealt with but its solution requires the mobilisation of human and financial resources. In this context, the establishment of a database of the various proposals emanating from the three ESFs should become a priority objective.

./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:35: The ’political’ function, strictly speaking. To overcome the current hypocritical situation in which some hegemonic established parties in the organising committee are omnipresent, either directly or through screen organisations, the latter, while recognised, must be allocated a circumscribed space in the Forums.

./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/218.txt:1:Belgian Social Forum

./english/218.txt:4:Some organisations of the Belgium Social Forum would like to propose some practical suggestions concerning ESF and it's process.

./english/218.txt:8:2) It would be good that more coordination would arise regionally. Thanks to i.e. : more exchanges and invitations to international speakers at National Forums.

./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/224.txt:9:The former three ESFs have been meeting points for the forces who, in Europe , refused the logic of neo-liberal globalisation in one way or another. Both in the preparation process and at the ESF as an event, new forces joined the movement during the whole three years, which enhanced the dynamics of the forums. Better knowledge of each other created by working in common favoured new convergences. The ESF process allowed important steps forward in fighting neo-liberal globalisation and building a social and citizen movement at the scale of Europe .

./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: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/226.txt:32:Hugo Braun (Attac Koordinierungskreis), Christine Buchholz (Initiative für ein Sozialforum in Deutschland), Erhard Crome (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung), Karen Genn (Marx-Engels-Stiftung), Willy van Ooyen (Friedens- und Zukunftswerkstatt) Christine Karch (Netzwerk Cuba), Stefan Krull (IG Metall), Jutta Ried (Babels-de), Hannelore Tölke (Initiative für ein Sozialforum in Deutschland).

./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: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:51:By the Greek Social Forum.

./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: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:21:A new link is emerging between plenary meetings, workshops and theme discussions, that are organized by networks, and there is also a more explicit relationship between the Forum seen as a great “space for learning” and a place of discussion and organization of networks and struggles. The social Forums, inlcuding the first held in Porto Alegre, were born as public spaces for the creation of alternatives: this is a process, of course, but this role must be strongly renewed as the necessary result from the link between the “space for learning” and the “organization of networks, campaigns, struggles”; between social movements and politics; between the experiences and capabilities of activists and intellectuals, who want a different world.

./english/229.txt:23:This double role, not easily manageable, is to be treasured and can be fuelled if the networks, the associations, the local Forums and the movements are involved in the organisation of the ESF from the very first day. In such a way, plenary meetings and workshops can be the “cultural projection” of the themes they carry on. This is an ineluctable step, if we want to avoid the domination of the Forum by the leaders of the social movements, who can also play the role of cultural education and information; therefore, it is necessary to have qualified persons involved in the plenary meetings and workshops. “No global” and experts must find their own space to enhance the role of the “space for learning” again. The exponents of networks, associations, trade unions can have their more natural placement in Forum’s meetings and thematic workshops that are organized by netwoks, supposed to be integral parts of the Forum, without being excluded from considerations and moments of education; also the debate on specific themes between political parties and movements can be the occasion for common efforts and possible confluence of ideas.

./english/229.txt:26:The approach to workshops and plenary sessions has to be focused on the “things to do”, the organized campaigns, the thematic networks; so a third level in the forums is then required: the level of the united “thematic meetings” (education, HS, temporary workers, migrants, public services, jobs etc.) from which manifestos and struggle initiatives might come out;

./english/229.txt:28:A balance between Forum’s function of “space for learning” and place of networks and struggle organizations is needed, so that the very meeting of social movements can become the final place where speakers are principally, though not exclusively, the representatives of meetings and workshops. The meeting of the social movements can be no longer a “separate world”, but the final place of the Forum, where people decide on the proposals (also thematic proposals), which have come out from the plenary meetings, seminars and workshops: this would enable us to write the final document and agenda, not as a result of an exhausting mediation, but as an expression of public discussions and efforts of mobilization that would have already gained the support of the networks.

./english/229.txt:34:The extension of lapse between a Forum and another (from one year to one year and half) is well accepted: maybe we could also agree for two years (with a regular deadline in spring), maintaining a travelling preparatory meeting every 3/4 months, with decisional and operative features, that can serve as a “dissemination campaign” for those countries, which are not involved in the ESF process yet.

./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/232.txt:6:People participating in the UK Local Social Forum Network met in Sheffield on the 4/5th December and found consensus on this document to be brought to the Assembly which is going to be held in Paris the 18/19 Dec 2004.

./english/232.txt:8:1. The British process to build for the ESF has been, from the proposal to have it in London onwards, organized without an open, democratic, inclusive process. Actually no link has been created with the UK Local Social Forums and the very same groups which played a prominent role in the process by organising mobilising committees for the ESF did so also in the places where a LSF was working already. This attitude has generated more problems and divisions in the movement in Britain and, even if some people have been inspired by the ESF experience to go on to join a Local Social Forum, we are registering a lot of repercussions from what happened, with people pulling out from the LSF in several different places.

./english/232.txt:11:3. The Assembly of movements: although the final document was built more openly than before the calls for actions have to come from the work of the networks and the assembly is the space for all to express the work which has be done. The way the London Assembly was organized didn't give the local social forum network the chance to communicate their work. We also want to point out that Stop the War Coalition in Britain has called a rally for the 19th of March, the same day when the ‘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’ will take place. We support the action in Brussels and we will work for that.

./english/233.txt:1:London Social Forum

./english/233.txt:5:The following notes were taken at a meeting that was held under the auspices of the London Social Forum at the LSE on 28 November to review the experiences of the ESF 2004 in London . They do not reflect the collective position of all participants to that meeting, but are circulated in the interests of documenting our discussion and promoting further debate.

./english/233.txt:13:· Local social forums had an inadequate part in the official programme. Unlike the Paris ESF, the costs of setting up their networking ‘space' were not covered by the London ESF ticket price or venue-finding arrangements. Local SFs had to make their own arrangements in the `alternative' spaces apart from one seminar at Alexandra Palace

./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/233.txt:27:· Successful events were often based on long-term international networking, with large, participatory preparatory meetings on particular themes or topics held well in advance to expand and consolidate networks and develop ideas. For example this was how the Cultural Forum worked, as well as the several `alternative' meetings dealing with migrant issues

./english/233.txt:33:• We should ensure that we ourselves, in local social forums and other ‘horizontal' movements, have structures in which there is full accountability. However, this invokes the question of what really is the ‘collective' in organisations with a loose, open membership and no delegate structure.

./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/234.txt:13:Tavolo Migranti dei Social Forum Italiani; Act Up-Paris, France; Amplitude-no one is illegal, Germany

./english/236.txt:1:Social Forums, Ethics and pedagogy: Another possible ethic

./english/236.txt:9:The Forum as a pedagogical space

./english/236.txt:11:The characterisation of the Forum as a pedagogical space can contribute to the nurturing of this kind of ethic. Rather than pedagogy defined as content transmission, this ideal pedagogy should be re-conceptualised as a willingness to learn and to teach, to challenge and be challenged, and to emerge different from this encounter, moving away from coercion and persuasion. This pedagogy should also cultivate an emphasis on critical engagement with and within the Forum making it a dialogical space where participants can reclaim their right to question knowledges and realities and share the ownership of the process and outcomes of the production of new contingent knowledge. Self-reflexive critical engagement can push the boundaries of the Forum and transform it at different levels. Besides being central to a pedagogy for decolonisation of minds and imaginations, it can also function as a safeguard against essentialisms and fundamentalisms, preventing processes of closure, promoting openness and supporting decentralizations of power in various dimensions, such as within organisational processes and the events themselves.

./english/236.txt:13:In practical terms, this conceptualisation signals a move from a feeling of vanguardism and from a “talking heads” format to more participatory, dialogical and inclusive structures in order to create an environment in which individuals can learn from one another and allow each other to feel acknowledged, validated and relatively safe from oppressive or silencing institutional powers. This would require the organising committee to use more participatory and inclusive approaches in an attempt to set the example in WSF-organised events, an effort that is already starting to take shape in preparation for the WSF 2005 and that will hopefully be embraced and celebrated by participants and other Forum initiatives, including the ESF.

./english/236.txt:15:Promoted and addressed in this way, the Forum has the potential to attract individuals (particularly young people) who are sceptical of the forms of politics that present absolute certainties or fixed utopias. It can also increase the Forum's potential as a catalyst for the creation of similar pedagogical spaces that can inspire and support “non-politicised” people in the wider society to start asking certain questions and to become aware of their political existence, expanding the role of the Forum as a catalyst for change beyond its boundaries. We can cite two initiatives that, using the Forum as an icon for resistance, have worked in this direction:

./english/236.txt:17:• The twelve-session Open Space Seminar Series on the theme “Are other worlds possible? Cultures of politics and the World Social Forum” that was organised by Jai Sen, Mukul Mangalik and Madhuresh Kumar at Delhi University in India during August-December 2003, under the auspices of the History Society, Ramjas College. One of the outcomes of this project was the publication of the book Are Other Worlds Possible? The Open Space Reader compiled by Jai Sen and Madhuresh Kumar; another was the formation of two autonomous discussion groups among students from different universities in the city; and a third is a forthcoming set of books based on the transcripts of the seminars.

./english/236.txt:19:• The educational project “Other Worlds”, an initiative inspired by the seminar series in New Delhi that involved educators, activists and academics in Brazil, India and the UK in the development of a set of introductory learning materials as an entry point to the Forum and to the issues discussed within it in order to prompt and support the creation of pedagogical “open spaces” in educational and community settings. In the second phase of this project, an international comparative research exercise has started, in which groups are going to pilot the materials in different contexts in five countries.

./english/236.txt:23:The Forum promoted as a learning or pedagogical space would expand the current focus on national and international links among movements and organisations in society and on connections and dialogue focusing on similarities. In outreach strategies to activist groups this view has the potential to help demystify the divide between theory (thinking) and practice (doing) and support the emergence of a culture of dialogue across differences. It could also justify the creation of outreach approaches for non-activists – as an invitation to a process of collective reflection and construction of an alternative world, increasing and expanding the Forum's political impact. We also claim that fostering the culture of self-reflexivity that is already emerging within the Forum could generate systematic considerations of the Forum's own contradictions, which could encourage Forum participants to re-negotiate their subject positions, bring in new actors and create new possibilities for the future of the space, reinforcing its potential as a catalyst of change in society.

./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:15:The worlds of the mega-social forums from Porto Alegre to Florence have broad and pluralistic definitions through the sophistic guidance of a Charter of Principles, developed and set out from the World Social Forum process in 2001. These principles conceive social forums as spaces of “diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party contexts that, in a decentralised fashion, interrelate organisations and movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the international to build another world.”

./english/237.txt:17:However, worrying trends emerged in the formative stages of the UK ESF process which raised questions about the motivations of the groups holding the reins of the event, namely Socialist Action, the Socialist Workers Party and the Greater London Authority (GLA). We quickly witness a lack of spaces for open dialogue, the delegitimisation of local working groups (including the London Social Forum), vertical company structures for the event and, most disturbingly, the silencing of dissent in the process and non-consensus based decisions. The UK ESF was sold as a gathering for those opposed to war, racism and corporate power, global justice, workers' rights and a sustainable society” but essentially it became a giant market place of commodified politics, with blatant backroom dealing in seminars and the privatisation of the event management.

./english/237.txt:28:So as one door closed, new doors were opened during the ESF preparations. These were doors that had been opened with crowbars. The coffee served was fair-trade Zapatista and the discussions were facilitated, not chaired. These were the doors of occupied social centres, campuses and town halls. Many discovered that by unlocking these doors and working with each other in very much more self-organised ways a stronger, more fluid and diverse socialised (rather than socialist) forum was possible. For many grassroots activists the development of autonomous spaces was the manifestation of participation though collective action. As spaces they represented exploratory forms of direct democracy, respect for diverse forms of political articulation and finding communality in our various forms of organising and difference.

./english/237.txt:30:The autonomous spaces (AS) were initiated by loose collectives that had disengaged with the ESF, deciding to meet and shape alternatives for the Forum participants outside of the official ESF process. The variety of the initial groups that met included Horizontals, Wombles, Indymedia, LetsLink, creative interventionists (Lab of ii), carnival, urban, creative forums and clowns. It was a mix of people more used to supporting each others’ tactics and actions through solidarity rather than all-out collaboration.

./english/237.txt:43:As we began looking at the variety of limited spaces on offer in London, aside from occupied social centres, one of the groups, the Wombles, decided to find an area large enough for a convergence space. With the collaboration of Middlesex University Students Union they managed to put on a five-day/night event for several thousand people with presentations, workshops and discussions from groups all over Europe. It was “Part conference, part direct action, part celebration of self-organised cultures of resistance”. Significantly, one of their main focuses was on precarity, with this space playing host to the first ‘Assembly Of Europe’s Precariat’ as well as well as the VOICE Refugee Forum.

./english/238.txt:3:Babels and the politics of language at the hearth of Social Forum

./english/238.txt:7:Abstract: Language and communication needs are at the heart of the Social Forums. The emergence of Babels, the international network of volunteer interpreters and translators, demonstrates that alternatives to market capitalism can and are being actively produced through the ESF process. Unfortunately, like Florence and Paris before it, the London ESF continued to promote and communicate in the languages of the ‘power elite' whilst marginalising all others, with negative consequences for equality of participation. This article describes the Babels story so far before critically reflecting on the 'politics of language' as a contribution to the debate on the future direction of the ESF process. We conclude that in order to make the ESF, and all Social Forums for that matter, genuinely internationalist affairs from now on, trade unions, NGO, social movements, networks and individuals must work hand-in-hand with Babels at the beginning of every process, while Babels must pro-actively fight to put language politics at the heart of the Forum.

./english/238.txt:10:Language is at the heart of the Social Forums. Or at least it should be. The Porto Alegre Charter that continues to shape and guide the ESF process makes clear our collective commitment to “ reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action”. It reminds us that the Forum must always be open to pluralism and “the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and physical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles.” Breathing life into these worthy principles requires that people have the means to communicate with and understand each other in ways that are egalitarian and democratic. As Susan George writes in her new book ‘Another World is Possible If …', political activists are as guilty as the ruling classes in using language for purposes of power, control and domination:

./english/238.txt:16:Yet how much do ESF organisers and participants reflect on the people, skills, technology, and resources – and above all the politics – involved in enabling participants to understand and speak in the myriad different languages that define and bring the Forum to life? For example, a common misunderstanding among Forum goers is the assumption that interpreters are hired in by the Forum to cater for ‘international speakers'. Yet since the first ESF in Florence 2002, almost all simultaneous and consecutive interpretation, as well as document translation, has been provided in political solidarity by Babels, the growing international network of volunteer interpreters and translators that was born out of the Social Forum process. The development of Babels and the commitment of its protagonists to ‘learn from practice' pro vides one of the best examples of how alternatives to market capitalism can and are being actively produced through the Social Forum process. At the same time, the problematic way in which the ESF (organisers) and Babels relate both to each other and language issues is evidence of the contradictory political ethics and practices within the ESF that must be addressed during the process towards Athens 2006.

./english/238.txt:22:Babels was born in the run-up to the Florence ESF in 2002 when the dubious politics and huge expense of hiring professional interpreters for the WSF in 2001 and 2002 led a small network of communication activists linked to ATTAC France to propose that only volunteers be used to interpret. Initial scepticism about volunteer ‘quality' gave way to pragmatism at the 11th hour when the high cost of the traditional market route began to bite the Italian organisers, unsurprising when one considers that professional interpreters normally command between 300 and 400 euros per day. An emergency call for volunteers was made to which s ome 600 people responded, eventually yielding around 350 volunteer interpreters and translators for the Forum.

./english/238.txt:30:With the Mumbai World Social Forum (WSF) and the first Social

./english/238.txt:31:Forum of the Americas in Ecuador under its belt during 2004, by the time of the third London ESF in October this year, the Babels database had almost doubled to over 7000 people representing 63 languages. From this network, the London ESF welcomed 500 volunteers from 22 countries who in turn enabled some 20,000 participants from more than 60 countries to express themselves in 25 different languages over 3 days. However, despite undoubted progress on many levels, it was widely felt within the Babels network that London had been the most politically difficult ESF it had participated in, especially in terms of its relationship to the host country's main organisers. We return to this issue later on.

./english/238.txt:37:Underpinning the Babels philosophy is a determination to continually reflect upon its role in each Forum and then learn and develop from practice. Out of this process, three important political pre-conditions have emerged for Babels involvement in Social Forums that are now guiding principles of the network. The first is that all interpreters and translators for the ESF must be 100% volunteers. This stems from the problematic experience of a two-tier workforce of voluntary and paid interpreters in Florence . Babels believes that hiring professionals or companies to ‘service' the Forum goes directly against the principles of solidarity and developing communicational alternatives to the market that are supposedly enshrined in the Social Forum's charter.

./english/238.txt:39:Secondly, Babels volunteers are not ‘free' service providers and oppose any attempts by social Forum organisers to treat them as such. Instead, they see themselves as Social Forum organisers like any other and want to participate fully in debates about the “part language plays in the mechanisms of cultural domination and in the circulation of ideas between the various social and citizens' movements” (Babels charter).

./english/238.txt:41:The third and perhaps most important principle of all is Babels commitment to defend and promote “the right of everybody to express themselves in the language of their choice” (Babels charter). For example, for the London ESF Babels insisted that ‘official' and ‘unofficial' language distinctions be abolished after the experiences of Florence and Paris, where the limited language pool of interpreters combined with the inherent bias of the Forum's organisers to make English, French, German, Italian and Spanish the official and thus overwhelmingly dominant languages. As Emmanuelle Rivière a professional interpreter and coordinator with Babels-UK explains, this outcome led to some serious soul-searching within the Babels network as to its own role in the Social Forum:

./english/238.txt:45:At a deeper level, in its efforts to bring to life these principles of ‘learning from practice', ‘solidarity, ‘horizontality' and ‘equality', Babels embodies the two main positive achievements of the Social Forum process. The first is its Gandhian philosophy of ‘being the change we want to see', also known as ‘pre-figurative politics'. In other words, Babels attempts to put into practice the very egalitarian and internationalist principles of the ‘good society' the alter-globalisation movement calls for in facilitating communication across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

./english/238.txt:47:The second contribution of the Social Forums is that through organising as much as possible ‘outside' of the capitalist sphere of competitive market relations, alternative systems of social and economic organisation based on need and solidarity – and not profit and private ownership – are being developed out of necessity . Annual Social Forums assembling tens of thousands of people from across different continents simply cannot take place unless we develop alternative means of international ist communication to the high cost and qualitative limitations of the market. At the same time, Babels must not be seen as a ‘low cost service provider' directly threatening the ‘communicatariat' of working interpreters and translators. Instead, it is an act of political solidarity indispensable to the Social Forums and the development of a global transformative politics and movement.

./english/238.txt:49:Putting both these principles and the knowledge gained into practice is no easy task for a volunteer network working mainly by Internet, but progress is being made on a number of fronts. Partly through Babels pressure, the last WSF in Mumbai 2004 saw the spectrum of ‘official languages' publicly broadened to 13 languages to reflect the ethnic diversity of India and the Asian continent, a development thought to have increased the number of participants from those language groups. Respect for language diversity is also being addressed through a commitment to improving the ‘quality' of interpretation and translation. Quality in the specific context and purpose of the Social Forums does not mean a professional standard of ‘technical proficiency' but the general ‘quality of communication' experienced in the Social Forum as a whole. This not only concerns how interpretation and translation are performed, but also how ‘access to the message' is facilitated or obstructed by the organisational structures and language discourses of the Forum, and its organisers, speakers and participants.

./english/238.txt:51:For example, Babels is developing innovatory new language tools through activities like the Lexicon Project. This is an on-going effort by volunteers from a wide range of countries and backgrounds (teachers, students, professionals, activists) to create a comprehensive glossary of words and phrases to help interpreters and translators best reflect different meanings according to different national, cultural and politico-historical contexts. It is consciously creating a process of ‘contamination' in which the excellent language skills of the politically sympathetic trained interpreter/translator interact with the deeper political knowledge of the language fluent activist to constantly improve the communications medium within the Social Forums.

./english/238.txt:53:Lexicons are being formed in conjunction with the Situational Preparation Project, more commonly known as ‘Sitprep.', which records WSF and ESF plenaries and seminars in a wide range of languages on to DVD to allow any volunteer – experienced or inexperienced – to more realistically prepare for simultaneous interpretation in the Social Forum. This issue links to the broader ‘memory' implications of the NOMAD project to which Babels belongs . As Sophie Gosselin argues elsewhere in this newsletter, one of NOMAD's main achievements so far has been the creation of Targ, an open source software system which can replace expensive propriety audio equipment used for live simultaneous interpretation. In addition to the revolutionary cost implications, using computers to relay the voices of speakers and interpreters the Targ system enables all speeches and interpretations to be easily archived, creating a direct and accurate ‘memory' of all the debates, themes, and controversies of each Forum. Taking it a step further, the audio could also be streamed live over the Internet. These possibilities would allow millions of people currently outside of the Forum to take part via the web.

./english/238.txt:55:Significantly for Babels, the creation of Memory will allow the quality of interpretation to be assessed and new online ‘distance practice' materials for inexperienced volunteers to be created. Not everyone will welcome this latter development within Babels. Many interpreters are already reluctant to have their work scrutinised and not just because they are ‘volunteers'. While professionals are simply not used to such practices in their particular labour market, non-professionals are often worried about being judged badly and marginalised. But if Babels is genuine about its commitment to ‘equality' and ‘quality' of communication' within the Social Forums, then these worries will hopefully disappear.

./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:67:But if Babels is a political actor like all others in organising the ESF, committed to language diversity and undermining power relations within the movement, how did it allow such a situation to develop in the first place? More to the point, why did it not withdraw its participation from a Forum that did not respect Babels pre-conditions for participation? The answers to these questions are very complex and still somewhat unknown, so here we simply flag up some of the dilemmas and constraints Babels faced.

./english/238.txt:71:Because of this, and a number of serious problems over accommodation and reimbursement for volunteers, Babels issued a number of critical public statements and nearly pulled out of the London ESF on several occasions. That fact that Babels stepped back from the brink each time was partly due to the fact that reaching a consensus to walk away is far harder than agreeing to get involved, especially in a a network bringing together people from different backgrounds and perspectives. Moreover, the UK coordinators of Babels who agreed to participate in this year's ESF did so with their political eyes wide open. The reality is that the Social Forums – and especially the ESF – are not politically ‘pure' spaces where everyone works together in mutual respect and harmony. They are instead political battlegrounds where self-interested factions fight for leadership and control and are met with resistance from those opposed to vanguardism. Babels thus currently accepts that the innovations and alternatives being generated by projects like itself and and Nomad come not only through the annual process of organising the ESF and WSF­, but also in struggle against those within them. And whatever the shortcomings of the organisation of this year's ESF, we still managed to gain an enormous amount of knowledge and experience that we will now share with future processes, particularly through adding value to the Lexicon and Sitprep projects. Most importantly, pulling out would have stopped the ESF from taking place – this was not a decision that Babels alone should have the power or right to make.

./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: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:23:According to an activist from No Vox, the decision to hold the ESF 2004 in London was a disaster for undocumented migrants and refugees in Europe. He said: “It has lead to their disenfranchisement in the emerging social movement. British migrants and refugees need to know about struggles going on in Europe and to learn from them. The excluded self-organised migrants organisations in Europe can have gained nothing from this year ESF, indeed it may be difficult for them to see why they should participate in the Forums again whereas we know that this is a serious movement about global justice. We know that their full involvement is key."

./english/241.txt:3:InvestigAction and Social forums

./english/241.txt:7:Five years after Seattle and four after the first World Social Forum, it is time to reflect upon what has happened during the last, very resonant years, and about how to continue. In response to this, several initiatives with multiple trajectories are beginning to emerge from the intersection of political action and investigation. Their aim is to put archiving and research techniques at the service of the process of social mobilization and social change. There is not an homogeneous and/or established concept for defining this action. It’s more a “network” of concepts that are growing together around words like archiving, documenting, reporting, memory, systematizing, investigation and activist research. The development of conceptual tools is one of the key-points around it that it is necessary to face now.

./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:17:The systematization/memory groups are addressing various aspects of the Social Forum. With a very simple (or, on occasion, fictitious) distinction, there are two kinds of information systematization and knowledge production that are considered necessary: one is related to the networking organisational aspect, the other is related to the content. This distinction doesn’t necessarily correspond to that established between “living memory or systematization” and its opposite (at a guess, “non-living memory”).

./english/241.txt:19:The networking organizational aspect gives an understanding of the nature and richness of movements that are involved within the Social Forum process; of what kind of organisations participated in the forum: thematically, regionally and by type and size; an understanding of the direction in which the process is growing through an evolution analysis; or which kind of connectivity the Forum has created; different models of participation etc.. It is focused on developing useful networking tools to reinforce the Forum’s dimension of “weaving” social networks.

./english/241.txt:24:As regards the contents aspect, there are again two sides to this. One is simply the reporting of who did what in terms of the event. The second and the more important involves keeping alive what was discussed so that it gets into our collective consciousness. This will also provide a basis for the evolution of our views and not just a yearly repetition of the same views. The first, and the more trivial part, consists of how many events of what size and themes were organised. The second consists of the reporting of the cultural programme, conferences, panels and workshops, and the reporting of how the media perceived the Social Forum event.

./english/241.txt:25:There is one ambit of the reporting that is currently being missed altogether. This is the kind of technologies and other innovations that are required to push the movement of the Social Forum forward. A coherent report of the technologies: what works well what does not, what are the support structures required and what kind of organisations and people are needed for this, should be part of the reporting of a Social Forum experience.

./english/241.txt:26:But going further, the key for the future is to use technology. The use of technology to advance movements should also be the task of Social Forums and these need to be folded into the memory/systematization process. There are clear synergies amongst the News Technologies of Information and communication, the translation system and the possibilities for the systematization of the process and making it accessible. For example, using the Nomad translation system allows us to have a record of the event. The Website is a basic “wardrobe” of information sources on the Forums and a basic tool to spread the systematization of its results. We look upon the web as the primary organisational tool as well as the primary disseminating mechanism.

./english/241.txt:57:In a process of collective creation, it is nurtured by a spirit of experimentation and cooperation through an open and pluralistic network structure. The Guide is developed from a network of very diverse nodes, politically and organizationally, such as research groups internal to the social movements (Transform! Italia, Transnational Institute, Glocal a-research centre) or social movement organizations (ARCI, EYFA, UNITED for Intercultural Action), in collaboration with academic departments/centres (The University of Florence or The Centre for the Study of Global Governance- LSE), Trade Union Foundations (like the CGIL’s Fondazione Di Vittorio), hackers support teams (Pangea), International archive institutions (IISH - International Institute of Social History) and a cluster of 40 advisers. It is also being developed with the collaborative interaction and recognition by the working groups internal to the social forum process which were mentioned above.

./english/241.txt:75:Social Forums Memory working group of the World social forum International Council e-list: memoria@mapeadores.net

./english/242.txt:11:Nomad was created in September 2003 through the development and setting up of the NIFT (Nomad Interpretation Free Tool) for the 4th World Social Forum in India (Mumbai). The NIFT is a translation transmission tool developed in collaboration with the international interpretation network: Babels .

./english/242.txt:19:Nomad is a space of experimentation for these technical and political issues. It sees the Social Forums as an experimental ground for the development of alternative technical solutions and alternative modes of organization (inside the process of the Forum itself and in relation to economic issues and aspects of knowledge transmission).

./english/242.txt:24:The NIFT system will be set up in 36 rooms at the WSF 2005 in Porto Alegre : 12 large rooms, 12 medium-sized rooms and 12 small rooms. In Mumbai the NIFT was only installed in large rooms. What became apparent then was that the small rooms, the workshop rooms, also needed a translation transmission system to facilitate exchanges and discussion between people from different parts of the world. Also, the political position of Nomad defends a vision of the Forum as a space of practical exchange and not a spectacular space, a form of music festival, as it seems to have become in its last editions.

./english/242.txt:26:Since Mumbai, Nomad and Babels have defended the position that the setting up and building process of the Forum must be carried out by activists. The activists cannot remain the consumers of alternative speeches in a framework produced by capitalist groups. Activists should apply their vision of “another world” in the setting up of the Forum itself. From this perspective, the extension of the workshop spaces becomes fundamental. The WSF 2005 in Porto Alegre has started a shift towards this perspective. The process of building the Forum has being confined to five working groups (architecture, translation, sustainability, communication and culture) composed of activists who will try to apply the alternative principles of the “other world” we defend in the construction of the Forum itself.

./english/242.txt:28:Nomad participates mainly in the translation group through the setting up of the NIFT. But the Nomad perspective is broader then this issue of translation. We would like to work on other projects during the Forum, such as a project of radio networking, by showing and setting up with Porto Alegre communities some hertzian and web-radios, linking these local radios through the net.

./english/242.txt:34:Forums as experimentation ground

./english/242.txt:36:The Forum is not an end in itself. The Forum is a place to meet and share political views:

./english/242.txt:40: the Forum makes resources available for testing and validating technical solutions. The Forums can become a platform for the reappropriation of knowledge;

./english/242.txt:42: Nomad is not seeking to be an exclusive network. In fact, if other participants at the Forums have the same goals, Nomad would like to be able to work in parallel or in partnership with them.

./english/242.txt:50:Participating in the Forums as part of Nomad can only be on a voluntary basis. The purpose of the notion of voluntary participation is to clarify the basis on which someone is involved in the Nomad project. People involved on a volunteer basis are also involved on a political basis: they control their own contractual obligation. They are neither subordinate nor dependent on an employer or any economic necessity. Outside of the context of the Forums, a Nomad activist may be compensated, but only for specific technical tasks. The precept of voluntary participation also has a political aim: involving volunteers, rather than calling upon a service company affirms that the Forum actors must participate in the process of creating the Forum, and not just use the content of a Forum created by others in a consumerist mode. It aims to question the division of labour between producers (subject to management and dependent on that management because of their salaries) and deciders. This implies that Nomad and a commercial system cannot coexist within the Forums, i.e. we cannot have both unpaid volunteers and paid employees of a service company. It is indeed possible to hire a technical system when we cannot build it ourselves (then it would be better to choose an organisation that is part of an alternative economic perspective), but it is unfair and against the principles of the Nomad project to call upon a service company for these kind of technical questions and at the same time to get volunteers involved. When these situations occur the technical providers are completely free to use the tools developed by Nomad but cannot claim to be Nomad.

./english/242.txt:56:For example, for the Social Forum at Porto Alegre , we will start by looking for local producers to develop the necessary communications tools for the translation system. However if the only local (geographically) producers that we find operate according to capitalist principles, we will favour foreign alternative producers (local in the ethical sense).

./english/243.txt:1:The Social Forum Process and Popular Education

./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/243.txt:9:This is what democracy in education looks like. And this workshop was one possibility for what popular education can look like. But are Social Forums likely to be the place for such kind of learning?

./english/243.txt:11:At the Radical Theory Forum there were not only workshops practicing popular education, there were also workshops on popular education itself: about its underlying ideas, about existing projects like ‘Other Worlds' in the UK on globalisation issues, and about possibilities to connect the different approaches in order to have access to each others tools. Popular education has also been a widely debated topic at other recent activist conferences, such as Life After Capitalism in New York in August 2004, which had its forerunner during the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2003. Something is happening here. Why?

./english/243.txt:13:Systematic political education is clearly underdeveloped among emancipatory movements struggling for another globalization . Although there are a significant number of critical analyses written for an academic audience, materials and methods of knowledge transfer for people's education are rare. Additionally, at the Social Forums the seminars often remind you very much of university lectures – and they are about as inspiring as them. Yet, even if you are the type of person that is into the academic style, have you ever wondered why you did not read an essay by this person instead of listening to him or her for hours, whilst sitting on an uncomfortable chair?

./english/245.txt:13:The truth is that these issues are just as political the issues of providing good quality organic, vegetarian or halal food, or of using ethical supply or service companies - indeed more so, since some of these areas effect the way the social forum process is built, and the ways people can participate in it, or not, as the case may be.

./english/245.txt:24:Much is made of the Social Forums being more than just a conference. They are supposed to be a process - given that the actual event only lasts a few days and passes by in a blur of packed schedules, while the preparatory process lasts for almost a full year, this truth should be evident.

./english/245.txt:26:And yet the development of communication strategies and the tools to support them seems to have been woefully lacking. Given that this '"movement of movements" that we're always talking about has blossomed under concepts of decentralised networks and non-hierarchical communication, underpinned by the opportunities afforded us through the use of computers and the Internet, it should be clear that any ongoing Social Forum process should place these values and tools at its heart. Sadly with the 2004 ESF, this was not the case.

./english/245.txt:34:Similarly there was an ongoing argument over the ESF website for London 2004. Much has been written on this matter and the private tendering and procurement process of the GLA in delivering the £40,000 website. Essentially the e-commerce functionality was deemed crucial to the ESF (which of course it was) and therefore the GLA took on the role of ensuring this was delivered. However the requirements for the other website functionality were never opened up for public discussion, all public interactivity was rejected, and too few people were trusted to participate and administer the site. All this was occurring at a time when the World Social Forum was producing a bold strategy to put electronic tools at the centre of building a better participatory process – a lead the ESF would be well advised to follow.

./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:43:This move coupled with the now ongoing attempt to ‘systematise’ information and communication strategies together with the various ‘memory’ initiatives should strengthen the Social Forums concepts of themselves – something which is urgently needed to aid self-reflection, a process that the ESF is now supposed to be engaged in given the issues in London and the fact that the next forum has been scheduled for 2006 and not 2005. As part of this, it is essential to look closely at the pioneering work being done by the World Social Forum in its efforts to deploy NOMAD, the DIY simultaneous translation infrastructure, and to place free software and communication tools at its heart.

./english/245.txt:49:Proposals for a Press Officer with a complimentary Media Team were presented to the UK Organising Committee several months in advance of the Forum. However no action was taken on this until very close to the event itself, despite some discussions having taken place. In the end only one person was employed with payment by the ESF Company (NB. unlike Babels or other office staff this person was appointed without advertising the position or equal opportunities) to fulfill the role of Press Officer.

./english/245.txt:51:It is clear that a larger team, in place earlier, and working with volunteers, is needed for future forums.

./english/245.txt:55:Because of the many problems of the UK process, organisations and networks who would have been expected to bolster any effort to gain press / media coverage did not engage in a publicity campaign. This meant that whole sectors of organisations failed to add their public weight behind the ESF. This failure should be seen as an important indicator of the attitude of many organisations towards the ESF - they may have participated in the Forum, but they didn't publicise it! Indeed many organisations even failed to link to the fse-esf website from their own websites.

./english/245.txt:61:If another world is possible, then this includes another media. There are many existing organisations and networks engaged in producing alternatives now, on a daily basis, and it is crucial for the ESF to ensure their participation, both to help develop communication channels, to promote the forums in advance, and to help in documenting them. The synergies that can be created through the combined efforts of different initiatives that includes NOMAD and other archiving, reporting and research projects are just the kind of practical collaborations and concrete projects we need if we are to progress anywhere at all in our quest for another world.

./english/246.txt:4:Culture at Social Forum

./english/246.txt:13:Having taken part for two years of the culture working groups of both the Youth Camp and the WSF, and also following the discussion in relation to the Brazilian Social Forum , I have come to be annoyed by this: too many grand statements on the ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ (some of which I have co-written myself!), and very little to be said on the ‘hows’. It is to the achievements and shortcomings of some of the ‘hows’ employed in 2003 that we shall turn, after shortly presenting the organisational structure behind them.

./english/246.txt:15:In fact, in the first two editions of the WSF there was very little discussion on how to integrate culture into the process as a whole. The cultural programme was basically arranged by the Culture Bureau of the Rio Grande do Sul state government, aided by the Culture Bureau of the Porto Alegre local authority. It consisted of a few exhibitions and film screenings spread around town (not in the space occupied by the WSF, the main campus of the Catholic University), seminars and pleanries on the subject, and most remarkably the concerts at the Por-do-Sol Amphitheatre, near the Youth Camp, on the bank of Lake Guaiba. In 2002, as a matter of fact, the organisation of the concerts was subcontracted out to an events manager. The Brazilian Organising Committee (BOC) would only have a culture working group after the 2002 edition, when one person was hired to be responsible for the area and organise the group. It worked closely with the Rio Grande do Sul Culture Bureau, which was still in charge of most of the executive decisions – the BOC culture working group, mostly composed by NGOs and a few local authorities, was based in Sao Paulo, therefore having little contact with the reality ‘on the ground’ in Porto Alegre. This group subsisted ‘autonomously’ for a while after the WSF 2003, and became somewhat involved in organising the Brazilian Social Forum. In the run up to Porto Alegre 2005, it was (in theory) subsumed by an international BOC/ International Council methodology working group; however, it has remained exclusively Brazilian and largely unchanged in its composition.

./english/246.txt:19:During the preparations for 2003, both the Youth Camp and the WSF working groups had already fallen into the pattern of diagnosis-negative evaluation, and were again asking themselves the question of how to bring culture centre stage. Their papers essentially covered the same ground – the forum was a privileged space for cultural exchange and creation; ‘culture’ should be understood not as art or spectacle, but as the whole of symbolic and material production of different societies; the commoditisation and homogenisation brought about by capitalist globalisation were the main enemies to be practically opposed; the cultural question was transversal to all discussions in the forum. The Youth Camp project, inspired by the language of the Zapatistas, spoke of a transnational ‘community’ of all the groups and people who resisted and struggled, whose symbolic and material production should be affirmed in their diversity.

./english/246.txt:39:Since the first WSF one has heard many cries about culture being left out of the discussions, about it not being transversal to the debates etc. While this is certainly true in the sense of the previous paragraph, it is also a bit nonsensical: if we understand culture in the broader sense used above, how could it be outside? This normally means that the people making these demands want more discussion on the specificities of culture in a globalised capitalist world – which ends meaning equalling culture and art or the industry of entertainment, and this can be as much a part of the problem as it is a part of the solution. All the debates I remember at the first three WSFs which were ‘on culture’ had to do with protections for the national audiovisual industries against Hollywood, or politics of national exception, or politics of national protection to endangered cultural heritage, particularly that of minorities. Although these may of course still be useful instruments in a struggle of resistance against homogenisation, they do not tackle the problem of commodification as such, nor do they tackle the ‘lateral’ importance given to cultural debates in the left. By treating culture as art, they assume without question distinctions we have shown to be very characteristic of the society we want to transform. By placing culture as an exception that can only be adequately dealt with by the nation-state, they not only close more questions than they open, but also compartmentalise ‘culture’ as a subject for specialists, as one of the many issues – and not a particularly vital one – to be debated at a forum. This is mirrored by the way, for instance, free software is also ‘a bit on the side’, something for those who use or develop it to discuss; while in some other corner some people talk about digital inclusion, and yet another group somewhere else talks about the persecution and criminalisation of social movements by the mass media, or the monopoly of information held by big transnational conglomerates.

./english/247.txt:3:Social Forums and the Environment

./english/247.txt:7:In the first three editions of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, engagement with the environment and sustainability remained at a thematic level. There were, however, some interventions from movements and organizations that tried to call the attention of the participants and organizers to practical actions that this space should have.

./english/247.txt:13:In 2003 the IYC was recognized as an integral part of the organization of the WSF, existing as a legitimate and differentiated space of the Forum, contributing to its organization and the moving of some of its activities to the shore of Lake Gua í ba where the IYC was also based.

./english/247.txt:19:The IYC was named City of the Cities. For ten days, it also sheltered the World Education Forum, having more than 26,000 campers. A model of collective administration in experiences of horizontal organization was proposed, where all the services (safety, cleaning, etc...) were managed by the campers.

./english/247.txt:33:The Sustainability Working Group developed a solid residues management proposal with the DMLU (City Hall's Department of Urban Cleaning), the Porto Alegre Recycling Units Association for the whole WSF territory. It also initiated an education programme stimulating more sustainable practices in the Forum, such as the use of bicycles or collective transports, the rational use of natural resources, consumption of organic products, etc.

./english/247.txt:45:Potira Preiss is a biologist, political activist, member of the Youth Camp Organizing Committee and the World Social Forum Organizing Committee Sustainability Work Group. Tiago Eduardo Genehr is a journalist, president of the NGO Roessler Moviment, and member of the Youth Camp Organizing Committee.

./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/248.txt:11:How did this situation come about? One explanation is that this is an unfortunate side-effect of entering the heartland of neoliberalism. T here are several grains of truth in this claim that the London Forum posed new challenges, although the situation was by no means unique. The WSF in Mumbai, for example, faced an even more hostile political climate in confronting local and national right-wing administrations that were both strongly implicated in the stirring up of communalist racism and violence.

./english/248.txt:15:Money bought power at the ESF in London , but it was only the political culture and institutional context that really made this possible. That this ESF was dominated by left parties and the local state was nothing new. The background involvement of political parties, for example, has been a feature of virtually all social forums and an important factor in mediating the relationship with local government. The difference in London , if anything, was not the dominance of organised Left parties but their relative weakness. This meant that the London ESF offered a real opportunity to break the mould of past forums and become the ‘civil society' initiative it has often promised to be. The fact that this did not happen shows, if anything, the role that parties play for the forum in its current form. The task of organising a forum is still primarily addressed at local and national levels, where political parties remain an important vehicle for articulating political demands and organising collective activities. In the absence of strong Left parties in the UK , the GLA took on this role by proxy.

./english/248.txt:17:The involvement of the state was also nothing new. When the city of Florence hosted the first ESF in 2002, it donated the massive Fortezza da Basso for the event. State involvement was even more widespread during the Paris ESF in 2003, which relied on large donations from all levels of government ranging from local municipalities to the President's office. The difference in London was not the extent of state support – which was considerably down on previous years – but the price extracted for it. The GLA established its own parallel organising structures and used its funding to exert an unprecedented level of political control. This led to a lack of creativity, with practical tasks outsourced or dealt with bureaucratically. In particular, the Mayor of London's office pursued a managerialist approach that is quite at odds with the participatory ethos of the forum.

./english/248.txt:19:The permeation of market values was clearly visible at the Forum itself, where d iscussions on fair trade and the campaign to boycott Coke sat uneasily alongside the corporate food outlets selling Coca-Cola. But the real ‘innovations' lay behind the scenes. The GLA, having rested control of the budget-making process, kept this under tight wraps and assumed virtually the entire responsibility for the financial aspect of the forum. It brought with it the benefits of professional financial experience, but even this turned out to be doubled edged.

./english/248.txt:27:The Forum's reliance on voluntary labour was also largely instrumental with volunteers, on the whole, denied any decision-making capacity and distrusted for all but menial tasks. This despite the fact that the greatest material resources received by the Forum were given in kind: the financial value of Babels' contribution alone would amount to more than ½ million pounds.

./english/248.txt:29:In addition, counting on the basis of financial inputs and outputs doesn't give a sense of the wider value of initiatives taken at the Forum. Projects such as Nomad, which could have archived the event (allowing, amongst other things, its speeches to be replayed for educational purposes) were ditched, as were most other initiatives that moved in the direction of long-term benefit for the social forum as a process rather than event. Such decisions were ultimately a consequence of how the GLA constructed its budget and allocated money. In particular, ticket revenues were left to bear a high proportion of the overall costs, which meant an increasing susceptibility to market pressures.

./english/248.txt:33:For many participants, the solution to some of these problems is to adopt the practices of the social or solidarity economy, which encompasses alternative modes of production and distribution of goods. To start with, this means that the organisers of the forum need to realise that the practical construction of the forum can be as political as the contents of its speeches. The recent Uruguay Social Forum, for example, was a showcase for fairly traded and co-operatively produced goods – inspired, in part, by the explosive growth of bartering networks in neighbouring Argentina following its economic collapse in late 2001. The Intercontinental Youth Camp at the 2003 World Social Forum went even further, accommodating more than 20,000 people in a tented city with its own internal currency (the ‘Sol'), which acted as an incentive to participate in the camp's own solidarity economy and purchase its organic produce rather than choosing the nearby commercial outlets.

./english/248.txt:35:These initiatives are not incidental to the social forum process. They speak as eloquently as the rhetorical turns on the forum's main stages about alternatives to market-driven globalisation, with its tendency to destroy local production and bio-diversity as it spreads inequality around the world. Making the social forums into a laboratory for alternative economic practices will not result in the overthrow of capitalism, for sure. But it would at least be a step in the right direction if the forums were to prefigure, in the here and now, the kind of ‘other world' that they hope to bring about.

./english/250.txt:7:Many changes have been introduced in the preparatory process of the next World Social Forum, which will be held in Porto Alegre from the 26 th to the 31 st of January and will only be composed of self-organized activities

./english/250.txt:9:The first step was the consultation that was launched in July. Its aim was to define the general outlook of the forum. More than 1800 organizations participated in the consultation, which was many more than expected. 11 ‘terrains' were defined on the basis of the results of the consultation during two meetings of the content and methodology commissions of the International Council in July and in August.

./english/250.txt:21:The third step will begin in a few days and end only several weeks after the forum itself. It is the construction of the WSF's memory, the ‘memoria viva' project. It articulates 4 different projects:

./english/250.txt:25:* Culture working group: this aims at building the memory of cultural events of all types that will be held at the forum. This project matches ‘diversity's living musuem', a project of living memory, etc.

./english/250.txt:29:* Proposals: this project aims at collecting before, during and after the forum texts presenting the proposals of alternatives that organizations will discuss in Porto Alegre. Those proposals will be published online and on proposal walls that will be located in each of the terrains.

./english/250.txt:31:Every project will be accessible (through links or a common database) on the www.memoria-viva.org website, which will be launched soon. This website could then also be used to collect or link the memory of future social forums.

./english/250.txt:33:The changes that were introduced in the preparation of WSF 2005 show one of the aspect of the forums' dynamic: that this is also a learning process. This means that many problems occurred during the process and that not everything that was planned could be achieved. The consultation and registration phase have shown that there is a strong interest in building the forum as a deeply self-organized process. However, because of the amount of answers and, amongst other things, because of some technical problems, the results of the consultation could only be partially analysed in a methodical way and were not sufficiently mutualized. Nor have we managed to create more profound links between the consultation and the process of registering events. Indeed, there was insufficient time to enable a strong appropriation by every participant of the changes that were introduced. Moreover, as these were significant innovations, the organizers themselves were learning new aspects everyday about how to facilitate the organization of a social forum in this way. Despite this, the new methodology is already a success because it has strengthened the dimension of the forum as a learning process and because it has lead to the greater involvement of every organization in the building of the forum itself. Those aspects that were not implemented this time around could still contribute to the shape of other social forums. From this perspective, it is important to try to manage to our work on a long term basis and not only to dedicate everybody's energy to the preparation of one single forum.

./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:39:Despite the few problems of accountability inherent in the macrostructures of the ESF, the official structures of decision-making, where the local committees and groups have privilege in daily decisions while the EPA ensures input from across Europe on critical political issues, is a rather effective and inclusive process. Unfortunately, the form which these meetings take can often be less inclusive. The official decision-making procedure of the social forum movement is consensus decision-making. However, in practice, due to a misunderstanding of what consensus is and a limited commitment to consensus, it is unclear what the exact procedure for making decisions is at the EPA.

./english/251.txt:47:These principles need to be explained at the beginning of every meeting and reinforced by the facilitator of the meeting or preferably by the meeting as a whole if possible. The Social Forum movement far too often assumes an awareness of consensus procedures that is not there. Most powerful organisations within the ESF process are not accustomed to working with consensus procedures as they tend to come from political party backgrounds or trade union structures which function through a more hierarchical and representative structure than the ESF. This lack of familiarity on the part of the key organisers and the participants creates a confusing atmosphere where all the weaknesses of consensus arise and very few of the benefits. If we are really interested in working through consensus decision-making structures then we need to be in a constant process of teaching ourselves and others how consensus works.

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

./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: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/252.txt:81:Norway Social Forum board member

./english/252.txt:85:Norway Social Forum coordinator

./english/252.txt:95:ESF Coordinator for Denmark International Forum

./english/253.txt:7:The organisers of the fifth World Social Forum have adopted a new methodology for organising the programme, which has involved participating organisations more fully in the construction of the forum from the outset. The greater focus on self-organised events is also intended to facilitate new networks and common actions amongst the participants of the forum.

./english/253.txt:11:To encourage the dialogue that takes place at Forums to lead to/strengthen action.

./english/253.txt:13:To ensure that Forums practice in their own organisation what they preach in the Charter, in particular participatory democracy, respect for plurality and diversity and a refusal of hierarchy.

./english/253.txt:14:To avoid the Forums becoming simply an annual event and to put concerted energy into creating a process that strengthens struggles and the development of alternatives in a cumulative way.

./english/253.txt:15:To ensure that the Forum process becomes more useful in promoting the density and dynamism of the relationships and networks resisting and creating alternatives to neo-liberalism.

./english/253.txt:16:To ensure that the Forum develops a systematic collective memory

./english/253.txt:17:To find ways of ensuring that the Forum treats divergencies as a source of strength and enrichment so that it does not simply represent moments of convergence on particularly struggles but enables a process of testing of different ideas in a process of continuing debate.

./english/253.txt:24:This active registration process (which needs to be encouraged by many different non-electronic means, public meetings, local forums etc) would be the basis of:

./english/253.txt:30:The electronic consultation would need to be wide in the sense of achieving the widest support possible, in social, political, cultural and geographical terms. It would need to be open in the sense that all proposals – as long as they are within the terms of the Charter – are legitimate as contributions to the themes and activity of the Forum. It would need to be active in the sense of based on proposals stimulating organisations, movements, campaigns and coalitions to participate in the process.

./english/253.txt:32:It is a process which needs committed facilitation from an international working group accountable to the Organising Committee of the Forum.

./english/259.txt:26:As such, the meeting’s proactive focus interacted substantially with the local contexts in which it took place, highlighting the ‘real world’ complexities influencing activist practice and research. Important issues that came up included: relationships between Catalan separatist politics and a radical activist politics that focuses on transnational issues; the integral significance of maintaining physical spaces for the existence and enhancing of alternative communities and organising practices; and current processes and events in Barcelona that are demolishing existing inner-city communities in the process of gentrifying and cleansing the city, particularly in relation to the city’s 2004 business and tourism-oriented Cultural Forum.

./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:32:These could be understood as two of the functions of the World Social Forum and Social Forums more generally. Certainly, this is the direction in which the developing methodology of the WSF – and hopefully the ESF – is moving. There is growing self awareness of Social Forums as useful contexts in which practical and theoretical knowledge can be shared in order to identify the next action to be taken. Enhancement of the movements’ role as producers of emancipatory knowledge – knowledge integral to the work of social transformation - provides a useful criteria for the workings of the methodology. For it implies a mobilisation process that reaches out to all those involved in struggles for social justice, grass roots movements – not simply co-ordinating groups and NGO’s; it implies open, democratic and empowering discussions through which there can be a real exchange of different kinds of knowledge, from different sources – not simply speeches to a more or less passive audience; it implies ways of organising the event which reveals connections, commonalities and differences between movements so that knowledge of power structures and strategies of transformation from different angles are debated and compared – not simply parallel, separate themes; it implies a tough mutual interrogation and debate of each others knowledge, imbued as it is by values and politics – not simply the co-existence of different perspectives. Only these kinds of activities will move the dialectic of knowledge and action on.

./english/272.txt:34:But by discussing the future of the World Social Forum I am going ahead of myself. The reason why it is necessary to summarise what we can abstract with hindsight from the practice of the earlier movements is because these movements went through a significant defeat. As a result many threads of thought were broken and forgotten. (What I’ve said here is only a fraction of relevant thoughts). Not only did they suffer a significant defeat this but this defeat produced a distorted legacy. I’m thinking here of the legacy of a post-modernism which separated the movements’ concern with language and culture from their roots in resistance and action to change the material realities which language describes. Defeat also halted a half-finished process of new thinking and the emergence of subjects of socialist or radically transformative change. The movements rarely had the infrastructure and resources to survive, other than in memory, writing, scattered personal networks and the occasional project. There are exceptions which prove the point: for example Rifondazione Comunista in Italy has been able to maintain some political continuity between the innovative movements of the 70’s and the equally innovative movements of today and is as a result very different – in many but not all ways – from most conventional parties of the left. But generally, a weakening or defeat of the social movements left a vacuum and in many places, the traditional left, whether a warmed up Leninism or a defensive parliamentary socialism, moved back into an influence disproportionate to their size and political credibility with their limited and stifling approaches to knowledge.

./english/275.txt:148:The development of phenomena such as Indymedia, the Social Forum process, and the current anti-war movement have then supported and developed this remarkable process, for which the nearest genuine points of comparison have to be sought in 1968.

./english/284.txt:82:This positionality is key to understanding the goal of this piece which is to disarticulate discourses of misrepresentation and prejudices about the Mexican low-wage workers in the US. Against interpretations of the Mexican language as “crude”, “ordinary” and the Mexican male as “an animal whose ferocious pantomimes are designed to terrify others” (Ramos in Limón, 1994: 124) he is trying to put forward an alternative analysis. Instead of beasts’ roars, Limón find voices of resistance. He wants to rethink them as revolutionary narratives. The marginalized peoples’ jokes, plays and cooking are ways through which the participants are transforming themselves into mastering subjects challenging the norms of a dominant social order. Their activities become ideological devices, antagonistic performances against a hegemonic culture and society. Limón discerns a grammar of insurgency encoded in apparently crass sexual jokes. Similar to Mexican language, the space of the rancho is transform into a “temporary forum of non-alienation” (135), into an interim non-capitalist space.

./english/300.txt:67:What is interesting to note about this discussion is that it’s emerging and multiplying itself at a time when we are seeing increased social mobilization and conflictuality. Issues such as globalizing capitalism, trade agreements, failed development, neoliberalism, and the war on terrorism are met by opposed dynamics whether they be Chiapas and the multiplication of indigenous movements, global resistance counter-summits and social forums or the independent organizing of the unemployed in numerous countries. Different struggles in distant places are articulating themselves through a similar discourse and already the term ‘movement of movements’ is one in common usage amongst activists. While in no way trying to say that this is a repeat of the sixties dynamic, it is interesting to see how similar discussions in geography begin to re-emerge with the increase of social conflictuality.

./english/302.txt:48: 4. Devices and resources for self-organizing, which would arise from the counseling, the workshops and the more specifically communicative activities, such as the mailing list and the web-forum, a bulletin board for exchanges between needs and Œexcesses¹ (often we need things but other times we have things to offer) or all kinds (exchanges of services, of work, of information) in order to think through and consolidate proposals of cooperativism and the generation of material resources (self-employment, grants) which permit us to carry out certain initiatives or survive moments of economic impasse (resistance fund).

./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/303.txt:32:A concrete example from my field notes can help shed light on the meaning and practice of militant ethnography. At the end of a July 1 march against police brutality in Barcelona, a Milan-based activist from the Italian White Overalls took the microphone and announced the coming siege of the G8 summit. After describing the Genoa Social Forum and the pact that had been made with the city, he enthusiastically called on all Catalan and Spanish activists to make the trip, exclaiming in the spirit of musician and anti-globalization favorite Manu Chao, “Next Stop: Genoa!” Tend days later, two Americans, an Israeli, 7 Catalans and I were discussing our police evasion strategy on a regional train we had skipped through southern France. As we pulled into Genoa, the Italian police were out patrolling in force. Although we had done nothing wrong, our hearts began to pound when we left the train. The paranoid feeling of being under constant surveillance would remain with us during our entire time in Italy.

./english/303.txt:33:We spent our first few days sleeping in a squatted social center nestled in the hills on the outskirts of town, where we met up with many PGA-inspired activists. Ricardo, a well-known solidarity activist and squatter from Germany had been among the first internationals to arrive, and was frustrated about how difficult it had been to coordinate with the Genoa Social Forum, the main body planning the protests in Genoa. He was extremely eager to fill us in an elicit some more support for building a strong radical “international:” contingent.

./english/303.txt:35:The most troubling aspect for Ricardo was that the GSF had not created any channels of communication with the militant anarchists, largely due to the Forum’s strict “non-violence” stance. The dominant political forces within the GSF- the White Overalls, NGOs, ATTAC, radical labor unions and Refundazione, the reformulated Communist party- were characterized by autonomous Marxist, socialist, and social-democratic perspectives and the use of strictly non-violent tactics. On the other hand, the guiding political ethos among decentralized grassroots networks like PGA or MRG is broadly anarchist, at least in the sense of horizontal networking and coordination among diverse autonomous groups. This networking logic also holds for the question of violence versus non-violence, where a “diversity of tactics” position generally prevails. For radical anti-capitalists like Ricardo, even those who would never engage in violent tactics, the important thing is to establish dialogue and coordination among all groups, regardless of the tactics they choose. The strict non-violence position of the GSF, along with their perceived unwillingness to communicate with groups outside their direct action guidelines, was thus perceived as a major obstacle to overcome through the mediation of the radical internationals.

./english/307.txt:3:Introduction The first version of this proposal was presented in January 2003 and published in Democracia Viva (IBASE), No. 14, January 2003, pp.78-83. In the months that followed it was discussed on several occasions with different people. In Madrid, on April 25, at the headquarters of ACSUR-Las Segovias, with Pedro Santana, Tomas Villasante, Juan Carlos Monedero and several other activists of Spanish and Latin-American nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); in Cartagena de Indias, in June 16-20, during the Thematic World Social Forum on Democracy, Human Rights, Wars, and Narcotraffic, in a workdshop coordinated by Pedro Santana, Giampero Rasimelli, Moema Miranda and myself; and finally in Rio de Janeiro, on September 2, at the IBASE headquarters, with Candido Grzybowski, Moema Miranda, several other members of IBASE and Jorge Romano of Actionaid. The present version is the result of these discussions. The name and the thing There is no consensus on the name to be given to the proposed institution. Some consider the term “University” elitist. Others think that the term “Popular University” entails identification with initiatives of communist parties and other left organizations of the first decades of the twentieth century. School? Academy? Open University of the Social Movements? Global University of Social Movements? At some point the organizations that decide to take upon themselves the task of actually creating the popular university will have to come to an agreement as to its designation. Since none of the alternatives so far seems preferable, in this version I stick to the original designation. 3

./english/307.txt:8:between teacher and pupil – thus creating contexts and moments for reciprocal learning. Recognition of reciprocal ignorance is its starting point. Its final point is the shared production of knowledges as global and diverse as the globalization processes themselves. Beyond the gap between theory and practice, PUSM intends to tackle two problems that currently permeate all movements for an alternative globalization. First, the scarcity of reciprocal knowledge that still exists between movements and organizations active in the same thematic area and operating in different parts of the globe. Social forums have been powerful instruments in arousing this need and showing the importance of reciprocal knowledge. However, given their sporadic nature and short duration, they have been unable to fulfill this need. Without this reciprocal knowledge, it is impossible to increase the density and complexity of movement networks. Without this expansion it is not possible to augment significantly the efficacy and consistency of transformational actions beyond what has been achieved so far. The other problem is the lack of shared knowledge among movements and organizations active in different thematic areas and their respective struggles. This gap is even wider than the previous one, and bridging it is equally important. Because it is impossible and undesirable to have a general theory globally encompassing all movements and practices in all thematic areas, we need to create conditions for reciprocal intelligibility among movements through methodologies akin to translation. Methodologies, that is, capable of detecting what is common and what is different among different themes, movements, and practices, in order to identify the points and modes of articulation where links can be made – without any of these movements and practices losing their identity or autonomy. What is at stake, in a word, is to find out what is common and what is different between the indigenous and the ecological

./english/307.txt:17:The proposals will be refined through the PUSM Network as well as through the set of networks that make up alternative globalization, namely those participating in the World Social Forum. Organization PUSM comprises two operative units: PUSM-Headquarters and PUSM-Network. PUSM-Headquarters PUSM-Headquarters will operate in a country of intermediate development (Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico, etc.). It includes the Coordinating Committee, the Translation Coordination, and the Executive Committee. The first workshops will take place at the headquarters. PUSM-Network will be managed here as well. The Coordinating Committee is constituted of representatives of all the movements and NGOs that are part of PUSM-Network. Its job is to coordinate the activities of PUSM and select the Translation Coordination and the Executive Committee. The functions of the Translation Coordination are: 1. select workshops and its participants; 2. supervise the activities, both pedagogical and of research-action for change; 3. fulfill activities for diffusion of translation capabilities and tools; 4. grant scholarships to activists/leaders and social cientists/scholars/artists that are not self-funded. Any one of these tasks may be managed by sub-committees.

./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:4:Invitation to action research the Social Forum Process

./english/313.txt:53:There are several types of searches and experiences; I will start presenting what had been developed on a clear focus of the Social Forum framework.

./english/313.txt:55:At the Social Forums Frame work

./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:59:The systematizes/memory groups are addressing various aspects of the Social Forum. With a very simple or in occasion’s fictitious distinction, there are two kinds of information systematization and knowledge production that are considered needed: one is related to the networking organisational aspect, the other is content aspect. This difference doesn’t have necessarily to correspond with the difference establish between “live memory or systematizaction” and as opposite, I guess, “not alive memory”.

./english/313.txt:61:The networking organizational aspects gives an understanding of the kind and reach of movements that are involved with the SF process; what kind of organisations participated in the forum: thematically, regionally and size; to which direction is the process growing throw evolution analysis; which kind of connectivity the Forum created; kinds of participation etc., and it is focus on developing useful networking tools, to reinforce the Forum dimension of “weave” social network.

./english/313.txt:95:An other space grown around the ESF, but focus of the activist theorising is the Radical Theory Forum, Radical Theory Forum (e-list: radicaltheoryforum@lists.riseup.net), questioning what is the radical theory?.

./english/313.txt:97:Further than the Social Forum Framework: Some more expressions and searches

./english/313.txt:101:A creative line is the collective construction of cartography maps “a caballo” of process of social mobilisation. Some examples are the maps of Bureua d’Etudes and the University Tangente about multinational networks, the bonairence Grup of street art about resistance, the map against/about the Forum of the cultures (but not against the War) of Barcelona or the map of conflicts in metropolitan territory of Rome done by Transform! Italia (publish us: “La riva sinistra del Tevere” by Carta).

./english/313.txt:151:BASIC WEB-BIBLIOGRAPHY AND CONTACTS ON SOCIAL FORUM PROCES SYSTEMATIZATION EXPERIENCES SEE: SF Tool Box

./english/313.txt:161:Social Forums Memory working group depending on the World social forum International committee e-list: memoria@mapeadores.net

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

./english/315.txt:9:After a navigationally-challenging half-hour suburban walk from the main Social Forum spaces of Bobigny, north-east Paris, we eventually found our allocated space for the somewhat grandly titled ‘Radical Theory Workshop’. We – Steffen Böhm (co-editor ephemera: critical dialogues on organisation, University of Essex), Jeremy Gilbert (Signs of the Times, University of East London), Jo Littler (Signs of the Times, Middlesex University), Oscar Reyes (Independent Student Media Project, University of Essex), myself (University of Warwick), Tiziana Terranova (University of East London) – registered the workshop as a response to our shared sense that the ESF in Florence last year, while electric, eclectic and inspiring, was rather low on theoretical content and reflection with regard to contemporary supranational socio-political ‘movement(s)’. Our blurb for the workshop registration process went something like this:

./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:13:Given the workshop’s location in the backend of suburban nowhere, and the one week Forum registration notification which meant we had next to no time to publicise the workshop, we entered the space with somewhat low expectations regarding what might transpire over the next three hours. Having rearranged the lines of chairs into a more conversation-friendly circle for around 15 people, we opened up proceedings with personal introductions. At this point we consisted of the five of us who had made it from the registration ‘team’ (Tiziana had unavoidable teaching commitments and couldn’t make the Forum until the following day), and about five other punters: more encounter-group than theory/practice workshop.

./english/315.txt:31:People are talking about ‘Social Forum Theory’ – what is this?

./english/315.txt:60:The setting up of an elist called Radical Theory Forum (thanks to Tom Cahill for doing this). A main focus of the list would be a space for communicating about the possibility of establishing a non-specialist journal. The description of the list is as follows:

./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:65:As noted above, a number of the workshop participants felt that an opportunity existed for the establishment of a journal that linked radical theoretical work with political practice. A second evening meeting was held during the Social Forum to take this discussion further.

./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/315.txt:77:In sum, and as someone pointed out in the final feedback, it is clear from the number and diversity of participants that the notion of ‘Radical Theory’ compels us, even if we are not sure exactly what we mean by the term. It is also apparent that there is a demand for critical and reflective thinking spaces to be at the heart of the social forum process.

./english/316.txt:2:The World Social Forum and the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement: A Backgrounder

./english/316.txt:9:The World Social Forum (WSF) is probably most identified with the recent international wave of protest known as the ‘anti-globalisation movement’. Whilst intimately interrelated with the latter, however, the WSF is just one emanation of this much more general phenomenon and process. How can these and their inter-relationship be best understood?

./english/316.txt:13:The WSF – promoted by an identifiable group of Brazilian, French and other, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), trade unions and individuals – is itself linked organically to the more general movement. This is through an informal Forum event, known as the ‘Call of Social Movements’. This has been attended, and its regular declarations signed, by many WSF participant bodies. The Call formalised itself between WSF2-3 with a Social Movements International Secretatriat. But this body, or tendency, is a matter of discomfort for those within the WSF who want to see the Forum as a ‘space’ rather than a ‘movement’. (Social Movements World Network website, Vargas 2003, Whitaker 2003, World Social Forum website,).

./english/316.txt:43:Many identify the new protest movement with the turn of the century, with the North (Seattle 1999, Prague 2000, Genoa 2001, Gothenburg 2001, Barcelona 2002, Evian 2003). They also associate it with the middle-classes, students and youth – who have indeed been prominent within it. But so have women, forming around 50 percent at the World Social Forums, though this is little commented on.

./english/316.txt:59:The language of the new radical-democratic protest movements is increasingly infecting some of the 50-100-year-old international trade union organisations, such as the recently-renamed Global Union Federations (GUFs). And the trade unions, which have 150-200 million members worldwide, are increasingly attracted by the World Social Forum. (Aguiton 2003, Buckley 2003, International Transportworkers Federation 2002, Waterman and Wills 2001).

./english/316.txt:61:The WSF has been held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2001-3, and is scheduled for Mumbai, India, in 2004. If the earlier-mentioned protest events were frequently marked more by opposition than proposition, the Forums have not only been devoted to counter-proposition over a remarkably wide range of social issues (with a wide range of significant collective actors). They have also demonstrated that what is shaping up is much more than a Northern, or even a Western-hemispheric, internationalism. The Forum process, moreover, has now reached take-off, with national, regional and thematic forums taking place all over the world. Some of these may be unknown to the WSF itself. The WSF has also become both the subject and the site of intense reflection concerning its own significance, nature and future. (Fisher and Ponniah 2002, Transnational Alternatives 2002, Sen 2003, Santos 2003, Whitaker 2002).

./english/316.txt:70:Christophe Aguiton (2001), from France, a Trotskyist of another feather, and a leading figure within the World Social Forum, tentatively identifies three 'poles' within the global justice movement: a ‘radical internationalist’, a ‘nationalist’, and a ‘neo-reformist’ one. The first looks beyond both capitalism and the nation-state, the second is a mostly-Southern response, and the third is the kind of 'global governance' tendency also strongly present within the WSF. (Global Civil Society Yearbook website, Rikkilä and Patomäki 2001).

./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:100:India has seen similar or even greater waves of such protest over the last decade. But these are traceable back a half century or more. They include worker, rural, urban, regional, adivasi (indigenous) and dalit (untouchable) movements, religious and ethnic protest (often sectarian or communalist), ecological and women’s movements. Over the past two decades there has been an increase in dramatic, often massive, protest demonstrations and marches, explicitly aimed against neo-liberalisation and globalisation/imperialism. With the possible exception of the ecological and women’s movements, and projects for regional civil society linkages, however, these have shown little consciousness of, or significant linkage with, movements elsewhere. That this has continued till recently may be due not simply to the relative size, poverty or isolation of India but to the framing of such protest within the protest discourses of the 19th-20th century, such as socialism (of a decreasingly international/ist nature), of nationalism and populism. The recently rising consciousness of, and connection with, the GJ&SM, is symbolised by the holding of the first Asian Social Forum (Hyderabad 2002), and the hosting of the first WSF outside Brazil, in 2004. Exceptionally, in India, this initiative has been taken (in hand?) by the old Left. Whether, at Mumbai, the clearest note will be struck by the old traditions of national subaltern protest, or the new ones of global counter-assertion – or how these will be mutually articulated – may be significant for the future of not only the WSF but for the GJ&SM in general. (Desh Bachao 2003, Dietrich and Nayak 2001, Featherstone 2002, Muricken 1999, Omvedt 1993, Sen 2003, Waterman 1982)

./english/316.txt:111:Alongside such new international/ist media practice has gone democratic international media-campaigning, itself traceable back to the thirdworldist (i.e. statist) New World Information and Communication Order of the 1970s-80s. Today this has a more radical-democratic or social-movement orientation. Media/cyberspace activity finds multi-faceted expression within the World Social Forum, partly in official panels, partly in more marginal ones. It may also, however, find expression within alternative or oppositional spaces during the World Summit on the Information Society, 2003-5. Such activities, within the United Nations system, may now be being seen as secondary to activity within the framework of the WSF. (Cyberspace after Capitalism 2003, ISIS 2003, Leon, Burch and Tamayo 2001, Putting People First 2003, WSF Thematic Area 3 2003).

./english/319.txt:26:To put it crudely, the ESF serves neither as a recruitment fair for the movement nor as a laboratory for the development of its arsenal. These two functions are not mutually exclusive. The forum can accommodate both, as long as a lot of work is done in two directions.

./english/319.txt:27:First, outreach. The ESF needs to appeal to constituencies that are not instinctively drawn to such an event. I don’t think that the average Londoner, let alone the British public, was even aware of something happening and the media, with the exception of The Guardian which was a sponsor, virtually ignored it. The forum’s diversity, vibrancy and festive atmosphere make it too good an opportunity to capture people’s imagination instead of just preaching to the converted.

./english/319.txt:29:Second, the formulation of concrete alternatives and strategies. The forum can not of course act as a representative legislative body or decide on a political programme. What it can act as, though, is a bright platform on which the very diverse analytical work that has already been done on specific issues and strategies can be brought together, debated upon and synthesised when possible. The point is not to come to a consensus; that is neither possible nor even necessary. What’s important is that ideas are analysed and contrasted, their advantages and drawbacks clearly elaborated, their starting and finishing points thoroughly mapped out. It will then be the task of the forum to publicise and champion this process and its outcomes as widely as possible, to put them out there as serious and concrete points of reference for the movement to draw on in present and future struggles. In practical terms, this could take the form of choosing a couple of issues each time and then having an opening plenary that will map out the process, a sufficient number of seminars that will tackle their different dimensions and a final plenary where the various approaches and ideas will be presented and debated upon.

./english/319.txt:31:This will hardly be a straightforward, easy or simple path. Blood will be spilled over the choice of issues. A lot of work is needed before and during the forum to break down each topic, maintain inter-connections within a coherent framework and enable synthesizing procedures. A significant amount of preparatory work will be demanded by advocates of diverse perspectives. The necessarily centralized nature of such a process will be anathema to many, but, for example, the overall number of centrally planned sessions within the ESF doesn’t need to increase. Everybody recognizes the need for concrete analyses and alternatives; this is one way for the forum to contribute to that aspiration.

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

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

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

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

./english/331.txt:87:Every week high profile left-wing writers (George Monbiot, Noam Chomsky, Mark Thomas, John Pilger to name a few) comment on the activities of corporate bullies and their partners in crime, corrupt politicians. Landmark publications have fuelled the anti-capitalist fire: Naomi Klein's No Logo was the book that united frustrated protestors into a global movement. Websites such as CorpWatch, Globalise Resistance and IndyMedia disseminate information and propaganda, and mobilise support - not just from rich kids in rich countries, but increasingly diverse groups from developing countries too. Each and every recent meeting of the World Economic Forum, WTO, IMF, World Bank, G8, in Davos, Seattle, Prague, Genoa, New York; environmental summits in Rio and Johannesburg, has had a contingent of protestors challenging the neo-liberal status quo. The left is still there, and it rejects both the conservative and the Third Way’s claim to the moral high ground. To the secular left, morality is compassion and justice on a global, humanitarian scale that transcends religious, ethnic or geo-political boundaries:

./english/331.txt:91:It is anti-global insofar as it rejects the imperialist tendencies of the Trans-National Corporation (TNC) and the global tourist trade, the globalisation of labour and consumer markets, and the use of developing countries as the rich world’s dustbin. But a common aim to combat the human exploitation and environmental degradation that characterise unregulated free-trade ideology is not 'anti-global'. Neither is a movement made possible by the global reach of the internet. Referring to the World Social Forum meetings at Porto Alegre, Noam Chomsky explained:

./english/331.txt:107:Ruggie is optimistic about a future built not on centralised hierarchies developed from the existing international economic institutions, but one, which utilises the global capabilities of TNC’s to “pull the mantle of public authority in a more global direction”. He has faith in Kofi Annan’s Global Compact in providing a framework for socially responsible corporations to lead by example, and in creating a truly global social domain, “a space that allows for the direct expression of human interests and values in global governance” (Ruggie, 2002:9). The resurgent civil society has a role to play in ‘generating, deepening and implementing transnational norms’ through campaign activities and governance forums.

./english/331.txt:113:So our choice is clear. Not just CEO’s, but each and every one of us has to look morality in the face. In the words of a truly global statesman to the World Economic Forum:

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

./english/332.txt:5:The ESF in Athens ended with a huge and militant mobilisation on the streets of the city. It saw the emergence of a left, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist wing – it was much more vibrant and militant than the previous two forums, in London and Paris.

./english/336.txt:1: Appeal of the Hungarian Social Forum cwg for the solution of the Crisis

./english/336.txt:3: The Coordinating Working Group of the Hungarian Social Forum (HSF

./english/336.txt:7:overwhelming majority of the Society, our Forum is not interested in the

./english/336.txt:35:Hungarian Social Forum cwg, as Forum of different social and civic

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

./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:19:Finally, this Forum was more successful in its enlarging process for Russia, central and oriental Europe, Turkey and Balkan countries. We will have to make sure this aspect is confirmed in the future. Unfortunately, the Scandinavian and Northern countries were not strongly represented.

./english/337.txt:28:We also have to discuss collectively about the building of a new relationship between networks and the EPA plenum. Until now, the EPA plenum exercised a « monopoly » on the elaboration of the programme. This Forum has shown that something has changed. Our next challenge is to build a dynamic discussion to adapt our collective preparation of the Forum to this evolution where networks – born within or outside the ESF process (Education, Health, GATS/WTO, War, Latin America, Public services, No Vox, Tax Justice, etc.) – feed the dynamics of the whole process as they build their own dynamics. How can this networking dynamic be facilitated without impoverishing our common space?

./english/337.txt:35:A lot of debates, badly prepared, are still repeating themselves, sometimes with the same speakers. The Forum suffers from these juxtapositions of political positions well known by everybody. Debates should help to go past well known positions.

./english/337.txt:43:Moreover, the Forum has a very limited impact on « mainstream public opinion », which doesn’t see this space as an « alternative policy-producing » process. This function – a space to build common alternatives– is, as we all know, the more theoretical part of our process. Some of our remarks here before could help to enrich the process. But this issue has to be thoroughly addressed.

./english/337.txt:56:• Also problematic is the reluctance against the use of sophisticated technical tools supporting the ESF process. Before the ESF in Athens for example, the ESF Internet Team had, during countless hours, prepared a quite powerful Website to facilitate the coordination process (which included a web-forum supporting political or technical discussions). Apart from this, we also have a mailing list. Unfortunately these tools have not been used as a help for political discussions. As a consequence, the EPA has to carry the whole burden of all political discussions. This makes the ESF far more complicated than it would need to be if it had a proper agenda and completed some first discussions beforehand. In addition, this absence almost enforces the construction of a small and informal circle where discussing political topics is made easier.

./english/337.txt:58:• In Athens we saw the confirmation of the high influence and visibility of political parties, which is a clear breach of The Charter of Porto Alegre. Moreover, this situation could - even in the short term - drastically reduce the scope of potential participating groups or individuals, and ultimately prevent the needed extension of the basis for a future ESF. We urgently need to discuss the place of political parties within the process of the Forum. We obviously know that the question of the relationship between social movements and political parties is different from one country to another, from one tradition to another. We also know that a political party can use a social movement as a « showcase ». Nevertheless, we propose to open a calm and constructive discussion on this sensitive point, in order to find adapted solutions for the future, solutions inspired by the principles of the Charter of Porto Alegre.

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

./english/337.txt:87:A reminder of the function of the solidarity fund: its priority is to enable, whenever possible, delegates from South and Eastern collective groups and organisations, working on the dynamics of Social Forums in their respective countries, to take part in EPAs and the ESF. As a tool, it belongs to the EPA which has political responsibility and management over it. It is exclusively funded by the contribution of EPA participating member organisations (50 € per organisation), or by donations from organisations.

./english/337.txt:95:Haris Golemi (Greek Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:97:Magda Kovsiautza ( Youth Synaspismos / Greek Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:99:Anastasia Thiodoravopoulou (Greek Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:109:Peter Damo (Romaian Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:111:Endre Simo (Hungarian Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:143:Grigoris Demestikos (Greek Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:151:Dworczak Hermann (Austrian Social Forum)

./english/337.txt:159:Panayotis Yulis (Greek Social Forum)

./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:8:5.Unfortunately, in Athens as well we had our share in the propaganda seminars. It should be clear by now that the seminars of a Forum —apart from all else— should give space to dialogue. It is also evident that we cannot proceed in coercive unifications. However, it is equally evident that 210 seminars are too many.

./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:4:There were many difficulties which were due to our lack of experience in organizing events of such a great extent, the lack of knowledge transmission from the countries that organized the previous forums and to the new features we had decided to give to this social forum.

./english/340.txt:5:By working collectively through democratic, participatory processes and voluntary work we tried with a lot of effort to build an anti-commercial context that would result to an open Forum, without exclusions, accessible in terms of the cost (registration, transport, food), and facilitating attendance by offering free hospitality to as many participants as possible.

./english/340.txt:6:One very important axis for us was the effort to build a forum friendly to the environment by using recycling regarding to the litter management and by emphasizing fields such as the fair trade and the biological culture in the food sector.

./english/340.txt:7:Furthermore, in a country with several thousands of immigrants it was of great importance that the organisation of the social forum would not only bear antiracist features but it would facilitate in every possible way the essential attendance of immigrants and the putting forward of those subjects that the immigrants wanted to stress. Based on the same principles and having as a starting point the decision about the thematic spaces that we had taken altogether, we accomplished to put a great deal of emphasis on them. Essentially, the Social Forum of Athens gave a great deal of visibility to matters and spaces that up to now did not participate organically in our processes.

./english/340.txt:8: In every step of the preparation, we tried to collaborate with groups from all over Greece and abroad (Voluntary Work Thessaloniki, Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network, No Vox etc.) that up to now did not participate systematically in the Forum process and we created new groups that would be responsible for organizing aspects of the forum (group of architects, group of technical support, catering etc).

./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/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/342.txt:10:The experience of organizing the 4th ESF —and particularly our effort to issue visas for those coming from the above-mentioned countries— once more gave us the chance to underline that that the policy against “illegal immigration” and the so-called “terrorism” is present in our everyday lives and gives a hard time to those who wish to participate in a Forum. Specifically, in many occasions the applicants were asked to: a. prove that they are members of societies, b. submit documents that proved that they do not intend to immigrate (especially to those who came from the countries of the former Eastern Europe), c. to persuade the consulates —by means of personal interviews— that they do not use their participation at the Forum as a pretext in order to immigrate or to ask for (in vain) political asylum. Moreoever, there were cases that the authorities refused to issue group —and free— visas.

./english/343.txt:38:1.The Assembly has developed in step with the World Social Forum but has shown it is different by the fact that it is an open space for building joint agendas. It is a group of diverse movements with specific regional and national aims, but who together want to fight on a global scale against neoliberal, imperailist and military capitalism (permanent global war), against racism and against the patriarchal system. It aims at being a space open to all who want to fight, in all their different guises.

./english/343.txt:160:Forum Social L?manique

./english/343.txt:202:Forum mondial des alternatives

./english/343.txt:224:Pakistan Social Forum

./english/343.txt:332:Russian Social Forum

./english/344.txt:43:One should not, finally, discount the influence in Latin America of the World Social Forum and its regional spin-offs, most of which have taken place in the sub-continent. The WSF has provided not only a site at which some of the (closed-door) union negotiations have taken place, but have also suggested more holistic alternatives to globalisation than have been traditionally offered by the major union internationals. Involvement in general social protest may have itself stimulated Latin American union concern about the content or ideology of a unification that is likely to continue a model forged in Western Europe during the years of both the Welfare State and the Cold War - both of which have pretty much disappeared.

./english/344.txt:80:Beijing Consensus. 2004. ‘Beijing Consensus: International Forum on Economic Globalization and Trade Unions’, October 11, 2004. http://www.acftu.org.cn/Consensus.htm

./english/346.txt:3: World Social Forum and

./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:16:Many organisations – including the Creek Social Forum itself, the Turkish organisations, immigrant organisations, some of the delegates from Italy, the organisations from the Anti-imperialist Space – saw all this as a real achievement.

./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:45:The ESF (and the World Social Forum -WSF) too came into being as a result of capitalist globalisation and as a result of the emergence of a movement fighting against it. But this movement not only combined resistance from different classes and strata – workers, peasants, youth, petit bourgeois and middle classes.

./english/348.txt:10:Also we think that the Anti-imperialist Space played a decisive role in the progressive, radical and militant "color" of the 4thESF and of the demonstration. The Anti-imperialist Space regrouped, on the basis of a militant line of joint action, dozens of progressive mass organizations, liberation movements and revolutionary parties from more than 20 countries. Despite the existing technical problems and the considerable financial constraints - we had the assistance of the Organization Committee to solve many of them - the Anti-imperialist Space has successfully coordinated our joint intervention (for the first time in a Forum) and "colored" the 4th ESF with its internationalist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist presence and political line. Almost all the different movements and organizations that took part in the Anti-imperialist Space have expressed their satisfaction and their will to continue this form of coordination and joint action as an Anti-imperialist Network in the framework of the ESF.

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

./english/356.txt:3:Social Forum Ivry, Greek Social forum, Turkish Social Forum, Belgium Social

./english/356.txt:4:Forum, Berlin SF, individuals or groups interested in building or working in

./english/356.txt:5:a local social forum in the place where they live from London, Paris and

./english/356.txt:12:where everybody made suggestions about what a local social forum is or could

./english/356.txt:16:expressed their concern about the need of local social forum to be spaces

./english/356.txt:26:work as Social Forum

./english/356.txt:28:* Local Social Forum are a crucial point in the process (its not possible

./english/356.txt:34:responsibilities in order to ensure the spread of local social forum and to

./english/356.txt:39:forum and the network through the web- site

./english/356.txt:44:1. What does “local” mean? Some of the forum are at a national level, some

./english/359.txt:9:The worldwide Social Forum phenomenon is thriving. In contrast, the World Social Forum once-a-year international event has run up against internal limits and needs renovation.

./english/359.txt:12:Forums Worldwide

./english/359.txt:14:The forums worldwide include relatively local events for small towns, cities, counties, whole states, and even regions. Examples are forums for Ithaca NY, Brisbane Australia, South Africa, and Asia. There are many instances at each level, including, for example, about a hundred in towns throughout Italy.

./english/359.txt:16:These forums worldwide have two universal aims, and beyond that, much variation.

./english/359.txt:22:Moreover, by all evidence, the forums worldwide cause even disagreeing activists to congregate, to hear one another, to develop new ties, and to take seriously economic, political, gender, race, culture, ecology, globalization, and international goals and strategies. Some local forums excellently generate shared program and actions among subsets of participants. But even short of that, by at least enhancing solidarity and enlarging vision, all the local forums powerfully aid movements.

./english/359.txt:24:Another attribute of the forums worldwide, more in evidence the more local they are, is accountability and transparency. Local forum organizers are generally well known to the people participating and attending. Even for forums lacking a fully democratic process, the decision-makers are at least known enough to the attendees to be accountable. Decisions are subject to challenge, refinement, and renovation.

./english/359.txt:26:Similarly, local forums have a manageable scale. Arrangements, fees, setting up panels and getting people to them, all occur relatively smoothly. Local agendas tend to include many interactive sessions so that everyone involved participates more or less equally. People can access one another. Presenters and audience aren't sharply divided. A few people don't enjoy elite status. Others aren't marginalized.

./english/359.txt:28:Without exaggerating the virtues of the forums worldwide, they are having positive effects and moving in participatory, transparent, and democratic directions.

./english/359.txt:30:The World Social Forum, however, is different.

./english/359.txt:33:The World Social Forum

./english/359.txt:35:The bottom-up forums worldwide were spurred into existence by a very top-down World Social Forum. The former have yet to reform the latter. So in contrast to the forums worldwide, the WSF is not yet transparent or accountable much less democratic. It has become unmanageable. And while it has profoundly valuable participation, there are often sharp and even destructive differences between the WSF's layers of participants. While some of these difficulties certainly derive from doing a massive event with unreliable and insufficient resources, there are other avenues of improvement, as well.

./english/359.txt:42:After WSF 2, I was enlisted to help with a variety of forum-related projects and, as a means to facilitate my doing so, I was asked to join the WSF's International Council. I missed a Spring and a Summer meeting, one in Thailand, the other in Barcelona. However, I did attend a meeting in Italy in the Fall. My experience was that the council wasn't a serious seat of power. In fact, my impression was that the International Council of the World Social Forum was barely a rubber stamp.

./english/359.txt:50:The real WSF leadership, I think, makes many key decisions. Will the event have Lula present, and in what capacity? What about Castro, or Chavez? Will there be exclusions, and if so on what grounds? The Zapatistas? Will being in a party, advocating violent tactics, or even just being from some group that the inner circle finds too radical or otherwise dislikes (such as the Disobedienti from Italy, or the international People's Global Action) preclude prominent participation? What content will be part of the core of the events (more on this below) and what content will be left as periphery? Who will have their way paid--and who will not? Will there be a march, and who will be the key speakers? Will there be a collective statement, with what content? What efforts will or won’t be made to achieve gender balance, race balance, geographic balance? How will class differences be addressed, if at all, within the process and more broadly? How will press be handled, both mainstream and alternative? Will the WSF start to discuss facilitating an international movement of movements, or will it persist only as a forum? What will be the accommodation between advocating reform of capitalism and advocating a new system entirely?

./english/359.txt:80:There is another odd if very much unintended layering effect at the WSF. The WSF is called a world forum. We all say "the WSF had 100,000 participants." And when I say and hear phrases like that, to me it sounds like a claim that 100,000 people from all over the world gathered. But while the WSF 3 did attract roughly 100,000 people, understandably perhaps as many as 70,000 were from Brazil, and perhaps another 15,000 were from neighboring countries in South America. So one might as reasonably say that this was a major South American Forum that invited 10-15,000 people from around the world to attend as presenters or as guests, as to say it was a world forum. Shouldn’t a world forum be worldly representative, with some degree of proportion among its delegates to movements and activism around the world?

./english/359.txt:85:So what is to be done about the WSF? It has been a remarkable phenomenon three times so far. It has propelled forums worldwide. It has educated, inspired, and engendered ties and connections. Its structure and processes were a miracle the first year, amazing the second year, but have begun to fall short the third year. The WSF, with all its virtues, is in diverse ways reaching the limits of its current incarnation.

./english/359.txt:89:(1) Emphasize local forums as the foundation of the worldwide forum process.

./english/359.txt:91:(2) Have each new level of forums, from towns, to cities, to countries, to continents, to the world, be built largely on those below.

./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/359.txt:99:(6) Have the forums from wealthier parts of the world charge delegates and organizations and attendees a tax on their fees to apply to helping finance the forums in poorer parts of the world and to subsidize delegate attendance at the world forum from poorer locales, as well.

./english/359.txt:101:(7) Make the once a year international WSF a delegate event. Cities and states in Brazil should have a forum. So should Brazil as a whole. So should other countries in South America, and so should South America as a whole. And likewise for India and South Asia, for South Africa and Africa, and so on. But the World Event should be different. It should be representative.

./english/359.txt:103:(8) Have the WSF attendance be 5,000-10,000 people delegated to it from the major regional forums around the world. Have the WSF leadership be selected by regional forums. Mandate the WSF to share and compare and propose based on all that is emerging worldwide -- not to listen again to the same famous speakers who everyone hears worldwide all the time anyhow -- and have the WSF's results, like those of all other forums, published and public, and of course reported by delegates back to the regions.

./english/359.txt:105:(9) Feature grassroots activists from movements around the world much more prominently in major events and throughout all forums to strengthen the WSF and local forums as vehicles for their activity and counter tendencies toward elitism.

./english/359.txt:107:(10) Ensure that the WSF as a whole and the forums worldwide not make the mistake of trying to become an international, a movement of movements, or even just a voice of the world's movements. To be a forum, the WSF and the smaller component forums need to be as broad and diverse as possible. But, being that broad and that diverse is simply being too broad and too diverse to be an organization. The forums can and should be venues for meeting. They can and should facilitate networking among mutually congenial participants that leads to shared actions. But to be an organization that takes decisions about anything other than its component forums would transcend the forum project's degree of unity.

./english/359.txt:109:(11) Mandate that the forums at every level, including the WSF, welcome people from diverse constituencies using the forums and their processes to make contacts and to develop ties that can in turn yield national, regional, or even international networks or movements of movements which do share sufficiently their political aspirations to work closely together, but which exist alongside rather than instead of the forum phenomenon.

./english/360.txt:9:The worldwide Social Forum phenomenon is thriving. In contrast, the World Social Forum once-a-year international event has run up against internal limits and needs renovation.

./english/360.txt:12:Forums Worldwide

./english/360.txt:14:The forums worldwide include relatively local events for small towns, cities, counties, whole states, and even regions. Examples are forums for Ithaca NY, Brisbane Australia, South Africa, and Asia. There are many instances at each level, including, for example, about a hundred in towns throughout Italy.

./english/360.txt:16:These forums worldwide have two universal aims, and beyond that, much variation.

./english/360.txt:22:Moreover, by all evidence, the forums worldwide cause even disagreeing activists to congregate, to hear one another, to develop new ties, and to take seriously economic, political, gender, race, culture, ecology, globalization, and international goals and strategies. Some local forums excellently generate shared program and actions among subsets of participants. But even short of that, by at least enhancing solidarity and enlarging vision, all the local forums powerfully aid movements.

./english/360.txt:24:Another attribute of the forums worldwide, more in evidence the more local they are, is accountability and transparency. Local forum organizers are generally well known to the people participating and attending. Even for forums lacking a fully democratic process, the decision-makers are at least known enough to the attendees to be accountable. Decisions are subject to challenge, refinement, and renovation.

./english/360.txt:26:Similarly, local forums have a manageable scale. Arrangements, fees, setting up panels and getting people to them, all occur relatively smoothly. Local agendas tend to include many interactive sessions so that everyone involved participates more or less equally. People can access one another. Presenters and audience aren't sharply divided. A few people don't enjoy elite status. Others aren't marginalized.

./english/360.txt:28:Without exaggerating the virtues of the forums worldwide, they are having positive effects and moving in participatory, transparent, and democratic directions.

./english/360.txt:30:The World Social Forum, however, is different.

./english/360.txt:33:The World Social Forum

./english/360.txt:35:The bottom-up forums worldwide were spurred into existence by a very top-down World Social Forum. The former have yet to reform the latter. So in contrast to the forums worldwide, the WSF is not yet transparent or accountable much less democratic. It has become unmanageable. And while it has profoundly valuable participation, there are often sharp and even destructive differences between the WSF's layers of participants. While some of these difficulties certainly derive from doing a massive event with unreliable and insufficient resources, there are other avenues of improvement, as well.

./english/360.txt:42:After WSF 2, I was enlisted to help with a variety of forum-related projects and, as a means to facilitate my doing so, I was asked to join the WSF's International Council. I missed a Spring and a Summer meeting, one in Thailand, the other in Barcelona. However, I did attend a meeting in Italy in the Fall. My experience was that the council wasn't a serious seat of power. In fact, my impression was that the International Council of the World Social Forum was barely a rubber stamp.

./english/360.txt:50:The real WSF leadership, I think, makes many key decisions. Will the event have Lula present, and in what capacity? What about Castro, or Chavez? Will there be exclusions, and if so on what grounds? The Zapatistas? Will being in a party, advocating violent tactics, or even just being from some group that the inner circle finds too radical or otherwise dislikes (such as the Disobedienti from Italy, or the international People's Global Action) preclude prominent participation? What content will be part of the core of the events (more on this below) and what content will be left as periphery? Who will have their way paid--and who will not? Will there be a march, and who will be the key speakers? Will there be a collective statement, with what content? What efforts will or won�t be made to achieve gender balance, race balance, geographic balance? How will class differences be addressed, if at all, within the process and more broadly? How will press be handled, both mainstream and alternative? Will the WSF start to discuss facilitating an international movement of movements, or will it persist only as a forum? What will be the accommodation between advocating reform of capitalism and advocating a new system entirely?

./english/360.txt:80:There is another odd if very much unintended layering effect at the WSF. The WSF is called a world forum. We all say "the WSF had 100,000 participants." And when I say and hear phrases like that, to me it sounds like a claim that 100,000 people from all over the world gathered. But while the WSF 3 did attract roughly 100,000 people, understandably perhaps as many as 70,000 were from Brazil, and perhaps another 15,000 were from neighboring countries in South America. So one might as reasonably say that this was a major South American Forum that invited 10-15,000 people from around the world to attend as presenters or as guests, as to say it was a world forum. Shouldn�t a world forum be worldly representative, with some degree of proportion among its delegates to movements and activism around the world?

./english/360.txt:85:So what is to be done about the WSF? It has been a remarkable phenomenon three times so far. It has propelled forums worldwide. It has educated, inspired, and engendered ties and connections. Its structure and processes were a miracle the first year, amazing the second year, but have begun to fall short the third year. The WSF, with all its virtues, is in diverse ways reaching the limits of its current incarnation.

./english/360.txt:89:(1) Emphasize local forums as the foundation of the worldwide forum process.

./english/360.txt:91:(2) Have each new level of forums, from towns, to cities, to countries, to continents, to the world, be built largely on those below.

./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/360.txt:99:(6) Have the forums from wealthier parts of the world charge delegates and organizations and attendees a tax on their fees to apply to helping finance the forums in poorer parts of the world and to subsidize delegate attendance at the world forum from poorer locales, as well.

./english/360.txt:101:(7) Make the once a year international WSF a delegate event. Cities and states in Brazil should have a forum. So should Brazil as a whole. So should other countries in South America, and so should South America as a whole. And likewise for India and South Asia, for South Africa and Africa, and so on. But the World Event should be different. It should be representative.

./english/360.txt:103:(8) Have the WSF attendance be 5,000-10,000 people delegated to it from the major regional forums around the world. Have the WSF leadership be selected by regional forums. Mandate the WSF to share and compare and propose based on all that is emerging worldwide -- not to listen again to the same famous speakers who everyone hears worldwide all the time anyhow -- and have the WSF's results, like those of all other forums, published and public, and of course reported by delegates back to the regions.

./english/360.txt:105:(9) Feature grassroots activists from movements around the world much more prominently in major events and throughout all forums to strengthen the WSF and local forums as vehicles for their activity and counter tendencies toward elitism.

./english/360.txt:107:(10) Ensure that the WSF as a whole and the forums worldwide not make the mistake of trying to become an international, a movement of movements, or even just a voice of the world's movements. To be a forum, the WSF and the smaller component forums need to be as broad and diverse as possible. But, being that broad and that diverse is simply being too broad and too diverse to be an organization. The forums can and should be venues for meeting. They can and should facilitate networking among mutually congenial participants that leads to shared actions. But to be an organization that takes decisions about anything other than its component forums would transcend the forum project's degree of unity.

./english/360.txt:109:(11) Mandate that the forums at every level, including the WSF, welcome people from diverse constituencies using the forums and their processes to make contacts and to develop ties that can in turn yield national, regional, or even international networks or movements of movements which do share sufficiently their political aspirations to work closely together, but which exist alongside rather than instead of the forum phenomenon.

./english/362.txt:18:Interview with Samir Amin, political economist and director, Third World Forum.

./english/362.txt:27:The antecedents of the World Social Forum (WSF) can be traced to January 2000 when a small group of about 50 activists, representing trade unions, intellectuals, peasant organisations and other social groups, gathered in Davos. Samir Amin, an intellectual who is regarded as one of the foremost thinkers on the changing dynamics of capitalism, was among those assembled at the "Anti-Davos in Davos". Since then he has been actively associated with not only the WSF but also the regional forums that have evolved as a challenge to imperialist globalisation. He is director, Third World Forum (TWF), located in Dakar (Senegal) and Cairo and in Belgium, a network of social scientists and intellectuals from developing countries. Amin has also played a key role in the formation of the World Forum for Alternatives, which was launched in 1997. The WFA aims to service the needs of social movements that are engaged in challenging the dominant discourse on globalisation. It is also involved in the search for alternatives by developing the tools for "the globalisation of resistance and struggles".

./english/362.txt:31:He spoke to V. Sridhar in Hyderabad, where he participated in the Asian Social Forum (ASF). He spoke about the changes in the nature of imperialism and globalisation and its consequences for the countries of the South. Articulating an alternative vision for the peoples and countries of the South, he pointed out that the plurality of visions against globalisation is a positive feature in the search for social change. He argued that any alternative system must allow each country and society to negotiate the terms on which it engages with the rest of the world. Excerpts from the interview:

./english/362.txt:43:The WSF is not an organisation with a common political platform for devising strategies. But it is also not a forum that is open to everybody. It has a charter to which participating organisations must adhere. They must make it clear that they are opposed to neo-liberalism, not necessarily to capitalism. They must also be opposed to militarisation of globalisation - not necessarily imperialism, which means much more.

./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:63:The "new movement", for lack of a better phrase, is experimenting with precisely this problem. The Zapatistas (Ortiz-Perez 2000) and the "encounters" they sponsored, the series of demonstrations from Seattle to Naples, Quebec and beyond, networks like People's Global Action and Via Campesina, and the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre can be understood in this light as attempts to find non-authoritarian ways of working ? which work.

./english/363.txt:112:What it does make for, and what the Anglo world often lacks, is long memories and a sense of what theory is for. Not for nothing was it the German Green Party, with its organisers' roots in the New Left, that galvanised attempts at organisation across Europe in the early 80s; similarly, the Italian contingent seems to have made crucial contributions to the ultimate success of the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre, while playing an important role on the Zapatista march and making effective connections between the "noglobal" protests in Naples, the local alternative scene and the peripheral poor of what is still in some ways a post-colonial city.

./english/363.txt:133:To concretise this briefly: the community activists I know, in Dublin or Waterford, would have no difficulty in making the mental connection between their own situation and practice and the new movement, at least in some of its aspects. The reverse is likely to be more problematic: I know many Irish leftists and eco-activists who find it anything other than easy to fit community development into their view of the world. What is hard to imagine, though, is a situation which might see effective practical alliances developing between working-class community groups and the "new movement". This failure of the imagination, if it isn't just my own, is a historical one: as we move towards the possibility of such an alliance, its outline is likely to take shape, perhaps in discussions like this, or in joint solidarity campaigns on the ground (in anti-racist work? against incinerators?) Until this kind of link can be made, though, "the new movement" will suffer the critical weakness in Ireland of being divorced from one of the two largest movements in the country (after the labour movement, where some links do exist). From Ballymun to the World Social Forum is perhaps not such a great step, but it still has to be made.

./english/364.txt:12:ABOUT THE FORUMS

./english/364.txt:31:Yet Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum (WSF) last year and again this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning movement against corporate-driven globalization. Galvanized by the slogan "Another world is possible," some 70,000 people are expected to flock to this coastal city from January 31 to February 4. This figure is nearly six times that for last year.

./english/364.txt:39:The World Social Forum emerged as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global corporate crowd in Davos, Switzerland.

./english/365.txt:92:Despite these differences in the communication interfaces created to organize the two demonstrations, both web sites offered user features that kept them alive and networked with broader communities of activists beyond those attending the specific demonstrations. For example, the FTAA protest site referred to the A16 site (which was still running), and contained its own extensive calendar of past and future demonstrations. In addition, the Montreal organization prominently featured links on its front page to several current issue campaigns against corporations (e.g., Nike and Monsanto) that needed support. Also posted were news reports from activists who had attended the recently concluded first World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. These user interfaces extend particular protest events forward in time, and give them broad connection to diverse protest communities in cyberspace. Embedding otherwise dated organization sites in these broader structures of time and space helps their successor organizations form with new networking patterns of their own.

./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:1:The World Social Forum: What it could mean for the Indian left

./english/367.txt:7:After three editions in Brazil, the World Social Forum in 2004 will be held in India. For the Indian left, it could have been a great opportunity for rethinking politics. Unfortunately, significant sections think otherwise. So there is the risk of the Forum coming and going, but nothing positive emerging.

./english/367.txt:65:The degree of insularity is best understood by looking at the early stages of the anti-globalization struggles. At the time of Seattle, there were very few public demonstrations on the day in India. During the Prague events in 2000, in Calcutta, Protest Initiative, a left regroupment effort involving the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (West Bengal State Committee) (the ICS is the Indian Section of the Fourth International), the Majdoor Mukti Committee, the Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha (Forum Against Oppression of Women), the Sramajeevi Mahila Samity (Women Workers’ Association), the Indian Rationalist Association, and others organized a daylong program. But the mainstream left did not mobilize; nor did the CPI(ML) Liberation, which claims to be the real pole for an alternative left but which in fact is shifting simply to occupy the left reformist spot vacated by the CPI(M) as it becomes a servant of capitalist neoliberalism.

./english/367.txt:67:Two events have since then served to turn the bulk of the left around. One is the Asian Social Forum, held in Hyderabad in 2002, and the other is the global protest against the war in Iraq. Even the most insular of forces could not but be impressed by the depth of worldwide antiwar, anti-imperialist sentiments expressed in February–March 2003. However, the CPI(M) moved swiftly once it realized the potential, only in order to kill it off. Cashing in on the feelings of unity and nonpartisan mobilization, it organized a central program which had only slogans on the U.S.-British intervention in Iraq, and which in the name of unity did not allow others to have their own slogans, their own posters, analyses, etc.

./english/367.txt:85:Nonetheless, the CPI(M) despite its rightward-moving trajectory, cannot simply turn its back on the working class. Its main electoral and social base remains the working class and the rural poor. So it has adapted to the anti-globalization struggles. It was one of the key players in organizing the Asian Social Forum at Hyderabad. Formally the party was absent. But with a plethora of party-controlled mass fronts packing the arrangements, there was no problem with CPI(M) leaders getting ample space at the Forum. At the same time, by taking a stand supporting the exclusion of parties, they made sure that smaller left parties did not get much space.

./english/367.txt:87:The CPI(M) and the CPI continue to be important actors in organizing the upcoming World Social Forum in Mumbai, and it is desirable that such forces are part of the WSF. The point is, they have shown that, on the one hand, they will use their strength to push out other forces as far as possible. And on the other hand, they will try to use the WSF as a platform to mask their actual surrender to neoliberalism.

./english/367.txt:89:The NGO sector is of course well represented, even overrepresented at the WSF. And many of the NGOs do not even realize that their agenda turns them into safety nets for capitalism, not instruments of struggle. But at the same time, there are plenty of NGOs that take a different, and more radical, stand. But the mainstream left and the bulk of the radical left are dead set against all NGOs. Two recent attacks on the WSF display this. During the Asian Social Forum, the CPI(ML) PW called for a boycott and a counter-program. This time too, they have been trying to set up an alternative called Mumbai Resistance.

./english/367.txt:91:Ultraleft and Sectarian Attacks on the World Social Forum and the Brazilian Workers Party— their partial validity and ultimate failure

./english/367.txt:93:An ideological think tank connected to some Maoist groups in India has come out with a publication asserting that the WSF is a creation of imperialism. In a nutshell, the following is a summary of the points made by the publication entitled “The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum: Lessons for the Struggle against ‘Globalization’” by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE):

./english/367.txt:109:“Globalization,” a misleading word for the current onslaught by imperialism, can be resisted, and even defeated, by a combination of struggles at various levels, in various countries, in various forms; and forces fighting “globalization” will need to join hands in struggle against it. However, a careful analysis reveals that the World Social Forum is not an instrument of such struggle. It is a diversion from it.

./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/368.txt:50:Such transformations of The Net derive from an openness to mutability that is much greater than traditional organizational forms. Within existing forums on The Net, persuasive or even just provocative intervention is sometimes all it takes to draw a variety of people into a new set of discussions. This can, in turn lead to the creation of new "spaces" for public or private discussion, e.g., new usegroups or lists (open or closed). Old discussions (and even forums) may fade away as attention coalesces around new issues or voices. No formal agreement is necessary, no quorums, no vote need be taken for substantive change to occur. These changes seem to happen in ways similar to the kind of informal shifts in leadership the Zapatistas have described in Chiapaneco villages or others have found in urban barrios.(13)

./english/368.txt:84:All of this thorough and rapid circulation of news and observer reports of the situation in Chiapas led quickly to analytical and critical assessments of the origins and meaning of the Zapatista uprising. Here too cyberspace provided forums for informal discussion and debate. Alongside editorial pieces from the print or sound media appeared questions and opinions from a wide variety of concerned participants. Unlike "letters to the editor", every single one of these comments and feedback appeared in electronic "print", not days later but hours or even minutes after an original story or argument. The repressive response of the government, with its torture and killing, was subjected to widespread condemnation, while being very feebly defended, mostly with lies that were quickly exposed. Unlike government or editorial "retractions" which might be buried in some obscure corner of a newspaper, the exposure of lies within an ongoing "thread" of discussion in cyberspace emerges right up front where everyone can see it. Within this context of open debate, the Zapatistas were condemned by some and praised by many, dismissed by the apologists of the state and treated with great seriousness by those who studied their communiques. Wild charges of "terrorism" (echoes of state propaganda) were dissected and demolished in plain public view.(35)

./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: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:129:In that spirit, we support the call of the PRC, a member of the conference, for an "Alternative Left Forum", which will take place in Italy at the end of October 2002. On the proposal of the Danish Red Green Alliance, a member of the conference, we will participate in the many activities of the counter-summit that will stretch out from September to December 2002, during the Danish presidency of the EU.

./english/371.txt:7:The World Social Forum is a potent liberating force, but its leadership risks being hijacked by the West’s old left. It must listen to women and to the Third World. They need exchange on an equal basis.

./english/371.txt:14:The international media ignored the big event which took place in Porto Alegre in January, when thousands of women and men walked through the streets shouting “another world is possible”. More than a hundred thousand people came to Porto Alegre this year to say why another world is not only possible, but necessary. I live in Egypt, I have travelled in Africa, Asia, Europe, to the two Americas, to Australia, and everywhere I have seen how people are dying of hunger, in wars, in the so-called ‘free market’, under so-called ‘democracy’. The media was occupied with the few who dominate the wealth of the world, who were meeting at the same time in Davos, at the World Economic Forum. This is not a world forum. It is a forum for the few individuals who own the multinationals and the ‘free market’.

./english/371.txt:22:Meanwhile in Porto Alegre’s biggest square, the third World Social Forum was being inaugurated by ‘Lula’ (as they call Brazil’s elected president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva). In his speech, addressed to over 60,000 women and men, he began: “I am going tonight to Davos to tell them about your goals, to carry your message to them.”

./english/371.txt:26:Some women and men in Porto Alegre believe that Lula is the Nasser of Brazil. But others disagree. They still consider him the hero of the left wing groups fighting against globalisation and imperialism. Brazil’s new left is more radical, younger. They describe the old left who dominate the World Social Forum as dogmatic, rigid, undemocratic, linked to the new liberals who are playing a role in isolating the forum from ordinary women and men, from the daily struggle of people.

./english/371.txt:28:Next January the fourth World Social Forum will be held in Hyderabad in India; the following year in Africa. Neither Brazil nor any other country should be allowed to dominate the World Social Forum. It belongs to the world and not to one country. Since it started in 2001 it has been held in Porto Alegre. Why this monopoly? The participants from the Arab countries may one day have a World Social Forum in Palestine, Cairo…or even Baghdad. For the time being this seems to be just a dream. But why should we not have big dreams? In Porto Alegre everybody is dreaming of another world, based on justice and freedom, in which women and men will be equal, in which there will be no wars and no poverty and no pollution of the environment by the capitalists.

./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/371.txt:40:The World Social Forum is not merely an annual event in Porto Alegre. It has become a global movement, a continuous process to create an open space for free and equal exchange of thoughts and action. In terms of numbers it grew from 25,000 people in the first meeting 2001 to more than 100,000 this year. But it is not just the numbers that count. The Forum has created an alternative to capitalist globalisation. It has created a new hope, a new power which is playing a profound role in helping to free people all over the world from the shackles of despair and false consciousness propagated by the global media. But more thinking is needed to close the gap between what is called political activities and social activities, between women’s groups and socialist groups.

./english/371.txt:58:We need to stop seeing the forum at Porto Alegre as the only World Social Forum, and regarding the local or thematic ones, as marginal. Self-critical reflection is an essential part of the World Social Forum. Without this it cannot grow, create new ideas and new actions locally or globally. I like the new word “glocal” since the local is inseparable from the global.

./english/371.txt:60:In Porto Alegre I met a few participants from Egypt and other Arab countries. Most came from Europe and the US. However the Palestinian flag dominated the demonstrations, and the protesters against the war in Iraq were visible, though all the other flags were drowned in the red of the flags carried by the Brazilian peasants and workers. The forum in its totality condemned American unilateralism, militarism and lack of global responsibility in spite of its claims as a global superpower. Power without responsibility is a political disease inherited from the patriarchal class system that was born with slavery. This is one of the dichotomies forced on us by religion and philosophy. We must resist this idea of an irrevocable split between a good, divine power and the devil’s responsibility for evil. We must un-mask and strip away the language of George W. Bush the father, son, and holy ghost, and his axis of evil.

./english/373.txt:3:Life After Social Forums

./english/373.txt:4:New Radicalism And The Question Of Attitudes Towards Social Forums

./english/373.txt:8:Usually, when talking about the forum history, historians talk about three important meanings of this word. According to the first meaning, the word "forum" refers to "agora", a place for meetings and discussion.. According to the second meaning, forum is a market. According to the third meaning of the word, forum is a elected central body that brings fully valid and binding decisions.

./english/373.txt:10:The third social forum in Porto Alegre wasn’t in the least "agora", was a little more like a market, but I am afraid there exists the actual danger of its being transformed into a body of elected representatives – that have been elected by no one. Noam Chomsky has said that creating an "International", based on anti-authoritarian principles, deprived of the historical burden of old antagonisms, would be a welcomed developement of the alter-globalist movement. Does, however, the experience of the third WSF allow us such optimism? Or does it, still, face us with the possibility of establishing a specific "International of the Irresponsible"?

./english/373.txt:12:It is my opinion that, when talking about the so-called anti-globalisation movement, it is possible to trace two parallel processes. One, which I named new radicalism, began with the Zapatista insurrection, has brought about creating of the Peoples’ Global Action network. The second one, I call traditionalistic, has developed separately, culminating by the creation of the WSF and regional forums. The history of these tendencies that have mainly developed simultaneously is relatively well known. Demonstrations – the Global Days of Action – and forums, as well as the Indymedia that has inaugurated a quite specific mode of activist communication, have all become the most important distinctive manifestations of the movement itself. The new radicalism implies an attempt to distance from the practices of the old left; to move away from the area of the conventional politics and to devise a new political space, the "politics from below"; pre-figurative politics (i.e. the modes of organization that consciously resemble the world you want to crate); direct action and social disobedience; anti-capitalism and anti-statism.

./english/373.txt:18:The traditionalists have comprehended, and they are to be congratulated for it, that there is something really new in the new movement: the proof is the very idea of organizing "forums" – the institution that is "new" although organized in the "old" way – as well as the striving of political parties to transform themselves into networks such as ATTAC. As I have already pointed out, these two directions have mainly formed their identities independently from one another. I do not deem, however, that this difference is necessarily a handicap. On the contrary, I believe that these differences are good for the movement. They feed it with different energies. It is possible to learn a great deal from the reformists. Very often one can learn much more than from the anti-authoritarian sectarians who take pleasure in marginalizing and in a certain "anti-authoritarian narcissism". Problems, however, occur when the "globalise the resistance" becomes "monopolize the resistance". When the balance between the two spirits becomes disturbed. When the dialogue space becomes narrow. The last WSF was a convincing evidence of the dis-equilibrium relating to the recently ended ESF in Florence. Bureaucratisation of the movement and establishing of the forum bureaucracy is becoming more and more obvious. The danger of turning the "globalisation from below" into "globalisation from the middle" is becoming more clearly discernable. The phenomenon of "NGO-isation of the movement" is increasingly present as connected to BINGO politics (Big International Non Governmental Organizations). Do we really want to create a movement that will resemble a cocktail party in the Plaza Hotel lounge in Porto Alegre? Do we want a movement dominated by middle-aged bureaucrats wearing Palestinian scarves, armed with the memories from 1968 (or 1917)? Do we want social forums with invisible organizers?

./english/373.txt:20:I do not agree with Naomi Klein’s point of view that the forum has been hijacked, because it actually has never been "ours"; or it might have been hijacked, but in a slightly different manner. It is not that the forum has been hijacked, but that the anti-authoritarian spirit that has inspired it has been abused. The very slogan "another world is possible" comes from the Zapatistas. The cake that landed on the face of the Brazilian PT president is becoming a metaphor, in the context of South America, for the opposition of two quite different spirits and two quite different feelings regarding politics. The one which implies yet another attempt at the change in the area of conventional politics, and the one which reveals the striving for something new, for something that can be found on the other side of voting and lobbying: the collective giving up of party politics and collective struggle for the "politics without power". Is it possible and is it necessary to sustain both of these views in equilibrium?

./english/373.txt:22:The answer to these questions, the questions regarding strategic attitude of the new radicals towards the world as well as regional social forums, has been offered by Lindon Ferer and Michael Albert in the dialogue that can be found on the pages of the Peoples Global Action web site dedicated to WSF. Both these authors think within the "abandon or contaminate" model (the same was used as a headline for an excellent article by L. Ferer), deciding, despite some cautious pessimism, in favour of "contamination". Now, after the WSF 3, it seems to me that it is time to replace this strategic dilemma – abandon or contaminate – by somewhat different one: participate or abandon.

./english/373.txt:24:I believe that time has come to develop some different models of strategic communication with the whole forum process.

./english/373.txt:28:HUB and Intergalactica have promoted an interesting model of an area organizing itself, a laboratory and experiment on social disobedience, organized in the spirit of complete horizontality and breaking of classical "conference" model of political debating. The reproaches directed to HUB, during ESF in Florence, related to the lack of organisation, the neglect of theory and thinking about vision. The new radical activism should not become a permanent global party. Life After Capitalism was envisaged as a forum within the forum that focuses on strategy and political and economic vision and on many dimensions of daily life. The whole occurrence included into the programme the very successful Peoples Global Action conference. The reproaches directed to LAC related to insisting on the classical form of discussion.The new radical activism should not become a permanent global conference.

./english/373.txt:30:All these experiments, with all their virtues and shortcomings, were extremely interesting and deserve attention. But all of them were successfully marginalized. LAC was moved into a suburban country club, while Intergalactica was dislocated into a tent that would have been difficult to find even by Karl May’s Vinetu. Why? My answer is probably a bit dissonant with respect to the angry intonation of most of the authors that have dealt with this problem. Namely, I do not believe that it was an organized political purpose in question. I think it is the bureaucratic myopia that was the issue there, i.e. the bureaucratic dis-interestedness of the forum organizers who did not take us seriously enough. Perhaps the time has come to prove them wrong.

./english/373.txt:32:Does this mean that the forum should be abandoned? Are we to say: abandon the forums? No. Actually, not yet. The idea of forums is a good one. If there is a chance, and I believe there is, to organize these forums in another way: "For the anti-capitalist movement to achieve real change, it will have to do so through a confrontational approach to liberal democracy. This could involve the setting up of social forums throughout Europe, at local levels, creating direct links with local communities in struggle. These, organized in a federal structure – but respecting local autonomy – would undermine and ultimately make obsolete the earth-destroying, authoritarian and oppressive governmental structures that currently control the planet". (L. Ferer)

./english/373.txt:34:The lack of democratic approach and of "transparency" (the term favourite with the "civil society" theoreticians) permeates the institution of a forum, the way it is today, at all levels. An appropriate question can be posed here, which even the members of the so-called International Council have no answer to: Who actually organizes these forums? Reading of the list of organizations participating in the IC is like getting through the woods of names of anonymous non-governmental organizations. The IC, as it seems, is a kind of honoured body that only approves the already brought decisions, agreed on probably somewhere along the Paris-Sao Paolo path, that are brought by the OC. What is the OC? I have no idea. Probably the same people who have established the Orwellian Secretariat for Call of the Social Movements which is to be found somewhere in Sao Paolo. The same is valid for the ESF. I was the witness of the preparatory meetings of the ESF, in which the bureaucratic and old left, owing to the experience they had had in such a kind of political struggle, pushed out without difficulty the grassroots initiatives. Thus we bump into an unusual paradox: those who have made this movement interesting and distinctive and who, in a way, are the most deserving for its success, are not adequately represented in its "institutions", in the forums.

./english/373.txt:36:It is therefore necessary to replace the formula "abandon or contaminate" by the formula "participate or abandon". The "contamination" is not a sincere one, the very expression is an entristic one: furthermore, it is not even productive. Closed in a suburban building of the forum, we are doomed to marginalisation and dissipation of energy. It is necessary to enter into dialogue with other participants in the movement, to organize ourselves so as to be able to reclaim the movement. To say that another forum is possible. In any case, it is necessary for us to turn to building of our own network, PGA, the optics of which would include reflection on the vision and strategy, options, on details of a different world we wish to create. Why dissipate the energy of the new radicalism, is the question that imposes itself, on endless projects? Why don’t we formulate a unique, coherent anti-authoritarian politics within the Peoples Global Action network? It would be the politics based on the bottom-up organizing, open and transparent methods, broad participation, anti-authoritarianism, multi-tactical approaches, innovation and spontaneity. We have to abandon sectarianism and " marginalization pleasure", but also avoid the trap of accepting the traditionalistic and bureaucratic rules of the game and the struggle for power, which we are not accustomed to, bearing always in mind that the goal of anti-authoritarianism is not to be small and isolated. Our goal should be the movement building. Not "summit -hopping": we should try to connect our local work and networking, instead of getting lost in "networks of networks" and "process of processes", hoping from one place to another.

./english/373.txt:38:But what if the traditionalistic old left and the forum bureaucracy refuse the dialogue?

./english/373.txt:40:Then we should, if the new radicals cannot participate in the process of forum building, abandon it and build our own forums.

./english/373.txt:42:I still hope that there will not be a complete break up. I believe and I hope, that the forum bureaucracy will eventually see that it has to enter the dialogue with the new radicals and reply to their requests. I will use the opportunity to suggest three requests that could be forwarded to them:

./english/373.txt:44:1. An open letter should be sent to the organizers of the WSF and regional forums, as well as to the notorious Secretariat for Call of the Social Movement, requesting commencement of the dialogue and joint work on democratising the forum process.

./english/373.txt:46:2. Request for an equal participation in forum organizing, at all levels.

./english/373.txt:48:3. Forming of work groups of the movement that would participate in forum organizing, equally and at all levels.

./english/373.txt:50:I believe and hope that these efforts will not be in vain. Whether the forums will continue to be forums, or otherwise become the "International", I do not know. But it is essential that they cease to be the markets.

./english/375.txt:2:This debate was organised by Globalise Resistance on 25 January 2003 at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil in front of about 300 people. The two main speakers spoke for 21 minutes each, and there were then some 22 contributions from the floor – one of the highest degrees of participation at any meeting at the forum.

./english/375.txt:151:I am from the Greek social forum. I feel that this opposition between the multitude and the working class is false. These terms do not mutually exclude each other. In the Marxist tradition the working class is a set of persons. In this society we can identify a number of people as being the working class, with the rest another class. For Poulatzas and other French writers from the 1970s we have a notion of a set of class positions. I think it is more correct to say the Marxist view is a way of functioning. Every twenty years we have this talk that the working class does not exist any more, and then we find it again.

./english/376.txt:40:Take the decision-making out of the closed rooms of politicians and the corporate sector and into a truly public forum. Create a space or spaces where civil society truly has a diversity of voices in the discussion on what media and information technologies should be, with full participation beyond a rhetorical nod.

./english/376.txt:95:* World Social Forum, Thematic Forum on the Right to Communicate / Media Justice - A proposal to develop a thematic Social Forum that addresses these concerns, to meet parallel to WSIS Tunis 2005.

./english/377.txt:3:A Report on the Asian Social Forum

./english/377.txt:5:At the Asian Social Forum, as at the World Social Forum and other gatherings, the need for strong sovereign states, the need to rebuild the state, to address politics would appear to be central. Also, the difficult negotiations within the diverse groups and locales to find 'political' consensus – to deal first with the big rogue state, the father of all rogue states, and then their own rogue states. Only then can the enormous street confrontations, the valiant successes of people's movements on the ground, push back this new hegemony, the Bush power.

./english/377.txt:10:Brinda Karat, general secretary of the AIDWA, speaking on a panel discussion on TV, referring to the gathering at the Asian Social Forum, said they are resisting the “Empire”. Indeed the gathering of 14,000 persons in Hyderabad, of whom unusually almost half if not more were dalits, and a good proportion of women, apart from those who work with the rights of the most oppressed and excluded, could be seen as a defining moment for the ‘Empire to strike back’ on many counts. As an expression of the vitality of the numerous identities, like dalits, displaced persons, unorganised workers and their ability to share a common space. As an expression of the widespread understanding of the international order, revealing the fact that information on the ‘big picture’ has reached the remote, thus justifying or affirming the value of forums and networks which have worked hard to carry the message of where and how the increasing pressures on dignity and survival are coming from. As a quest for alternatives to the current political and economic regimes and the theories that back them up. And, last but not the least, evidence that civil society has developed the mode and skills to hold international or world conferences outside of the UN’s initiative; an important step forward, as the UN world conferences are beginning to become counterproductive as the conservative forces and the unipolar world debases them.

./english/377.txt:12:It could be said that the themes and the formations as well as the presentations at the panels and workshops were not providing anything that could be called new knowledge. The agonising over this overgeneralised programme called globalisation has not only been on for some time, but its impact, experience, hearings, theatre and ‘naras’ are now almost a catechism. The groups and expressions on the criminality of war, on the ugly state and the uglier politicians that run it, and the voices on the TV and other media who are ‘quoted’ on this package, are also a known scenario. As an experience for those who have been witness to these journeys and forums for some time it was nothing especially new.

./english/377.txt:18:Beginning as an offshoot of the World Social Forum, which also had a beginning as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, with ‘globalisation’, and the Bretton Woods Institutions as the whipping boys, the Asian Social Forum took a shape of its own, expanding the space, almost encroaching on the primacy of space usually occupied by not only government representatives but the ever-present UN agencies and bilateral donors; looking for potentials for funding and for their legitimacy as upholders of human rights, and supporters of poverty removal efforts. There was also the shift in the character of those present from NGO types usually engaged in ‘development’ to people’s movements. Also evident was the learning that had filtered in, from the earlier experience of participating in the NGO. Forums of the UN – for which naturally the UN system and the bilateral donors have to be given credit – from Durban for the dalit groups, from the people’s health assembly of the health for all movement, from the various women’s conferences for the women.

./english/377.txt:24:There were murmurings that the Forum was dominated by the ‘leftists’, while there was also the phenomenon of some left groups publicly dissociating themselves from the Forum. The alliances like the NAPM, the NCL, apart from many others such as the movement spearheaded by Vandana Shiva, bear shades of the Gandhian inspiration. As has been commented upon by many in recent times, the progressives in the India of today are increasingly referring to Gandhi’s political and economic ideas and methods as inspirational. So the alliances of left and Gandhi were not on a collision path or even demeaning or demonising each other as was wont some time ago. Yet the reference to Gandhi had to be muted, as the dalits would dissociate from the explicitly Gandhian presence. Ideological premises, controversial ikons, did not impede the ‘soul’ of the space, the sense of oneness of the gatherings.

./english/377.txt:26:One of the most vivid mass formations at the Forum was the contingents belonging to AIDWA. They were not only there in numbers, but also in various important sub-identities such as Muslim women marching together in their black burqas under the AIDWA banner, giving voice to their concerns. Similarly at the dalit gathering, the gathering on women, they were a conscious, well informed mass. Their presence and the nature of their leadership stimulated a thought – whether the rejuvenation of the formal left was now to come from the women’s formation. The other faces of the left have been seen as tired old men, no new faces of leadership emerging.

./english/377.txt:32:Perhaps at the World Social Forum and other gatherings the need for strong (not majoritarian nor soft) sovereign states and for configurations like the NAM of old which had a political stance, which distanced itself from the former colonisers, the need to rebuild the state, to address politics would appear central. Also the difficult negotiations within the diverse groups and locales to find ‘political’ consensus to deal with first the big rogue state, the father of all rogue states, and then their own rogue states. Only then the enormous street confrontations, the valiant successes of people’s movements on the ground, can push back this new hegemony, the Bush power.

./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:13:It was as though virtually all the energies of the forum organisers had gone on preventing provocations, and ensuring that the demonstration would be peaceful. This succeeded brilliantly. A vast mass of people (by the most cautious estimates, more than a hundred thousand), marched successfully through the city. Not only did they not smash anything, but they did not leave even accidental damage behind them.

./english/378.txt:17:For the whole evening after the end of the forum, the Italian television was talking about the success of the demonstration. Unfortunately, this was the only achievement. The organising of the forum's activity was striking for its confusion. In the program distributed to participants, the organisers contrived to designate two days, the Friday and Saturday, as 8 November.

./english/378.txt:25:These would have been minor annoyances, if the organisational muddle had been redeemed by interesting and substantial discussion. Unfortunately, the discussion at the forum never happened. People who had gathered in Florence to talk about the prospects for the movement found that they had come to a three-day rally.

./english/378.txt:35:The shortage of trained and experienced people, however, is not the main thing. The movement is faced with serious political problems, which went practically undiscussed at the forum. The demonstrations are becoming increasingly massive, but this is in no way equivalent to political success.

./english/378.txt:39:The authorities are reacting less and less to the protests. In the very heat of the forum, the United Nations Security Council unanimously supported the American resolution on Iraq. Not only Russia, but even Syria sided with the US. For the peace movement this was unquestionably a huge defeat - if, of course, we take seriously the statements to the effect that we do not merely want to criticise the war, but also to stop it. This development, however, simply went unnoticed at the forum, and did not darken the mood of the pacifists at all.

./english/378.txt:45:The delight at the election of Lula as President of Brazil is also premature, to put it mildly. The sympathy of the new Brazilian president and his party for antiglobalist ideas is one thing, but the policies they will implement in practice are another. If these policies are to correspond in any way at all to the proclaimed ideals, serious work is needed. But no-one said anything about this at the forum.

./english/378.txt:49:Moreover, the victories of the right in France and Italy were gained after mass antiglobalist actions had begun taking place. Do the movement and "big politics" exist in isolation? How can we change this situation? What can movements achieve, and what is there that requires a party? How can we build these parties and movements, so as to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past? At the forum there was no time and no place to discuss this.

./english/379.txt:108:The Seattle protests had some immediate consequences. The day after the demonstrators made good on their promise to shut down the WTO negotiations, Bill Clinton gave a speech endorsing the concept of labour rights enforceable by trade sanctions, thus effectively making impossible any agreement during the Seattle meetings. In addition, at the World Economic Forum in Davos a month later there was much discussion of how concessions were necessary on labour and the environment if consensus over globalization and free trade were to be possible. Importantly, the issues of overcoming divisions between the information-rich and the information-poor, and improving the lot of the disenfranchised and oppressed, bringing these groups the benefits of globalization, were also seriously discussed at the meeting and in the media.

./english/379.txt:138:Clearly, right-wing and reactionary forces can and have used the internet to promote their political agendas as well. In a short time, one can easily access an exotic witch's brew of websites maintained by the Ku Klux Klan and myriad neo-Nazi assemblages, including the Aryan Nation and various militia groups. internet discussion lists also disperse these views and right-wing extremists are aggressively active on many computer forums, as well as radio programmes and stations, public access television programmes, fax campaigns, video and even rock music productions. These organizations are hardly harmless, having carried out terrorism of various sorts extending from church burnings to the bombings of public buildings. Adopting quasi-Leninist discourse and tactics for ultraright causes, these groups have been successful in recruiting working-class members devastated by the developments of global capitalism which has resulted in widespread unemployment for traditional forms of industrial, agricultural and unskilled labour. Moreover, extremist websites have influenced alienated middle-class youth as well (a 1999 HBO documentary on Hate on the Internet provides a disturbing number of examples of how extremist websites influenced disaffected youth to commit hate crimes).

./english/380.txt:149: Against capitalist globalization from above, there have been a significant eruption of forces and subcultures of resistance that have attempted to preserve specific forms of culture and society against globalization and homogenization, and to create alternative forces of society and culture, thus exhibiting resistance and globalization from below. Most dramatically, peasant and guerrilla movements in Latin America, labor unions, students, and environmentalists throughout the world, and a variety of other groups and movements have resisted capitalist globalization and attacks on previous rights and benefits.[8] Several dozen people's organizations from around the world have protested World Trade Organization policies and a backlash against globalization is visible everywhere. Politicians who once championed trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA are now often quiet about these arrangements and at the 1996 annual Davos World Economic Forum its founder and managing director published a warning entitled: "Start Taking the Backlash Against Globalization Seriously." Reports surfaced that major representatives of the capitalist system expressed fear that capitalism was getting too mean and predatory, that it needs a kinder and gentler state to ensure order and harmony, and that the welfare state may make a come-back (see the article in New York Times, February 7, 1996: A15).[9] One should take such reports with the proverbial grain of salt, but they express fissures and openings in the system for critical discourse and intervention.

./english/380.txt:181: The Seattle protests had some immediate consequences. The day after the demonstrators made good on their promise to shut down the WTO negotiations, Bill Clinton gave a speech endorsing the concept of labor rights enforceable by trade sanctions, thus effectively making impossible any agreement and consensus during the Seattle meetings. In addition, at the World Economic Forum in Davos a month later there was much discussion of how concessions were necessary on labor and the environment if consensus over globalization and free trade were to be possible. Importantly, the issue of overcoming divisions between the information rich and poor, and improving the lot of the disenfranchised and oppressed, bringing these groups the benefits of globalization, were also seriously discussed at the meeting and in the media.

./english/380.txt:209: Of course, rightwing and reactionary forces can and have used the Internet to promote their political agendas as well. In a short time, one can easily access an exotic witch's brew of Web-sites maintained by the Ku Klux Klan, myriad neo-Nazi assemblages, including the Aryan Nation and various militia groups. Internet discussion lists also disperse these views and rightwing extremists are aggressively active on many computer forums, as well as radio programs and stations, public access television programs, fax campaigns, video and even rock music productions. These organizations are hardly harmless, having carried out terrorism of various sorts extending from church burnings to the bombings of public buildings. Adopting quasi-Leninist discourse and tactics for ultraright causes, these groups have been successful in recruiting working-class members devastated by the developments of global capitalism, which has resulted in widespread unemployment for traditional forms of industrial, agricultural, and unskilled labor. Moreover, extremist Web-sites have influenced alienated middle-class youth as well (a 1999 HBO documentary on Hate on the Internet provides a disturbing number of examples of how extremist Web-sites influenced disaffected youth to commit hate crimes).

./english/382.txt:5:The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended Tuesday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was "big." Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all! Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial President of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the movement.

./english/382.txt:11:Of course, the forum, in all its dizzying global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing the same direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the big certainly put its mark on the event.

./english/382.txt:13:Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but "new": new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that most delegates agreed on (and there wasn't much), it was that the left's traditional methods had failed.

./english/382.txt:15:This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some left-wing parties have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the delegates at that first forum had spent their lives building labor parties, only to watch helplessly as those parties betrayed their roots once in power, throwing up their hands and implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated by global markets. Other delegates came with scarred bodies and broken hearts after fighting their entire lives to free their countries from dictatorship or racial apartheid, only to see their liberated land hand its sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund for a loan.

./english/382.txt:17:Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire Communist parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" of Eastern Europe had turned into centralized, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares. And outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and energetic generation of young people who had never trusted politicians, and were finding their own political voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Sao Paulo.

./english/382.txt:21:The World Social Forum didn't produce a political blueprint — a good start — but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to be less about trusting well-meaning leaders, and more about empowering people to make their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more participatory. The ideas flying around included neighborhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative farming — a vision of politicized communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organization. For a left that had tended to look to centralized state solutions to solve almost every problem, this emphasis on decentralization and direct participation was a breakthrough.

./english/382.txt:23:At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered, too: not as a heroic figure who vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an innovator whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished people to meet their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and democratic empowerment were largely absent from Mr. da Silva's campaign for president. Instead, he told and retold a personal story about how voters could trust him because he came from poverty, and knew their pain. But standing up to the demands of the international financial community isn't about whether an individual politician is trustworthy, it's about the fact that, as Mr. da Silva is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.

./english/382.txt:27:Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by the big men is that there isn't much glory in it. A victory at the ballot box isn't a blank check for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

./english/382.txt:29:For some, the hijacking of the forum is proof that the movements against corporate globalization are finally maturing and "getting serious." But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed, left political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious.

./english/386.txt:129:The new policy will not only lead to the indiscriminate destruction of marine eco-system and erode livelihood of traditional fishing communities but will have serious ecological consequences of intensive mechanised fishing. National Fish Workers Forum (NFF) was in the forefront of the agitation taking on issues of survival of traditional fisherfolk, preservation of marine ecology for utilising it in a sustainable manner, banning of fish trawling during the monsoon months of breeding season. Opening up of waters of the Indian Exclusive Zone (EEZ) to joint venture to exploit the wealth in a indiscriminate way forced the fishworkers to launch major struggle on these issues nation-wide. Protests, blockades, demonstration and hunger strikes forced the central and state government to concede some of the demands. Notable among the gains were the cancellation of permits to foreign vessels under joint venture, denial of extension of existing licences and adopting of measures to preserve marine eco-system.

./english/387.txt:80:The most promising aspect of the new peasant movements is their understanding of the limits of strictly “peasant movements” confined to rural struggles. All of the major peasant movements are making a concerted effort to build an urban base of support and to coordinate rural and urban struggles. In Ecuador, FENOC is involved in the struggle to elect a constitutional assembly, reflecting the interests of the urban and rural poor. The Paraguayan Peasant Federation has formed an Agrarian Reform Forum including students, professionals, and businesspeople. They have expanded their political horizons to oppose free market capitalism and the narco-capitalist elite. In Bolivia the coca farmers have formed a new electoral party, the Alliance for the Sovereignty of the People. It swept to victory in all the coca growing countries, gathering over 60 percent of the vote and electing Evo Morales to Congress.

./english/388.txt:8:What are the main points of disagreement – and agreement – among the world’s social movements? In the first book in English on the World Social Forum, two American activist/academics talk about the process, the people, and their vision for a future world. Thomas Ponniah and William Fisher spoke to openDemocracy's Solana Larsen under a tree in Porto Alegre.

./english/388.txt:15:openDemocracy: What were your reasons for editing a book (Another World Is Possible: Popular Alternatives to Globalization at the World Social Forum published by Zed Books in March 2003) about the World Social Forum (WSF)?

./english/388.txt:17:Thomas Ponniah: I talked with the anti-Apartheid activist and poet Dennis Brutus in the autumn of 2000. Dennis explained that the WSF was an attempt to bring together progressives from all over the world to renew the process of envisioning a new world. It seemed obvious to me that there was a need to document the process. This was the impetus; it is only through documentation that activists and intellectuals can continue to build on the knowledge produced at each forum. I put the idea to Bill [William Fisher] and he agreed to co-edit a book on the alternatives presented at the forum.

./english/388.txt:19:William Fisher: We’re particularly curious about what the world might look like if the slogan for the forum, ‘another world is possible’, proves true. It is important to move beyond critiquing the world you’re opposed to, and to begin articulating the characteristics of the world you’re imagining as the future. It isn’t that we thought that after just two WSFs there would be a coherent vision of what this other world is. Rather, we wanted to identify and analyse where there were clear divergences or convergences, and that’s what became the organising theme for the book.

./english/388.txt:37:What is the WSF all about? It’s not a social movement in and of itself. It’s an open forum, and in that there’s a commitment to its openness, to the participatory nature of it, to open democracy. That’s the key convergence.

./english/388.txt:39:There’s also a convergence about the nature or identity of the adversary – neo-liberal globalisation. Admittedly, after 9/11, war and militarisation became very important themes of the WSF of 2002 and remain important in the forum of 2003 because of the pending war on Iraq.

./english/388.txt:47:WF: It’s a place where that can happen. It’s a place where people are encouraging others to make that happen – where people are pressing each other about what the answers might be if you’re rethinking democracy on different kinds of levels. It’s not a place yet where you’d expect all the answers to come out and be somehow ratified by a forum. But it may come out in small ways through networks that use the forum in order to interact.

./english/388.txt:53:WF: No, it’s not. But I think that Thomas is right that for the first three years it was really significant that it was held here. There was a connection between Porto Alegre as a model for an alternative way of doing things that provided an inspiration for the whole forum. It doesn’t mean that the forum can only be held in a place like this, but it will be very different somewhere else. I can’t think of a single place where you’re likely to find a better match between the city and the spirit of the WSF at the moment. So I don’t expect it will relocate for good, but there’s no reason it can’t move about. In the current plans it is expected that the WSF would return periodically, perhaps every other year to Porto Alegre.

./english/388.txt:55:TP: The choice of making India the base of the 2004 WSF was pretty much a consensual process. At the last forum, it was proposed that India host the WSF in 2003. The Indian members of the International Council said no, and that they needed more time to consult Indian civil society. One of the representatives told me at the time that only 200 or so activists in India even knew about the forum. At the International Council meetings in Barcelona in spring 2002, it was agreed that India should first host an Asian Social Forum and, based on the success of that event, the International Council and the India Working Committee should decide whether India could host the WSF in 2004. The Asian Social Forum was held in January in Hyderabad and was a great event that has filled many people with optimism about the WSF being held in India.

./english/388.txt:57:Also, the process of the forum moving around different parts of the Global South is actually playing out the democratic ideal, in the sense that movements are very wary of becoming bureaucratised, centralised, sedimented. So we have to have a forum that is structured in a more fluid manner. It cannot be permanently located in one place or it would just become a new IMF or a Soviet Union. Movements have learned from their history and from their adversary. The forum has to move. Porto Alegre is a great alternative, but so is Kerala in India, or Chiapas in Mexico where movements and governments are also experimenting with new forms of democracy. Porto Alegre was not known four years ago on the global left, and now, hopefully, parts of India will also become known for their alternative forms of governance. So I think it is a good thing. I hope that the forum also moves to Africa sometime in the near future so that we can learn from the innovations of African movements as well.

./english/388.txt:59:WF: You could expect that, once it moves, some of the social forums of the future might not be as successful as this one is – because of their setting and possible lack of institutional support. But I think Thomas is right that if it stayed here, it would become too institutionalised and would die.

./english/388.txt:65:TP: The fact that we now have regional and thematic forums, and soon perhaps national and local forums, is an extension of the process. What this means is that if the global WSF ever collapsed, or fragmented, the process would continue, because there are now regional forums that are independent of the initial event. In this sense the WSF is already a great success because it has produced forums that go beyond itself – that will outlive it.

./english/388.txt:67:WF: It’s important to think of all these various forums as the WSF. They are the process that is the WSF. It is not just about this annual meeting.

./english/388.txt:71:WF: There is definitely a divergence. I wouldn’t just limit it to the organisers. There are so many different participants who have visions of what they would like to see the forum become – and maybe criticisms of what it is now and its limitations.

./english/388.txt:75:We don’t think that there is a single consensus that could come out of the forum. Nor would we want to see it powerful enough to institute one idea, as the consensus idea of the forum. So we are among those people who see the WSF as an absolutely new but significant process.

./english/388.txt:79:TP: This has come out in the International Council. There is a debate on whether the International Council should make a statement about the war on Iraq. One group argues that the forum should be a political agent, while another says no, the forum should be a pedagogical space. These are two different visions. It is a good debate to have.

./english/388.txt:81:Personally, I would hope that it remains a pedagogical space out of which new politics can emerge. That is to say, the WSF provides a space in which movements from all over the world can network together and make statements about the war, but not in the name of the forum.

./english/388.txt:85:TP: I think it is clear that another world is possible – a world of many worlds. The question is, what are the strategies for moving towards a different future? That is the discussion that I think has been initiated at this forum. The 2001 WSF was about defining ourselves and understanding the global situation. The 2002 WSF was about alternatives. The question for this forum and future events should be strategies.

./english/391.txt:6:The third edition of the World Social Forum represents an important moment in the movement's history, whether for the multitude of participants, the decision to hold the next meeting on another continent, or for the institutionalisation of the parallel forums accompanying it.

./english/391.txt:12:The problem now, from my standpoint as member of the WSF International Council, is that we must begin debate on the architecture of the Forum. We must recognise that the WSF entails three equally necessary elements: mobilisation, participation, and strategies for a better possible world.

./english/391.txt:14:We won't be able to achieve these goals in a gigantic event like the WSF. The International Council decided that the Forum will not take place on the same dates as Davos anymore. During the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum there will be marches staged wherever possible around the world. We will mobilise millions more than was possible prior to the creation of the WSF.

./english/391.txt:16:In terms of participation, the decision to broaden the WSF internationally has proved positive. The various regional Forums (Europe, Asia, Africa), as well as thematic (such as Quito and the Amazon about the FTAA), or local (such as in Argentina and Palestine), have achieved much more in terms than the colossal WSF. And, in the many more forums being planned, there will always be the problem of disproportionate representation from the surrounding region.

./english/391.txt:20:We will only be able to devise the way forward if we recognise that at least one of the Forums must be much smaller, more in-depth, with a strong methodology and systematisation. There must also be horizontal communication among all Forums, whether regional or thematic, so we know what has happened in each of them.

./english/391.txt:22:But that is not where India 2004 and Porto Alegre 2005 are leading. Their success will be measured by the number of participants. Is this the path we need to achieve a better world? And when it is said that we have no proposals, that all we do is talk, will we answer that we don't want to be elitist like other Forums? The time has come for us to reflect so our route is broader, but stronger in order to challenge neoliberal globalisation and its mercenaries.

./english/392.txt:1:The World Social Forum −

./english/392.txt:7:extended by the International Council of the World Social Forum to civil actors people in India

./english/392.txt:8:to consider the possibility of ’India’ hosting the next Forum, in (January−February) 2003, and

./english/392.txt:14:Forum be held in India or of how or why the person who convened the Bangalore meeting was

./english/392.txt:17:in the World Social Forum in particular and in the dynamics and politics of civil and political

./english/392.txt:23:World Social Forum is an extremely significant initiative − indeed, in my opinion one of the

./english/392.txt:29:next Forum here in India − and even if we end up not doing so. I also invite you to read this

./english/392.txt:30:note along with a companion Note I have prepared, titled ’World Social Forum 2003 − Some

./english/392.txt:31:Suggestions for the Forum’s Strategic Perspective’.

./english/392.txt:33:with hosting the next Forum alone but with building a WSF process in India. I see the two as

./english/392.txt:39:· Hosting the World Social Forum requires a very different vision and perspective

./english/392.txt:41:· Hosting the Forum will require the Secretariat and its members abandoning (or

./english/392.txt:49:the Forum

./english/392.txt:50:· Whether or not we host it, we need to see the Forum as a process and not as an

./english/392.txt:55:’India’ host the World Social Forum in 2003 − in just a year’s time − offers an extraordinary

./english/392.txt:69:thinkers, on whatever issue − and the Forum offers an extraordinary opportunity to act as a

./english/392.txt:90:serious account. Indeed, I would urge that even if we in India decide to not host the Forum,

./english/392.txt:91:we should definitely use the opportunity of the Forum process as a vehicle to build close

./english/392.txt:94:On the other hand, I believe that the task of organising and hosting the Forum can easily

./english/392.txt:115:that the World Social Forum process will itself get dragged into these turbulent domestic

./english/392.txt:116:currents and undercurrents − and that it (the next Forum) may well founder, as it were,

./english/392.txt:119:World Social Forum process as such but rather with domestic currents in India that the

./english/392.txt:120:present organisers of the Forum probably have little idea of.

./english/392.txt:145:Forum in Kolkata − and that it has many of the right connections and credentials for this

./english/392.txt:152:WSF on the future (such as whether there should be one large Forum in 2003, or

./english/392.txt:157:4. Hosting the World Social Forum requires a very different vision and perspective

./english/392.txt:159:While hosting the Forum will certainly not (and should not) mean that ’civil India’ is

./english/392.txt:184:If we want to seriously consider the question of hosting the Forum, I believe that we

./english/392.txt:191:5. Hosting the Forum will require the Secretariat and its members abandoning (or

./english/392.txt:194:Hosting something like the World Social Forum − which has a very wide range of

./english/392.txt:199:Social Forum process but one that is not partisan, either in terms of issues or in

./english/392.txt:225:2 The World Social Forum has already adopted a Charter of Principles. This is available on its website.

./english/392.txt:257:task of building, parallel to the building of a secretariat for the Forum, what the WSF

./english/392.txt:260:consciousness−creation within the country around the key concerns of the Forum. I

./english/392.txt:266:(I think I should add some explanatory points to this. In the World Social Forum’s own

./english/392.txt:269:first Forum. Such Committees were formed in several countries, and in the words of the

./english/392.txt:277:Forum accepted the responsibility of forming an MC in India, and that on the WSF’s

./english/392.txt:278:4 Diego Azzi, Mobilization Committees Section, Secretariat of the World Social Forum, Personal

./english/392.txt:284:with the WSF secretariat after the first Forum and have also not replied to several

./english/392.txt:294:next Forum, we must ourselves accept that a mandatory accompanying

./english/392.txt:298:the Forum

./english/392.txt:300:World Social Forum as a strategic project, then we need to commit ourselves to

./english/392.txt:302:responsibility of hosting the next Forum.

./english/392.txt:303:9. Whether or not we host it, we need to see the Forum as a process and not as an

./english/392.txt:305:Whether or not we host the next Forum, I believe that we need to far more consciously

./english/392.txt:306:and critically see ’the Forum’ as an ongoing organising and mobilisation process − rather

./english/392.txt:311:i) Among its other roles, the Forum should play a role as a permanent

./english/392.txt:312:(long−term) forum or platform for debate on civil tactical and strategic

./english/392.txt:316:Committees that has already been established by the Forum.8 If the Forum is

./english/392.txt:320:6 Diego Azzi, Mobilization Committees Section, Secretariat of the World Social Forum, Personal

./english/392.txt:323:8 By the Forum’s own assessment, the formation and work of Mobilisation Committees in countries

./english/392.txt:324:across the world has been one of the most important achievements of the World Social Forum process so

./english/392.txt:329:The Forum also needs to democratically consider questions of democracy,

./english/392.txt:333:forged, so that the Forum becomes a multilayered and multidimensional

./english/392.txt:336:events, the Forum as a world entity should re−constitute itself into

./english/392.txt:338:parallel and in tandem. Indeed, one way of viewing the Forum as a process

./english/392.txt:349:decades (which are, after all, the backdrop and foundation of the Forum) to

./english/393.txt:11:the World Social Forum website in English on October 23 2003 (from now on referred to as the

./english/393.txt:26:commentator based in The Hague, The Netherlands, who extensively writes on the Forum and on

./english/393.txt:32:words ‘World Social Forum’ and ‘Charter of Principles’).

./english/393.txt:50:World Social Forum Charter Of Principles

./english/393.txt:53:Social Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after evaluating the results

./english/393.txt:54:of that Forum and the expectations it raised, consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a

./english/393.txt:56:Information Note that it issued at the close of the Forum. While the principles contained in this

./english/393.txt:58:editions of the World Social Forum – are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the

./english/393.txt:59:holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those

./english/393.txt:63:Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after evaluating the results of that

./english/393.txt:64:Forum and the expectations it raised, consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a Charter of

./english/393.txt:67:editions of the World Social Forum - are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the

./english/393.txt:68:holding of the Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those decisions

./english/393.txt:72:1. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate

./english/393.txt:78:1. The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of

./english/393.txt:85:2. The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now

./english/393.txt:89:2. The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now on, in

./english/393.txt:97:3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this

./english/393.txt:99:3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process

./english/393.txt:102:4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of

./english/393.txt:110:4. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of

./english/393.txt:119:5. The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of

./english/393.txt:124:5. The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil

./english/393.txt:130:9. The World Social Forum will always be a forum open to pluralism and to the diversity of activities

./english/393.txt:134:organizations shall participate in the Forum. Government leaders and members of legislatures

./english/393.txt:140:6. The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social

./english/393.txt:141:Forum as a body. Noone, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of

./english/393.txt:142:the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The

./english/393.txt:143:participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by

./english/393.txt:145:majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a

./english/393.txt:147:6. The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as a

./english/393.txt:148:body. No one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to

./english/393.txt:149:express positio ns claiming to be those of all its participants. The participants in the Forum

./english/393.txt:152:propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body. It thus does not

./english/393.txt:158:7. Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in the Forum’s meetings

./english/393.txt:161:Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions widely by the means at its disposal,

./english/393.txt:164:7. Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in the Forums meetings must

./english/393.txt:166:decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other participants. The World Social Forum

./english/393.txt:171:8. The World Socia l Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and

./english/393.txt:179:8. The World Social Forum is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party

./english/393.txt:187:9. The World Social Forum asserts democracy as the avenue to resolving society’s problems

./english/393.txt:191:9. The World Social Forum will always be a forum open to pluralism and to the diversity of activities

./english/393.txt:195:organizations shall participate in the Forum. Government leaders and members of legislatures

./english/393.txt:202:10. The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of history and

./english/393.txt:207:10. The World Social Forum is opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy,

./english/393.txt:215:11. The meetings of the World Social Forum are always open to all those who wish to take part

./english/393.txt:224:12. As a forum for debate, the World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts

./english/393.txt:233:11. As a forum for debate, the World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection,

./english/393.txt:241:13. As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social Forum encourages

./english/393.txt:245:12. As a framework for the exchange of experiences, the World Social Forum encourages

./english/393.txt:251:14. As a context for interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new

./english/393.txt:256:13. As a context for interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new

./english/393.txt:265:15. The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its participant organizations and

./english/393.txt:269:14. The World Social Forum is a process that encourages its participant organizations and movements

./english/393.txt:287:Social Forum Organising Committee, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum

./english/393.txt:290:as the ‘World Social Forum Organising Committee’.]

./english/393.txt:301:when he called a first national consultation on the World Social Forum in India. Vijay Pratap, January 2002 - Letter of

./english/394.txt:6:Social Forum today in reality has two Charter of Principles in existence. This would be amusing, and

./english/394.txt:9:Social Forum : In principle, wanting to be open, relying on autonomous action on the part of everyone

./english/394.txt:15:the case of a world initiative such as the World Social Forum, worldwide consequences.

./english/394.txt:17:In April 2001, the eight Brazilian organisations that convened the first ‘World Social Forum’

./english/394.txt:20:In early June 2001, in order to “take the Forum to the world level”, they convened a first

./english/394.txt:26:organisations hosting the world meeting of the Forum in January 2003. This first meeting, held in

./english/394.txt:30:with which he circulated a copy of the Forum’s Charter of Principles. This went out to hundreds of

./english/394.txt:38:of extensive discussion on the Forum in India, since this was the framework provided by the

./english/394.txt:41:work they did around the Forum, as a part of what in India was called ‘The WSF India Process’, a

./english/394.txt:43:Forum as an idea.6 India is a big country, with a very large number of social and politically active

./english/394.txt:59:titled the ‘WSF India Policy Statement : Charter of Principles - World Social Forum India’.7

./english/394.txt:62:mobilisation for the Asian Social Forum in January 2003, and more generally looking ahead to the

./english/394.txt:63:likely holding of the world meeting of the Forum in India in January 2004.8 It was also put up on

./english/394.txt:65:way, the Forum’s Charter and a version as modified in India therefore reached an unknown further

./english/394.txt:68:The Netherlands, who extensively writes on the Forum and on the global justice and solidarity

./english/394.txt:70:attached this as an annexure to a paper of his on the Forum in 2002.9 Waterman does not clearly

./english/394.txt:73:(Brazil, Sunday, August 12 2001). Since then, he has continued to write extensively on the Forum,

./english/394.txt:77:in India, who have been interested in the Forum since its formation in 2001 and have followed its

./english/394.txt:78:activities and even taken part in it, who also see this document as being the Forum’s Charter.

./english/394.txt:81:understanding of the idea of the World Social Forum. Thousands upon thousands of people -

./english/394.txt:84:Forum in terms of the provisions of this Charter.

./english/394.txt:110:declared that “The meetings of the World Social Forum are always open to all those who wish to

./english/394.txt:113:nor military organizations shall participate in the Forum”; and the list of signatories (the eight

./english/394.txt:114:organisations that formed the Forum) has been replaced by a statement that the document was

./english/394.txt:116:World Social Forum Organising Committee”.11

./english/394.txt:120:drew attention to some specific clauses in the Forum’s Charter of Principles – and referred

./english/394.txt:132:where substantial changes took place in the provisions in the Forum’s Charter of Principles, this is

./english/394.txt:135:region where the next world meeting of the World Social Forum is to be held - a large and populous

./english/394.txt:136:country and region where there are a large number of organisations active in relation to the Forum.

./english/394.txt:139:Forum’s founding principles from where the Charter today stands. In terms of numbers, because of

./english/394.txt:144:know of the Forum see the original April 2001 version as the initiative’s Charter.

./english/394.txt:152:to declare in writing that they are willing to adhere to both the Forum’s Charter and the WSF India

./english/394.txt:158:how widely word is likely to have spread through the actually existing Forum, it is now very difficult

./english/394.txt:162:Forum are always open to all those who wish to take part in them, except organizations that seek to take

./english/394.txt:164:“Neither party representations nor military organizations shall participate in the Forum”. [Emphasis

./english/394.txt:167:countries also, because it was on this basis that the message was spread in India that the Forum

./english/394.txt:169:such groups, and that several groups who were otherwise interested in taking part in the Forum

./english/394.txt:171:contributed over time to splits taking place in the World Social Forum process in the country. In

./english/394.txt:174:senses the last thing that the Forum should be doing, and against its very spirit. It has closed space,

./english/394.txt:177:initially offered, in April 2002, to take major responsibilities for organising the Asian Social Forum

./english/394.txt:178:(held in Hyderabad in January 2003), the Hyderabad-based FAIG – Forum Against Imperialist

./english/394.txt:179:Globalisation – ultimately not only ultimately withdrew from the Forum but also organised a major

./english/394.txt:180:demonstration and rally against the WSF, at the time of the Asian Social Forum. This was within

./english/394.txt:181:the very first year of the Forum process in India. Although FAIG is widely understood to be

./english/394.txt:183:formation in India today, the formation and existence of the Forum could surely have been a way of

./english/394.txt:186:which those in the leadership of the Forum process in India – led by groups affiliated to the CPI(M)

./english/394.txt:190:- handled the criticisms the WSF was facing both before and during the Asian Social Forum (when

./english/394.txt:191:other civil groups also came out in opposition to the Forum) contributed to a more general culture

./english/394.txt:192:of positional warfare in relation to the Forum, and in its own way to the moulding of much more

./english/394.txt:193:major opposition to the Forum that is expected to take place in Mumbai during the world meeting,

./english/394.txt:196:reportedly been denied access to the Forum in Porto Alegre (or that they have chosen to stay away),

./english/394.txt:202:which the World Social Forum is a part, this is a little ironic.

./english/394.txt:205:denied, and registration revoked, at the world Forum, in January 2002, fully six months after the

./english/394.txt:217:process such as the World Social Forum, there is always the completely unpredictable possibility of

./english/394.txt:219:All these questions need to be asked, and answered. While the Forum is not a

./english/394.txt:221:Forum as it is emerging shows that the architects of the Forum and at least some of its leadership

./english/394.txt:226:Forum as it actually exists, the editors of a forthcoming book on the Forum have decided to, in the

./english/394.txt:231:I also invite the attention of the ‘official’ bodies of the Forum to this issue, at national and

./english/394.txt:236:on the website at some point of time, but not everyone who is involved with the Forum was

./english/394.txt:238:interested in the Forum abandoned the superseded version. As a direct consequence of this, it is

./english/394.txt:239:clear that there has been some mistake, and those initiating the Forum process in the country

./english/394.txt:254:of the Forum.

./english/394.txt:255:2 ABONG, ATTAC, CBJP, CIVES, CUT, IBASE, CJG, and MST, April 2001 – ‘World Social Forum

./english/394.txt:257:http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.asp?id_menu=4&cd_language=2 [This document was earlier

./english/394.txt:260:Forum and its Engagement with Empire.

./english/394.txt:266:3 World Social Forum, Brazil Organising Committee, August 2002.

./english/394.txt:267:4 World Social Forum Organising Committee, June 2001 – ‘World Social Forum Charter of Principles’.

./english/394.txt:268:Available at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.asp?id_menu=4&cd_language=2. The version

./english/394.txt:269:available on the Forum website says that it was the ‘WSF International Council’ that approved the revised

./english/394.txt:275:7 World Social Forum India, July 2002 – ‘WSF India Policy Statement : Charter of Principles - World Social

./english/394.txt:276:Forum India’. 3 pp. Earlier available on the WSF India website www.wsfindia.org. Published in Jai Sen with

./english/394.txt:278:World Social Forum and its Engagement with Empire.

./english/394.txt:286:World Social Forum process in India’. Forthcoming in Sen, Anand, Escobar, and Waterman, eds – The

./english/394.txt:287:World Social Forum : Challenging Empires. New Delhi : Viveka.

./english/394.txt:288:9 Peter Waterman, 2002 – ‘What’s Left Internationally? Reflections on the 2nd World Social Forum in Porto

./english/394.txt:291:10 In the course of preparing the forthcoming book The World Social Forum : Challenging Empires, edited

./english/394.txt:304:http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/main.asp?id_menu=4_2&cd_language=2.

./english/394.txt:311:fundamentalism in the Forum, see : Jai Sen, December 2003g – ‘How Open ? The Forum as Logo, the

./english/394.txt:312:Forum as Religion : Scepticism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will’. Forthcoming in Jai Sen, Anita Anand,

./english/394.txt:313:Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman, eds, 2004 – The World Social Forum : Challenging Empires. New

./english/394.txt:321:Forum process in India and internationally’. Available at http://www.choike.org/cgibin/

./english/394.txt:324:the first year of the World Social Forum process in India’. Forthcoming in Sen, Anand, Escobar, and

./english/394.txt:325:Waterman, eds, 2004 – The World Social Forum : Challenging Empires. New Delhi : Viveka.

./english/394.txt:331:Whitaker, March 2003 – ‘Notes about the World Social Forum’. Revised version, dt March 17 2003, and

./english/394.txt:335:Samir Amin (Third World Forum), interviewed by V Sridhar, January 2003 – ‘For struggles, global and

./english/394.txt:338:Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar, and Peter Waterman, eds, 2004 – The World Social Forum : Challenging

./english/395.txt:2:THE FORUM AS LOGO, THE FORUM AS RELIGION : SCEPTICISM OF THE

./english/395.txt:6:named ‘WSFItself’ organised a workshop on power relations within the World Social Forum. An

./english/395.txt:8:adopted that would kill — or certainly, cripple — the Forum. In its words, the ‘toxics.’ The idea was

./english/395.txt:12:normally tend to see the world around us, including the Forum.2

./english/395.txt:13:In some senses, this essay is a continuation of that exercise, of trying to read the Forum. I

./english/395.txt:14:have written this essay because even as I celebrate the fact of the Forum and what it is doing and

./english/395.txt:16:deeply negative and contradictory to its very spirit. Most centrally, they include the Forum

./english/395.txt:18:worldwide franchising; and an increasing struggle for control of the Forum. In large part this is

./english/395.txt:24:that the actually existing Forum is not the ‘open space’ that it is said to be, but is instead highly

./english/395.txt:25:structured and, in several dimensions, exclusive. Among other features, the Forum — though

./english/395.txt:29:to the given policy formulations. The Forum also discriminates against individuals, as I explain

./english/395.txt:37:at national levels, such as the WSF India Organising Committee. The leadership of the Forum at

./english/395.txt:41:all issues. The Forum is therefore gradually becoming a place only for gatherings of the committed

./english/395.txt:51:Even though I am deeply worried about what I see taking place in the Forum today, I still

./english/395.txt:56:suggestions for a more creative future. In particular, I propose that the Forum must recognise the

./english/395.txt:60:The Forum needs also to explicitly recognise that individuals play myriad roles in social life

./english/395.txt:65:possibilities of movements taking over the Forum are, in fact, only moving in what in generic terms

./english/395.txt:67:some among the leadership to criticism and opposition, are only leading the Forum to lose its soul.

./english/395.txt:69:I believe the primary significance of the Forum lies in the political culture it represents and is

./english/395.txt:70:attempting to explore, and that its main contribution is in political-strategic terms. The Forum, as

./english/395.txt:77:The original organisers of the Forum saw their task as being not the building of movement,

./english/395.txt:80:This is most resonantly expressed in the Forum’s Charter of Principles.6 A principal architect of the

./english/395.txt:81:Forum has recently issued an interesting note reflecting on ‘the Forum as space, the Forum as

./english/395.txt:82:movement,’ and has come out strongly against seeing the Forum — the space — as being primarily

./english/395.txt:84:The real ‘success’ of the Forum is that it is making possible a scale of talking across

./english/395.txt:90:challenges for the Forum, and quite possibly also one of its historically most important.8

./english/395.txt:91:In principle, the concept of the Forum challenges us to think and to act freely. But it

./english/395.txt:93:and also, importantly, ourselves resist the temptation to control it. The Forum, as it takes place, is

./english/395.txt:104:polemically challenge the annual World Economic Forum held at Davos, Switzerland, to being an

./english/395.txt:106:challenging neoliberal globalisation alone.9 And in terms of numbers, the Forum has grown

./english/395.txt:110:of the world context. 9/11 took place in the same year as the first Forum and gave an impatient

./english/395.txt:113:who are not with us are against us.” The numbers attending the Forum, which has explicitly

./english/395.txt:161:How does the Forum fit into all this ? Most importantly perhaps, the WSF has struck at the

./english/395.txt:167:The challenge for the Forum is now to envision how to relate to the extraordinarily fluid

./english/395.txt:181:issues — including whether there is, and should there be, only one World Social Forum.14 In this

./english/395.txt:182:version, I take up only some of these issues, referring to the Forum not only in Brazil but also in

./english/395.txt:183:India — since this is the country where the next world meeting of the Forum is to take place and

./english/395.txt:187:The Forum as Market, the Forum as Alienation

./english/395.txt:188:As many others have pointed out, despite all its other virtues, the Forum is becoming a huge,

./english/395.txt:193:undeclared emphasis in the Forum on private, individualised, separa te initiative and enterprise, and

./english/395.txt:196:In the theorisation of the Forum as ‘open space’, the basic but undeclared assumption is

./english/395.txt:200:Forum.16

./english/395.txt:203:overwhelming experiences such as the Forum, unless very major efforts are made by the organisers

./english/395.txt:209:meetings speak to themselves, and although some authors refer to the Forum as reflecting the web

./english/395.txt:213:available in many parts of the Forum and crucial information available in several languages, and

./english/395.txt:217:suggestions that it should consider creating a discussion space on the Forum’s website. It almost

./english/395.txt:218:seems as if this is not in the Forum’s culture, as presently defined by its leadership. While there is

./english/395.txt:221:the Forum on private enterprise and the lack of prioritisation given to the collective.

./english/395.txt:227:as a vanguard and politburo.18 Equally, as Naomi Klein and others have pointed out, the Forum is

./english/395.txt:231:minds that the Forum has the potential of being.

./english/395.txt:232:The Forum as Event, not World Process

./english/395.txt:236:drafted for the Forum just three months later in April 2001, that “The World Social Forum at

./english/395.txt:241:purpose of the Council was to “take the Forum to the world level.”21 Consistent with this vision,

./english/395.txt:244:A series of such meetings have now taken place — the Asian Social Forum, the first and

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

./english/395.txt:247:this flowering as a manifestation of the globalisation of the WSF, each event — each ‘Forum’ — is

./english/395.txt:249:are going to take place, other than looking ahead in a general way to the next ‘world’ social forum,

./english/395.txt:259:A small but encouraging sign in this area has been a shift in the Forum’s language, and

./english/395.txt:261:Forum’ was reserved exclusively for the event each January, the International Secretariat is now

./english/395.txt:262:referring to all WSF-related meetings as ‘World Social Forums’ in the plural, which is what some of

./english/395.txt:264:composite vision of the whole, and of its politics. If the leaders of the Forum have this vision, they

./english/395.txt:267:disintegration of the political culture that the Forum in principle represents, and of a creative

./english/395.txt:268:interpretation of this culture. One of the most important roles that the Forum is playing is

./english/395.txt:273:world politics and of looking beyond the Forum as a world event to seeing it as a world process.

./english/395.txt:274:The Forum as Temple

./english/395.txt:275:How open is the Forum ? Or, is the Forum, in fact, already highly mediated and structured at a

./english/395.txt:278:The Forum’s Charter of Principles says, “The meetings of the WSF are always open to all those

./english/395.txt:283:book on the World Social Forum)22 say:

./english/395.txt:284:“What is the WSF all about ? It’s not a social movement in and of itself. It’s an open forum, and in

./english/395.txt:287:This is therefore the fundamental working assumption of participants at the Forum, the idea that it

./english/395.txt:290:fundamental aspect of what the Forum is about — and importantly, is perceived to be about and also

./english/395.txt:298:is “… not a forum that is open to everybody. It has a charter to which participating organisations must

./english/395.txt:302:It is clear from this that the architects of the Forum have themselves never intended that the

./english/395.txt:303:Forum should be fully open. Notwithstanding the formal provision in Clause 11 of the Charter, in

./english/395.txt:305:organisers. And important voices within the Forum’s leadership are also clear that those who take

./english/395.txt:315:popular power) — so has the ‘open space’ that is the Forum. In this case, the ‘square’ that is the

./english/395.txt:316:Forum has been created by the BOC, and is maintained by the IC.

./english/395.txt:327:specifically cautions against the Forum being ‘turned into’ a movement.

./english/395.txt:332:entities, and not by right. Insofar as the Forum discriminates against and marginalises individuals, it

./english/395.txt:342:If the Forum is indeed restricted to only those who already have a clear and defined position, how

./english/395.txt:355:politics that the Forum seeks to follow and to promote.

./english/395.txt:365:‘open space’ that the Forum is said to be.28

./english/395.txt:371:self-defence or defence of common property, such as forests for forest dwellers. What the Forum is

./english/395.txt:375:Again, and especially given the mission it has taken up, is it not necessary for the Forum to,

./english/395.txt:377:what is the strategic purpose of closing the Forum to such exchange ? Historically, it has especially

./english/395.txt:382:to be applied to those wanting to participate in the Forum, then it must equally be applied — and

./english/395.txt:387:first sign a form declaring their adherence to the Forum’s Charter of Principles.29 This development

./english/395.txt:388:— which seems to be hardly known (and believed) in circles beyond the Forum — might be viewed

./english/395.txt:390:is coming to the surface as the menu of the now ‘global’ Forum being interpreted locally.

./english/395.txt:392:Forum. At the Asian Social Forum in January 2003 held in Hyderabad, India, for instance, at a

./english/395.txt:397:Forum’s position.’

./english/395.txt:402:Consistent with this, the online form for registering events at the Mumbai Forum requires those

./english/395.txt:403:applying to declare ‘Yes/No’ as to whether they are willing to adhere to the Forum’s Charter. This

./english/395.txt:407:and should be closely analysed by those undertaking the systemisation of the Forum.)

./english/395.txt:408:In short, the world (social forum) is being rendered in black and white, with no spaces for

./english/395.txt:409:shades of grey. If this is so, what is the difference between the Forum and any other ideologically

./english/395.txt:412:for the committed and converted alone. And that ‘the Forum’ is becoming like a party or organised

./english/395.txt:414:In a major paper earlier this year, analysing the dynamics of the Forum, Boaventura de

./english/395.txt:423:the Forum too is creating absences by virtue of the political culture it has adopted and is practising

./english/395.txt:425:Indeed, notwithstanding Santos’ radical analysis of the Forum, it is noticeable that that

./english/395.txt:426:Forum is not, as yet, the arena of spontaneous choice of victims of violence, of oppression, of

./english/395.txt:428:of indigenous peoples — are as yet keeping away, and many of those who come to the Forum to

./english/395.txt:430:organisations. As I see it, this is happening because the Forum is an initiative that still belongs to the

./english/395.txt:433:might well be causing ‘absences’ is something that the Forum perhaps needs to consider.

./english/395.txt:444:has in one sense taken the first step of accepting this much-widened vocabulary as the Forum’s

./english/395.txt:445:vocabulary: for the world meeting in Mumbai will, after all, be seen as ‘The World Social Forum’

./english/395.txt:453:Racism, Xenophobia, and Other Forums of Discrimination. For the issue to now be accepted at

./english/395.txt:467:these in the agenda of the Forum, although they have not yet formally modified the Charter of

./english/395.txt:469:caste, and patriarchy have not yet entered the Forum’s vocabulary despite their having been

./english/395.txt:483:which the Forum is an open space.

./english/395.txt:485:this wider agenda might work to make the Forum an even more exclusive space. As above, if the

./english/395.txt:488:the Forum’s present principle in this area as given above — the WSF will become a space for:

./english/395.txt:493:This in turn, will mean that all those who wish to take part in the Forum, and more specifically, to

./english/395.txt:494:play any role in the decision-making bodies of the Forum, will therefore need from then on to

./english/395.txt:499:Forum. It is evident that they are tending towards making the Forum turn in on itself and become

./english/395.txt:501:the owners and managers of the Forum to bring order to and control the use of the space. The

./english/395.txt:503:The Forum as Real Estate

./english/395.txt:505:question of the openness of the Forum to individuals. Notwithstanding the Forum’s assertion and

./english/395.txt:510:This division is also reflected in the organisational structure of the Forum. I do not know

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

./english/395.txt:521:But in insisting upon this formula, are the organisers of the Forum only creating divisive

./english/395.txt:530:It is a fact that the Forum’s Charter of Principles as it stands, provides space only for

./english/395.txt:532:“The World Social Forum brings together and interlinks only organisations and movements of civil

./english/395.txt:539:often tends to be used that way. Only the organisers of the Forum can explain what they had in

./english/395.txt:543:While the Forum is declared to be an ‘open space’, in reality, the organisers have therefore

./english/395.txt:552:The proportions between the two ‘classes’ at the Forums also reflect the classic condition of

./english/395.txt:554:majority. In the first Forum there were apparently something like 4,000 delegates and some 16,000

./english/395.txt:556:which the minority belong that has created the Forum and now owns and manages it.

./english/395.txt:557:In effect, the Forum privileges those who represent organisations, and thereby organisations

./english/395.txt:564:According to one of the architects of the Forum, the thinking behind this discrimination is

./english/395.txt:565:‘to push organised people to come [forward] and to avoid transforming the Forum into a traditional

./english/395.txt:566:congress.’ This also means that if the organisers of the Forum are asked what participants do with

./english/395.txt:567:all that happens at the Forum — and why the Forum itself is not taking a lead, as conventional

./english/395.txt:581:of the open space that the Forum is meant to be.

./english/395.txt:582:In terms of the latter, the unstated and undeclared structure of the Forum is that

./english/395.txt:584:— are the owners of the space that is the Forum. This is never openly said, but is the underlying

./english/395.txt:586:the struggle and debate that continues and is sharpening in the Forum, regarding understanding the

./english/395.txt:587:Forum as space or seeing it as movement.42 Because the Forum is now real estate.

./english/395.txt:609:‘observers’ have seen through this structure at the Forum, and even if registered as individuals, have

./english/395.txt:610:otherwise taken full and equal part both within the Forum and in the follow-up activities.44 The

./english/395.txt:644:purposes, and the Forum is an arena where the two paths (can) cross. Even while, as I have argued

./english/395.txt:645:above and elsewhere, the Forum has a vital role to play in providing a space for different modes of

./english/395.txt:647:part of this new phenomenon - of transient association. (Even though the Forum is usually thought

./english/395.txt:648:of in terms of singular physical event/s, the actual reality of the Forum is that for the 350 other days

./english/395.txt:651:constituencies and realities that make up the actually existing Forum — and most crucially, we need

./english/395.txt:653:In formal terms, although the Forum’s Charter of Principles declares that it “intends neither

./english/395.txt:657:privileged. Once again, though without declaring this to be the case, ‘the Forum’ today is trapped

./english/395.txt:666:Finally, by excluding or marginalising individuals, the Forum is also marginalising a huge and

./english/395.txt:676:practised in the Forum against individuals. We need to rethink and reconceptualise this question.

./english/395.txt:677:The Forum as Logo

./english/395.txt:678:My final point: as the Forum spreads across the world, there is a distinct possibility that it is fast

./english/395.txt:687:The organisers of the Porto Alegre Forum, the BOC (now called the International

./english/395.txt:691:being more or less duplicated at the Mumbai Forum. The International Secretariat continues to

./english/395.txt:693:proposal that the conferences, which earlier used to be at the centre of the Forum and dominated

./english/395.txt:694:the event (and where this design was replicated at, say, the Asian Social Forum), should now be at

./english/395.txt:697:the Forum that will be organised by the WSF itself, thereby further emphasising the self-organised

./english/395.txt:700:events, even within three years. In Porto Alegre, there is now a World Youth Forum, a World

./english/395.txt:701:Parliamentary Forum, a World Forum of Mayors and Local Authorities, and a World Education

./english/395.txt:702:Forum that are held along with the WSF. There are rallies and marches, and obligatory formal parts

./english/395.txt:705:also a World Parliamentary Forum, as well as opening and closing celebrations.

./english/395.txt:706:The problem is that since the Porto Alegre Forum is widely seen as having been ‘successful’,

./english/395.txt:712:the Forum has so far been ‘successful’, this has created a power and value to it, and so there is now

./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/395.txt:714:Asian Social Forum.54 The fact that the Forum has declared through its Charter that it “intends

./english/395.txt:720:possibility of the Forum becoming a world chain, with a standard recipe, and The Forum — the

./english/395.txt:723:patenting the Forum’s motto ‘Another World Is Possible !’ just in case someone else tries using it ?

./english/395.txt:724:The Forum is also catching. Besides the regional and thematic fora mentioned earlier, there

./english/395.txt:728:spreading of the culture of the Forum, along with creative local reinterpretation, or is it more a

./english/395.txt:730:At certain levels therefore, the experiment of the globalisation of the Forum is clearly

./english/396.txt:553:When we surf the Internet, there is a tendency to stop there where we can see, hear and interact with the other. That is why chats, video conferences, forums and other forms of exchange have grown so quickly.

./english/396.txt:604:(From Costa Rica): A big hug for the 8th of March, I have been thinking today of all the women who are working there. The information that you have been sending out is very valuable and useful for us. When you return to Costa Rica, I hope you will have lots of information about what occurred at the Beijing +5 forum. Here all is well, we are working to organize the next Feminist Encuentro. A big hug, Roxana Arroyo, Agenda Política de Mujeres, Costa Rica.

./english/396.txt:612:(From Chile): Dear FIRE: I am sending you by e-mail the campaign “Listen to the Women,” produced by Radio Tierra for the initiative by the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network. On Thursday the 23rd we uploaded the forum to transmit on Radio Tierra and CLADEM, at the following website: www.geocities.com/rtierra2000. There are a total of four audio files. Perla Wilson, Radio Tierra.

./english/396.txt:624:(From Canada): Dear FIRE: This is great! Please send us the press releases and reports and we will distribute them to the entire list of the women’s forum so they can receive the news! Here we read it and are very much interested! Julie Beijing, International Coordinator of AMARC (World Association of Community Radios).

./english/398.txt:20:In his observations on how to make the WSF a more coherent movement without making it into another institution Suwit Watnoo of the Forum of the Poor from Thailand said that the various groups coming to the meeting need to have regular information linkages. He called for the regular organizing of more WSF conferences in the coming years and for global mobilization through the WSF on specific issues such as the demand for immediate release of trade union leaders in South Korea.

./english/398.txt:24:In reply, Vittorio Agnelotto, of the Genoa Social Forum from Italy said that the kind of violence carried out by the anarchists of the 'Black Bloc' at the G-8 Genoa meet last year was counterproductive and harmful to the entire movement. Such acts of violence he alleged gave an opportunity to the police and even neo-fascist groups to infiltrate the anti-globalization protests with dubious agendas of their own.

./english/401.txt:122:From among the main conquests made possible for the Portuguese workers by the EWCs, I would emphasise the following: to be able to share problems of national scope at transnational level (in a more extended forum) so as to try and seek joint solutions for them; to have a more concrete understanding of the type of involvement manifested by the workers of a same multinational, albeit of different countries, regarding the EWCs; to know the labour realities of other countries better, ensuring a better communication and more visibility among all the workforce of a same multinational; to learn about the trade union action strategies of the country of the parent company regarding the trade unions of the countries of the subsidiaries, thereby testing the transnational effectiveness of trade union solidarity; to allow the access to initiatives or to information with are not limited to a pure model of company management, etc.

./english/401.txt:134:at least in principle, there would be no incompatibility between the pro-social movement position coming from the North and the union practices of the CUT. On the contrary, cross-contamination between the two cultures could instill radicalism among other changes greatly desired by the most dynamic nucleus of Brazilian syndicalism [unionsm – PW]. The fact that there has been more than a little resistance to the influence of unions in Mercosur forums demonstrates that the manner in which those actors have tried to address problems related to regional integration has been conflictual and creative at the same time. Finally, to acknowledge that the possibility of a working-class internationalism has its problems does not mean that it is doomed to failure. The challenge of trying could bring new meaning to an old and celebrated call.

./english/401.txt:152:New alliances—particularly with social movements, NGOs, and political parties opposed to neoliberal-inspired policies—have also been pursued at the international level, through participation in demonstrations such as the one in Seattle (at the WTO meeting, in 1999), in Washington (at the IMF meeting, in 2000), and in Quebec (at the FTAA meeting, in 2001); in the constitution of networks, such as the Continental Social Alliance…; and in events such as the World Social Forum…[in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 2001 – PW]…CUT's discourse has been increasingly incorporating the expression “citizen union” to designate (not without internal tensions), in an adverse context, a union practice of a more ["propositional"] character, that takes as its central issues the defense of employment and of social rights, that seeks to expand its action to institutional spaces and have a more direct influence on the formulation and execution of public social policies, that seeks to construct closer links with other organizations and social movements, at local (by focusing on the question of “local government”), national (by discussing a “national project”), and international levels.

./english/401.txt:185:The most crucial question seems to be how to valorize the contribution of the working class in the informal sector worldwide and to give it a unified voice. This voice has to have a feminist perspective, as the mass of women in the Third World or the Global South are working in the informal sector. From this point of view, the experience of the NFF [National Fishworkers Forum – PW] is encouraging, as its leadership has been willing to create space for a feminist perspective on fisheries and the women involved, despite much hardship, have also not given up on asserting themselves in a heavily male dominated environment. However, this alternate perspective on interaction with nature, energy use, subsistence production as base for extended production, production of life and livelihood as central concern, has not found support from any of the mainstream trade unions. This can be explained by the fact that organized trade unionism had its origin in the very concept of industrialism which has turned out to devastate the resource base. Organized labor has the same insensitivity to the informal sector and resource management as patriarchy has had towards women’s housework and other subsistence labor. Even in Seattle, the unions of the organized sector deflected the mass struggle against market fascism of the WTO by demanding that the WTO include the social clause [the inter/national union attempt to establish labor rights through the WTO – PW]. The position in India is that social clause must be separated from trade agreements.

./english/402.txt:8:I was somewhat alarmed, at the elite hotel I eventually found myself in at Porto Alegre, by the number of people who looked like me: White, Male, Middle-Aged (hey, I am not yet 70!) and, evidently, Middle-Class. I do not know to what extent this bias applies to the decision-making committees, but it existed visibly on the various platforms and other public events. This does not, of course, mean that women, Africans, Indians, Indigenous Peoples, or the Under-30s are excluded from the Forum, or from that hotel. But the youth were under canvas in the Youth Camp, the Argentinean piqueteros were in the streets, and, it seemed to me, the women were less visible than they had been at WSF2.

./english/402.txt:10:Amilcar Cabral, assassinated leader of anti-Portuguese struggle in colonial Africa, suggested that after independence there would occur the ‘suicide of the petty-bourgeoisie’. Nice idea, but no cigar! As the more-sceptical Frantz Fanon argued at the same time, the post-colonial elites were going to do everything they could to retain and increase their privileges. There are striking power/wealth differences between Forum participants, particularly visible in the case of the South. In two or three Latin American cases known to me, the poorer participants travelled by bus – this sometimes meaning a 4-5 day journey, with entry obstacles at various border-crossings. There is no reason to assume that any elite is suicidal (nor that I was going to abandon a hotel with hot and cold running internet) without irresistible pressure from outside or below. In so far, on the other hand, as the WSF elite has declared certain principles relating to liberty, equality, solidarity, pluralism, the respect of difference and the pursuit of happiness, then it might be possible to confront them (us) with the necessity of re-balancing the power equation. The elites could then put their efforts, in their home states/constituencies into facilitating rather than dominating or controlling the Forum process.

./english/402.txt:12:The experience of women within the Forum might point here in different directions. I have no figures for this year, but at both previous events, women were almost 50 percent of the participants. There are powerful feminists on the panels and in at least the IC, quite capable here of making the Forum a Feminist Issue. There are numerous panels on gender and sexuality in both the Central and Marginal programmes. Whilst the recent Latin American/Caribbean Feminist Encounter considered alternatives to the old pattern, and addressed itself centrally to globalisation, it seems to have not identified itself as such with the Forum process. Despite a discernible shift in the international women’s/feminist networks, over recent years, away from the inter/state bodies and toward the public arena, I am wondering whether the lobby has not been shifted from that old site to this new one.

./english/402.txt:14:It occurs to me that the power/presence balance within the Forum might be corrected by two measures. One would be quotas for under-represented categories. The other would be an official programme structured according to collective subjects rather than, or as well as, major problems. Thus one could have major panels/programmes on Labour, Women, Youth, Indigenous Peoples – even the Old (I hope to become such myself one day).

./english/402.txt:18:At two previous Forums there has been issued a ‘Call of Social Movements’. The initiative for such has come from members of the OC and IC, some being recognisable social movements, others being recognisable NGOs. Both Calls have been publicly presented and then signed by 50-100 other organisations and networks. This year, the notion of a ‘Social Movements World Network’ (SMWN) was widely circulated on the web and subject to a two-session public discussion within the Forum. This eventually produced a much shorter, one-page, declaration, proposing a continuation of discussion about the nature of such a network, with further meetings to take place during major movement events this year and next. It may be that what I received was an interim document and that there either is or will be a longer one. But, following the two dramatic previous Calls, and the larger, better-publicised, two-stage, discussion this year, one is struck by the modesty and caution of this proposal.

./english/402.txt:20:There are good reasons for such caution. The Call – like other Forum bodies and initiatives – is surrounded by a certain amount of mystery. Given overlapping memberships, are we to understand the Call as a device for going beyond the Forum’s self-limitation on making political declarations? How come the Secretariat of the Call, in Sao Paulo, only came to this interested observer’s attention one year after it came into existence? Why did it take seven or eight months for the signators of Call 2 to be publicly identified (at least on a website), when those of Call1 were published instantaneously? What, for the purposes of this new initiative, is a social movement?

./english/402.txt:22:I am actually favourable to, even enthusiastic about, the creation of such a network. In part this is because there exists no such internationally. In part because it is going to provide information and ideas on a continuing basis - and to those people/places otherwise excluded from the periodic Forums. In so far as this will have an existence in ‘real virtuality’ (Manuel Castells), it may go beyond a WSF that remains largely earth-bound and institutional. Apart from the questions above, certain crucial others remain (about which I may only have yet other questions).

./english/402.txt:36:The FSM website remains a disgrace – promoting year-old ideas (chosen by whom?) in its meagre library. Trying to reach a human being on this site, to whom one could pose a question, reminds one strongly of Gertrude Stein (or whoever) on Oakland, California: ‘There is no there there’. The only FSM daily is Terra Viva, an admirable effort by the customarily unaccountable NGO, but which this year seemed to me to add to its space-limitations, delays and superficialities a heavier bias toward the Forum establishment. The more-professional, substantial and independent regional paper, Zero Hora, gave wide coverage but only in Portuguese. For background information and orientation one was this year dependent on free handouts of La Vie/Le Monde (marked by a certain social Catholicism?), and Ode, a glossy, multi-lingual, New Age, magazine from Rotterdam, with impressively relevant coverage (which I have used in this paper).

./english/402.txt:38:The FSM seems to me something of a shrine to the written and spoken word. (In so far as I worship both deities, I am throwing this stone from my own glasshouse). At its core is The Panel, in which 5-10 selected Panellists do their thing in front of an audience of anything from five to 5,000, the latter being thrown the bone of three to fine minutes at a microphone. And these were the lucky ones! At the other end of the Forum’s narrow spectrum of modes there is The Demonstration. Here euphoria is order of the day: how can it not be when surrounded by so many beautiful people, of all ages, genders and sexual options, of nationality and ethnicity, convinced that Another World is Possible? But here we must note the distinction made 30 years ago, between mobilisation and mobility, as related to the old organisation and the new media:

./english/402.txt:46:Something of an exception to the general Forum rule was, in 2002, the campaign against fundamentalisms of the Articulación Feminista Marcosur. I had and have doubts about both the subject of and the interpretation offered by this campaign, but it was one which intimately combined the customary Forum modes with dramatic cultural expression of undeniable originality and impact: last year there were masks, an enormous hot-air balloon, hoarding-sized posters and more. This year activity was concentrated in a big and packed-out book launch, at which was also projected a 10-minute CD production of considerable originality and power (Lucy Garrido, the Uruguayan designer, opted for visuals, music and minimal words, in successive English and Spanish). We could have had, we should have had, a discussion around this. Even a panel…

./english/402.txt:50:I am concerned about the future of the Forum process but not worried. Pandora has opened her box, the genie has is out of the lamp, the secret of fire is now an open one. Already in Florence, young libertarians were mumbling, ‘Another Forum is Possible’. This possibility is not only a matter of information and communication technology (which has yet to produce an English/Spanish translation programme with an appropriate vocabulary). It may be the combination, precisely, of this with youth, given that urban kids have grown up with cellular phones, playing arcade computer games, and therefore with an affinity for any computer technology, and a healthy disregard for attempts to coral such. (I was moved to produce my first-ever Power Point production, on WSF2, by my 12-year-old granddaughter, Joelle, who is also puzzled about my resistance to the cell phone, text-messaging and computer chat).

./english/402.txt:52:For the rest, I am inspired by: energetic and innovative social protest, and original analyses of the local-national-global dialectic in Argentina; by the belated appearance in Peru of a network, Raiz/Root, which clearly has some feeling that the WSF is more than an NGO jamboree; by the Kidz in the Kamp who were discussing under a tree, and with informal translation, how to ensure that the emancipatory and critical forces had more impact on the Forum process; by the struggle, against all odds, of the US Znet people to mount ‘Life after Capitalism’, an event of post-capitalist propuesta within the Forum; by the increasing number of compañer@s, of various ages, identities, movements and sexual orientations, who believe that, in the construction of a meaningfully civil global society, transparency is not only the best policy but the right one.

./english/402.txt:60:Escobar, Arturo. 2003. ‘Other Worlds Are (already) Possible: Cyber-Internationalism and Post-Capitalist Cultures. Draft Notes for the Cyberspace Panel, Life after Capitalism Programme, World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January 23-8’. http://www.zmag.org/escobarcyner.htm.

./english/402.txt:66:Ode. 2003. ‘Another World is Possible: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the World Social Forum’, Ode: The Magazine to Change Your World. (Rotterdam). 16-page insert.

./english/402.txt:70:Sen, Jai. 2003. ‘The Long March to Another World: Porto Alegre – Hyderabad – Porto Alegre, ‘Two, Three, Many New Social Forums?’, Special Issue, TransnationalAlternativ@s, (Transnational Institute, Amsterdam), No. 0. www.tni.org.tat.

./english/402.txt:74:Waterman, Peter (guest editor). 2003. ‘Two, Three, Many New Social Forums?’, Special Issue, TransnationalAlternativ@s, (Transnational Institute, Amsterdam), No. 0. www.tni.org.tat.

./english/402.txt:76:Waterman, Peter. 2003. ‘From “Decent Work” to “The Liberation of Time from Work”: Some Reflections on Work after Capitalism’. For the Panel on Work, Life after Capitalism Programme, World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January 23-8, 2003’. http://www.zmag.org/watermanwork.htm

./english/402.txt:78:Waterman, Peter. 2003. ‘Cyberspace after Capitalism: Cyber-Utopianism without Cyber-Illusionism: Paper for the Cyberspace Panel, Life after Capitalism Programme, World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January 23-8, 2003’. http://www.zmag.org/lac/watermancyber.htm.

./english/403.txt:25:Beyond such subterranean channels, social movements have often relied on corporate and state media as a means of communicating with other sections of society, with all the attendant risks that this reliance brings. Such ‘guerrilla tactics’ (Fiske 1989: 19) were again demonstrated as recently as the Melbourne S11 blockade of the World Economic Forum in 2000: for example, with the mock adoption of a John Farnham song as the protest anthem, and the media furore that this provoked. At the same time, this attempt to detourn corporate media also indicates a fundamental weakness of the movement itself:

./english/403.txt:37:It is with projects such as the Indymedia network (www.indymedia.org), however, that it becomes possible to talk of the emergence of a distinctly social movement electronic communications forum. The first Indymedia site was established as part of the Seattle days of protest, where they proved effective in relaying images, audio recordings and written accounts of the mass blockade (Weingartner 2001). Since then, Indymedia sites have been formed across Western Europe, the Americas, and Australasia (Shumway 2001) — and most ecently, in the Middle East. Powered by ‘open publishing’ software that allows users both to upload materials and to offer commentaries on the stories, opinions and images provided by others, Indymedia can be seen as part of a broader Internet phenomenon of sites fuelled by ‘the creativity of their users, not [by] professional producers as was the tradition with earlier electronic media’ (Arnison 2002). At the same time, Arnison has argued, one of the issues presently being debated within the Indymedia network of web sites is precisely ‘what to do when they are not covering a major event’. One response to this dilemma has been to mentor new ventures into ‘real world media’. In Melbourne, for example, there is The Paper, a fortnightly publication that began around the S11 protests, and has since carved out its own identity independently of the local Indymedia collective.

./english/403.txt:179:Scott, A. (2001) ‘(In)forming Politics: Processes of Feminist Activism in the Information Age’, Women’s Studies International Forum 24 (3/4).

./english/405.txt:4:Recent criticisms against the World Social Forum have been made by well-intentioned people, but reveal reactionary thinking. They introduce into the alterglobalisation movement logics that marked the Left in the twentieth century? and led it to a historic failure.

./english/405.txt:6:"Much is expected from those in whom we trust a great deal", Jesus Christ said once. It is possible that the same statement applies to projects that generate collective hope, like the World Social Forum (WSF). Just before its sixth edition, two articles that were published in journals of enormous visibility in the alterglobalisation galaxy, argued that the big world meeting of alternative movements is about to be over.

./english/405.txt:8:Their authors are connected to the history of the process that started in Porto Alegre. Ignacio Ramonet created the famous sentence: "Another world is possible"; Fran�ois Polet is assistant to Fran�ois Houtart, an important figure on the WSF International Council. The central arguments of both texts is very similar and can be summarised into three essential ideas: a) By unfolding itself, every year, in the form of thousands of activities and hundreds of ideas without hierarchy among themselves, the WSF keeps its participants fragmented and reduces itself to a folkloric parade of ideas and good intentions; b) The way to avoid this huge project losing itself is to make the Forum a great "general assembly of mankind", where actions that have priority are chosen to be adopted by all participants; c) The first step was taken in Porto Alegre, on January 2005, at the Plaza S�o Raphael Hotel, when nineteen intellectuals announced a manifesto that put forward twelve ideas that alterglobalisation should defend so that it would no longer be "morally victorious but without being effective". And in particular, at the end of his text Ignacio Ramonet suggests that it is only through government actions such as those being taken by Hugo Chavez that it is possible to avoid falling victim to neoliberalism.

./english/405.txt:26:Besides providing an open space for the articulation of common action, the editions of the WSF have been important laboratories of social science, where theories of transformation are being constantly re-elaborated. This power plant of ideas has at least two remarkable characteristics. It puts all emancipatory streams into contact with each other. Marxisms, Gandhiism, feminism, liberation Christianity, Gaia theories, thirdworldism, humanism, and others all dialogue and enrich each other constantly. They are present, as theoretical influences, in the self-organised activities during the Forums, where more and more we see the common factor is the meeting of participants from diverse countries and cultures. But this is exactly the second relevant idea: the debate of ideas does not happen only at an academic level, or within political parties. The Forum breaks barriers between intellectuals and activists. Intellectuals of international importance and leaders of different

./english/405.txt:30:Equally, this is where Social Forums and alterglobalisation are producing their first results. The refusal to repeat old formulas, the openness to learn from different points of view, and the reduced importance given to old political and academic hierarchies are allowing the birth of a new political

./english/405.txt:37:This ensemble of principles is not only a code of etiquette that Social Forums participants establish among themselves. It is possible that it also contains clues for a new emancipatory project.

./english/405.txt:44:Will we not be legitimate, to the contrary, to use World Social Forums ? these magnificent laboratories of actors, common actions, sensibilities and ideas to reinvent the fight to overcome capitalism? And if, for example, it were possible to do this starting from "open forms": from multiple anti-systemic initiatives unleashed by social actors that recognise themselves in the WSF and see in it not a space to "choose" priority campaigns, but to articulate, empower, and give a sense of commonality to the ones already underway?

./english/405.txt:51:roads it has opened? Why should we rush into a "choice" of campaigns supposedly capable of "unifying" the world of Social Forums? Why should we propose them from small groups, re-establishing the barrier between those who think and those who fight and violating the simultaneous commitment to equality and diversity?

./english/405.txt:53:Le Monde Diplomatique, the Three Continental Centre, and the World Forum of Alternatives have been inspiring sources of alterglobalisation since its gestation. The criticism that they now make should be seen as intellectual stimulation to the world of the WSF. In the same way, this "criticism of the criticisms" is made while being sure that Ignacio Ramonet and Fran?ois Polet will not renounce the journey at the first call of the sirens of the old traditions.

./english/408.txt:4:LONDON, [England], Jan 23 - Returning to London from Bombay was like moving from technicolor to black and white. Bombays ferocious but friendly vitality is mind-blowing at the best of times, but when this is combined with the diversity and energy of the Indian movements represented at the fourth World Social Forum (and the noise and colour of their demonstrations), the effect is to produce a surge of adrenalin that will keep me (and, Im sure, lots of others) going for a long time to come. Truly this was a festival of the oppressed.

./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:12:But what light did the Bombay Forum throw on the development of the global movement? First of all, the long-standing debate over the relationship between social movements and political parties was given a different modulation. In Porto Alegre the presence of the Workers Party (PT) was so all-informing that it could be taken for granted (Olivio Dutra, one of the founders of the Brazilian Forum and now Minister of the Cities in Lulas government, represented the PT in Bombay). India has the largest Communist movement in the world - two mass parliamentary parties, the quasi-Maoist Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Communist Party of India (pro-Moscow in the days of the USSR), plus various Marxist-Leninist (M-L) organizations that often lead very large and militant movements in different parts of the country. The WSF couldnt have happened in India without the support of

./english/408.txt:14:A related issue concerned the participation of NGOs in the WSF. Relatively uncontroversial in Brazil, this was hotly contested in India where much of the left have developed a fierce critique of the NGOs for creaming off activists into well-paid bureaucratic jobs and confining the movements they back to relatively narrow issues. This critique - plus the WSFs exclusion of armed struggle groups (some M-L organizations are still involved in guerrilla campaigns in some regions of rural India) - was used to justify the organization of two rival forums, one of which (Mumbai Resistance 2004) took place at the same time as the WSF. It was a flop, attracting a few thousand compared to the 100,000 who thronged the WSF - yet more evidence that cultivating revolutionary purity for its own sake merely isolates you from those whose interests you claim to represent.

./english/408.txt:16:The greatest index of the Forums success was the extensive participation of movements of the most oppressed groups of Indian society - the Dalits (untouchables) and lower castes. Some of us northerners seem to have reacted to what admittedly was an overwhelming romanticism by slipping into an easy romanticism, portraying the Dalit/lower-caste movements as a kind of spontaneous upswelling from below. But caste is an immensely complex phenomenon, and so is its politics. It is a symptom of the failure of the Indian left - what many activists I met described as its sterility and (in the case of the CPs) integration into the state - that it seems to have little connection with these movements.

./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/408.txt:30:Beyond that, the existence of various activists assemblies is a consequence of the principle that the Forum as a space that doesnt take decisions. I think that this is a piece of metaphysics that may have helped to bring together very different forces together in the initial phases of the WSF but that doesnt make much sense now. Pace Whittaker and Cassen, the Forums live through the interplay between all the debates, seminars, workshops etc that they offer a roof to and the movements and the calls to action to which they give rise. Rather than making a fetish of organizational norms devised at a much earlier phase of the movement of movements development, we should be looking for ways that promote this interplay while maintaining our unity.

./english/409.txt:8:For the past thirty years, a select group of CEOs and world leaders have met during the last week in January on a mountaintop in Switzerland to do what they presumed they were the only ones capable of doing: determine how the global economy should be governed. We were cheering because it was, in fact, the last week of January, and this wasnt the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It was the first annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. And even though we werent CEOs or world leaders, we were still going to spend the week talking about how the global economy should be governed.

./english/409.txt:10:Many people said that they felt history being made in that room. What I felt was something more intangible: the end of The End of History. And fittingly, "Another World Is Possible" was the events official slogan. After a year and a half of protests against the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the World Social Forum was billed as an opportunity for this emerging movement to stop screaming about what it is against and start articulating what it is for.

./english/409.txt:17:ATTAC, who helped organize the forum.

./english/409.txt:19:Which is where the World Social Forum came in: ATTAC saw the conference as an opportunity to bring together the best minds working on alternatives to neoliberal economic policies--not just new systems of taxation but everything from sustainable farming to participatory democracy to cooperative production to independent media. From this process of information swapping ATTAC believed its "common agenda" would emerge.

./english/409.txt:21:The result of the gathering was something much more complicated--as much chaos as cohesion, as much division as unity. In Porto Alegre the coalition of forces that often goes under the banner of antiglobalization began collectively to recast itself as a pro-democracy movement. In the process, the movement was also forced to confront the weaknesses of its own internal democracy and to ask difficult questions about how decisions were being made--at the World Social Forum itself and, more important, in the high-stakes planning for the next round of World Trade Organization negotiations and the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City at the end of April.

./english/409.txt:25:The result was a strange hybrid of all of the above, along with--at the opening ceremony at least--a little bit of Vegas floor show mixed in. On the first day of the forum, after the speeches finished and we cheered fanatically for the end of The End of History, the house lights went down and two giant screens projected photographs of poverty in Rios favelas. A line of dancers appeared on stage, heads bowed in shame, feet shuffling. Slowly, the photographs became more hopeful, and the people on stage began to run, brandishing the tools of their empowerment: hammers, saws, bricks, axes, books, pens, computer keyboards, raised fists. In the final scene, a pregnant woman planted seeds--seeds, we were told, of another world.

./english/409.txt:29:The forum was filled with these strange juxtapositions between underground ideas and Brazils enthusiastic celebrity culture: mustachioed local politicians accompanied by glamorous wives in backless white dresses rubbing shoulders with the president of the Peasants Movement of Brazil, known for chopping down fences and occupying large pieces of unused farmland. An old woman from Argentinas Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, with her missing childs name crocheted on her white head scarf, quietly sitting next to a Brazilian soccer star so adored that his presence provoked several hardened politicos to rip off pieces of their clothing and demand autographs. José Bové, the French cheese farmer known for "strategically dismantling" a McDonalds, unable to go anywhere without a line of bodyguards protecting him from the paparazzi.

./english/409.txt:33:One thing that wasnt so big at the World Social Forum was the United States. There were daily protests against Plan Colombia, the "wall of death" between the United States and Mexico, as well as George W. Bushs announcement that the new administration will suspend foreign aid to groups that provide information on abortion. In the workshops and lectures there was much talk of American imperialism, of the tyranny of the English language. Actual US citizens, though, were notably scarce. The AFL-CIO barely had a presence (John Sweeney was at Davos), and there was no one there from the National Organization for Women. Even Noam Chomsky, who said the forum "offers opportunities of unparalleled importance to bring together popular forces," sent only his regrets. Public Citizen had two people in Porto Alegre, but their star, Lori Wallach, was in Davos.

./english/409.txt:34:"Where are the Americans?" people asked, waiting in coffee lines and around Internet linkups. There were many theories. Some blamed the media: The American press wasnt covering the event. Of 1,500 journalists registered, maybe ten were American, and more than half of those were from Independent Media Centers. Some blamed Bush. The forum was held a week after his inauguration, which meant that most US activists were too busy protesting the theft of the election to even think about going to Brazil. Others blamed the French. Many groups didnt know about the event at all, in part because international outreach was done mainly by ATTAC, which, Christophe Aguiton acknowledged, needs "better links with the Anglo-Saxon world."

./english/409.txt:36:Most, however, blamed the Americans themselves. "Part of it is simply a reflection of US parochialism," said Peter Marcuse, a professor of urban planning at Columbia University and a speaker at the forum. Its a familiar story: If it doesnt happen in the United States, if it isnt in English, if its not organized by American groups, it cant be all that important--let alone be the sequel to the Battle of Seattle.

./english/409.txt:38:Last year, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote from Davos, "Every year at the World Economic Forum there is a star or theme that stands out"--the dot-coms, the Asian crisis. Last year according to Friedman, the star of Davos was "Seattle." Porto Alegre had a star as well; it was, without question, "democracy": What happened to it? How do we get it back? And why isnt there more of it within the conference itself?

./english/409.txt:44:In response to this democratic crisis, the forum set out to sketch the possible alternatives--but before long, some rather profound questions emerged. Is this a movement trying to impose its own, more humane brand of globalization, with taxation of global finance and more democracy and transparency in international governance? Or is it a movement against centralization and the delegation of power on principle, one as critical of left-wing, one-size-fits-all ideology as of the recipe for McGovernment churned out at forums like Davos (cut taxes, privatize, deregulate and wait for the trickle-down)? Its fine to cheer for the possibility of another world--but is the goal one specific other world ("our" world, some might say) or is it, as the Zapatistas put it, "a world with the possibility of many worlds in it?"

./english/409.txt:45:On these questions there was no consensus. Some groups, those with ties to political parties, seemed to be pushing for a united international organization or party and wanted the forum to issue an official manifesto that could form a governmental blueprint. Others, those working outside traditional political channels and often using direct action, were advocating less a unified vision than a universal right to self-determination and diversity: agricultural diversity, cultural diversity and, yes, even political diversity.

./english/409.txt:47:Atila Roque was one of the people who argued forcefully that the forum should not try to issue a single set of political demands. "We are trying to break the uniformity of thought, and you cant do that by putting forward another uniform way of thinking. Honestly, I dont miss the time when we were all in the Communist Party. We can achieve a higher degree of consolidation of the agendas, but I dont think civil society should be trying to organize itself into a party."

./english/409.txt:51:"This is a city that is developing a new model of democracy in which people dont just hand over control to the state," British author Hilary Wainwright said at the forum. "The challenge is, how do we extend that to a national and global level?"

./english/409.txt:52:Perhaps by transforming the anticorporate, antiglobalization movement into a pro-democracy movement that defends the rights of local communities to plan and manage their schools, their water and their ecology. In Porto Alegre, the most convincing responses to the international failure of representative democracy seemed to be this radical form of local participatory democracy, in the cities and towns where the abstractions of global rule become day-to-day issues of homelessness, water contamination, exploding prisons and cash-starved schools. Of course, this has to take place within a context of national and international standards and resources. But what seemed to be emerging organically out of the World Social Forum (despite the best efforts of some of the organizers) was not a movement for a single global government but a vision for an increasingly connected international network of very local initiatives, each built on direct democracy.

./english/409.txt:54:Democracy was a topic that came up not only on the panels and in workshops but also in the hallways and in raucous late-night meetings at the youth campground. Here the subject was not how to democratize world governance or even municipal decision-making--but something closer to home: the yawning "democratic deficit" of the World Social Forum itself.

./english/409.txt:56:On one level the forum was extraordinarily open: Anyone who wanted to could attend as a delegate, with no restrictions on numbers of attendees. And any group that wanted to run a workshop--alone or with another group--simply had to get a title to the organizing committee before the program was printed.

./english/409.txt:58:But there were sometimes sixty of these workshops going on simultaneously, while the main-stage events, where there was an opportunity to address more than 1,000 delegates at a time, were dominated not by activists but by politicians and academics. Some gave rousing presentations, while others seemed painfully detached: After traveling eighteen hours or more to attend the forum, few needed to be told that "globalization is a space of dispute." It didnt help that these panels were dominated by men in their fifties, too many of them white. Nicola Bullard, deputy director of Bangkoks Focus on the Global South, half-joked that the opening press conference "looked like the Last Supper: twelve men with an average age of 52." And it probably wasnt a great idea that the VIP room, an enclave of invitation-only calm and luxury, was made of glass. This in-your-face two-tiering amid all the talk of people power began to grate around the time the youth campsite ran out of toilet paper.

./english/409.txt:59:The griping about a "coup détat of the French intellectuals" was symbolic of a larger problem. The organizational structure of the forum was so opaque that it was nearly impossible to figure out how decisions were made or to find ways to question those decisions. There were no open plenaries and no chance to vote on the structure of future events. In the absence of a transparent process, fierce NGO brand wars were waged behind the scenes--about whose stars would get the most airtime, who would get access to the press and who would be seen as the true leaders of this movement.

./english/409.txt:61:By the third day, frustrated delegates began to do what they do best: Protest. There were marches and manifestoes--a half-dozen at least. Beleaguered forum organizers found themselves charged with everything from reformism to racism. The Anti-Capitalist Youth contingent accused them of ignoring the important role direct action played in building the movement. Their manifesto condemned the conference as "a ruse" using the mushy language of democracy to avoid a more divisive discussion of class. The PSTU, a breakaway faction of the Workers Party, began interrupting speeches about the possibility of another world with loud chants of: "Another world is not possible, unless you smash capitalism and bring in socialism!" (It sounded much better in Portuguese.)

./english/409.txt:63:Some of this criticism was unfair. The forum accommodated an extraordinary range of views, and it was precisely this diversity that made conflicts inevitable. By bringing together groups with such different ideas about power--unions, political parties, NGOs, anarchist street protesters and agrarian reformers--the World Social Forum only made visible the tensions that are always just under the surface of these fragile coalitions.

./english/409.txt:68:of such services as water and more aggressive protections of drug patents? Should the goal be to add onto these trade agreements or take entire sections out--water, agriculture, food safety, drug patents, education, healthcare? Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South, is unequivocal on this point. "The WTO is unreformable," he said at the forum, "and it is a horrible waste of money to push for reform. Labor and environmental clauses will just empower an already too-powerful organization."

./english/409.txt:69:But that is not the strategy leading up to the Summit of the Americas in Quebec. Several large labor organizations and NGOs have taken government money to organize a parallel Peoples Summit during the official week of meetings, and have yet to issue clear statements on the FTAA. Not surprisingly, there were tensions about these issues at the forum, with those favoring direct action accusing the Peoples Summit organizers of helping to make the closed FTAA process appear open to "civil society"--perhaps just the public relations gloss Bush needs to secure fast track.

./english/409.txt:70:There is a serious debate to be had over strategy and process, but its difficult to see how it will unfold without bogging down a movement whose greatest strength so far has been its agility. Anarchist groups, though fanatical about process, tend to resist efforts to structure or centralize the movement. The International Forum on Globalization--the brain trust of the North American side of the movement--lacks transparency in its decision-making and isnt accountable to a broad membership. Meanwhile, NGOs that might otherwise collaborate often compete with one another for publicity and funding. And traditional membership-based political structures like parties and unions have been reduced to bit players in these wide webs of activism.

./english/409.txt:72:Perhaps the real lesson of Porto Alegre is that democracy and accountability need to be worked out first on more manageable scales--within local communities and coalitions and inside individual organizations. Without this foundation, theres not much hope for a satisfying democratic process when 10,000 activists from wildly different backgrounds are thrown in a room together. What has become clear is that if the one "pro" this disparate coalition can get behind is "pro-democracy," then democracy within the movement must become a high priority. The Porto Alegre Call for Mobilization clearly states that "we challenge the elite and their undemocratic processes, symbolized by the World Economic Forum in Davos." Most delegates agreed that it simply wont do to scream Elitist! from a glass house--or from a glass VIP lounge.

./english/409.txt:74:Despite the moments of open revolt, the World Social Forum ended on as euphoric a note as it began. There was cheering and chanting, the loudest of which came when the organizing committee announced that Porto Alegre would host the forum again next year. The plane from Porto Alegre to São Paulo on January 30 was filled with delegates dressed head-to-toe in conference swag--T-shirts, baseball hats, mugs, bags--all bearing the utopian slogan: Another World Is Possible. Not uncommon, perhaps, after a conference, but it did strike me as noteworthy that a couple sitting in the seats across from me were still wearing their WSF name tags. It was as if they wanted to hang on to that dream world, however imperfect, for as long as they could before splitting up to catch connecting flights to Newark, Paris, Mexico City, absorbed in a hive of scurrying businesspeople, duty-free Gucci bags and CNN stock news.

./english/410.txt:4:PORTO ALEGRE: It was founded as the Un-Davos, the Anti-Davos, which would meet simultaneously with the events in Switzerland. And indeed the differences between the settings of the World Economic Forum and the World Social Forum could hardly be more striking: an exclusive ski resort on the one side, and a sun-baked Brazilian industrial town on the other. And whereas Davos hosts about 2200 of the global rich and famous in a cordoned-off village, about 150,000 to 200,000 people assembled in an open tent city near the center of Porto Alegre. However, the open space and diversity that make the anti-Davos gathering attractive may also prevent it from rising above the cacophony as an effective voice of a global civil society.

./english/410.txt:6:According to its charter of principles, the World Social Forum is designed to provide an "open meeting space for … groups that are opposed to neo-liberalism and the domination of the world by … any form of imperialism." Furthermore, it aims to contribute to building a "planetary society," which should lead to just and well-balanced forms of globalization. In that manner, the gathering is not opposed to globalization as such, but only to particular incarnations thereof. Generally, the attending groups shared the idea that reducing the public sector and liberalizing trade will not ultimately benefit poor countries and disadvantaged people. Against neo-liberal globalization they advocate alternative globalizations or the new slogan of "alter-globalization."

./english/410.txt:8:The Forum indeed offered plenty of opportunity to hear about the alternative globalization from prominent intellectuals such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Leonardo Boff, and Antonio Negri. Other events were characterized by the sharp rhetoric of large international activist groups, such as the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC). One could attend information sessions by international trade unions from Latin America, East Asia, Europe, and other parts of the world. Or one could talk to smaller NGOs and projects, ranging from Third World Foundations to groups such as the Coalition for a World Parliament.

./english/410.txt:12:During the past four years, this idea of a global civil society mobilizing against "McWorld" has proved to be quite successful in getting public attention. In 2001, the first World Social Forum was organized by grassroots movements such as the French ATTAC and partly sponsored by the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT). Whereas the first event drew a modest number of 12,000 activists, the fourth Forum (in Mumbai, 2004) attracted 80,000 people. This year, the number of participants rose to a staggering 150,000 to 200,000, and featured 2500 events organized by more than 5700 organizations from more than 100 countries. This year, more than 5400 journalists went to Porto Alegre to cover an event that in many countries received more public attention than the parallel meeting in Davos.

./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/410.txt:16:In order to ensure more regional representation, next year's World Social Forum will most probably be spread among several simultaneous meetings in different world regions. The disadvantage of this regional diversification is that the Forum may lose its character as a meeting place for all kinds of internationally operating NGOs. Still, the question of how to balance regional representation with the need for a unique discussion forum is not the only challenge to be tackled in the future. How can the Forum combine its character as an open space with the quest of forming one voice?

./english/410.txt:20:In the future, it may be possible to add religious representatives to the World Social Forum. But in that case, a defined set of global objectives and values may be even more elusive. There is a certain danger of the World Social Forum turning into an amorphous carnival of initiatives and projects. To counter this trend, a group of 19 high-profile activists, including Immanuel Wallerstein, Tariq Ali, and Eduardo Galeano, tried to hammer out a consensus document for the 2005 conference. Its 12 points include proposals ranging from debt cancellation to the adoption of a Tobin tax on international money transfers. Yet this "G19-group" drew criticism for trying to monopolize the Forum's agenda.

./english/410.txt:22:However, if the World Social Forum wants to become a global pressure group, it must narrow down its agenda. Only with a clearly defined program will a much needed dialog between Porto Alegre and Davos be possible. However, formulating such an agenda means excluding a range of alternative options and viewpoints. If the World Social Forum wants to deepen its international impact, it will no longer be able to claim to represent global civil society in toto.

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

./english/417.txt:14:Forums

./english/417.txt:24:Union (IGM) for Social Movements (including social forums). He said that a growing number

./english/417.txt:25:of trade unionists all over Europe participated in the Social Forum in Athens. This growing

./english/417.txt:26:number demonstrates that Social Forums have an increasing significance for trade unions.

./english/417.txt:30:question of how social forums will manage to be a space in which real agreements for com-

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

./english/417.txt:37: Social Forum in such a small country could be possible. Plus, there was strong counter

./english/417.txt:38: activity in Greece against a Social Forum. Athens shows that the movement against

./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:45: only the biggest forum but also the most pluralist one.

./english/417.txt:47: Forum. There were (too many) seminars for propaganda, which were as such not

./english/417.txt:49:-> A Social Forum cannot be organized by administrative decision from above, but has to

./english/417.txt:52:relations (for Greece, there will be a Forum in Thessaloniki focusing on preciousness). For the

./english/417.txt:55:  The committee stresses the success in expanding the forums and reducing the mistakes

./english/417.txt:57: participated in the forum, simultaneously the forum has to be seen as a productive ex-

./english/417.txt:61: thematically expanding forum. They built networks for voluntary and collective work,

./english/417.txt:62: which made the forum possible; they included networks which have not participated in

./english/417.txt:63: the forum process previously.

./english/417.txt:65:Forums organizers, some mistakes and unnecessary work could have been avoided.

./english/417.txt:67:  One of the main objectives for the Forum was the enlargement of the forum in terms

./english/417.txt:69: mer participants, the forum had lost after London.

./english/417.txt:70:  Since the social forum process is not a process of rich people, it had to be organized as

./english/417.txt:75:-> For the future regional social forums/meetings need to be supported for a more integrated

./english/417.txt:80:  The main goal was to organize a Forum with half of the money which was needed for

./english/417.txt:81: previous forums and not to rely on state money for the organization. It was estimated

./english/417.txt:85: order to enlarge the forum the solidarity fund had to be established and a good and

./english/417.txt:89: for the next forums.

./english/417.txt:92:tive about raising the money, but proposes a “financial security fund” for further forums.

./english/417.txt:100:-> However, there two problems have to be identified for future forums: Babels Greece could

./english/417.txt:108: forums. Even if a big chunk of money was spent for ALIS at the 4 th Social Forum, it

./english/417.txt:109: was less than a commercial solution and is re-usable for further forums.

./english/417.txt:110:  The World Social Forum in Nairobi will profit from it as will other EPA’s and Fo-

./english/417.txt:116:Forum through a serious of workshops with a focus on Laicism, Democracy in Europe,

./english/417.txt:120:Social Forum

./english/417.txt:126:-> Transversal issues/questions (future of the forum, how do we stand in regards to patriarchal

./english/417.txt:130:Ada (Russian Social Forum)

./english/417.txt:139:Turkish Social Forum

./english/417.txt:140:+ The ESF was essential for organizing a Turkish Social Forum in September 2006 (with

./english/417.txt:147:Lars Bonk, Danish Social Forum (attac Denmark)

./english/417.txt:153:-> the Forum has to be democratized

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

./english/417.txt:161:-> Participation of activists whose impact lie beyond the current forum impact need to be ex-

./english/417.txt:164:cific groups. The Forum’s approach of pluralism has to be more visible and be reflected

./english/417.txt:168:rather than the dynamic of the whole forum. This slowed down the work for seminars, topics

./english/417.txt:174:-> Each Forum needs to have a goal, a project

./english/417.txt:186:tending since they think of the Forum as too traditional , propagandistic, repeatable. In Italy it

./english/417.txt:187:is difficult to promote participation. Thus, the question is how to expand the Forum

./english/417.txt:188:-> The Forum needs to be organized as a public space for very different people

./english/417.txt:189:-> The Forum will be lost if there are struggles over hegemony – the Forum does not belong

./english/417.txt:191:within the Forum

./english/417.txt:192:Leo Gabriel, Social Forum Austria

./english/417.txt:194:zontal relationships, vice versa Social Forums can profit form the experiences made there:

./english/417.txt:203:In order to make a good Forum happen, priorities needs to be made. The goal of the “propa-

./english/417.txt:216:Forum as a place for societal debates allowed especially interesting debates on migration and

./english/417.txt:219:-> For the next Forum the focus should lie on the EU as well as the G8 summit, the coopera-

./english/417.txt:228:Social Forums have a key responsibility for movement dynamics. Therefore there are specific

./english/417.txt:230:-> Although the forum was enlarged territorially, some networks and movements were lost in

./english/417.txt:240:Judith Dellheim, Social Forum Berlin/Germany

./english/417.txt:245:-> The Forum should remain a space for reflecting on political failures and successes, there-

./english/417.txt:252:The 4 th Forum demonstrated a new stage: Thematic networks emerged and new thematic dy-

./english/417.txt:261:Lisa, Sweden Social Forum,. Attac

./english/417.txt:273:Visibility of the Forum depends on the dynamic of the movements involved.

./english/417.txt:278:Much more thought should be given to ways to expand the forum ‘s participation in regards to

./english/417.txt:282:  A Social Forum cannot be organized by administrative decision from above, but has to

./english/417.txt:285: cial Forums organizers, some mistakes and unnecessary work could have been

./english/417.txt:289:  For the future, regional social forums/meetings need to be supported for a more inte-

./english/417.txt:294:  A “financial security fund” should be set up for further forums. Financial means have

./english/417.txt:310:  The Charta is e a crucial question for expanding the Forum. The Forum needs to be

./english/417.txt:312:  The Forum will be lost if there are struggles over hegemony – the Forum does not be-

./english/417.txt:315: struggles within the Forum. The (enforcement of the) Charta of principles as well as

./english/417.txt:318: party, since the Forum should remain a space for reflecting on political failures and

./english/417.txt:325: Forum.

./english/417.txt:338:Democratizing the Forum

./english/417.txt:353: specific groups. The Forum’s approach of pluralism has to be more visible and be re-

./english/417.txt:363:  Participation of activists whose impact lie beyond the current forum needs to be ex-

./english/417.txt:366:  Although the forum was enlarged territorially, some networks and movements were

./english/417.txt:368:  More thought should be given to ways to expand the forum ‘s participation in regards

./english/417.txt:371:  Each Forum needs to have a goal, a project. Alternative projects for the society needs

./english/417.txt:375:  For the next Forum the focus should lie on the EU as well as the G8 summit, the coop-

./english/417.txt:388:  Local Social Forums - Contact: Mariangela Casalucci maciacia50@hotmail.com

./english/419.txt:16:IG. 13. Need to organise at a local level (local/ regional…social forum )

./english/419.txt:37:IM. 17. How to create local forum everywhere

./english/470.txt:4:Forums Worldwide

./english/470.txt:6:The forums worldwide include relatively local events for small towns, cities, counties, whole states, and even regions. Examples are forums for Ithaca NY, Brisbane Australia, South Africa, and Asia. There are many instances at each level, including, for example, about a hundred in towns throughout Italy.

./english/470.txt:8:These forums worldwide have two universal aims, and beyond that, much variation.

./english/470.txt:13:Moreover, by all evidence, the forums worldwide cause even disagreeing activists to congregate, to hear one another, to develop new ties, and to take seriously economic, political, gender, race, culture, ecology, globalization, and international goals and strategies. Some local forums excellently generate shared program and actions among subsets of participants. But even short of that, by at least enhancing solidarity and enlarging vision, all the local forums powerfully aid movements.

./english/470.txt:15:Another attribute of the forums worldwide, more in evidence the more local they are, is accountability and transparency. Local forum organizers are generally well known to the people participating and attending. Even for forums lacking a fully democratic process, the decision-makers are at least known enough to the attendees to be accountable. Decisions are subject to challenge, refinement, and renovation.

./english/470.txt:17:Similarly, local forums have a manageable scale.

./english/470.txt:21:Without exaggerating the virtues of the forums worldwide, they are having positive effects and moving in participatory, transparent, and democratic directions.

./english/470.txt:23:The World Social Forum, however, is different.

./english/470.txt:25:The World Social Forum

./english/470.txt:27:The bottom-up forums worldwide were spurred into existence by a very top-down World Social Forum. The former have yet to reform the latter. So in contrast to the forums worldwide, the WSF is not yet transparent or accountable much less democratic. It has become unmanageable. And while it has profoundly valuable participation, there are often sharp and even destructive differences between the WSF's layers of participants. While some of these difficulties certainly derive from doing a massive event with unreliable and insufficient resources, there are other avenues of improvement, as well.

./english/470.txt:33:After WSF 2, I was enlisted to help with a variety of forum-related projects and, as a means to facilitate my doing so, I was asked to join the WSF's International Council. I missed a Spring and a Summer meeting, one in Thailand, the other in Barcelona. However, I did attend a meeting in Italy in the Fall. My experience was that the council wasn't a serious seat of power. In fact, my impression was that the International Council of the World Social Forum was barely a rubber stamp.

./english/470.txt:41:The real WSF leadership, I think, makes many key decisions. Will the event have Lula present, and in what capacity? What about Castro, or Chavez? Will there be exclusions, and if so on what grounds? The Zapatistas? Will being in a party, advocating violent tactics, or even just being from some group that the inner circle finds too radical or otherwise dislikes (such as the Disobedienti from Italy, or the international People's Global Action) preclude prominent participation? What content will be part of the core of the events (more on this below) and what content will be left as periphery? Who will have their way paid--and who will not? Will there be a march, and who will be the key speakers? Will there be a collective statement, with what content? What efforts will or won’t be made to achieve gender balance, race balance, geographic balance? How will class differences be addressed, if at all, within the process and more broadly? How will press be handled, both mainstream and alternative? Will the WSF start to discuss facilitating an international movement of movements, or will it persist only as a forum? What will be the accommodation between advocating reform of capitalism and advocating a new system entirely?

./english/470.txt:69:There is another odd if very much unintended layering effect at the WSF. The WSF is called a world forum. We all say "the WSF had 100,000 participants." And when I say and hear phrases like that, to me it sounds like a claim that 100,000 people from all over the world gathered. But while the WSF 3 did attract roughly 100,000 people, understandably perhaps as many as 70,000 were from Brazil, and perhaps another 15,000 were from neighboring countries in South America. So one might as reasonably say that this was a major South American Forum that invited 10-15,000 people from around the world to attend as presenters or as guests, as to say it was a world forum. Shouldn’t a world forum be worldly representative, with some degree of proportion among its delegates to movements and activism around the world?

./english/470.txt:73:So what is to be done about the WSF? It has been a remarkable phenomenon three times so far. It has propelled forums worldwide. It has educated, inspired, and engendered ties and connections. Its structure and processes were a miracle the first year, amazing the second year, but have begun to fall short the third year. The WSF, with all its virtues, is in diverse ways reaching the limits of its current incarnation.

./english/470.txt:77:(1) Emphasize local forums as the foundation of the worldwide forum process.

./english/470.txt:79:(2) Have each new level of forums, from towns, to cities, to countries, to continents, to the world, be built largely on those below.

./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/470.txt:87:(6) Have the forums from wealthier parts of the world charge delegates and organizations and attendees a tax on their fees to apply to helping finance the forums in poorer parts of the world and to subsidize delegate attendance at the world forum from poorer locales, as well.

./english/470.txt:89:(7) Make the once a year international WSF a delegate event. Cities and states in Brazil should have a forum. So should Brazil as a whole. So should other countries in South America, and so should South America as a whole. And likewise for India and South Asia, for South Africa and Africa, and so on. But the World Event should be different. It should be representative.

./english/470.txt:91:(8) Have the WSF attendance be 5,000-10,000 people delegated to it from the major regional forums around the world. Have the WSF leadership be selected by regional forums. Mandate the WSF to share and compare and propose based on all that is emerging worldwide -- not to listen again to the same famous speakers who everyone hears worldwide all the time anyhow -- and have the WSF's results, like those of all other forums, published and public, and of course reported by delegates back to the regions.

./english/470.txt:93:(9) Feature grassroots activists from movements around the world much more prominently in major events and throughout all forums to strengthen the WSF and local forums as vehicles for their activity and counter tendencies toward elitism.

./english/470.txt:95:(10) Ensure that the WSF as a whole and the forums worldwide not make the mistake of trying to become an international, a movement of movements, or even just a voice of the world's movements. To be a forum, the WSF and the smaller component forums need to be as broad and diverse as possible. But, being that broad and that diverse is simply being too broad and too diverse to be an organization. The forums can and should be venues for meeting. They can and should facilitate networking among mutually congenial participants that leads to shared actions. But to be an organization that takes decisions about anything other than its component forums would transcend the forum project's degree of unity.

./english/470.txt:97:(11) Mandate that the forums at every level, including the WSF, welcome people from diverse constituencies using the forums and their processes to make contacts and to develop ties that can in turn yield national, regional, or even international networks or movements of movements which do share sufficiently their political aspirations to work closely together, but which exist alongside rather than instead of the forum phenomenon.

./english/471.txt:1:Making History: The Future of the World Social Forum

./english/471.txt:4:The World Social Forum in Mumbai was democracy in action in search of a fairer, people-centred world, says one of its Indian organisers. But to advance its global ambitions, must it look beyond Brazil as the site of future forums?

./english/471.txt:6:The fourth World Social Forum, and the first held outside Brazil, concluded in Mumbai on 21 January after six days of intensive discussion, rallies and cultural events. What did this event really mean? Why did they participate – more than 100,000 people, including both the 15,000 from over 130 countries outside India itself, and the overwhelming numbers of urban and rural poor, Dalits, tribals and women?

./english/471.txt:8:They came, most evidently, to protest against the failure of neo-liberal globalisation to provide equitable and sustainable development, and to debate alternatives. The forum – in the 1,200-plus public meetings, seminars and workshops organised by movements from India and abroad – had, as its overarching themes, discussion of the forces that disfigure humanity: patriarchy, racism, caste-ism, religious sectarianism, and militarism.

./english/471.txt:10:These discussions voiced a rich variety of views from the environmental, women’s, tribal, indigenous peoples’, workers’, peasants’ and other movements, and diverse intellectual and political tendencies. Such a plurality is built into the forum and its charter, in the form of the concept of an ‘open space’ that encourages contending opinions to debate and exchange experiences. This space includes those figures (like Joseph Stiglitz and Mary Robinson) who want a reformed liberal model to replace the neo-liberal ‘Washington consensus’ that dominates the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the OECD; and more radical critics who seek anti-capitalist alternatives (like Immanuel Wallerstein, Samir Amin and Walden Bello).

./english/471.txt:16:Some of the WSF’s critics have variously charged the forum with being a foreign-funded talk-shop or nothing more than a carnival. The cacophony of views expressed at the WSF, activists in the Mumbai Resistance event claim, disables the unity of the opposition that is needed to United States attempts to secure its global hegemony.

./english/471.txt:20:The Mumbai WSF, in contrast to the Brazilian committee which had arranged earlier forums, decided not to accept funding from agencies like the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Britain’s department of international development (DfID). So the Indian media image of elite, foreign-funded intellectuals dominating the ‘rented’ crowds in Mumbai is a canard; as is the comment that most participants were not intellectually engaged and had come only for a latter-day Woodstock-type carnival.

./english/471.txt:23:Yet it is precisely the combination of shared concern and frank discussion of these complexities by major intellectuals, leaders of mass movements and activists – in audiences large and small, from 50 to 50,000 – that makes the World Social Forum unique. This is the WSF’s strength and the reason why it will endure: a commitment to democratic debate founded on diversity and openness, and a recognition of the responsibility of intellectuals to question received wisdom from whatever source.

./english/471.txt:26:Again, the intrinsic character of the forum itself presents an answer to such inequality of treatment. This enormous popular gathering – even larger and more diverse than its predecessor in Porto Alegre – featured extensive discussions by feminist organisations, and noted intellectuals like Nawal al-Saadawi and the 2003 Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi. These discussions included criticisms of the aggressively patriarchal attitudes that lead to and legitimise crimes against women; and creative feminist analyses of dominant, neo-realist, state-centric concepts of ‘national security’.

./english/471.txt:30:The main practical lesson of the Mumbai WSF is the need to provide more time for informal discussion and exchange of experiences. The wish of the organisers to give all movements the space they desired meant that formal discussions stretched from 9am to 8pm. This did not leave enough time for more relaxed dialogue. A shortage of funds also left many good and diverse discussions unrecorded even in summary form – a major drawback which deprived the forum of what would have been an invaluable record of a historic event.

./english/471.txt:32:Despite these limitations, the WSF’s international council believes that the Mumbai event was a milestone of social organisation in India itself, and across Asia as a whole. In both nation and continent, the Mumbai forum marks the broadening of alliances against the world’s dominant economic model and the politics of communalism and bigotry.

./english/471.txt:33:It is likely that, after 2006, such massive annual mobilisations will be held only every two years, with continental and regional forums in the intervening year. There is also a sense that the forum must move beyond its Brazilian base as much as possible; the hosting of the event in different continents and countries in principle would expand and strengthen the global reach of alternatives to neo-liberalism.

./english/472.txt:1:The World Social Forum and the rise of global politics

./english/472.txt:4:The size and diversity of the yearly World Social Forum are at the same time its strengths and its limitations. The Forum provides an opportunity to exchange and debate local and global strategies for social justice, but the realities of the Forum itself give rise to its own internal structural debates.

./english/472.txt:7:Since 2001, activists from around the world who are opposed to neoliberal corporate globalization have gathered annually at the World Social Forum (WSF). The Forum brings together tens of thousands of people from the world’s social movements and nongovernmental organizations in pursuit of varied agendas: for women’s rights, small-scale worker-controlled enterprises, public health, community-controlled schools and a host of other causes. In the words of Naomi Klein, it’s a movement of “one no and many yeses.”1 The phrase captures the pluralism and diversity of the movement, but at the same time makes clear that there is a core of unity about what it opposes. It also shows why it is difficult to analyze the movement.

./english/472.txt:9:The central point of unity in the movement is its opposition to the neoliberal model promoted by international financial institutions (IFIs) and transnational corporations. The IFIs condition loans to the governments of developing countries on a fiscal austerity that requires those governments to limit spending on their people’s needs. And the corporations invest in manufacturing plants for export, driving down wages as they threaten to move their investments in search of cheaper labor. In the eyes of their critics, IFIs and transnational corporations perpetuate poverty in the Third World, while increasing the steadily growing riches of the First. Indeed, the Forum’s “Charter of Principles” broadly states that the WSF is “opposed to neoliberalism and to the domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism…. The alternatives proposed at the World Social Forum stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations’ interests, with the complicity of national governments.”2

./english/472.txt:13:The Forum held its first three meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil and the fourth in Mumbai, India. The fifth met in Porto Alegre from January 26 to 31, 2005, as this article went to press. The WSF has been a heady experience for its many participants. Imagine a gathering with tens of thousands of people (100,000 in 2003) successfully communicating across barriers of language, political orientation and issue emphasis. The scene bursts with energy as people who work on particular causes at home—feminism, the environment, indigenous rights, economic justice, human rights, AIDS treatment and prevention and many more—compare notes and strategies. Musicians and other performers entertain in the open air during breaks, and dozens of organizations and publishers promote their projects and publications.

./english/472.txt:15:Economic inequality features prominently in the discussions and debates. The Forum provides participants a chance to discuss strategies and programs for collective action. Against the belief in the free market prevailing in official circles, they seek to formulate a new discourse that will help them recover the ideological offensive. Rejecting Margaret Thatcher’s oft-repeated injunction that “there is no alternative” to transnational capitalism, the Forum’s slogan insists that “Another World is Possible.”

./english/472.txt:19:Participants also celebrate the great diversity among the people and groups the Forum brings together. They proclaim their respect for the varying opinions expressed and for the many cultures visibly present, and they defend the right of all to differ with one another.3

./english/472.txt:21:The WSF is self-limiting; its charter, adopted at the first forum in Porto Alegre, explicitly excludes political parties and forswears taking political positions or proposing actions.4 It is a space, not an actor: it opens its agenda to all the forces wanting to discuss the issues relevant to the struggle for a better world.

./english/472.txt:23:While like-minded activists attend hundreds of meetings in small rooms, they gather by the thousands in plenary sessions to hear prominent international activists such as Samir Amin, Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy. Some grumble that a democratic movement should not give so much space to celebrities, but against this, the WSF weighs the need to attract the international media and, to some extent, tailors the event to the media’s demands. Though a double-edged sword, international media attention has helped the Forum communicate its breadth of demands and its broad opposition to neoliberalism.

./english/472.txt:25:These events bear fruit afterward. After meeting so many fellow activists from so many different places, people return home actually believing that another world is possible—in part because they feel they have experienced it. But it has concrete results as well. The Social Forum has inspired many replicas at the regional, national and local levels, and among specific interest groups organized around particular themes. The 2003 gathering contributed to organizing the massive February 15, 2003, demonstrations opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq in which a reported 10 to 15 million people participated in cities around the world.

./english/472.txt:27:Organizers of the WSF originally conceived of the meeting as a counterweight to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the annual conclave of the international capitalist class that usually meets in Davos, Switzerland. (The WSF times its meetings to coincide with those of the WEF.) In 2000, a network of Brazilian and French activists, NGOs and unions began organizing a meeting for the following year. Many of the Brazilian groups had indirect ties to the Workers’ Party (PT), while the French activists were largely from the Association for a Tobin Tax for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC, later renamed Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens), an international movement based in France to promote a proposed tax on international speculative capital movements, with the aim of making developing countries less vulnerable to capital flight.

./english/472.txt:33:The PT and the city government spared no effort in showing off the budgeting process to WSF delegates. Under the PT mayor, the city provided major financial and logistical support for the Forum in its first years, as did the PT governor of Rio Grande do Sul, the state of which Porto Alegre is the capital. When the PT lost the gubernatorial election in 2002, however, the state withdrew some resources from the WSF. And the party’s loss of the mayoralty in 2004 further dampened the welcome in 2005.

./english/472.txt:37:The first forum brought 20,000 participants from over 100 countries to Porto Alegre from January 25 to 30, 2001. In the most dramatic incident of the gathering, the MST and José Bové, the French peasant leader and anti-McDonald’s activist, led the occupation of a farm near Porto Alegre owned by the U.S.-based biotech multinational Monsanto. The company was allegedly developing genetically modified seeds on the farm. The takeover made some of the Brazilian NGOs on the Organizing Committee fear they had unleashed a monster they could not control. Consequently, they tried to moderate the tone of the second forum in 2002 to prevent a repeat of incidents like the Monsanto occupation.

./english/472.txt:41:A highlight of the third forum was the presence of the newly elected Brazilian President, the PT’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. While speaking of his “Zero Hunger” program to guarantee every Brazilian three meals a day, the charismatic former factory worker also responded to criticism of his previous announcement that he would proceed to the World Economic Forum in Davos. While many in the audience shouted, “Stay here!” he promised to say in Davos “exactly what I would say to anybody here: that it is impossible to continue an economic order where a few can eat five times a day and many go five days without eating.”5

./english/472.txt:43:The fourth Forum moved to Mumbai, symbolically staking in Asia the claim to be a genuine world forum. About 80,000 people attended, making it smaller than the previous meeting at Porto Alegre, but larger than the first two, and laying to rest the fears of some that it would be impossible to attract similar numbers from the many cultures and the extreme poverty of South Asia. The atmosphere was festive, following local traditions of including musical and dramatic performance in political demonstrations. The widespread Indian NGO network brought more poor people to the Mumbai Forum than were in evidence at any of the Porto Alegre meetings.

./english/472.txt:46:Each forum has attracted parallel events. At Porto Alegre, self-organized world forums of education, trade unions, judges, peasants (Vía Campesina, a worldwide confederation of national peasants’ organizations fighting for land reform) and many more have all met concurrently. At the 2003 WSF, the youth camp, a tent city that sheltered some 25,000 people, had its own loosely organized, anarchic program of activities, though the campers also participated in the main events.

./english/472.txt:48:After the 2003 Social Forum, many of those who had celebrated it for the first two years began to complain that the WSF was not living up to its promise to serve as a model of democratic organization. Indeed, the forum now contends with four big issues of internal debate: internal democracy, political action, global vs. local struggles and class inequality. The first two issues have been debated extensively in the forum’s councils and on the Internet. The latter two have not been so openly recognized.

./english/472.txt:50:Size and format conspire against democracy. A global movement has to be big, but the Social Forum bursts at the seams. It is a challenge for tens of thousands of people to come together in the same space for a short time and accomplish anything. The plenaries held in stadiums that seat 15,000 people only allow for one-way communication. Even the smaller workshops held in classrooms are often impersonal. Most of them follow a hierarchical model: a panel faces an audience, gives prepared talks and leaves little time at the end for the audience to respond.

./english/472.txt:56:Along with the issue of internal democracy, the Forum debates the strategic issue of its external projection: whether it can take concerted political action as a body. The Charter adopted in 2001 ruled out joint action, but many participants, including many on the International Council, want the Forum to propose and undertake worldwide political action. The political moderates, however, especially those within the NGO community, value the Forum as an opportunity for international networking and the exchange of ideas. They do not want the forum to go beyond its provision of a “space”: it should be a talking shop for civil society and should steer clear of political intervention.

./english/472.txt:58:Other activists agree, but for a different reason: some fear that any concerted action coming out of the Social Forum will be marked by the same rigid, top-down organization that they criticize in the Forum itself. Naomi Klein, for example, would prefer the movement to remain rooted in decentralized communities, neighborhood councils and land reform, “networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.”6

./english/472.txt:60:Some on the International Council, on the other hand, see it as a waste to hold such a Forum merely to offer the like-minded a chance to talk among themselves. They contend that the Forum should seize upon its size and energy to offer a more coordinated challenge to transnational capital. The NGO-network model has “abandoned strategic programmes for the construction of a new type of society,” writes Emir Sader, a Brazilian sociologist on the International Council.7 “They talk about thinking globally and acting locally, but the most they can do is resist.” Instead, Sader calls on the Forum to frame “global alternatives to the big problems of the world” and present a unified challenge.

./english/472.txt:62:Here is a key dilemma: how can the forum’s base act globally when it is so deliberately diverse and the priority of most participants is with their local and sectoral concerns? At the forum they discover that the problems are worldwide and learn about new ways to act locally, but they do not learn to confront the problems on a global scale. They believe that all their efforts will collectively add up to a global solution, but others argue that only a targeted struggle has any chance of success.

./english/472.txt:64:There is another largely unaddressed issue: stark class disparities pervade the Forum. Though the elite within the movement place themselves in solidarity with the oppressed, the Forum reproduces the hierarchy it claims to be fighting on a global scale. The class divide largely falls along the geographic division between North and South. It starts with who can afford to attend. Class differences create an internal hierarchy within the Forum that produces divergent positions on important global issues.

./english/472.txt:68:There is also a striking gender imbalance—not among participants but among speakers. Though some women who are stars of the international global justice movement, such as Arundhati Roy, Medea Benjamin and Susan George, have addressed the forum, many plenaries, panels and even the smaller workshops have only male speakers. It is paradoxical, of course, that such divisions and imbalances should weigh so heavily within a broad global movement dedicated to equality and to an improved life for the marginalized and excluded of the world.

./english/472.txt:70:The Social Forum must work within these contradictions and overcome them collectively. It has exposed some of the problems inherent in mobilizing opposition to capitalism on a global scale. So far, internal problems have not been overwhelming. Activists rejoice in the opportunity to come together, meet and learn from each other. The Social Forum is inherently pluralistic. It would be hard to imagine an event of comparable scope and reach achieving greater coordination.

./english/472.txt:72:In any case, the debates are mostly waged not at the Forum itself but in print and on the Internet before and afterward. Most participants don’t have to choose. They are happy to live the exhilarating experience of global solidarity, tangible in their interaction with others from around the world. They return home ready to fight against war and imperialism, energized to carry on the fight for social justice and popular sovereignty in their communities and in their countries.

./english/473.txt:4:The World Social Forum pioneered new forms of global activism and democracy. Now it is being pressed to take the shape of an older politics, reports Solana Larsen in Caracas.

./english/473.txt:5:When 100,000 optimistic activists get together in one of the most colourful and dynamic events the world has ever seen, you've got to expect a good deal of music and dancing, clapping and stomping. But as the sixth World Social Forum slowly unravels, first in Bamako, Mali and now in Caracas, Venezuela, there is also a great deal of frustration over the fact that "nothing" seems to be coming out of this enormous effort.

./english/473.txt:7:Certainly, the world is still a terrible mess, and many of the participants of the forum - or in most cases the people they represent - live in extreme poverty and face early deaths. Neoliberal capitalism is still king, and in spite of victories across South America especially, the global left still has less impact that their counterparts at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland who are also gathering this week.

./english/473.txt:9:"This forum will not lead to anything; we'll just hear the same speeches," said a teacher from Bamako to South Africa's Mail & Guardian on 18 January, the eve of the forum. "Before, it was politicians putting us to sleep with their words - now it's those who question globalisation..." Similarly, the secretary general of Civicus , a world alliance of non-governmental organisations, Kumi Naidoo, called for the forum to agree on and propose real solutions instead of only complaining about the world's problems.

./english/473.txt:11:The impulse to raise the stakes and turn the World Social Forum into a more consolidated political force is in some ways an expression of frustration. But several of the founders of the WSF, among them world-renowned social activist Chico Whitaker , are unequivocally opposed to the growing number of calls for manifestos and proposals.

./english/473.txt:12:"If people are frustrated, it's because they are expecting something they can never get from the forum," said Whitaker over the telephone from Brazil on 20 January.

./english/473.txt:16:Whitaker insists the primary purpose of the forum is to create a space for free dialogue between social movements, and that its openness should not be compromised by confining participants to any narrow statement of intent. More importantly, he says it would be "impossible" to represent the views of such a diverse gathering in one statement. "The forum would be finished," said Whitaker. "Those who disagreed would stop coming - I would stop coming." (This year, Whitaker was in Recife, Brazil planning a national Brazilian Social Forum.)

./english/473.txt:18:One group of very influential intellectuals at the forum disagree with him. At the 2005 World Social Forum in Brazil " a group of 19 " - including Frei Betto, Immanuel Wallerstein, Eduardo Galeano, and Tariq Ali - signed a document they called the Porto Alegre Consensus Manifesto and urged others to sign on ( openDemocracy translated it into English, here ). It created intense controversy and an uncomfortable divide between those who agreed with the manifesto and those who didn't. Many also questioned the undemocratic way the document was conceived and proposed.

./english/473.txt:20:It doesn't take much imagination to foresee a situation where the global social-justice movement spends all its time arguing about how to phrase joint statements. As if the world needed yet another arena for internal power struggles and empty words in place of direct action. Consensus language could also easily provoke more wrath of the type offered by Fred Halliday in the Observer in the aftermath of the 2005 forum.

./english/473.txt:21:But a year later, the Porto Alegre Consensus Manifesto has not been forgotten, and the mere mention of it makes Whitaker huff. "It was an initiative by only a small group of participants at the forum," he said. "Their views do not represent the forum as a whole."

./english/473.txt:23:Alarm bells rang again for Whitaker and his colleagues, when they heard that WSF organisers in Bamako - among them Samir Amin , director of the Third World Forum and a signatory to the original Porto Alegre Consensus document - were planning to use the opening session of the Forum to revive the Bandung initiative , an alliance that brought twenty-nine African and Asian countries together against American and Soviet power-blocs fifty years ago.

./english/473.txt:25:Concerned that they were trying to represent the views of everyone at the forum, Whitaker says he helped write a letter to Amin a few days before the forum began. It politely asked whether this session was simply a separate "initiative", or whether they in fact were launching the Bamako forum in a manner that goes against its charter of principles . The response arrived shortly after the forum began. It was simply an initiative, and it was presented as such.

./english/473.txt:27:But Whitaker - whose book on the WSF will be published in English later this year - said he was also concerned about talk of "countries" doing anything at a gathering of social movements where neither governments nor parties are invited. Of course, judging by the number of different socialist party banners at these conferences, you would think someone had forgotten to tell participants this. Star speakers at the Brazil Forums in 2003 and 2005 were President Lula of Brazil and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

./english/473.txt:29:"As 'people' from parties they can show up," says Whitaker, explaining that participants organising sessions are free to invite anyone they want. In 2005, Lula was invited to launch the Global Call Against Poverty ( GCAP ); and the Brazilian landless people's movement, MST , invited Chávez. This year, in Caracas, many feel Chávez's people are playing too strong a role in the organisation of the forum. A group of young activists have even organised an Alternative Social Forum , which many local youth and Venezuelan bloggers are attending instead.

./english/473.txt:31:This struggle between governments, parties, and WSF organisers is inevitable. From Porto Alegre to Recife to Caracas, it is impossible to organise a Forum without the support of local government. "They always try to interfere," says Whitaker, adding that it is ultimately up to the local organisers of any event to stand their ground against interference with the programme. "If they don't say no they will be manipulated," he said, "I hope this is not the case of the organisers in Caracas."

./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/474.txt:1:World Social Forum: Time to walk the talk?

./english/474.txt:4:The debate on whether the World Social Forum (WSF) should remain merely a space for reflection and protest or should move on to proposals for concrete action once again emerged at the sixth edition of the annual global civil society meet, taking place in the Venezuelan capital this week.

./english/474.txt:6:The discussion on moving "from protests to proposals" began last year at the fifth edition of the Forum, in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, where the WSF was first held in 2001.

./english/474.txt:12:The debate on whether or not the Forum should move towards action is taking place this week in a country whose government proclaims itself to be revolutionary and on the path to a still-undefined "21st century socialism", and whose leader, Chávez, has been an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy.

./english/474.txt:14:Many of the foreign participants taking part in the Forum were at least partly moved to come by an urge to obtain a firsthand view of the changes that the Chávez administration has brought about, mainly through his social programmes - known here as "missions" - in the areas of health, education and food security.

./english/474.txt:18:Dirceu said in Caracas that the Forum was held here because of the process of change that Venezuela is undergoing, which is "based on real participation by the people."

./english/474.txt:22:In his view, the Forum "has become the voice of those who are suffering from globalisation," and the idea is for people to listen to each other, in order to move towards a collective grassroots vision.

./english/474.txt:26:"Although it would be a mistake to straitjacket all WSF delegates into an artificially-constructed consensus on policy positions, it is important that the Forum correct the myth that there are no major policy directions that most WSF delegates share and advocate - both within and outside of the WSF," he added.

./english/474.txt:28:A survey carried out by the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (IBASE) at last year's Forum in Porto Alegre revealed that 60 percent of the participants considered themselves to be leftist, while 19.8 percent described themselves as centre-left.

./english/474.txt:30:Last year's WSF witnessed the emergence of a "hard line" in favour of strengthening the activist aspect of the event, when two of the Forum's founders, Emir Sader of Brazil and Samir Amin of Egypt, urged participating intellectuals to adopt a manifesto calling for concrete actions and a more clear-cut political stance.

./english/474.txt:32:"The utopian outlook of the earlier forums seems to be fading in Caracas, and there are those who want to bring about an extreme shift towards a more political nature," commented Plinio Arruda Sampaio, a leftist Brazilian community activist who has participated in previous WSF meets.

./english/474.txt:34:According to Sampaio, the Forum "is facing a delicate moment, and will have to decide what course to take with caution, because it is in danger of losing much of the ground gained since 2001, when it emerged as a counter-current to the World Economic Forum," which hosts an annual meeting of the world's business, economic and political elite in the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

./english/474.txt:36:"It seems that some people come to the Forum to sell their own fish, when they should really be coming here to see all of the fish that are being offered," he added.

./english/474.txt:38:In Bamako, Mali, which served last week as the African venue for this year's polycentric WSF - Karachi will host another Forum session in March -, ActionAid International chief executive Ramesh Singh stressed the importance of the WSF as a "large space" that has been created and enhanced.

./english/474.txt:42:Edgardo Lander, a member of the Venezuelan organising committee, admitted that the WSF "is relatively fragile, and must be handled with care. It is a political forum, which undertakes campaigns, but it could be hurt by a more militant commitment."

./english/475.txt:1:Some Hard Questions About World Social Forum

./english/475.txt:6:This note is to ask some hard questions about the World Social Forum, with the aim of raising some debate on it in the run-up to the world meetings that are coming up later this month. I ask these questions in the assumption of agreement that the World Social Forum, with all its limitations, is still a significant world institution, in terms of world politics and even more so in terms of civil politics, and that it is something that we need to understand and critically engage with as it evolves.

./english/475.txt:8:From this year (2006), the WSF is attempting a significant new experiment, a so-called polycentric¹ World Social Forum (in Bamako, Mali; in Caracas, Venezuela; and in Karachi, Pakistan) is about to take off, in two weeks, though with one of the three locations (the Karachi one) postponed till March. The Bamako Forum is to take place from January 19-23, and the Caracas one from January 24-29. (For Oofficial¹ details, see the official WSF

./english/475.txt:10:http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/ index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu

./english/475.txt:12:The step, of moving from single-centric Fora to polycentric ones, is as a step in the development of the World Social Forum - as important as the holding of the Forum outside Brazil and in Mumbai, India, in January 2004. But given this significance, and behind this the significance of the World Social Forum as an emerging world institution and as an institution of civil politics, it is important, and perhaps of no small interest, that there is hardly any debate about the polycentric Forum, either as individual meetings or as a collective. Even on the official WSF website, in its Library of Alternatives, there are only two articles and then too, the two are both in Spanish, despite the fact that the three Fora are being held in

./english/475.txt:15:Compared with the storm of articles that the Forum generated in earlier years, this is stunning. What is happening ? Why is there no discussion ? Has the Forum run its course ?

./english/475.txt:19:* To a degree that is decisively more so than holding the Forum in Mumbai in 2004, this year¹s Forum by the choice of locations - is evidently trying to open up social and political space : In Venezuela as an apparent ally of anti-imperialist popular forces in Latin America (and now made only the more so, with the election of Morales in Bolivia and his visit to Venezuela and Hugo Chávez in this past week); and in Pakistan, still formally a dictatorship, with the army and a general in firm control (of state power, at least). What has the leadership of the World Social Forum hoped to achieve by doing this by choosing these locations for this major

./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:24:* More specifically, and despite the sometimes trenchant and even bitter discussion of the manner in which the Workers¹ Party in Brazil has influenced the emergence and politics of the World Social Forum as an idea, and also about the dominating influence of political parties in the

./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/475.txt:26:http://www.ipsterraviva.net/TV/WSF2005/viewstory.asp?idnews=170.) And on the other hand, some reports suggest that his practice of politics is enervating independent social movement in the country and one opinion is that the WSF being held in Caracas is a shroud for such politics. (Rafael Uzcategui, January 2006 - OWSF Caracas: Shroud for Venezuela's social movements¹. On http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=2063.) To the opposite of fighting it therefore, the leaders of the WSF seem to be almost celebrating this profound contradiction to the very soul of the Forum (and in a carefully downplayed way, which makes it close to being cynical) because, one has to assume, they think that OChávez is on our side¹S But what are the Osides¹ in this game, in these politics ? And who is on which side ?

./english/475.txt:28:These are serious questions. It is not enough just to innocently Ogo and take part¹ in Othe World Social Forum¹ and to then think or feel that you have been sold down the river when you are there (or indeed, even if you do not go, because all this is being done in our name the name of so-called Ocivil society¹, both local and global). In short : Do you agree that the Forum should and can be organised by political parties and by governments, towards their partisan ends ? If Chávez in Venezuela, then why not Musharraf in Pakistan ?

./english/475.txt:30:In a way, what seems to be happening is a kind of a creeping coup within the Forum; in the broadest sense, of old politics over new politics. Even if you happen to agree with or be sympathetic to Hugo Chávez, or Lula, or the CPI(M) in India, if they can take over the Forum in their respective contexts then why should other parties and politicians not do so in other contexts ? Or is it really ultimately only a question of left and right (where left is right, and right is wrong) and that the Oalternative power¹ and influence that so many have said that civil movements can exercise is, in the final analysis, not relevant ? Or do you have another take entirely, on what is happening ? If so, let¹s talk about it.

./english/476.txt:4:Under the umbrella of the World Social Forum, a variety of dissidents from all over the world have begun to assert themselves

./english/476.txt:6:MUMBAI: The recent meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India, was a big step forward in the steady rise of a global anti-capitalist movement. Over the past five years, the WSF has grown from a relatively small group of economic dissidents to a huge yet decentralized annual gathering of over 100,000 people.

./english/476.txt:8:There are three moments of origin in this story. The first was the very successful mass protests at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization in November, 1999. A large group of mostly U.S. protestors - an unlikely coalition of AFL-CIO trade-unionists, environmental activists, and anarchists - succeeded in scuttling the meeting. Two months later, in January, 2000 at Davos, a group of some 50 intellectuals from around the world tried a different tactic, organizing an "anti-Davos at Davos," seeking to get anti-neoliberal arguments a world press. And in February, 2000, two Brazilian leaders of popular movements, Chico Whitaker and Oded Grajew, went to Paris to talk to Bernard Cassen, a journalist and the president of the anti-globalization organization called Attac-France. The two Brazilians suggested to Cassen that they join forces and launch a world meeting that would combine mass protest and intellectual analysis. They convened this in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the same time as the 2001 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. They called this the World Social Forum, and Cassen said the object was to "sink Davos."

./english/476.txt:14:But there were problems. The three biggest ones were: (1) a tension between those who insisted on retaining the formula of an open forum and those who wished to see the WSF become a "movement of movements," perhaps eventually another "International"; (2) an inadequate degree of participation from Asia, Africa, and east-central Europe; (3) debates about the internal structure and the funding of the WSF - how democratic and how independent was it as a structure? All three problems were tested at the Mumbai meeting, the first to be held other than in Porto Alegre.

./english/476.txt:16:The concept of the open forum is seen by the original founders as the key element that provides the strength of the WSF. They argue that any deviation from that formula will lead to exclusions and turn the WSF into one more sectarian movement. To guarantee the openness of the forum, the charter of principles had barred "party representations" and "military organizations." Nonetheless, both parties and guerilla movements come anyway, through front organizations.

./english/476.txt:18:When the Forum moved from Brazil to India, the Indian organizing committee dropped the provision about parties. Still, the proscription against violence led to a split among the Indians. A small Maoist movement organized a counter-Forum, called Mumbai Resistance-2004, on grounds across the road from the WSF. And they denounced the WSF as a combination of Trotskyites, Social-Democrats, reformist mass organizations, NGO's financed by transnationals - in short, a stalking-horse for quietism and counter-revolution. They specifically attacked the concept of the open forum (merely a talk show, they said), the slogan (not "another world," but socialism as the objective, they said), and the financing of the WSF (the fact that some money came from the Ford Foundation).

./english/476.txt:20:But Mumbai Resistance proved to be a minor sideshow, stimulating some good discussion in the WSF but attracting maybe 2% of the numbers. As for action by the WSF, many pointed out that the world demonstrations of Feb. 15, 2003 against the war in Iraq, were inspired and organized by WSF participants. So, in the end, everyone seemed to agree that WSF should retain the concept of the open forum but perhaps find some way to accept and institutionalize groups that wished to take common actions.

./english/477.txt:1:The Rising Strength of the World Social Forum

./english/477.txt:4:The recent 4th meeting of the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai (India) - Jan. 16-21, 2004 - was a big step forward in the steadily rising strength of the World Social Forum. In five years, it has become a major actor on the world scene. There are three moments of origin in this story. The first was the very successful mass protests at the Seattle meeting of the World Trade Organization in November, 1999. A large group of mostly U.S. protestors - an unlikely coalition of AFL-CIO trade-unionists, environmental activists, and anarchists - succeeded in scuttling the meeting. Two months later, in January, 2000 at Davos, a group of some 50 intellectuals from around the world tried a different tactic, organizing an "anti-Davos at Davos," seeking to get anti-neoliberal arguments a world press. And in February, 2000, two Brazilian leaders of popular movements, Chico Whitaker and Oded Grajew, went to Paris to talk to Bernard Cassen, Director of Le Monde Diplomatique and the president of Attac-France. The two Brazilians suggested to Cassen that they join forces and launch a world meeting that would combine mass protest and intellectual analysis. They convened this in Porto Alegre, Brazil, at the same time as the 2001 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos. They called this the World Social Forum, and Cassen said the object was to "sink Davos."

./english/477.txt:10:But there were problems. The three biggest ones were: (1) a tension between those who insisted on retaining the formula of an open forum and those who wished to see the WSF become a "movement of movements," perhaps eventually another "International"; (2) an inadequate degree of participation from Asia, Africa, and east-central Europe; (3) debates about the internal structure and the funding of the WSF - how democratic and how independent was it as a structure? All three problems were tested at the Mumbai meeting, the first to be held other than in Porto Alegre.

./english/477.txt:12:The concept of the open forum is seen by the original founders as the key element that provides the strength of the WSF. They argue that any deviation from that formula will lead to exclusions and turn the WSF into one more sectarian movement. To guarantee the openness of the forum, the charter of principles had barred "party representations" and "military organizations." It was hard to enforce since both parties and guerilla movements came anyway, through front organizations. And it was controversial since many participants saw no reason to bar party structures (as long as any one of them was not in a controlling position). And guerilla organizations included the Zapatistas as well, who claim to be a military organization, even if their military action has been virtually nil, and of course most participants were highly sympathetic to the Zapatistas, even considering them a model movement.

./english/477.txt:14:When the Forum moved from Brazil to India, from a country in which most movements had more or less supported the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and therefore didn't need the actual formal presence of the PT to a country in which the movements were divided among many parties and where the parties were key mass organizations, the Indian organizing committee dropped the provision about parties. Still, the proscription against violence led to a split among the Indians. A small Maoist movement organized a counter-Forum, called Mumbai Resistance-2004, on grounds across the road from the WSF. And they denounced the WSF as a combination of Trotskyites, Social-Democrats, reformist mass organizations, NGOs financed by transnationals - in short, a stalking-horse for quietism and counter-revolution. They specifically attacked the concept of the open forum (merely a talk show, they said), the slogan (not "another world," but socialism as the objective, they said), and the financing of the WSF (the fact that some money had come in the past from the Ford Foundation).

./english/477.txt:16:But Mumbai Resistance proved to be a minor sideshow, stimulating some good discussion in the WSF but attracting maybe 2% of the numbers attending the WSF. As for action by the WSF, many pointed out that the world demonstrations of Feb. 15, 2003 against the war in Iraq were inspired and organized by WSF participants. So, in the end, everyone seemed to agree that WSF should retain the concept of the open forum but perhaps find some way to accept and institutionalize groups that wished to take common actions. There already is an assembly of movements, who meet together at the time of the WSF, and do pass resolutions and propose concrete actions. They are planning a worldwide demonstration on March 20, 2004, the anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

./english/480.txt:1:The World Social Forum: Exploiting the Ambivalence of “Open” Spaces

./english/480.txt:7:World Social Forum (WSF) as an immediate and euphoric redress coming out of this contemporary

./english/480.txt:22:This paper makes the case that the World Social Forum and its tangential activities also can provide

./english/481.txt:1:Challenging Empires: Reading the World Social Forum

./english/481.txt:4:In an introduction of the book “World Social Forum”, composed by articles of several authors who try to analyze and reflect about WSF, the author presents the aim and construction of the book as well as its limitations and structure. He analyzes the importance of the Forum and states that the book tries to contribute for this initiative’s understanding.

./english/483.txt:1:How Open? The Forum as Logo, The Forum as Religion: Scepticism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Wil

./english/483.txt:4:After the ending of WSF, the author analyzes the fundamentals of the Forum and questions how open it is. He talks about external and internal challenges that it has and declares that we have to question the existing Forum. The author concludes that the spirit of “open space” should be retake.

./english/484.txt:1:The World Social Forum – A New Space for Politics?

./english/484.txt:4:The author reflects about the proposals and perspectives of WSF and wonders if it is really a new space for politics. He analyzes the Forum’s process as being democratic and questions its future.

./english/485.txt:1:The World Social Forum: An Open Space or a Movement of Movements?

./english/485.txt:4:After the conclusion of the fourth WSF, held in India, the authors debate the politics about the open space that took place in Mubai and reflect about the importance of a geographical changing in this edition. They conclude the article saying that the changes show that the Forum is a process in a constant and growing movement

./english/486.txt:1:The Forum as Jazz

./english/486.txt:4:The author considers about WSF saying that it is vital to the creation of a global politic culture that is open to debates and alternatives planning. She also says that the Forum’s perspective changes at each angle, meaning that each one sees it according to their perceptions.

./english/487.txt:1:Making the Road whilst Walking: Communication, Culture and the World Social Forum

./english/488.txt:4:The author analyses among WSF, global justice and solidary movements and says that the Forum was created in the recent protest waves known as anti-globalization.

./english/489.txt:4:The author analyses among WSF, global justice and solidary movements and says that the Forum was created in the recent protest waves known as anti-globalization.

./english/491.txt:4:The author analyses the WSF, exploring three themes he considers being fundamental to the Forum process continuity: the choice between the Forum as a space or as a movement; the importance of the activities organization at the Forum’s meetings; and the role of the entourage that organizes the Forum’s events.

./english/500.txt:1:World Social Forum: Polycentric and Losing Focus

./english/500.txt:4:PENANG, Malaysia, Mar 24 (IPS) - While a buzz of excitement surrounds the World Social Forum, now underway in the Pakistani city of Karachi, veteran activists and political scientists here are having reservations over the regional approach to the global event, with some even unaware it was taking place.

./english/500.txt:6:This is the first year that a polycentric approach is being used for the previously global-level WSF, with regional events in three continents. Two events were held in January in Bamako, Mali and Caracas, Venezuela to counter the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, held in the same month.

./english/500.txt:16:''It's a good idea to regionalise the forum,'' says one veteran activist here who has been following the WSF's evolution closely. He said that regional groups can participate and benefit from the forum and discuss issues relevant to them.

./english/500.txt:44:''There should be more debates on issues and some level of calls or statements that people can sign on after such forums,'' she said, adding that there could be a need for some kind of structure.

./english/502.txt:4:Recent criticisms against the World Social Forum have been made by well-intentioned people, but reveal reactionary thinking. They introduce into the alterglobalisation movement logics that marked the Left in the twentieth century? and led it to a historic failure.

./english/502.txt:6:"Much is expected from those in whom we trust a great deal", Jesus Christ said once. It is possible that the same statement applies to projects that generate collective hope, like the World Social Forum (WSF). Just before its sixth edition, two articles that were published in journals of enormous visibility in the alterglobalisation galaxy, argued that the big world meeting of alternative movements is about to be over.

./english/502.txt:8:Their authors are connected to the history of the process that started in Porto Alegre. Ignacio Ramonet created the famous sentence: "Another world is possible"; François Polet is assistant to François Houtart, an important figure on the WSF International Council. The central arguments of both texts is very similar and can be summarised into three essential ideas: a) By unfolding itself, every year, in the form of thousands of activities and hundreds of ideas without hierarchy among themselves, the WSF keeps its participants fragmented and reduces itself to a folkloric parade of ideas and good intentions; b) The way to avoid this huge project losing itself is to make the Forum a great "general assembly of mankind", where actions that have priority are chosen to be adopted by all participants; c) The first step was taken in Porto Alegre, on January 2005, at the Plaza São Raphael Hotel, when nineteen intellectuals announced a manifesto that put forward twelve ideas that alterglobalisation should defend so that it would no longer be "morally victorious but without being effective". And in particular, at the end of his text Ignacio Ramonet suggests that it is only through government actions such as those being taken by Hugo Chavez that it is possible to avoid falling victim to neoliberalism.

./english/502.txt:26:Besides providing an open space for the articulation of common action, the editions of the WSF have been important laboratories of social science, where theories of transformation are being constantly re-elaborated. This power plant of ideas has at least two remarkable characteristics. It puts all emancipatory streams into contact with each other. Marxisms, Gandhiism, feminism, liberation Christianity, Gaia theories, thirdworldism, humanism, and others all dialogue and enrich each other constantly. They are present, as theoretical influences, in the self-organised activities during the Forums, where more and more we see the common factor is the meeting of participants from diverse countries and cultures. But this is exactly the second relevant idea: the debate of ideas does not happen only at an academic level, or within political parties. The Forum breaks barriers between intellectuals and activists. Intellectuals of international importance and leaders of different

./english/502.txt:30:Equally, this is where Social Forums and alterglobalisation are producing their first results. The refusal to repeat old formulas, the openness to learn from different points of view, and the reduced importance given to old political and academic hierarchies are allowing the birth of a new political

./english/502.txt:37:This ensemble of principles is not only a code of etiquette that Social Forums participants establish among themselves. It is possible that it also contains clues for a new emancipatory project.

./english/502.txt:44:Will we not be legitimate, to the contrary, to use World Social Forums ? these magnificent laboratories of actors, common actions, sensibilities and ideas to reinvent the fight to overcome capitalism? And if, for example, it were possible to do this starting from "open forms": from multiple anti-systemic initiatives unleashed by social actors that recognise themselves in the WSF and see in it not a space to "choose" priority campaigns, but to articulate, empower, and give a sense of commonality to the ones already underway?

./english/502.txt:51:roads it has opened? Why should we rush into a "choice" of campaigns supposedly capable of "unifying" the world of Social Forums? Why should we propose them from small groups, re-establishing the barrier between those who think and those who fight and violating the simultaneous commitment to equality and diversity?

./english/502.txt:53:Le Monde Diplomatique, the Three Continental Centre, and the World Forum of Alternatives have been inspiring sources of alterglobalisation since its gestation. The criticism that they now make should be seen as intellectual stimulation to the world of the WSF. In the same way, this "criticism of the criticisms" is made while being sure that Ignacio Ramonet and Fran?ois Polet will not renounce the journey at the first call of the sirens of the old traditions.

./english/510.txt:1:World Social Forum 2006

./english/510.txt:4:This year, the World Social Forum will be polycentric! In other words, it will be held practically simultaneously in Bamako, Mali; Caracas, Venezuela; and Karachi, Pakistan. It will be an opportunity for the process to take root on a global scale.

./english/510.txt:8:At the close of the first World Social Forum in January 2001, its organizers circulated a memo in which they proposed to convene World Social Forums every year, at the same date as the Davos Economic Forum. In 2002, a new WSF was held in Porto Alegre, and the holding of other Forums in various places of the world was encouraged. It had become clear that, along with the success of the first edition of the Forum (two persons expected, 20,000 participants!), the process of World Forums had to be continued as an alternative to the one-sided thinking (pensée unique) of the World Economic Forum.

./english/510.txt:10:But it had also become clear that, to bring about a rebirth everywhere in the feeling of hope for a different world, this type of forum of exchanges and of linking up must be introduced in other countries. This feeling was experienced by the Brazilians – more than 80% of the participants – who had attended the Forum.

./english/510.txt:12:Shortly afterwards, the Forum organizers clarified the choices that, according to them, explained its success:

./english/510.txt:13:- a forum reserved for civil society, without elected representatives, governments, or political parties (except as outside speakers) tempted to use their participation for political purposes;

./english/510.txt:14:- a forum governed by rules that renew the traditional practices of collective action. These are the founding rules of the "Porto Alegre generation," appropriate for an era of networks and of recognition of diversity and cross-cutting issues: openness; acceptance of diversity as a value; horizontality in relations between participants; non-directivity and therefore absence of spokesperson, leader, or final declaration. Collected in a Charter of Principles, these choices have now become the fundamental reference for organizing Social Forums.

./english/510.txt:16:Several Forums have been organized since then, at the global, regional, national, and even local level, in several countries of the world. But it took three years for a Forum at the global level to be organized outside of Brazil. It was held in January 2004, in India. Its having been carrying out showed that it was possible to respect the Charter of Principles in a historical, social, and economic context quite different from Brazil. The decision was then made to set off again for another continent, Africa, after having come back to Brazil in 2005. The participating African organizations had stated they were prepared to take up this challenge, along with support by the WSF International Council (1). They nevertheless considered that it was too early to organize the WSF in Africa in 2006 and that it would be better to do so in 2007.

./english/510.txt:18:So the question came up: what to do in 2006? The idea of several simultaneous Forums, at the same date as the Davos Economic Forum, had been proposed in the 2001 information memo. This was thus taken up again to organize a polycentric WSF.

./english/510.txt:20:But it's up to the organizations of the host countries to take the decision to organize a forum. Following a call for candidacies, three countries were accepted for the 2006 WSF: Venezuela (in Caracas), Mali (in Bamako), and Pakistan (in Karachi). This makes one in each continent of the Third World. The proposal from Morocco was transformed, through decision by its organizers, into a Constitutive Assembly for a North African Social Forum that will be held just before the Bamako Forum.

./english/510.txt:22:These three Forums will represent a new experience in the World Social Forum context. What are the issues involved in this innovation? Some consider that decentralization could weaken the impact of the Forum in the fight to overcome neo-liberalism. Others say that, on the contrary, its strength would be precisely the creation of forums of exchange and link-up held simultaneously in three continents. Some think that the three Forums should concentrate on several common themes and link up with each other, as a movement would. Others think that, as a forum and not a movement, the richness of our polycentric Forum would be the diversity of themes discussed.

./english/510.txt:24:In fact, the work program of each forum ensues from the activities proposed and self-managed by its participants. The registration process enables them to find out about the proposals from others, with common themes and convergences appearing quite naturally. The overall objective of overcoming neo-liberalism is shared by all. And each of these themes can be deepened based on the real interests of the participants, and not by decisions by a higher authority, this latter being non-existent and unacceptable in the Forum process.

./english/510.txt:26:But the great challenge is found elsewhere. This is the taking advantage of an invaluable opportunity, made available through respect of the World Social Forum's Charter of Principles, for strengthening civil society in each of the three countries as a new political actor independent of governments, parties, and political leaders. A Social Forum opens the way for building links between organizations, by overtaking the barriers that generally divide them and by the mutual recognition and the discovery of their autonomous strength, with respect for their diversity.

./english/510.txt:28:The main dynamic that characterizes the Forum, as an open place of exchange, is the invitation to replace quarrels by the power of listening. We can then move towards fertile dialogue that can lead to the discovery of points of convergence and to the establishment of new alliances within this society. That way, we can launch new initiatives of struggle and transformation at the local, regional, or global level.

./english/510.txt:30:The big challenge of the 2006 polycentric WSF is therefore the effect it will have, in each host country and around the world, on the involvement by a growing number of citizen organizations in the fight for overcoming neo-liberalism and the building of a society of fairness and solidarity. If this set of Forums achieves this result, we will have made a great step towards "another world is possible."

./english/510.txt:32:(1) The International Council brings together around 100 organizations supporting the World Social Forum process. It decides on its general directions.

./english/512.txt:4:Chico Whitaker, representative of the Brazilian Justice and Peace Commission on the organizing bodies of the World Social Forums.

./english/512.txt:6:The 2006 World Social Forum was multi-centred: it took place in Bamako (Mali), and then in Caracas (Venezuela). The third forum which was scheduled – but postponed because of the earthquakes in Pakistan – will be held in Karachi at the end of March. The fourth Europe Social Forum will take place in Greece in May, and an Asia Social Forum will be held in Thailand in the second half of the year. At almost the same time as the two first multi-centred forums, an assembly was called in Morocco to set up the Maghreb Social Forum, scheduled for 2007 shortly after the next World Social Forum, which once again will be centralized, this time in Nairobi, Kenya.

./english/512.txt:8:The World Social Forum process can be said to be expanding strongly. More than just expanding, though: that expansion is bringing something new, a qualitative change in the kind of unity that has been forged among those who want to build the “other possible world”, a unity that respects diversity and in which everyone plays a leading role. The Forums do not result from decisions by an international summit that schedules and monitors them: they are always the initiatives and the responsibility of the civil society movements, groups and organisations of the country or region where they are held, with support from an International Council on which those groupings also participate. The Forums’ organizers – or facilitators, as we call them – in turn encourage participants to self-organise their activities at the Forums.

./english/512.txt:12:After the multi-centred Forums, it is now time to draw up balances and make the evaluations that are so essential to moving ahead in the light of our methodological advances and setbacks. This paper raises some of the questions that may come to be discussed in that light at the International Council meeting planned for late March in Nairobi.

./english/512.txt:17:The thinking and action that have taken place in the course of the Forums since then, are making it possible to identify better the great sores that neoliberalism, domination by capital and imperialism have opened up on the face of the Earth. To me, they seem to be the following:

./english/512.txt:26:At WSF International Council meetings the proposal very often comes up to bring the Forums to focus on just one of these sores – war, for example. The concern is to be more effective by concentrating efforts and reducing the extent and variety of the struggles that can be discussed – and turned into plans of action – at the Forums.

./english/512.txt:30:It may be that holding the next World Forum in Africa – a new social, economic and political reality – will reduce the scope for proposing that kind of single focus. The way of doing politics that it expresses, however, is the same as lies behind four challenges that the WSF process faces if it is to continue and expand, which may be a subject to be discussed by the International Council in March. Two of these challenges could be said to come from outside the Forum, and two from inside.

./english/512.txt:32:The challenges that come from outside the Forums

./english/512.txt:33:The two challenges that come from outside result from the action of governments and parties. Continuing with the political struggle in the same way as it has always been pursued, they find it hard to understand – and therefore to accept – what the WSF intends. This difficulty shows up clearly in the way parties and governments – and with them, international intergovernmental organizations – very often seek to associate themselves with the Forums. The WSF Charter of Principles establishes that they may not organise activities at the Forums, although they may take part at the invitation of participants, in activities that those participants organise (on the self-organised basis of the Forums).

./english/512.txt:35:The Forums’ organisers ask something even more difficult of governments that dialogue with the WSF process – because they take a position on the same field of battle against neoliberalism: they ask them to help without interfering. Not all governments are willing to do that. It is hard for them to resist the temptation for self-promotion at the event. This difficulty in respecting the autonomy of civil society is a natural result of the political culture that prevailed throughout the last century.

./english/512.txt:39:Why should governments and parties not be given the central place they have always enjoyed and their activities be supported through the WSF process? That would risk reducing the whole meaning of the Forums to dust. Of course, governments and parties have a role that is very often decisive in bringing about the changes required to build the “other world”. But why not let civil society reinforce the battle fronts and do so autonomously?

./english/512.txt:41:It is not a question of bringing the Forums as such into those battle lines. In themselves they are not political actors – and thus cannot set themselves to become the new “subject of history” that the experts in politics hope to encounter. They are just a space. But they are a civil society space, for the different sectors of society to exchange ideas and experience and find avenues to effective political action, including the means to pressure and constrain governments and parties, and to contribute to bringing about changes by doing whatever is within their grasp without depending on either. Never before did civil society have an instrument of this kind with which to develop its interrelations autonomously.

./english/512.txt:43:It is quite true that as the World Social Forum was being organized, in the early days, certain ambiguities hung over these issues. To this day there are participants who rely on those ambiguities to reinforce their arguments in favour of governments and parties being present and participating directly as such in the Forums. This is because most of the organizers of the early WSFs were members of the PT, and because they took place in a town – Porto Alegre – where the state and municipal governments were held by that party. The doubts grew with the presence of Brazil’s newly elected President, Lula, at a major public rally at the 2003 Forum.

./english/512.txt:45:Much has been written to explain what in fact was happening and why Lula was there in 2003. But only practice and time will persuade people that neither the party itself nor the governments command the organisation of the Forum nor do they interfere in it. One reason is that they passed up none of the opportunities that arose to promote themselves. To complicate this situation still further, WSF 2005 practically started with Lula, President of Brazil, and ended with Chavez, President of Venezuela. In fact those events were organized by participants, who made use of the freedom the Forum affords to self-organise their activities there...

./english/512.txt:47:In 2006 (at the two multi-centred Forums held to date), the risk of hijacking by parties seemed smaller. In the case of Venezuela, however, many people pointed to the risk of government interference. Its President is a strong presence in the country and has many resources that can help, but also create dependence. According to observers, however, the Forum’s organisers managed to maintain the autonomy of the activities at the event. In fact what happened there was once again what constitutes the wealth of the Forums: participants were most interested in the free exchange of experiences and in developing new interaction among the movements and organisations of civil society.

./english/512.txt:49:The greater presence of Chavez, personally, and of the resources that he made available – even for the Bamako Forum – was exploited fully by the mass media seeking to undermine the WSF’s image. It was less exploited however than another strong presence: the Brazilian government and its state enterprises. Both of these resulted from activities self-organised by participants in the Forum. This brings us, in turn, to the challenges that come from within the Forum.

./english/512.txt:51:The challenges from within the Forum

./english/512.txt:52:These challenges are in fact the stronger. Coming from inside the WSF, they have greater power to undercut any resistance. Both originate in the same approach that seeks to “focus” the Forums, as mentioned earlier in this text, and in the difficulty of accepting the innovations proposed at them as regards how to do politics, which was mentioned in relation to the challenges coming from outside the Forum.

./english/512.txt:58:The first of these challenges arises out of the actions of those who are being called “intellectuals”, and who are invited to conferences and debates; the second stems from the so-called Assembly of Social Movements, which, at the close of the Forums, puts out appeals for mobilization in the struggle against neoliberalism and at times holds demonstrations that make its presence and strength more visible.

./english/512.txt:62:Experience shows that this second path is not effective, and also that it is contrary to any construction of the “other possible world” – which must necessarily be characterized by respect for the diversity and differences in pace among people, or it will not be “another” world. Nonetheless, union has been maintained – the WSF process is now in its eighth year – and that is probably because, from the outset, the rule among the Forums’ organizers has been that decisions are made by consensus. That too takes time, but it means that decisions are upheld by all those who take part in them, for the good of preserving union.

./english/512.txt:65:A the Bamako Forum, there was an attempt to do something similar to the “Manifesto” launched at Porto Alegre in 2005 by 19 leading figures, in an endeavour to bring all the proposals and struggles that emerge at the Forums together around certain main themes. This time, the effort was directed to relaunching the coalition of the “non-aligned” countries of the 1955 Bandung Conference, now that it is commemorating its fiftieth anniversary. An international seminar, held the day before the Bamako Fórum began, featuring leading figures from intellectual circles and the anti-imperialist struggle, sought to present itself as an opening ceremony of the Forum – as a prior orientation for the discussions that would be held there.

./english/512.txt:67:The guests has the good sense not to let it turn into an opening ceremony, and it was thus not considered as setting any course by the Forum’s participants, who were moved more strongly by its proposal for horizontal relations. But a final “appeal” by the seminar, drafted after it happened, was taken to Caracas, perhaps with a view to its gaining the importance it had not commanded at Bamako. It is currently seeking further subscriptions in the circles of those active in resisting imperialism. That, incidentally, is making for healthy discussion of its content on the Internet.

./english/512.txt:69:The Bandung Conference, in the struggle for economic and political independence for Third World countries, was a conference of heads of state, not of peoples – even though the former may present themselves as representatives of the latter. Its proposal thus presupposes that everything depends on governments, and that real action for change depends on taking political power. Now that is a hotly debated issue in the WSF process, which is a space for peoples to interrelate through their organisations. In that respect, the initiative taken at Bamako adds to one of the challenges coming from outside the Forum, that is, the endeavour to increase governments’ presence in its actions. Caracas offered na unparalleled opportunity to gain a vigorous ally: President Chavez, who is notorious combatant in the anti-imperialist cause, and presented by some at “the leader we were needing”.

./english/512.txt:71:“Intellectuals” have the means to present their analyses but they do not have the whole truth. For that very reason the World Social Forum offers a special space to showcase what is growing out of the social grassroots. According to its Charter of Principles, however, all the activities that take place there are equally important and given the same priority, so it is not always a simple matter to expect proposals to prosper because they are persuasive, rather than because they are presented by some kind of authority.

./english/512.txt:76:In fact, the Assembly of Social Movements, which poses the Forum its second challenge from within, faces this same difficulty in accepting that there should be no single “final document”. It seeks to meet this difficulty by proposing that “its” final document should be put forward as being the whole Forum’s. To that end, it nearly always schedules its concluding meeting for the day after the end of the Forum, as if it could thus gather together and systematise the most important things discussed and proposed there.

./english/512.txt:78:With the help of ill-advised or ill-intentioned journalists, its message ends up coming across. This occurred at Mumbai, in India, and now again at the Caracas Forum: a meeting of the Assembly with a limited number of invited participants, held after the Forum had ended, offered “a rendering of accounts by the Forum to President Chavez”, which TV Globo broadcast to all of Brazil as if it was the Forum’s closing ceremony, although it was an initiative by the Assembly and not by the organisers of the Caracas Forum. That interpretation of Globo’s was doubtless facilitated by the fact that at the meeting Chavez spoke in front of a large banner bearing the logo of the World Social Forum. These are the minor details that taint good intentions...

./english/512.txt:80:Unlike the challenge posed by intellectuals who position themselves as leaders and guides of the Forums, the challenge from the Assembly of Social Movements comes from below, an option that the Forum is designed to strengthen. In that sense, it represents one of the best results that the Forum is making possible, because it interlinks a growing number of civil society organisations. Among the Forum’s aims is the ideal that many interconnections like this should emerge and grow up with it. And that is indeed happening. The problem is that the Assembly of Social Movements intends to command a hegemony over the Forums, and to become the main grouping to grow out of them. It is as if it wished to hijack the Forum to achieve the aims of the movements of which it is composed.

./english/512.txt:82:This challenge is the greatest of the four mentioned here. It first arose at the 2001 Forum, where for the first time the organisers of the Assembly wanted to put out their final “Appeal” as coming from all the participants at the event, and using the official Forum website for that purpose (3). It associates the value set on action by the social grassroots – which is an option taken by the Forum – with the feeling of urgency of calls to action. But instead of integrating naturally into the process that is underway, it holds to the type of competitive political action that is felt has to be changed in order to build the necessary union.

./english/512.txt:84:The final effect of the Assembly’s actions may be fatal to the Forum, by transforming it into a movement with a single line of action and a single direction, thus alienating all those who do not accept that action and direction. How can that be prevented? Meeting that challenge will call for open and frank dialogue among those who advocate for one position or the other. If we manage that we will have managed to take a decisive step towards a new political culture that is needed in order to build the “other possible world”. Preparations for the Kenya Forum may just offer us the right opportunity.

./english/512.txt:92:3. For more detail on this fact and other issues addressed in this article, see O Desafio do Fórum Social Mundial – um modo de ver (The Challenge of the World Social Forum – a way of seeing), published in Portuguese by Edições Perseu Abramo e Loyola, and in Spanish by Editorial Icaria, Barcelona.

./english/513.txt:1:The Future of The World Social Forum

./english/513.txt:6:The WSF was always a proposal for the future, born looking towards the future, and took shape with the future in mind, but it’s also been built in a present framed by a critique of the neo-liberal model, from which to envision a plurality of possible, pressing alternatives. By establishing a space to express them, the Forum cleared away the screen that hid alternatives that were being conceived and forged everywhere, of which there are not just ten but thousands of ways to construe the world.

./english/513.txt:8:The Forum was born robust, heir of historical struggles while combing new, emerging and fertile ideas, critical thinking, proposals and actions for change. By being an original, heterogeneous world-wide open space, the Forum had the virtue of enabling a great confluence and of encouraging the re-emergence of a collective awareness that changes are possible and viable, so setting off a process of inexhaustible transforming potential. Its ebullient rhythm has been such that the abundant initiatives, ideas and proposals seen over these past five, short years have produced enough material for hundreds of debates.

./english/513.txt:10:The rapid emergence of regional, national and thematic Forums soon led to the emergence of a process anchored in diverse realities being built from a basis of multiple critiques, but which merge together in shared hopes of a world of peace, justice, rights, diversity, and radical changes in patriarchal, class-based, racist and exclusive relations.

./english/513.txt:12:The Forum also revealed that daily life is more political than ever, and that changes are forged from transformations involving people and human relations as a whole. However, for these changes to become reality it’s necessary to uproot unequal relations wherever they appear.

./english/513.txt:14:In its short life the Forum has quickly shifted from revealing the manifold relations of oppression which underlie all human relations to that of developing alternatives that have become forceful proposals that have in turn given rise to a process of developing strategies to achieve radical changes in human relations.

./english/513.txt:16:This issue is precisely one of the vital issues of debate on the Forum’s future, and is inextricably linked to its original goal of fighting neo-liberal globalisation and attempts to consolidate that struggle.

./english/513.txt:20:The Forum’s origin is undoubtedly the cause of justice, both existing and urgently pending: peoples’ struggles and those of the excluded and victims of discrimination, the defenders of integral world views, intellectuals, alternative media, and a broad combination of all those who adhere to the Forum’s principles of change. However, their potential can’t be seen solely from a mathematical viewpoint; adding is important but much more so is coming together, the convergence of proposals and actions, enriching everyday language with symbols and practices, and drawing up concrete agendas which reflect their collective hopes.

./english/513.txt:22:Yet, what are their ideas for change? They are many and diverse, their point of convergence is the struggle against the Neo-liberal model, to build that Other Possible World, imagined as inclusive, egalitarian and based on solidarity. For this very reason, the Forum – conceived of as an open space where social movements, initiatives, proposals, networks, organisations and individuals all come together – now sets out to face the challenge of debating the different possible ways of doing things, of conceiving actions and ensuring that changes are possible.

./english/513.txt:24:Among what realities does the Forum move in? It does it in hundreds of contexts, which are facing a key moment: that of challenging neo-liberal, mercantile, patriarchal, predatory, and homogenising globalisation shaped by the so-called owners of the world and led by a handful of multinational corporations, financial capital, and old and new elites, all of whom have redoubled their attacks in order to control and possess it with ever growing greed.

./english/513.txt:26:Thus, to speak of the Forum’s future implies the decision to think about where it wants to go. There are hundreds of possible ways of responding, each one with its corresponding political responsibilities, with actors who propose and support these possibilities from their own respective realities and viewpoints.

./english/513.txt:28:For some the Forum can be a permanent annual meeting point, a type of “fair of alternatives” where year after year a multiplicity of expressions, ideas and proposals are show-cased, after which everyone goes home, in some cases with a feeling that having participated in the debates and activities is per se a way of contributing towards change; others will return home dissatisfied about the gap between this reality and their expectations of moving on in the urgent task of transforming things by developing concrete proposals and actions, here and now.

./english/513.txt:30:For others, the Forum can be a space where - as well as allowing for meetings and confluence among the activities developed -, it enables the identification of

./english/513.txt:35:The Forum can be what it already is and be much more besides, all of which is important and transcendental; but, we insist, its central challenge must be to follow through on the main purpose of its original convocation: resistance to neo-liberal globalisation. This can hardly be achieved by staging “a fair of alternatives” or an agenda of debates, nor by calling for mobilisations on unconnected issues; neither can it be achieved through methodological experiments for improving the Forum event, whose concretion is not unrelated to intra-Forum economic and power relations. While this goes on, the existing Neo-liberal model will quietly continue to consolidate.

./english/513.txt:37:Thinking about the Forum’s future also requires a look at its origins as a counter-proposal to the elites’ meeting at Davos and the need to subvert power relations from multiple horizons, an issue that makes even greater sense when the system’s institutions – the WTO, the international financial institutions, and those that assume a global leadership role – strengthen themselves and establish solid mechanisms to ensure the market’s control as an irreversible fact, even if this means risking the planet’s demise and all that it contains.

./english/513.txt:39:Can the Forum collectively define common world gatherings or rallying points in order to enable the struggles taking place everywhere to express themselves in one or more key moments, and so achieve greater impact? Can it provide a focus for a common agenda and calls that inter-relate the multiple, inter-related resistances/struggles to the different sources of oppression within the system? Can the Forum’s agenda prioritise vital issues such as dignity, sovereignty, justice and peace? Common sense says so; the political significance of the agenda of struggle against the model also says so, and in fact it is already happening, but these issues still don’t form part of its explicit aims.

./english/513.txt:41:Of course, the Forum can’t supplant movements or their actions or go back to a single line or a supreme command; its challenge lies in becoming a subject of change so that its accumulated wealth of proposals and ideas leads to advancements in the fight against the present model of development. This challenge to be creative implies a number of definitions and the collective acceptance that the Forum is not just an event but a process, and as such can’t limit itself to convocations.

./english/513.txt:43:The Forum’s periodicity

./english/513.txt:44:The frequency of the Forum’s meetings is also under debate; its analysis alludes to different notions of time in the world. There is no single time; different civilisations, cultures, and even our movements and processes which are part of this process, have different concepts of time. To standardise timing and periodicity under a succession of events contradicts the Forum's pluralistic principles.

./english/513.txt:46:In fact, within the rhythms of the Forum, there is the time-frame of the events, that of struggles, of practices and of debates, which are all inter-related. The challenge lies in how to combine the timing of the processes of struggle with that of the Forum events; in how to avoid an imbalance, where the timing of the events affects that of struggles. On the contrary, they should contribute to strengthening them, taking into account that they have their own specific terrain and agendas.

./english/513.txt:48:The different social movements that actively participate in the Forum have been proposing for some time the idea that its timing shouldn’t contradict that of the movements’ struggles and actions, rhythms and potential, including the economic situation of the most excluded. The situation of the Vía Campesina International Peasant Movement, one of the world’s most important movements, illustrates the point. For example, the most important events on its agenda over the past few months were marked by an important mobilisation against the WTO in Hong Kong last December, which was followed immediately by two polycentric forums held in two different continents in January. This raises a number of questions, one of which is how to ensure that these struggles become an open space within the Forum’s collective timing.

./english/513.txt:51:The Forum has emerged as a self-managed and self-convened initiative, which is a central issue of its innovative proposal and participatory character. But what is self-convocation? What are its characteristics? What are the basis of its principles? What are the Forum’s prevailing principles of autonomy? Needless to say, by raising these questions from a pluralistic perspective we’ll get a lot of different answers. However, a number of questions inherent to the realities which influence the definitions need to be sketched out.

./english/513.txt:53:The first question concerns intra-Forum power relations; as a heterogeneous open space, the Forum inherits the very same gaps of inequality it intends to fight. In fact the Forum’s actors are not equal and carry the baggage of their societies’ structural gaps that consign discriminated majorities to the status of minorities, thus legitimising the voice and presence of those close to power. In this context, limiting the possibilities for building the space to self-management and self-convocation among unequals without taking concrete measures that lead to equality can only result in reproducing discriminatory dynamics and practices within this realm of the alternative.

./english/513.txt:55:The Policy of Equality adopted in 2005 by the Forum’s International Council is an important recognition that changes cannot be generated spontaneously. Given the expansion and interrelatedness of an exclusive, class-based, racist, sexist, homophobic, urban-centrist culture, these changes are needed more than ever. Can’t the Forum recognise that there are social groups that need reparation and to whom society has a social debt that should be indemnified, starting at home? Indigenous peoples, afro-descendants, peasants, women, people discriminated against because of their sexual orientation, and other people who are marginalised for a variety of reasons, won’t find a space as equals in the Forum, without the risk that its self-convocation might limit their participation or restrict their autonomy.

./english/513.txt:57:This issue, as well as that of equality in the generation of discourses, methodologies and practices, could continue to be left to the random material and symbolic circumstances that intervene in defining who edifies the Forum’s rules of play and who its decision-makers are.

./english/513.txt:60:We are entering the first, novel experiment of the Polycentric Forums, which coincide with regional initiatives, and we hope that they won’t be down-graded because up to now the emergence of regional Forums has had the advantage of generating a distinct view of globalisation from specific realities and so broadening the idea of processes that are based on local realities and experiences.

./english/513.txt:62:However, in the Forum’s creative process there’s a striking coincidence. The three countries that have responded to the convocation – Venezuela, Mali, and Pakistan – are from the South. This opens up horizons for looking from and towards the South, developing a perspective that recognises the South as a source of alternatives, which inscribes the multiplicity of visions for the future which co-exist here. Because it is precisely here that age-old universal proposals of a different, alternative world to that of the northern-western-centric one continue to survive, though they have not as yet been fully expressed and made their presence felt in the Forum.

./english/513.txt:65:The Forum is undoubtedly the largest planetary initiative, bringing together citizens, in history. Its accumulated experience is benefited by the wealth of an important trajectory of struggles and resistance to old and new forms of domination; its heritage of critical thought, alternatives and visions of change are an inexhaustible source of proposals and actions; its participatory, pluralistic and diverse character is the terrain for building new democratic practices. In sum, in its short life the Forum has begun a wide-ranging process of opening up possibilities for struggle against the development model. Its growth now implies the need to invent strategies to politically organise resistance to the model and to do so, from a pluralist and diverse prospect of hope, that the Forum awakened on a planetary scale when it affirmed that “Another World is Possible”.

./english/513.txt:67:Up until now the Forum has managed to face up, with verve and ingenuity, to most of the challenges it has come across as part of its innovative project; and so it will undoubtedly take on the great task of assuming the role of the political actor which its own development has generated.

./english/519.txt:12:But this must not neglect neither the globalizing project’s legitimacy crisis before important sectors of the world population, nor the existence of a movement which is capable of maintaining a dia-logue with different worldwide leftist components seeking through struggles and initiatives, to build a different world – in this sense, the World Social Forum in more than five years of existence, is al-ready being successful. Nowadays, the ones who oppose themselves to the system have a place where they can move; a growing audience listening to their ideas and they are starting to test their different proposals for changes.

./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:28:In Bamako, the African edition of the polycentric Forum has, for the first time, introduced com-pletely the self-organized dynamics, which characterizes the Forum’s format within the continent. Ten thousand people participated in the event and hundreds of activities took place, it was a suc-cessful process, assembling the entirety of debates on pan-African tradition and its renewal and also many questions that are strongly present in the continent – from the free trade impact to Aids, from migrations to the role of international agencies. The Forum also witnessed an important effort to re-cover the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and socialist tradition, inherited from Bandung – a seminar stimulated by Samir Amin, right before the Forum, debated the non-aligned movement’s legacy, which was born in April 1955, in Indonesia. Bamako demonstrated an improvement of the WSF process in the continent and sealed a promising direction towards Nairobi 2007.

./english/519.txt:32:The Caracas Forum was also influenced by the Evo Morales’ electoral victory in Bolivia, which is a result of the indigenous peoples’ long insurrection in that country – and the indigenous issue was a very strong point in the event. Chavez tried to capitalize the Forum taking place in Venezuela – as Lula had done in Porto Alegre, in that case to try to justify the idea of not having an alternative to neo liberalism – strengthening his presence on the continental scene as well as straiten Caracas’ re-lationship with movements from the region. This transformed the way social movements, political parties and government relate to each other in terms of an important matter regarding the Forum and has given a new value to the debate on the state-power issue.

./english/519.txt:34:But the Forum, with its eighty thousand participants, was also an opportunity for social movements to confront at a continental and international level and to launch again campaigns regarding certain themes, such as how to fight free trade (including the articulation of a global action plan to derail the WTO), the defense of water as a common good (integrating Latin-Americans and the Europe-ans) and a greater integration of the continents in the fight against war and militarization; the social movements could also again articulate themselves regarding the variety of themes, which make the richness of the Forum (external debt, indigenous people, women, Haiti, ecologists, fight against state-terrorism, sexual diversity, rural reform, etc). The Forum has witnessed the first unified inter-national labor union conference since the beginning of Cold War. The regional integration alterna-tives agenda, already reinforced by the ALBA proposal, has improved and has acquired density. And the Caracas Forum has witnessed a growth on the participation of movements and organiza-tions from the United States, integrating them more in the WSF process (with the perspective of having a Forum in the United States, in 2007). The remarks contained in many evaluations are re-lated to infrastructure, highlighting the difficulty caused by the activities being dispersed in a big city (the same kind of observation is also present in evaluations about Bamako).

./english/519.txt:38:Since the Forum has been constituted, an expressive sector within the International Council defends that the WSF, or at least the IC, should adopt resolutions which, supported by the legitimacy of the WSF process, would point directions for the movement. On this matter, it has been always dis-cussed that the “brand” WSF should be used to sign under a platform or position concerning a cer-tain theme (remember, for instance, the discussion during an IC meeting that preceded Porto Alegre 2003, whic discussed if this body should adopt a position against the Iraq invasion, a consensus among the participants).

./english/519.txt:40:Now, in Caracas, Chavez asserted – as Lula had done before, almost in the same terms, through the newspapers, before the 2005 Forum, concerning the campaign against hunger – that “a forum which does not come up with conclusions is a waste of time and will end up being a tourist fair”. As for the debates in Brazil, this same position has been reinforced by people from different positions within the left wing spectrum, from Emir Sader to the congressman Babá.

./english/519.txt:42:The WSF has shown itself very efficient in giving impulse to the left wing’s political struggle in the beginning of this century. Innumerous declarations, platforms and calls have been coming out of the process’ events and have been fundamental to organize from the referendum on the FTTA in Brazil to the protests against the invasion of Iraq on February 15th, 2003. In each forum, social movements network meetings agree on an agenda for global mobiliza-tions, which is reference to thousands of movements and organizations. Declarations such as the “World Charter on the Rights to the City” have been produced in many forums. During the Caracas Forum, de declaration “Another integration, urgent, possible and necessary” was made. The “Ba-mako Call”, written in a seminar that took place one day before the Forum, is an important refer-ence to our days, assembling much of what the WSF has produced up to now. Some examples of “conclusions” produced “during the Forums” could be multiplied infinitely, and many would point out its efficiency as an impelling force to the organization of initiatives which are central to the left-ist movement nowadays.

./english/519.txt:44:But, in spite of all these evidences showing the WSF’s efficiency, some still insist that if the Forum does not undertake resolutions, declarations or platforms, it will “end up being a fair”. Therefore, this insistence seems to rely less on what is made explicit within the discourse (how to organize the struggles better) and more on acting methods and political culture conceptions, to rely on what should be the model of organization for the political action adopted by us. This discussion needs to be done without ambiguities.

./english/519.txt:48:The global movement in which the Forum’s existence is based on has brought to us three important lessons: it demonstrates the efficiency of network-like organization to articulate current struggles (which opposes itself to pyramidal structures, which are conservative and bureaucratic); the revalue of internationalism within the left; and valuing pluralism within social and political composition of any emancipation project without establishing hierarchy among its components. The Forum-like format (open-space, self-organized, structured in network and non-decision making) copes with these challenges and must be defended against any kind of past “international directions” nostalgia.

./english/519.txt:52:Adopting resolutions “as” the Forum means the establishment of deliberative bodies that surpass the powers and the function of being the process’s facilitators (as they are today, from the IC to the OCs). This would mean to open processes – natural, but inevitable – of dispute for power, with all its problems, something that the Forum has succeeded in avoiding. Within the processes of delibera-tion, this would mean imposing the opinion of some people upon others, which would jeopardize the efficiency of the Forum in its current format where the political argument and the voluntary ad-hesion to any proposal, declaration or campaign prevails. To abandon theses victories obtained by the Forum would mean a great political retrocession to the current left wing.

./english/519.txt:57:At the Mumbai Forum, during a panel about the WSF’s future, Sohi Jeon already warned us about the fundamental implications of this: the Forum process must incorporate the big protagonists from popular struggles in regional, national and local levels, which is the only way for us to keep grow-ing and strengthening, which is also the only way of condensing sets of networks that compose the global movement and the WSF process. Our concern regarding this topic was reflected in the last Porto Alegre Forum, in which we adopted the methodology of stimulating the convergence of themes and struggles, increasing initiatives of dialogues and meetings among different actors.

./english/519.txt:59:This year’s polycentric process surely enables an enlargement in the WSF’s horizontal relation with some regional and national processes – in Bamako and Caracas this was clear and we hope that the same occurs in other stages of the process (Karachi, Athens, Bangkok, and for us in Brazil, Recife). We also have to evaluate the methodology’s efficiency within these events and verify if the worries that have guided us in Porto Alegre 2005 are being properly contemplated. But for the 7th WSF in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2007, we must fundamentally build a participative process for the event‘s preparation, a methodology and a communication process that enables global connections of the processes, which at this moment are relatively dispersed – and this in a bigger qualitative scale than has ever been done in any WSF process’ events. But always keeping in mind that the Forum does not substitute social movements nor any kind of struggle, on the contrary, it is an instrument to assist them.

./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:65:In the last period, this attempt of linking the Forum and some left sectors received a new impulse because of the situation present in Latin América with the new left parties or left-origin parties gov-ernments. It produced a renewal of nationalizing temptations, reinforced by the strengthening of the sectors with government resources access. The frustration with PT and Lula’s government moved tendencies in the region towards Chavez government, which has been leading important social changes and anti-imperialist struggles. It is essential to the global movement and to the WSF proc-ess to dialogue with all the positive experiences in the anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist struggles in progress. The choice of Caracas to host one of the events of the policentric process refelcted the recognition of Bolivarian Revolution’s positive role.

./english/519.txt:69:In the article “WSF: from resistance to the struggle for a post-neoliberal world or retrogression”, written by Emir Sader a little before the Caracas Forum, he says: “The WSF leaves the neo liberal-ism resistance stage and starts to participate actively in the fight for ‘another possible world’ or it will be doomed to retrogression. Taking place in Venezuela, it is an excellent opportunity for the WSF to take this step further. If it gets out of this event undamaged, recovering the same previous speech, without having learned from the extraordinary conquers and warnings that Caribbean and Latin America offered, it will condemn itself to be in the margin of the big battles that are in pro-gress now against the imperial hegemony and neo liberalism in the world”.

./english/519.txt:71:This quote may give rise to various criticism, regarding topics that go from “denying” the fact that the Forum has actively participated in the fight for ‘another possible world’ (as a space) and it was an important agent in the global ideology struggle for revaluing leftist projects, up to its “ultimate” character as if it was the last chance to correct a mistake, which would be producing its current marginality. We may also think about it as nostalgia of a past in which there were countries whose governments represented international tendencies of the socialist movement. Moscow, Belgrade, Beijing, Havana, Tirana and even Pyongyang were already presented as the ones which would lead socialism to victory — geopolitical determinations that specific sectors have tried to turn into politi-cal imperatives.

./english/519.txt:73:If the leftist governments ought to be defended from the imperialist ag-gressions, we should also learn with the “real socialism” collapse and emphasize the fragility of so-cial change processes whose focus is unilaterally the state machine — and this fragility became clear to many Caracas Forum participants. This should not be seen as an antagonistic critic to the Bolivarian Revolution, but as a part of a dialogue that tries to contribute to the improvement of this process. This is the same kind of criticism that many components of the WSF process have made to castrism, from the leftist point of view, what we, the Latin American people do emphasize stressing the difficult conditions imposed by the imperialistic enclosure to the Havana regime and the Cuba people heroic resistance — approach that usually leftist sectors from outside the continent take as condescendence. On the other hand, the concrete problems of revolutionary processes in progress stimulate the debate within the WSF on the political power and the State as a changing element to-wards another world.

./english/522.txt:1:The Karachi Social Forum and its international significance

./english/522.txt:6:Europe solidaire sans frontières (ESSF) participated in the World Social Forum in Karachi. The report which follows is not descriptive (number of seminars and so on.), but seeks to share some elements of analysis on this new experience and its significance - taking account of the fact that this was the author’s first visit to Pakistan. The report is, then, “foreign” and does not claim to be based on a real knowledge of the country. It is on the other hand informed by the comparative experience of the preceding forums in Porto Alegre, Europe and India. A more detailed report will be drawn up later.

./english/522.txt:8:After Bamako (Mali) and Caracas (Venezuela) last January, Karachi constituted the third wing of the World Social Forum, in its “polycentric” version of 2006. Meeting from March 24-29 in the main industrial centre and port of Pakistan, it proved to be a success both in terms of numbers and of politics. The attendance - more than 30,000 - was twice as big as predicted and the forum represented an event with many new aspects for this country.

./english/522.txt:12:The destructive earthquake of October 2005, in the north of the country in Kashmir, forced the delay of the forum, initially planned for the end of January. For several months financial resources and activist energies were devoted to aiding a population which had been very hard hit and was threatened by the rigours of the Himalayan winter. Moreover, the social and citizen-based dynamic which had contributed to the success of previous forums was not self-evidently present in Pakistan.

./english/522.txt:14:Pakistan, land of expansion of forums

./english/522.txt:15:In its original homeland (a part of Latin America and of southern Europe) the launch of the WSF benefited from a new context (the emergence of resistance to capitalist globalisation), but also from the renewal of unitary traditions during the 1990s, already involving a notable diversity of social actors. The forums have enlarged and strengthened these unitary traditions, but they have profited from a dynamic of convergence which was already underway.

./english/522.txt:17:In other countries, in the lands of expansion, it is rather the existence of the world process which serves as reference. It is this which allows the initiation of the dynamic of convergence specific to the social forums, which constitutes their “trademark”. It is always difficult to seek to understand the characteristics of a country that one knows very little of, but, at the risk of caricaturing a necessarily complex reality, it seems to me that such has been the case in Pakistan.

./english/522.txt:19:The experience of the Karachi WSF is all the more interesting to analyse inasmuch as it took place in a very diversified country (as much in social structure as in regional and national identities); under a military regime; placed on the Afghan front line of Washington’s “war on terror”; subject to the growing pressure of religious fundamentalist currents, called here “sectarian movements” and capable of murderous violence [1]; in a region dominated since the partition of 1947 by Indo-Pakistani antagonism, which has now become a nuclear stand off. [2] It is also the first time that a forum of this breadth has met in one of the biggest Muslim countries in the world.

./english/522.txt:21:The success of the Karachi WSF was not then in any way banal. It should be analysed in its specificities. It is obviously the job of the Pakistanis (and those who know Pakistan well) to do it. But the perception, without pretension, of an old habitué of forums can nonetheless be also useful, at least to raise certain specificities which are the most apparent to a "foreign" onlooker. I would like first to sum up briefly on what, in my eyes, has given the event its significance.

./english/522.txt:24:First element of success, and a major one, the WSF in Karachi opened a democratic and secular space between the pressure of the military regime and that of the fundamentalist, conservative currents. The site of the forum was alive. It was a permanent theatre of demand-based demonstrations.

./english/522.txt:26:Musical groups and poets gave an emotional power to the political speeches. In the seminars, some women wearing shawls or veils removed them - in Pakistan, there are many who wear no headgear. Women were numerous and mixed company was the rule in the spaces and the tribunes of the forum. The atmosphere was joyous, the speech and behaviour liberating.

./english/522.txt:28:Second element of success, diverse popular movements effectively appropriate the democratic and secular space opened by the forum: small fishers from the Karachi region; peasants from the province of Punjab; trades unionists in struggle against privatisation; nationalists from Sind (where Karachi is located), Baluchistan (in the west) or Kashmir (in the north); and a myriad of women’s organisations. As at the WSF in Mumbai, in January 2004, the movements were participants as such in the forum, impelling the space, more than is often the case in Europe or in Latin America. The WSF in Karachi thoroughly merited the name of social forum. It expressed the radicalism of democratic and social demands.

./english/522.txt:32:Fourth element of success, the presence of youth and the return of politics. Hundreds of youth, particularly from Karachi, participated in the forum as volunteers. For many among them, it was their first political experience - sometimes a little disconcerting, it seems, because of the changes of programme. More generally, the forum allowed a reaffirmation of the authenticity of the political terrain in the face of the military regime which sterilises it in the name of the imperatives of national security and faced with the fundamentalist movements which sterilise it in the name of religious imperatives. The forum has reopened the debate on the place of politics and it is not the least of its results.

./english/522.txt:36:Fifth element of success, the forum constituted a new stage of a regional process, in South Asia, begun in India during the forums of Hyderabad (2003) and Mumbai (2004). It also initiated a unitary dynamic in Pakistan itself, which should continue: discussion was immediately opened, after the experience of Karachi, on the regular organisation of a Pakistani social forum. To be followed up and confirmed, then

./english/522.txt:41:1. The MQM. The relationship to the governmental institutions in the towns or the countries where the forums are held has nearly always caused problems. In Karachi, the tensions crystallized on the attitude to be taken to the MQM, the “Mohajir” movement [4] which dominates the municipality and which many formations of the Pakistani left judge “ethnicist”. It was not integrated in the programme of the forum.

./english/522.txt:43:2. Integration. A certain number of movements which should logically have participated in the forum did not do so. This was notably the case with the feminist organisations of Lahore. The process of integration in the dynamic of the forums of all the components concerned is not then finished. This problem goes back probably as much to questions of functioning (opening of structures) and orientation as of “visibility”.

./english/522.txt:45:3. Visibility. the contrast was striking between the composition of the platform during the forum’s opening ceremony (where there were no social movements) and the place occupied by the movements in the space of the forum itself or in number of seminars. This contrast is still more accentuated in the area of “international visibility” of the Pakistani forum (at least before its holding), which was very reduced. This problem of representation and visibility, of the gap between the composition of the central platforms and the movements which ensure the social character of the forums, is obviously not specific to the case of Pakistan.

./english/522.txt:47:4 On the left. This polemic on the nature of the social forums divided the Pakistani left. Some political movements supported the process from the beginning. This is particularly the case of the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) whose activists were perfectly at home in the forum. The Awami Tehreek (from Sind) was very present. A little before the forum, a front was set up between six left organisations [5]. That probably facilitated a broader participation of left forces in the forum.

./english/522.txt:49:5. Internationally 58 countries were “represented” at the forum in Karachi. But, outside of South Asia, the national delegations were generally small. These were generally made up of people already concerned by Pakistan or the region (with exceptions, concerning in particular the Latin Americans). The French delegation was probably the most numerous “outside Asia”. From the CRID to ESSF via the Frères des Hommes, the French were in the main already “into” Asia - although the presence of unions like the CGT and the Italian CGIL should be mentioned.

./english/522.txt:50:From this point, the forum in Karachi was an essentially Pakistani forum with a significant regional dynamic but a weak global participation. It was supposed to be a wing of the World Social Forum. But it was not “taken up” by the components and the international bodies of the WSF in the same way as the forums of Bamako and Caracas. Very significantly, on the very eve of the forum in Karachi, the International Council of the WSF met... in Nairobi. It was certainly good to prolong without delay the African dynamic of Bamako to prepare the WSF 2007 in Kenya, but it would have been preferable to hold the March IC in Karachi and the following, planned in October, in Nairobi. The consequences, in Pakistan, of the lack of international support made themselves felt, including on the financial plane, and the Pakistanis clearly posed the organisational problems at a meeting during the forum, with the members of the IC of the WSF present.

./english/522.txt:52:Given the difficulties and the stakes (national and regional) of the Pakistani forum, the WSF in Karachi particularly merited being supported internationally. It was also a unique occasion to learn about a pioneer experience. But Asia remains the poor relation of solidarity in Europe and Latin America. Despite the role played since Mumbai by the Indians, the international bodies of the WSF reproduced instead of correcting this very unequal perception of the world.

./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:59:Of course, each forum has its own characteristics and functions. But the form “forum/process”, “meeting space/place of impulsion of actions” clearly responds to needs linked to the period and not only to a specific political geography. We already knew it, but this is a confirmation of it. The forums allow the rallying of resistance (in its diversity) in a time of globalisation, when the crisis of the socialist reference has not been overcome and the modes of centralisation of the past period (around the workers’ movement or armed struggles) do not work as before.

./english/522.txt:61:2. The significance of the Pakistani experience. The Karachi forum illustrates this first point of conclusion. The political situation in the country is not good. There are key struggles, sometimes victorious, but the trade union and social movement remains fragmented and globally weak. The country is extremely divided. Social structures are often very different according to province, or even inside the same province like the Punjab. The whole history of the Pakistani state since its formation in 1947 is traversed by conflicts between the elites of “ethnic” groups and provinces for the control of the administration and the army (which are dominated by the Punjabis, but also the Mohajirs). Regional or national conflicts are numerous (Baluchis, Pashtoons, Kashmiris, Sindhis and so on) and can lead to internal wars. Statistics show 97% of Pakistan’s population are Muslims, with all the ambiguity linked to the use of categories of religious (or cultural?) appearance against a complex social reality (don’t doubt it, there are Pakistani atheists). But we have seen the multiplicity (Sunni, Shiite, Ahmadiyya, Sufis and so on) and the violence that this “unanimous” percentage hides.

./english/522.txt:63:Despite all this, the forum in Karachi was a dynamic place of popular convergence. It is this which gives us something to reflect on, and which ensures that this experience its national and international significance.

./english/522.txt:65:3. Internal contradictions. A recurrent polemic on the role of the NGOs in the process of the WSF re-emerged in Karachi. The “left” critique of the forums is often formulated in too abstract, too “external” a fashion. The success of the forums has nothing obvious about it, it expresses something new. To be pertinent, the critique should then begin by understanding this and recognising this; it should be formulated in, let us say, a more “internal” fashion.

./english/522.txt:67:The evolution of the world of NGOs poses a problem? Effectively. Some, in the name of global civil society, weaken the local or national activist fabrics. In the name of a citizen-based discourse, they stifle social radicalism. In the name of democracy, they monopolise visibility to the detriment of otherwise more representative organisations. But the world of the NGOs is not homogeneous; and it is not alone in creating a problem. The same is true of the trade union bureaucracies, intolerant “rank and file” movements, authoritarian political leaderships, of naïfs and cynics and (oh how many!) egotistical personalities and manipulative individuals. In short, it is not enough to denounce the NGOs (many of whom have their place in the forums) to ensure the popular dynamic of the process.

./english/522.txt:69:The poor are, in society, invisible. On the contrary, the forums should ensure the visibility of the most exploited and oppressed. Since the very beginning in Porto Alegre this has not been self-evident. The gap can be large, inside the forum, between the “street” and the platforms. Since 2001, some progress has been accomplished, but the process is not one-way - there are also regressions.

./english/522.txt:71:Just as the experience of the forums merits being defended against a “left” critique which is too “external”, it is necessary to take seriously the contradiction at work among the people of the forums. We should neither hope nor wish for a process without contradictions. But for a new forum to merit the name “social”, the most audible voice should be that of the most exploited and oppressed, their movements should be at the heart of the process.

./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/522.txt:77:The forum in Karachi was made possible by this world expansion of the process; in return it gives it dynamism in a country and a zone of strategic conflicts. A sole regret: that too few organisations in Europe and Latin America took this opportunity to acquaint themselves with the stakes in South Asia.

./english/524.txt:4:If the World Economic Forum is willing to learn from the reflections on globalisation in the World Social Forum, much will be won, argues

./english/524.txt:10:This inextinguishable cheerfulness also dominated the World Social Forum (WSF) in the recently held edition in Bamako, the capital of Mali, on the river Niger, not too far from Timbuktu. That is the beautiful side of Africa: this basic note of life’s enjoyment, evident most prominently in the displays of music and dance. Naturally, at the same time, there was concern on all that stems somber: the relentless and persistent robbery of Africa’s natural wealth, the wars, the hopeless juvenile unemployment and the ways in which youth, who try to find their luck elsewhere, are caught in the gates around “fortress Europe”. In the stadium for cultural manifestations, there was an impressive work of art that depicted the enormous enclosure around the Spanish enclave Melilla, depicting countless black figures in ironware who had been forced to succumb to the power of border control.

./english/524.txt:14:Based on the experiences in Mali, polycentrism appears to be a good idea: it was Africans themselves who determined the agenda and were seeking appealing responses. Of course, the jargon that is so typical of the struggle against “neo-liberalism” was voiced here as well as the anger about political leaders with enormous foreign bank accounts. But much more striking was the way in which from within the continent itself, a quest for a vision on Africa’s future was clear. Pan-Africanism had returned: one radio MTV station for the whole of Africa; complete economic integration; and railway lines that would run right through and over the whole continent. The forum itself however, was a living testimony of the necessity to transcend the frontiers drawn by colonialism. Of the people who had registered from Eastern and Southern Africa only few actually appeared. In francophone Mali, it was the Malians who dominated together with other francophonians.

./english/524.txt:19:The WSF is not intended to design a common program for the complete nongovernmental world, but to offer space for an exchange of insights and experiences. The focus concerns endeavors towards renewal from bottom-up as well as cooperation in a commitment for equitable globalization. Bamako fully reflected this end. Striking was the sympathetic ambiance that the leadership of the forum in Mali managed to create, with full cooperation from their government. This is in complete contrast to the total isolation from ordinary women and men that is so typical for the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

./english/524.txt:21:Yet the WEF tends to draw the attention of the major global media that the World Social Forum, since its inception in 2001, has failed to allure. More and more this attention revolves around celebrities and in Bamako that was limited to Danielle Mitterrand, widow of the former President of France. With her empathic attitude and spontaneous reactions, she did indeed impress. “ What do we teach our children?” she wondered. “To be beautiful, to become rich …! As a result, our world gets more and more polarized, full of people competing with each other and excluding others. Let us on the contrary start from the hope with which every child in whatever poor conditions born, arrives on this earth. In that hope lies the basis for a humane kind of globalization.”

./english/527.txt:1:The World Social Forum of Porto Alegre: what future?

./english/527.txt:4:2006 is a very special year. The World Social Forum of Porto Alegre turned ‘polycentric’. It means there are three world meetings in three different places: Bamako (Mali) in Africa, Caracas (Venezuela) in Latin America and Karachi (Pakistan) in Asia. A fourth polycentric Forum will take place in Bangkok in October 2006.

./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:14:The World Social Fora clearly are a formula for success. More than one hundred thousand participants in 2005 in Porto Alegre. Twenty to thirty thousand participants in Bamako in 2006. More than sixty thousand participants in Caracas. In Karachi, the forum had to be postponed because of the earth quake end of 2005. There clearly is a growing demand of such meetings, especially by young people who want more debates and more campaigns. The media however, do not follow. They are more interested in colourful festivals and in violence. They are the ones who are saying and writing that the fora have no future. In Caracas, very little media attention was given to the WSF, and most were dismissing this meeting in ‘Chavez country’.

./english/527.txt:16:When 1400 organisations from all over the world gather to organise more than 2000 seminars, one might expect the media to be there. Surely, one could say that the mainstream media are part of the problems that are discussed at the fora, since they are dominated by neoliberal capitalism. Nevertheless, even the World Economic Forum in Davos got little attention and even alternative media were not massively present in Caracas. End of January 2006, all media focused on some Danish islamophobic cartoons. So, one necessarily has to question recent developments. What exactly is going on? Have the World Social Fora become irrelevant? Are today’s world’s real conflicts not situated elsewhere? Do the World Social Fora mirror the world’s most urgent problems?

./english/527.txt:26:Post-capitalists, then, are not less radical than anti-capitalists, but only adhere to a different strategy. However, one should not forget that revolutionary forces are also present at the WSF, and very often they consider it to be ‘too soft’. In Mumbai, they had organised their own alternative forum. They clearly reject all proposals to take into account the existing reality of current neoliberal policies. ‘Correcting’ these policies is out of the question. Their proposals concern a totally different economic order.

./english/527.txt:28:Houtart’s dichotomy, then, is very useful to bring some clarity in the debates on the forum, but it is clearly not complete. Moreover, many movements have completely different objectives. The best example comes from the advocates of an ecologically sustainable development that very often go beyond the anti- or post-capitalist dividing line. This certainly is one of the weakest spots in the WSF, since there surely are very interesting analysis of all that goes wrong in our environment, but no one apparently can or dares to say how the rich countries of the North have to change their non-sustainable production and consumption patterns. Debates are organised on the privatisation of water, on the rights of indigenous peoples and on the ecological debt, but only very rarely on how the rich have to change. Little attention is paid to the dividing lines within these movements. Some are clearly post-modernists, condemning all ideas about progress and advocating a totally different development. Others are more or less openly and consciously anti-modernists, believing only in small scale economies, autarky and self-management.

./english/527.txt:38:No one will disagree on the need for more participatory democracy. However, the question on how and if movements can ally with politicians and/or political parties is much more difficult to answer. The WSF in Caracas was a case in point, since many observers and participants feared that Chavez would try to appropriate the forum. There was quite some resistance against a possible funding of the WSF by the Venezuelan government. Civil society, it was said, has to be autonomous and cannot work with governments. This debate was sharpened by a letter from Chico Whitacker, one of the Brazilian founders of the Forum. Because of the corruption within Brazilian politics, he dismissed from the PT (Worker’s Party) and fiercely defends a politisation of society, without political parties.

./english/527.txt:44:The presence of political parties at the forum is also controversial. Surely the Charter of the WSF talks of a possible participation of elected representatives ‘in their personal capacity’ and assuming they respect the principles of the Charter. Public authorities are not our enemies, as Bernard Cassen rightly states. But then, how to explain the presence in some seminars of civil servants from the World Bank or the UNDP?

./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/527.txt:50:These differences between the advocates of civil society and the politically minded participants would be easier to understand if there were no power relations within the forum. The WSF has created its own elite, people who decide were and when to meet, that are part of the secretariat or the international council, people that do not have to queue and wait two hours in order to register for the forum, people that live in expensive hotels and know what is good for the ordinary activist. One might suspect some horizontalists to just defend their own interests and power. Those who want to avoid any hierarchy and are against any political influence, often just try to perpetuate existing and informal power relations.

./english/527.txt:52:This is not being stated in order to accuse anyone. Though I do think that the power relations within the forum should be formalised in order to have more transparency and democracy. The Brazilian members of the international secretariat repeat that we should change ourselves before we can start to change the world. They are certainly right. It is one more reason for the ‘hierarchy’ of the Forum to do what it preaches.

./english/527.txt:58:One point seems to be beyond controversy. The objectives of the many participants of the forum are not equal and some seem to be defenders of a more consistent neoliberalism instead of being against it. It remains an open question whether all are really for radical democracy. Some participants seem to think that all problems can be solved by giving a more important role to civil society. Sometimes, one even starts to wonder whether all are really for ‘another world’. Just think of all the movements that joined Lula – and six months later the World Bank – to defend the millennium goals against poverty. These NGOs now accept an air ticket tax, a consumption tax without any structural impact on redistribution or on ecology. These measures cannot even be called neokeynesian. Or think of the NGOs that march against the WTO. Some of them are not against free trade but want ‘real free trade’ and are marching against the interests of poor countries.

./english/527.txt:70:In 2005, nothing was done with this proposal. Until the WSF in Bamako of January 2006. One day before the Forum a number of movements gathered to discuss and adopt an ‘Appeal of Bamako’, a text of some 20 pages with an interesting programme. Most post-capitalists should be able to agree with it, certainly if they believe in strong states and the important role of political and social agency. The initiative was promoted by Samir Amin, François Houtart and the people of ‘Le Monde Diplomatique’, all founders of the WSF process.

./english/527.txt:74:This brings us to the delicate question of whether the WSF has to defend one or other form of socialism. In the Forum, most people avoid terminology that has negative connotations, because no one knows exactly what is meant by them. There will not be many movements that defend a return to the socialism of the cold war. Consequently, discourses about socialism have no sense if they do not clearly define what they are about. It is about radical democracy, some participants may answer, and that may be acceptable. But can one define socialism without including an economic dimension?

./english/527.txt:76:The authors of the ‘Appeal of Bamako’ are also being blamed for not understanding the dynamics of the forum. They underestimate the importance of democratic processes. Last year’s text, the ‘consensus of Porto Alegre’ certainly was no consensus, but it was a clear and short document. Why has no one tried to organise a debate around it? This could have led to a new document in 2006. Now, movements are asked to sign the ‘Appeal of Bamako’, without any possibility of participation in the drafting of the text and without any possibility to amend it. This clearly is an old-fashioned top-down approach that is difficult to accept. Moreover, in Caracas the text was presented in a seminar by seven gentlemen – not one single woman – and again without any possibility for the audience to discuss it. The WSF deserves better than this hierarchical way of doing.

./english/527.txt:92:Secondly, the WSF, the international secretariat and/or the international council will have to reflect on another kind of organisation. The WSF is a very expensive initiative – every global forum costs millions of dollars – and it is indeed a very positive step to give every one an opportunity to gather, to exchange ideas, to discuss proposals. However, many movements do not even respect their own proposals, they remain absent or they have no audience other than their own members. Edgardo Lander of the WSF in Caracas proposed to make a pre-selection of all initiatives. That is a very delicate mission. What criteria would have to be used? Who will decide? However, these ideas have to be studied in depth since the WSF has its financial and logistical limits. A solution that is acceptable to all has to be found.

./english/527.txt:100:The WSF has to find its way, as François Houtart notes, ‘between a 5th International and a social Woodstock’. The WSF is a festival and the WSF is political. The WSF has to be politicized, which means that many political actions within the forum should be possible. The WSF should not become the victim of its success. Its process has to be deepened in order to find a number of practical, post-capitalistic, radical democratic alternatives. The WSF is an open forum and should remain an open forum. But it also should be able to encourage the wording of strategies and alternatives, in both a pragmatic and idealistic way. We will indeed have to change ourselves. As Peter Waterman says, the main problem of emancipation is not the enemy, it is us.

./english/529.txt:1:Last Reflections On The World Social Forum, Karachi

./english/529.txt:6:The Polycentric World Social Forum was planned to be held simultaneously in Karachi, Pakistan, Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali, but Karachi had to be postponed following the disastrous October earthquake in northern Pakistan, while the other two went ahead. I’ve just returned home from this momentous gathering and my experience at the WSF Karachi is now melding together into a big blur, from which I can extract some overall impressions. The big blurry picture is of course, interspersed with a clearer myriad of details, many of which warm the heart and inspire. With a theme slogan of "Another World is Possible," energetic, exuberant, flamboyant, and celebratory are the predominant adjectives which come to mind to describe the event. It was a very joyous meeting. There was an overall impression of gender balance, and although there’s no doubt that the event attracted the most progressive women in Pakistani society, there was also wide representation from rural and tribal women. Women spoke out freely and worked together with men. Men participated in women’s forums, women and men marched together, and there was gender balance in the facilitation of meetings.

./english/529.txt:8:About 20,000 people a day visited the Forum which was primarily centred at the KMC Sport Complex, located somewhere in that flat megalopolis of 15,000,000 people. There’s no height of land around Karachi, nor are there any tall buildings from where anyone can get a true sense of the enormity of the city. Each day, there were more than 120 activities to choose from, which were held in 50 giant ’shamyana’s’ (open-air Pakistani tents). Activities included cultural expositions, rallies, seminars, music, testimonies, workshops, theatre, conference/panels, film screenings, exhibitions, dialogue tables, assemblies and celebrations. There was also an excellent food and crafts fair which continued for the duration, which featured items from all over Pakistan. There were perhaps less than 100 white-skins there ( I met one American) and accordingly, most of the discussion was conducted in Urdu, which was, quite generously, often translated into English. Nevertheless, I enjoyed listening to the Urdu, Sindhi, Seraiki, Punjabi, Hindi, Balochi and Pashto speeches simply for the beauty of the language and the animated passion of the speakers. And with many familiar thematic keywords, one could get a fair gist of what was being said.

./english/529.txt:12:The idea for the World Social Forum was born out of the enormous, unprecedented grassroots demonstrations which materialized at the Seattle WTO meetings in November 1999. It was founded in 2001 by community organizers, youth groups and academics as an alternative to the establishment World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The Seattle demo’s were enormously motivating and successful, but they were spontaneously organized if organized at all, leaderless, free-structured, free-flowing, individualistic, non-committal and non-dependent on funding, all of which of course, are anathema to the NGO, or any other structured human organization. There is some kind of catalytic critical mass convergence that arises from time to time, which brings people together to demand change. We need to learn to recognize, predict and make those catalysts happen. Nobody has ever defined what exactly worked at Seattle, but I believe it set a prescient example that the clear majority of humanity can become focussed and channel its energies and imagination into action which can change the status quo. It reiterated that humanity can spontaneously mobilize to powerful, non-violent action, beyond any of the extant, status-quo social organizational structures. But action is simply not enough without a new vision for the world.

./english/529.txt:14:Objections have been voiced that many of those seeking a change in the world do not know what they are looking for. Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo who attended the first forum, wrote, "After a year and a half of protests against the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the World Social Forum was billed as an opportunity for this emerging movement to stop screaming about what it is against and start articulating what it is for." President Chavez of Venezuela where the WSF was held in January also expressed the same fear when he appealed for a serious political discussion and the need for direction. I didn’t hear a whole lot of visionary discussion at the Karachi Forum. There were countless NGO’s presenting their efforts, railing against the powers that be, but other than a sense of solidarity, no discussion arose by which the global activist community might grow their movement. I didn’t see any "Big Picture" emerging.

./english/529.txt:16:The criticisms of the "NGO-ization" of the World Social Forum, levelled by Arundhati Roy, (who declined to attend), and repeated by Tariq Ali, (who stayed only for his own speeches and then flew away back to England) are valid. These criticism’s were circulating around the conference, and they have been heard, apparently, by whatever there is of a WSF management hierarchy. One hopes that there will be some flexibility and a maturation of the event to include these concerns as a central aspect of examination at future forums. But on the whole, for Pakistan, even as an NGO-fest, the WSF justified itself simply to get so many activists together, many for the first time to see each other’s projects, to recognize the importance of dissent, and to feel solidarity with their neighbours, of which more than 5000 Indians were said to have been present. Although there was a professional and international presence, by far the greatest majority were Pakistani and South Asian volunteer, grass-roots activists. This Forum was valuable for everyone who showed up. Demonstrations and mass rallies are very empowering and inspiring. These qualities are in short supply, in a world overwhelmed by apathy, inertia and despondence.

./english/529.txt:24:Not a single status-quo extant political system, nor any of its players, which are currently arrayed along a left/right cline are offering anything which can check our path-dependent, headlong rush to global catastrophe. No Robert’s Rules meeting can produce the required course of action. A clear majority of humanity understands clearly what is wrong with this world, yet is completely stymied by the zero political options to turn around this hell-bent march to destruction. This human majority is mutually instantly recognizable, -we can spot each other out of crowds of thousands, regardless of nationality, class, colour or creed. There is a desperate need for a new political paradigm, and that’s what needs to be discussed at these kinds of Forums. The World Social Forum should be the place where this discussion happens. I don’t know of any bigger gathering of people who are trying to believe that "Another World is Possible."

./english/532.txt:29:The chief purpose of this article is not to answer these questions by examining the ‘self-evident’ truths of open source production. Such studies are already being carried out in forums like Oekunux [http://www.oekonux.de]; indeed, in this issue of Mute, Gilberto Camara, Director for Earth Observation at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, publishes research that challenges some key tenets of the FLOSS model. His research exposes the possibility that, in many cases, FLOSS does not innovate significantly original software, or sustain projects outside of corporate or large scale academic involvement. Instead this article seeks to address the intense political expectation around open organisation among diverse elements of the diffuse activist organisations which, post-Seattle, have been loosely referred to as ‘the social movement’ or ‘social movements’. In referring to the social movement, this article concerns itself primarily with groups such as People’s Global Action, Indymedia, Euraction Hub and other such non-hierarchised collectives; it does not have in mind more traditionally structured organisations like the Social Forums, Globalise Resistance or so-called ‘civil society’ NGOs.

./english/534.txt:1:Polycentric World Social Forum: Caracas 2006

./english/534.txt:6:As has happened every year for the last six years, at the end of January people from around the world gather in the World Social Forum (WSF) under the slogan "Another World is Possible." The goal of the forum is to provide a space for social movements and civil society to reflect and strategize on ways to confront neoliberalism and militarism.

./english/534.txt:8:After meeting four of the last five years in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the forum moved this year to a new "polycentric" model of meetings in Mali, Venezuela, and Pakistan. The meetings originally were planned to be held simultaneously, but finally the Mali and Venezuela forums were held sequentially with the one in Pakistan postponed until March.

./english/534.txt:10:The Venezuela forum (also known as the second Americas Social Forum, after a similar hemispheric meeting in Quito, Ecuador two years earlier) began on January 24 with a massive rally through the streets of the capital city, Caracas. Over the next five days, delegates gathered in approximately 2000 workshops, panels, and sessions to discuss and debate a wide variety of social, economic, and political issues.

./english/534.txt:12:About 80,000 people, representing 2,500 organisations from around the World, attended the forum. The largest delegation came from Brazil where the forum started, the next largest group was from the host country of Venezuela, then the neighbouring country of Colombia, and the United States providing the fourth largest with about 2,000 delegates. The United States' participation in the forum has been small but growing, and this was the first year that activists from the US had a noticeable presence.

./english/534.txt:14:The Caracas forum was much more monolingual than previous gatherings. In Porto Alegre, the official languages were the four main colonial languages of the Americas (Portuguese, Spanish, English and French), and anyone who was merely bi-lingual was at a distinct disadvantage. In Caracas, the lingua franca was Spanish; most people from Venezuela and neighbouring Andean countries speak only that language, and expected conversations to be in Spanish. Furthermore, a growing United States participation also introduced a sizeable mono-lingual English audience who increasingly felt alienated in the Spanish environment.

./english/534.txt:16:Reflecting these language politics, IPS's forum newspaper, Terraviva, that previously had been published in several languages, appeared exclusively in Spanish in Caracas. For the first time, the youth camp had its own newspaper called, El Querrequerre (named after a local bird that dies if held in captivity); it was published almost entirely bilingually, in Spanish and English. Community radio broadcasts provided additional sources of information on the forum further enlivening discussions.

./english/534.txt:18:Setting the tone for the forum, and reflecting its central issues, the leading slogan at the opening march was "no to war, no to imperialism, another world is possible, another America is possible." The dominant discourse at the forum, however, has radicalized. Rather than talking about war and globalization, the language increasingly shifted to one of anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism. Reflecting this, the volunteers who greeted delegates at the airport sported shirts with the slogan, "a better world is possible, if it is socialist." Another common slogan proclaimed "another world is necessary, and with you it is possible."

./english/534.txt:20:Holding the forum in Venezuela was controversial, and reflects long debates within the forum over the relationship between civil society and party politics. On one hand, Hugo Chavez's government is engaging in a process of social change in line with the goals of the WSF. As such, Caracas was a logical venue for a debate on how to construct a better world. On the other hand, from the beginning, the WSF was designed to be an expression of civil society that explicitly rejected the participation of political parties, armed groups, and statist solutions. These debates over the role of state structures in fostering social justice have long run through the political left, these debates within the WSF are only its most recent manifestation.

./english/534.txt:22:For Venezuela, having the forum in their country was an excellent opportunity to both exchange experiences with others, as well as, build international understanding and solidarity for the Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuela does not historically have a strong civil society, but the Chavez's government appears to have provided political space for its significant growth. One fourth of the 2000 panels in Caracas were organized by Venezuelan organizations.

./english/534.txt:24:Some people feared that in Venezuela the WSF would turn into a Chavez forum. In reality, Chavez was present everywhere, and nowhere at the same time. Few Chavista banners or chants made their way into the opening march. Although several panels focused on building solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, overall the discussions retained their broad ideological and thematic diversity with Chavez being a minor and relatively insignificant footnote.

./english/534.txt:26:The one exception, however, was Chavez's personal presence at the forum. As in 2005 in Porto Alegre, Chavez headlined the largest event, although this time, as leader of the host government, WSF regulations permitted and sanctioned his presence. His speech reflected the consolidation and radicalization of the Bolivarian Revolution. Continuing his religious language, Chavez declared that "we are realizing the utopian dream that Christ did not see during his life." He proclaimed that "this century we will bury United States imperialism." Capitalism is destroying the planet, which leaves only two alternatives: socialism or death.

./english/534.txt:28:Chavez argued that the forum should take advantage of its momentum and build a political struggle, and that it is important to support governments like that of recently elected Evo Morales in Bolivia. He noted that the concrete advances in Venezuela would not have been possible without taking political power. Some participants resented Chavez injecting himself into one of the key debates in the forum; Chavez, however, argued that even if he were not president he would still be present, advancing these ideas. He stated, "I am just one more person like the rest of you in forum."

./english/534.txt:30:Lining the streets around meeting spaces vendors sold all sorts of Chavez memorabilia: hats, t-shirts, watches, and even dolls. Was his omnipresent image on the edges of the forum merely a reflection of opportunistic informal economic actors motivated by profit, or a manifestation of gung-ho supporters determined to use the forum to advance their political agenda? In either case, by their purchases many participants demonstrated their interest in, and support for, the Chavez agenda.

./english/534.txt:32:More significant, however, was the logistical and institutional support that the Chavez government provided to the forum. A week before the forum was to open, a bridge on the freeway between the airport and Caracas showed signs that it was on the verge of collapse and had to be closed. The government diverted traffic onto an old winding road through the mountains and the poor neighbourhoods separating the airport from Caracas, this turned a safe and quick fifteen minute trip into a potentially dangerous trek of at least two hours, and often much longer.

./english/534.txt:34:In response, the state oil company PdVSA provided free and safe shuttle service between the airport and the city. Once in the city, the government provided free transportation on the metro system, tents for the meetings, and even bottled water for participants. The government also waived visa requirements and airport taxes to facilitate the participation of as many people as possible. Chavez seemed to recognize this balancing act, "we have helped with forum and are willing to do so in future," he stated, "but its work is completely autonomous."

./english/534.txt:36:Although an expression of civil society, the forum could not succeed without external support. While the forum also received state and municipal funding in Porto Alegre, due to the polarizing nature of the Chavez government this collaboration became even more overtly apparent and controversial in Caracas. Some argued that the forum should return to its original vision of providing non-governmental alternatives, while others maintained that governments are not inherently good, nor evil, but value neutral, and that Chavez demonstrates how state structures can be used to advance goals of social justice. Who should be responsible for organising and administering an enormous event continues to be a pressing issue.

./english/534.txt:38:Without governmental support, the forum would need to be scaled down Significantly, and perhaps this would not be a bad idea. The forum has grown so large that it has become a logistical nightmare, delegates often arriving late and missing speakers and discussions. Spread across a congested and polluted city, it was difficult to travel from one event to another. With an additional 80,000 people dumped onto the metro system, all hours seemed to be peak hours with riders often having to wait for several trains before finally squeezing onto one. The organisation of the forum was often loose and chaotic, with events starting late or being cancelled. As with the bridge into the city, the forum seemed to be on the verge of collapse under its own weight. Larger is not necessarily better, and cannot be used as a measure of success.

./english/534.txt:40:Others, however, found encouragement in the chaos as people joined together in good spirits to overcome adversities. It reflects a certain amount of flexibility, both on the part of the government and the forum, to be able to adapt to changing circumstances. It is this creativity that brings a good deal of strength and power to the WSF.

./english/534.txt:44:Civil society has become empowered and revitalized with new ideas. Local and thematic forums are popping up all over the world. Even in the United States, the fundamentally subversive notion of organizing a social forum has taken hold and led activists to rethink, fundamentally, how to organize civil society. As Chavez noted, the goals of social justice expressed at the WSF are well on their way to being the dominant discourse in the world, and those who advocate putting capital before people will soon be seen as the dissidents.

./english/534.txt:46:What role will the forum play in that process? The WSF tends to remain, to a certain degree, a place where organisations quickly organise events, but then fail to realize their potential to network and connect with other movements and struggles until the next forum the following January. Attendance is still largely limited to those with the time, resources, passports, and visas necessary to travel to a central location. Participating organisations and movements must engage in an evaluation of how they can realize meaningful articulation of these struggles throughout the year.

./english/535.txt:1:World Social Forum Wrap Up

./english/535.txt:4:The sixth World Social Forum (WSF), which brought together tens of thousands of participants from throughout the world, concluded on Sunday, January 29 in Caracas, Venezuela. In spite of a couple of logistical bumps in the road, participants were overwhelmingly positive about the outcome at the WSF.

./english/535.txt:6:The word used time and again by US participants to describe the experience at this year’s WSF is hope. The opportunity to meet with other participants from 140 countries around the world reinforced the forum’s theme that Another World is Possible. Laura Wells, who is a Green Party candidate for Controller in California, saw hope and was inspired by the fact that Venezuela used to be a two party system, but now Hugo Chavez, who describes himself as a socialist, and is outside of the two party system, is president. Wells said “a series of incidents happened in this country that led to a radical change in government.” She believes that conditions can change in the United States, as a result of one crisis or another, and that we need to be ready to seize the opportunity. Building the Green Party and running for Controller in this years election, when viewed in the context of the huge changes taking place in Venezuela and South America, is a strategy that makes more sense to her now than ever before.

./english/535.txt:12:Originally, the purpose of the WSF was to serve as an alternative to the World Economic Forum held by the powerful institutions of globalization, like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But, a dialog has emerged at the WSF asking if it is enough to simply bring everyone together for five days of discussions and networking or should the forum attempt to develop a strategy to confront globalization and to build a more just world? This question was discussed at some of the meetings but there is no definitive answer yet.

./english/535.txt:14:In addition to the tension surrounding the purpose of the WSF, there is also an emerging division between two different sectors of participants at the forum. Conference participants from Non Governmental Organizations (NGO’s) tend to view their role as “helping” the poor, while most grassroots activists who are a part of social movements see the need for structural economic change as being an essential part of the transformation process. The contradiction was most clearly illustrated in workshops and events about the situation in Haiti. Grassroots activists from Haiti, who support exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, were surprised and disillusioned to see Camille Chalmers from the Social Hemispheric Council on stage with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, during his principle speech to WSF participants. The presence of Chalmers at the table with Chavez was viewed as giving legitimacy to those who participated in the U.S. engineered coup that exiled Aristide. Grassroots activists wanted to know why they were not invited to have a representative at the table, but those that legitimize the coup did.

./english/535.txt:20:The organizers of the WSF provided some statistical information from last year’s forum in Porto Alegre to help us better understand who participates in the forum and why. They found that 49.8% of the people at the WSF said the reason they attended was for the exchange of experience among the participants. 47.9% attended because they wanted to contribute towards a fairer society. 42.4% came for the democratic debate of ideas and 20.6% came to contribute towards the formulation of alternative proposals to the neoliberal model.

./english/544.txt:6:FOR Karachi, the World Social Forum was a big event. This is a city that has in recent years earned a bad name for itself for its lawlessness, crime and violence, where foreigners fear to tread because of dreaded bomb blasts. When it played host for five days to 20,000 people - 2,500 foreign delegates - (organisers’ claims) without any untoward incident, this could be termed as a major achievement.

./english/544.txt:26:The Pakistan Social Forum, which organised the Karachi event, was formed in March 2003 when 50 civil society organisations, labour federations and trade unionists, rights-based people’s movements, teachers, journalists associations, political and social activists had a two-day consultation in Lahore. Their idea was to disseminate in Pakistan the ideals of the WSF - a forum of progressive, social democrats, socialists and other anti-imperialist, pro-peace and democratic forces from all over the world.

./english/548.txt:1:World Social Forum

./english/548.txt:6:Every year at the end of January, the world’s corporate and government elite gather under tight police security in the Swiss resort town of Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) to plot the future of corporate-led globalization. Five years ago, community organizers, trade unionists, young people, academics, and others began to meet in Porto Alegre, Brazil to rethink and recreate globalization so that it would benefit people.

./english/548.txt:8:From these humble beginnings, this alternative annual meeting called the World Social Forum (WSF) has grown into the world’s largest meeting of civil society. Stretching for several kilometers along the open spaces of Porto Alegre’s Guaiba riverfront, from January 26-31 of this year 155,000 participants from 135 countries joined together in 2500 activities in 11 Thematic Terrains under the southern hemisphere’s summer sun.

./english/548.txt:9:With the slogan “another world is possible,” the forum is filled with speakers, workshops, panels, debates, marches, and cultural events. The forum provides an open platform for activists to discuss strategies of resistance to globalization and to present constructive alternatives. Although hardly known or recognized in the United States, the World Social Forum has quickly grown into the most dynamic and important political event in the world.

./english/548.txt:15:Activists who have been involved in the organization of social forums in North America gathered to share their experiences and to chart directions for future action. Bringing a model of mobilizing civil society from the south to the heart of the empire is a fundamentally subversive and profoundly radical activity. It is precisely this attempt to smash capitalism, one organizer noted, that makes it so hard to organize a social forum in the United States. Nevertheless, activists hope to hold a United States Social Forum during the summer of 2006.

./english/548.txt:16:Alongside the main activities, 35,000 people gathered in the international youth camp. Some consider the youth camp to be the truest expression of the social forum. Participants dispose of hierarchy and privilege, as they work together in a common project to transcend race, class, and gender barriers.

./english/548.txt:22:Leftist Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva came to the WSF to launch a Global Call to Action Against Poverty. The biggest celebrity to visit the forum, however, was left populist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Packing to overflowing a huge sports stadium, Chavez strongly condemned neoliberalism and imperialism that takes resources away from the poor in order to benefit the wealthy. He framed his message as “the South stopping the destruction of the Bush doctrine.” If the enemy has a name perhaps so does the people’s champion, and for many people at the WSF that name would be Hugo Chavez.

./english/548.txt:24:Placing elected political officials at the middle of WSF discourse is rather ironic given that the forum began explicitly as a gathering of civil society that discarded state-centered solutions to social problems. Many activists, however, are rethinking the relationship between social movements and political parties. This has led back to an emphasis on the importance of the state in achieving fundamental social changes.

./english/548.txt:26:Next year the World Social Forum moves to a decentralized model with regional meetings planned for Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. A hemispheric Americas Social Forum is scheduled to take place the last week of January in Venezuela. In 2007, plans call for another global meeting of civil society–this time in Africa.

./english/549.txt:8:But nominations, power and awards bring with them expectations and responsibility. When speaking of the abstract concept of 'global civil society' a very concrete space within the 'global civil society' comes to mind: I think of course of the World Social Forum process, a process that has emerged into the largest self-formed, autonomous and spontaneous gathering of civil society to date.

./english/549.txt:43:Further reforms, as in reforming the existing framework - or transformations, as in setting up something new - would then have to be prioritised following careful analysis on the state of our world. Not surprisingly, during the latest World Social Forum meeting in Porto Alegre in January 2005, 19 members of the International Council of the World Social Forum launched a 'Porto Alegre Manifesto'. The manifesto 'calls for agreement among WSF participants on a clear set of goals for world economic reform', much in line with the reforms and transformations listed above. The 'Porto Alegre Manifesto' was much criticized for the procedures according to which it was presented; all initial signatories are male, there is not much representation from younger of women's groups etc. But interestingly, as I gather, the content has not been much focus of the debate. Have you heard, or perhaps presented yourselves, comments regarding the substance of the Manifesto?

./english/569.txt:1:Critical Reflection on the Fifth World Social Forum

./english/569.txt:5:1. The Fifth World Social Forum, which met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, between 26 and 31 January 2005, demonstrated once again the enormous strength of the global movement that became visible in the struggles of Chiapas, Seattle, and Genoa. 200,000 at the opening demonstration, 155,000 participants involved in 2,500 activities, a wealth of cultural events, the concluding Assembly of the Social Movements that took up the call for a global day of protest against the occupation of Iraq on 19 March - all of these are things to celebrate.

./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:11:Chico Whittaker, one of the founders of the WSF, has justified the Charter in highly poetic terms: like a village 'square without an owner', a social forum is 'a socially horizontal space'. How then to justify the fact that, on the day the WSF proper began, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva addressed what was notionally a seminar, but was really a mass rally of the ruling Workers Party (PT), within the WSF? Lula is not only leader of the PT, but President of the Republic of Brazil. His participation in the Forum doesn’t seem very 'horizontal'. It's as if the village mayor, followed by his retinue, thrust his way through the beggars in the square to proclaim his love of the poor.

./english/569.txt:13:Two issues are involved here. One is the question of principle. In our view it was a mistake to impose a ban on parties, since political organizations are inextricably intermingled with social movements and articulate different strategies and visions that are a legitimate contribution to the debates that take place in the social forums. In fact, the Porto Alegre Charter has always been circumvented, but the Lula rally has made the resulting hypocrisy absolutely flagrant. It would surely be more honest to amend or scrap this tattered ban. 1

./english/569.txt:23:3. Maybe the domestic political pressures on the Brazilian organizers of the WSF were simply too great for them to resist the demand that the Forum itself should be a venue for the attempt of Third Way politicians to appropriate the agenda of the altermondialiste movement. But they must taken responsibility for how the WSF itself was organized. Taking inspiration from the 4th WSF in Mumbai, they moved the Forum from its old main site at the Catholic University (PUC) to a specially dedicated zone along the right bank of the Guiba river.

./english/569.txt:25:This had the great advantage, compared to previous forums at Porto Alegre, of physical contiguity (although the walk from one end to the other, particularly in the summer heat of a city in the grips of a drought, was pretty arduous!). But this gain was undercut by the division of the site into 11 distinct 'Thematic Terrains', each devoted to their own political theme: Thus Space A was devoted to Autonomous Thought, B to Defending Diversity, Plurality, and Identities, C to Art and Creation, and so on. The effect was tremendously to fragment the Forum. If you were interested in a particular subject - say, culture or war or human rights - you could easily spend the entire four days in one relatively small area without coming into contact with people interested in different subjects.

./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/569.txt:29:This effect of this fragmentation, particularly in combination with Lula’s intervention, is not politically neutral. It runs counter to the trend in the wider movement to make connections between the challenges we face, between neo-liberalism and environmental catastrophe, for example, and crucially between corporate globalization and war. As Emir Sader, one of the leading intellectuals of the Brazilian left and a WSF founder, put it,'while the Forum emphasizes secondary issues, there is no major debate about the most important issue of the day - the struggle against the war and imperial hegemony in the world.'

./english/569.txt:33:And we should acknowledge that some of the difficulties are a product of political disagreements. The giant meeting that Hugo Chávez addressed towards the end of the Forum was a rallying point for the anti-imperialist left, and as such a tacit answer to the Lula rally earlier on - the implicit confrontation between the two leaders was underlined by the fact that both spoke to equally packed meetings in the same Gigantinho Stadium. We need to continue to have forums and mobilizations where the followers of Lula and Chávez - as well as those of us who have reservations about Chávez too - can comfortably work together and debate.

./english/569.txt:35:But the purpose of drawing a balance sheet is surely to offer some guidance for the future. The WSF in India a year ago set a benchmark that others - the organizers of the last ESF in London, as well as of the latest Porto Alegre Forum - have striven to match. For all its strengths, however, the latest WSF doesn't offer a comparable model. In some respects, indeed - in particular the thematic fragmentation that we have described, its example is positively to be avoided.

./english/569.txt:37:All the same, however, the Fifth World Social Forum did throw down a gauntlet to us. The challenge that it posed is not simply to denounce and to expose the falsity of the 'rescue' of the global poor promised by Blair and Lula. Anyone can do that. What we have to do is to build a movement capable of showing that it has a better alternative.

./english/571.txt:1:The Post-Porto Alegre World Social Forum: An Open Space or a Movement of Movements?

./english/571.txt:11:Movement can emerge, occur or take place only in space. The most interesting attempt to create a global space for critical social movements is the World Social Forum (WSF), organized since 2001 annually in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and in January 2004 in Mumbai, India (2). In the coming years, the main events of the forum will take place in a decentralized form (2006) and in Africa (2007), which will imply new challenges for the process, until now associated strongly with the city of Porto Alegre. Even though the event has in the beginning been organised simultaneously with – and also as a protest against – the World Economic Forum (WEF), in each subsequent gathering there have been fewer attempts to interact with the WEF. The process has caused a considerable amount of enthusiasm, as well as various sceptical comments on its possibilities to facilitate social transformations.

./english/571.txt:13:The best-known slogan of the WSF is “another world is possible”. The enthusiasm caused by the apparently simple and ambiguous phrase can be understood as a counter-hegemonic challenge to the equally famous slogan of Margaret Thatcher, “there is no alternative”. After five annual social forums, however, simply repeating that another world is possible is no longer enough. An increasing amount of participants and observers of the WSF process have started asking what the other world(s) might look like. Thus far, the WSF has been able to provide few concrete answers to that question. While the inability has been often considered a key limitation of the WSF, for some of its original creators, the WSF should not even attempt to give any clear answer to that question, at least not through a unified voice.

./english/571.txt:15:The World Social Forum is a space that, according to its Charter of Principles, “brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil society from all the countries in the world” (3). The Charter was drafted by the Brazilian Organizing Committee soon after the first WSF meeting and approved with modifications by the WSF International Council in June 2001 in São Paulo. It has achieved a quasi-constitutional status within the WSF process, even if its authority has occasionally been challenged.

./english/571.txt:17:Some of the main challenges concern Article 6 of the Charter, even if it is seldom explicitly mentioned in the debates. According to the Article, “the meetings of the WSF do not deliberate on behalf of the WSF as a body… The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body”. In practice, this has meant that the WSF as a body never made a declaration, for example, against the war in Iraq. According to many of its “founding fathers”, such as Chico Whitaker, making a declaration against the war would have been a violation of the Charter of Principles (4). The issue was hotly debated in meetings of the WSF International Council, especially in January 2003 in Porto Alegre, but the decision was not to issue any declaration. The question was not about whether anyone present would not have been opposed to the war, it was about the concept of space that the WSF is supposed to be.

./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:23:In 2005, the WSF returned to Porto Alegre. When the International Council of the WSF in January 2003 decided to hold the WSF 2004 in Mumbai, it simultaneously decided that the WSF 2005 would be back in Porto Alegre. In fact, it would probably have been impossible to reach a consensus on India if there had not existed the promise of returning to Brazil. Those who feared that organizing the Forum in India could turn out to be a total failure were thus bought off with the idea that even if Mumbai fails, it would be back to the good old Porto Alegre in the following year. Moving the annual WSF event to another continent included difficult questions about the continuity of the process, including its institutional memory, which the Brazilian Organizing Committee had provided.

./english/571.txt:37:One of the main arguments of many social movements was that preparing for annual world events demands too much organizational energy. At the same time many social movements expressed support for a suggestion that in the years when there would be no centralized WSF, the social movements should make another kind of event to protest against the World Economic Forum. This plan made some of the Brazilian Organizing Committee members change their position during the Passignano meeting. Their reasoning was that if the social movements say that annual forums demand too much of their organizational energies, how come they intend to organize something else instead to fill the vacuum.

./english/571.txt:43:The World Social Forum has been defined as a civil society event, but there exists a considereable debate on how the limits of this civil society should be defined. Who gets in, and who stays out? If the World Social Forum is a counter-event to the World Economic Forum, in 2004 Mumbai Resistance was the counter-event’s counter-event. Mumbai Resistance was conceived as a “truly anti-imperialist” parallel event that took place next to the World Social Forum venue in Mumbai. One of the concerns of the originators of Mumbai Resistance was that the WSF is not open to “all forms of struggle”, referring to the rule, expressed in Article 9 of the Charter of Principles, that military organizations cannot participate in the WSF (9).

./english/571.txt:45:The same article of the Charter states that representatives of political parties cannot participate in the WSF either. Since the two main communist parties were visibly involved in the organization of the forum in India, this rule caused confusion. The issue had been debated in the International Council, for example in its meeting in Miami in June 2003, and an understanding was finally reached that the parties would not be formally inside the Indian Organizing Committee or other official bodies of the WSF in Mumbai, even if representations within these bodies were in many cases allocated taking party membership considerations into account.

./english/571.txt:47:There has been concern from the very beginning of the WSF process about the involvement of the Workers’ Party of Brazil. Even if the party has not formed part of the organizing committee or other official organs of the WSF, its presence has been visible in many ways (10). After the party won the federal election of 2002, the Lula government’s economic policies have alienated many of its original supporters. In the WSF 2005, Lula received plenty of criticism both because of his economic policies based on concessions to the IMF, and thereby on neoliberalism, as well as for his decision to travel to the World Economic Forum of Davos directly from Porto Alegre. Lula has tried to take some international steps to counter this criticism. The so-called Lula-Chirac Initiative by the Presidents of Brazil and France, joined also by the Presidents of Chile and Spain, includes proposals for global taxes and other measures in the global fight against poverty. The Report of the Technical Group on Innovative Financing Mechanisms “Action against Hunger and Poverty” (11), and the related summit in New York at the end of September 2004, at the time of the General Assembly meeting, appear to many as the biggest step thus far towards the adoption of new global mechanisms of finance. Perhaps due to the rather neoliberal framing of these proposals, they have not caused a lot of interest at the WSF.

./english/571.txt:67:We believe it is important that concrete strategies of change will emerge from within the space (or movement) of the WSF. Global democratic changes are not possible without transformist global political movements, which must consist of not only civic actors but at least in some point also of states. Any transformation requires regulation also in the form of international – and later perhaps global – law. Currently, only states can create and change international law. Whatever form global civil society will assume, including the possibility of replacing the term “civil society” with something much more accurate and imaginative, it can only achieve transformations by making interventions in more traditional-sounding processes, with the aim of creating new forums of deliberation, agenda-setting and decision-making. To the extent that the empowerment of global movements will be based on well-articulated programmatic visions, they may also constitute steps toward world political parties.

./english/571.txt:71:The World Social Forum is a crucial process of rethinking politics and political possibilities to create “another world”. With Mumbai the WSF process itself became more global and less tied to one particular locality, the city of Porto Alegre in Southern Brazil. Gradually and hesitantly, the structures and procedures of the WSF are becoming more clearly defined and, possibly, democratic. While the WSF acknowledges that it is actually making at least some decisions on behalf of all the participants, it continues, first and foremost, to provide spaces for NGOs and movements.

./english/571.txt:81:With all the limitations, these changes tell us that there exists a learning process in the World Social Forum and that it is in movement, even if not a movement of a traditional kind. After the WSF V, during the first days of February 2005, there was a melancholic mood in Porto Alegre where activists knew that the forum is unlikely to return to their city during the coming years. In the International Council meeting of January 2005, Roberto Savio from Inter Press Service made a proposal that the WSF should return to Porto Alegre in 2008, but this proposal did not receive much support. The inevitable geographical movements of the WSF events will, however, be important only if they are accompanied with a movement that makes the WSF an increasingly relevant space for radically democratic changes of the world.

./english/571.txt:95:Cassen, Bernard (2003) Tout a commencé a Porto Alegre. Mille forum sociaux! Paris: Mille et une nuits.

./english/571.txt:97:Charter of Principles of the World Social Forum, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum International Council on 10 June 2001 in São Paulo.

./english/571.txt:99:Desai, Rajani X (2003) The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum: Lessons for the Struggle against 'Globalisation'. New Delhi: Aspects of India’s Economy.

./english/571.txt:103:Patomäki, Heikki and Teivo Teivainen: (2004b) ‘The World Social Forum: An Open Space or a Movement of Movements?”, Theory, Culture & SocietyVol. 21, No. 5, pp. 145-154.

./english/571.txt:107:Teivainen, Teivo (2002) ‘World Social Forum and Global Democratization: Learning from Porto Alegre’, Third World Quarterly Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 621-632.

./english/571.txt:109:Whitaker, Chico (2004a) ‘The WSF as an Open Space’, in Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar and Peter Waterman (eds.) World Social Forum. Challenging Empires, New Delhi, Viveka Foundation, pp. 111-121.

./english/571.txt:112:http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/dinamic.asp?pagina=bal_whitaker_eng (2.6.2004).

./english/571.txt:120:(2) The first meeting in January 2001 attracted some 5000 participants of 117 countries and thousands of Brazilian activists. For the second forum, the figures had grown significantly, rising to over 12 000 official delegates from 123 countries and tens of thousands of total participants, mostly from Brazil. The third forum in January 2003 attracted over 20 000 official delegates and approximately 100 000 participants in total. The global media impact of the second and third Forum was also significantly stronger than in the first year. In 2004 and 2005, the number of total participants was close to 150 000.

./english/571.txt:122:(3) Charter of Principles of the World Social Forum, 10 June 2001.

./english/574.txt:4:With 155, 000 participants from 135 different countries, the fifth World Social Forum held in a specially constructed site in Porto Alegre’s Marinha Park was bigger than ever, and with a wider geographic spread. Yet the future of the WSF was on trial. Was it becoming its caricature: a kind of political , Hugo Chavez pulling the crowds instead of Mick Jagger?

./english/574.txt:6:Few would question that these global gatherings are inspiring experiences for those who attend. It was the lasting value of the Forum for movements and campaigns struggling on the ground for social justice, which was in question as activists arrived in the sweltering heat and picked up their 50 page programme from the vast gasometer converted into WSF HQ. For some organisations this was the fourth or fifth year that they had spent precious resources sending delegates to the five day Forum, funding travel and hotels and losing valuable local organising time of individual activists.

./english/574.txt:8:`We are getting tired’ said Gianfranco Benzi, from the leadership of the Italian trade union CGIL. `It is more difficult to get people to come…it’s not clear what is coming out of it’. Or from where the pressures on local activists engaged in social movements are particularly intense, Dot Keet researcher for Alternative Information on Development Economics (AIDC) describes how she ` had real foreboding that the Forum would lose it’s purpose if it did not manage to achieve more cross-fertilisation and joint actions between the variety of participants. Without this, instead a source of support, it could become a distraction to activists struggling to build movements on the ground."

./english/574.txt:10:A profound political frustration underlies this self-doubt. The global social justice movement and the anti-war movement have both effectively won the moral arguments. But they have had not had a commensurate impact on the exercise of political and economic power. This was visible in the smoke signals coming from the World Economic Forum across the geographical and political divide in Davos. There, the corporate elite were morally on the defensive, desperate to prove that they too cared about poverty yet stubbornly continuing the policies which daily mean millions go to sleep hungry – including the poor of Brazil whose government, under president Lula, (who made a brief and controversial appearance at the Forum) is being forced by the IMF to pay in debt relief which would otherwise go towards the social programme for which the leader of the Brazilian Workers Party was elected was elected.

./english/574.txt:13:The organisational methods of the Fifth World Forum itself - the way in which the activities of the forum were decided, the spatial and political relationship between the different seminars, workshops and debates during the five days of the Forum, the way the food, the waste and the architecture of the Forum was organised according to the principles of the society we are trying to create, the 35,000 strong Youth Camp at the centre of the Forum’s riverside encampment – all provided glimpses of an answer. These innovations showed that the organisers of the WSF are trying to create a closer, more directly supportive and catalytic relationship with the campaigning movements and initiatives which are the source of the Forums extraordinary energy.

./english/574.txt:15:In the first three Forums there was a contradiction, inevitable perhaps but ultimately debilitating if it had continued. Its founders claimed that it would be a self-managed space for the plurality of activities that made up the resistance to neo-liberalism and war. But the reality was a programme dominated by plenaries organised by an increasingly unrepresentative though well-intentioned organising committee.

./english/574.txt:17:After a successful experience of significantly reducing the official plenaries at the fourth WSF in Mumbai in 2004, the International Committee of the WSF took the risky decision to eliminate the official programme altogether. Instead, it initiated a `consulta’ with the all past participants in the Forum asking them to propose the main themes of the Forum, using keywords to summaries their priority themes. The results formed the basis of 11 clusters or `terrains’ around particular themes: militarism, trade and debt, common goods, social movements and democracy and more. Organisations then proposed and registered their activities within these terrains which also were the physical focal points of the WSF. The theory was that groups would put their plans on the WSF website, other groups would notice an overlap or a connection with their activities and there would be a process of merging and connecting. A team of facilitators was appointed to encourage and help this process.

./english/574.txt:23:As a result things often felt scattered and fragmented, but most people I ‘ve talked to found the break from the centrally planned programme a real liberation. ` I came to one Forum under the old system and sat for three hours listening. I didn’t get to know anyone else; this time I’ve come back with a notebook full of new contacts and lines of common action’ said Camilla Lundberg, part of a 20 strong Swedish delegation of trade unionists and popular education activists.

./english/574.txt:29:If you wanted to be spoon fed was to pick up a copy of the rather lifeless free sheet Terra Viva which announced on day four of the Forum that 19 people – 18 of whom were men - had drawn up a `consensus’ of the Forum in an effort to give coherence to the process. The names were impressive including Edward Galeano and Samir Amin. It appeared, however, `from on high’ and did not reflect the new `bottom up’ methods of consensus building being worked on in the tents alongside the river Guiaba. Nevertheless it served a purpose, provoking discussions about more rooted ways of both bringing together and giving powerful expression to the work of the Forum.

./english/574.txt:31:No one has the answer. Evidence that people are working for a solution, that they journeyed to not just to consume but to plan and organise was the Social Movement Assembly held on the final day. Tent G 901 was overflowing. Representatives of different groups – Antiwar campaigns; groups working for democratic control against water; campaigns around debt, around the WTO and the world wide attack on public service; feminist organisations; the growing movements on climate change came to the microphone one after the other to announce agreed action plans negotiated across different seminars and campaign sessions during the Forum: March 19th global action for the withdrawal of troops in Iraq; April 17 peasants and small farmers co-ordinating a global day of action to act against subsidies to agri-business, against GM food and for local control over the production of food; July 8 pressure on the G8 in Scotland to cancel the debt and for action to impose a global tax on financial transactions to finance development; October 17th the end of global march of women from Sao Paulo to Burkino Faso; other actions included policies around the democratic ownership of water as a common good, the changes needed to avoid the mounting climate chaos.

./english/574.txt:33:It was only a beginning, however, involving only a fraction of the Forum’s participants. But it reflected a recognition that the WSF itself is not the embryonic framework of a new political force but rather the catalyst for the variety of assembled collectivities to build that force themselves. What this new `subjectivity’ will be is also an open question. Certainly it will not be singular. The old agencies of left politics were socialist parties, providing leadership of different kinds for the broader working class movement. The development of Social Forums is leading the more innovative left political parties to rethink their role, their understandings of leadership and representation. The traditional organisations of labour are also using the Forum to create new alliances and develop new tactics in the face of capital’s global reorganisation and the new insecurity and fragmentation of labour.

./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/576.txt:4:It's not Paris or Tokyo, Beijing or New York. Nor is it São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. Enthusiastic residents of Porto Alegre, Brazil will tell you that their modest city of 1.5 million people in the country's deep South is "the last bastion of socialism and rock 'n' roll." Indeed, stalls covered with black Iron Maiden t-shirts stand in the public markets, and the municipality long served as a stronghold of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the Brazilian Workers Party. But today Porto Alegre is best known around the globe, especially among those inclined to hold a critical opinion of capitalism, corporate power, and U.S. military aggression, as the original home of the World Social Forum.

./english/576.txt:6:Five years ago, after the late-1999 Seattle protests but before the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers, thousands of activists first converged on the city to discuss the challenges presented by the likes of Enron and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). With this year's fifth consecutive summit, the idea of holding a large, participatory people's assembly to contrast with the World Economic Forum--the exclusive annual gathering of economic elites in Davos, Switzerland--is no longer novel. The Social Forum has attracted virtually every personality from powerful heads of state to the most unencumbered of wandering counter-culturalists. It is possible that the most naive of the 155,000 who attended this year (according to organizers' counts) were those journalists who came to gape at the much-debated gathering as if it had emerged spontaneously and without precedent from the gaucho lowlands.

./english/576.txt:8:If this year's was not the first World Social Forum, however, there are indications that it will be Porto Alegre's last, at least for the foreseeable future. The famous local progressivism that brought the Forum to Porto Alegre was called into question when an anti-PT mayor, José Fogaça, won election last fall. Recognizing the Forum's multitudes as a major economic boon for the city, Mr. Fogaça toned down his past criticism of the summit as an "ideological Disneyland." Still, other cities are clamoring for their turn to host the event. (While four out of five Forums have been held in Porto Alegre, the 2004 event took place in Mumbai, India). Moreover, these turns are slated to grow more scarce. The unified global gathering is becoming bi-annual; next year organizers will focus on holding forums at the regional level.

./english/576.txt:10:The question of Porto Alegre, then, and of the Forum's fifth anniversary, is what has become of the event that was once synonymous with the city's name? And what is the World Social Forum, alternately regarded as a laboratory of progressive vision and a rapidly ossifying political Woodstock, building toward?

./english/576.txt:16:It is also true that Lula did not receive as enthusiastic a reception at the Forum as did Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who addressed the same packed stadium on the last day of workshops. Wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt as bright red as the berets of his watchful security detail, Chavez was less prone than Lula to speak of "partnership" with the North and more likely to denounce "imperialism." In a press conference before the rally, Chavez declared the Social Forum one of "the most important political events taking place each year in the world today," he invoked his "Bolivarian revolution," and he labeled the 2002 coup attempt against him "Made in the USA." Ms. "Condolencia" Rice, he quipped, "may say that Hugo Chavez is a negative force in Latin America. I say the government of the United States is the most negative force in the world today!"

./english/576.txt:17:Even as the two presidents book-ended the Forum, dozens of other speakers led panels taking place simultaneously in tents and warehouse spaces spread over a nearly three mile expanse along the banks of Porto Alegre's Guaiba River. In past years, the Forum was held at the city's Catholic University and large morning plenaries brought together participants to hear featured speakers. This year, all of the events took the form of "self-organized" workshop sessions. Although hailed as a victory for democratic planning, this diminished the sense of common purpose at the summit. It enhanced the feeling that there were many forums, large and small, going on at once.

./english/576.txt:19:"Three years ago everyone was talking about Plan Colombia; two years ago it was Iraq," a friend who has participated in several Porto Alegres said to me. For this year, she identified the right to clean, public water as the Forum's emergent issue. But, with a several-hundred page program listing panels on the challenges of global poverty, trade, war, and debt, as well as on Open Source software, the trafficking of women and girls, and the impact of culture on social change, any attempt to identify a single focus would necessarily be arbitrary.

./english/576.txt:21:The presence of Lula and Chavez raised its own issue for discussion, and its own suggestion for what the Forum might build toward: namely, state power. Far from "Disneyland," one of the most significant changes in Latin America in past years is the rise of left-leaning governments--not only in Brazil and Venezuela, but also, to varying extents, in Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, and Chile.

./english/576.txt:25:Thus far the Forum's charter, which at least formally prohibits participation of political parties, has held firm. Those who cheered Chavez's social democratic reforms cited active participation at the local level as the most positive part of the government's transformation. And even those inclined to defend Lula said that pressure is needed to train state focus on the needs of Brazil's poor majority. During each presidential address, the dozens of other panels outside strategized about how to generate this pressure--and how to apply it to all governments, no matter how friendly.

./english/576.txt:29:"Maybe if I were younger," a veteran activist commented to me, "I could deal with the heat." The late-January summer in Porto Alegre was unrelenting. Brazilians wandering the sweltering expanse of tented workshop areas sported bare chests, Bermuda shorts, and skirts, treating the Forum like a beach. For those less acclimated, a new morning might bring a fresh willingness to believe that the seeds of a new society were being planted in the manifold meetings of the day. But an afternoon of solar radiation had a way of intensifying one's ambivalence about whether it was all worthwhile.

./english/576.txt:32:If state power represented a first possible conception of the Forum's end goal, some of these prominent speakers would ultimately provide a second suggestion for what the event is building toward: a common agenda for political action.

./english/576.txt:38:The ethos of the Forum would seem to favor Galeano's view. The event's charter indicates that it is not a deliberative body; it does not take official positions on behalf of the assembly. Yet Saramago's defense of short-term demands received a standing ovation. And at the end of the week, a group of nineteen high-profile participants, including both of the writers, released a statement dubbed "The Porto Alegre Manifesto." Among its planks, the twelve-point platform called for cancellation of debts, a Tobin tax on international financial transfers, local control of the food supply, and the democratization of international financial institutions. "We're confident that the great majority of the people of the Forum will agree with this proposal," Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, told reporters.

./english/576.txt:40:Critics immediately charged that the celebrities' document contravened the "horizontal" character of Forum. Some signers, like Brazilian Forum organizer Chico Whitaker, took pains to emphasize that the proposal was merely one of many to emerge. (The Forum's closing press release cryptically indicated that "352 proposals so far" had been accepted.) Others like Ramonet, however, made clear that they considered such a unifying platform essential if the Forum is to move forward as a political force.

./english/576.txt:42:Ramonet is right that his manifesto would probably prove agreeable to most of the participants; he is probably right, too, that the lack of a more well-defined program of action will speed the sense that repeated world summits are growing stale. At the same time, his Group of 19 pointed to a real problem. Absent formal mechanisms for representation, all efforts to exert leadership at the forum must come from self-selected bodies. When not emanating from the headline speakers, efforts at agenda setting this year were most likely to originate with high-profile NGOs. Oxfam and Save the Children, for example, were among those who used the Forum as an occasion to announce a Global Call to Action Against Poverty, which Lula endorsed and which received ample media attention.

./english/576.txt:43:Some of the major criticisms of the Forum to emerge in the past few years have targeted both the cloudy role of the event organizers and the power of well-financed NGOs. The criticisms have some merit, but they end up highlighting the fact that the event as a whole is self-selecting. Eighty-five percent of participants in the Forum over the years have come from the host country. This year Brazilians again dominated, with neighborly Uruguayans and Argentineans also sending prominent delegations. For everyone else the cost of jet fuel was a serious consideration. It is perhaps unusual that more trade unionists haven't taken to the forum, but not that large numbers of NGO campaigners attend. Progressive-minded newspaper editors, professors, and foundation officers could also be expected to fly in. But when it comes to participation from community organizers, particularly those from the wider global South, it is remarkable that their presence even as small but visible minority has held strong.

./english/576.txt:45:Participants who moved closest to formulating shared agendas without urging from above were those who stayed together for tracks of workshops in specific issue areas. Anti-war activists agreed on March 19-20 to hold coordinated international days of action. (Plans for the massive protests of February 15, 2003 were similarly birthed at a social forum). And several observers cited environmentalists' progress in strategizing around climate change as an important joint effort.

./english/576.txt:46:Whether these advances are sufficient to justify a trip into the Brazilian summer, or whether a manifesto is needed to save the Forum, is subject to continuing debate.

./english/576.txt:50:Back when it was held on their campus, the Catholics significantly slowed the sale of revolutionary t-shirts at the Forum. With no such repressive influence stemming commercialism this year, food stands and souvenir vendors lined the river and snaked through the workshop spaces. The presence of the Youth Camp in the middle of Forum furthered the fair-like atmosphere. This expansive tent city-within-a-city housed 35,000 young people. There, passersby could see jugglers and drilling drum corps, late-night bonfires and the graffiti-covered Casa de Hip Hop.

./english/576.txt:51:The carnival aspect of the event has been understandably maligned by those looking to dismiss the Forum. But these open spaces also provided room for participants to wander, to meet, and to hang out. If presidents and stadium crowds occupied the "biggest" social forum, and publicity-savvy NGOs the next largest, these places offered room for the littlest interactions. And it was the small moments, rather than the Forum's penchant for grand pretense, that helped to assuage some of my skepticism about the gathering.

./english/576.txt:53:"Walking between sessions with an Italian senator, talking over ideas for our environmental campaigns--that's what I got out of the Forum," one friend told me.

./english/576.txt:59:Strolling through the Forum space could produce rewarding surprises. A colleague, Zeynep Toufe of the Institute for Public Accuracy, told of how, "tired, hot, severely underslept," she stumbled into an afternoon panel on land rights and the "untouchable castes" of India. She was unexpectedly blown away by the testimony of homelessness and dispossession offered. "It was so uncynical that I didn't know what to feel," she reported. And when they burst into songs or chants, she stated, "It was one of the most sincere, the least contrived instances I have ever encountered of people shouting slogans.... I tried to explain what a privilege it felt like to be in their presence."

./english/576.txt:67:Few progressives would argue that the World Social Forum is without its faults. Yet few, even among the critics, would hold that movements would be better off if ceased to exist. Evaluating the event involves blending criticisms and potentials, often ending in an unsatisfying shade of gray.

./english/576.txt:68:What, then, can be said definitively about the state of the Forum?

./english/576.txt:70:As a positive space, not founded as a mass protest outside a World Trade Organization or IMF meeting, the Forum still provides a unique opportunity for setting an alternative agenda for globalization. Its influence on Davos, where elites are now photographed pondering problems of poverty and AIDS, has been undeniable.

./english/576.txt:72:The Forum is still growing; each year has been larger than the last. It has not stagnated in this respect. It will enhance its relevance by actively recruiting social movement leaders--making efforts to balance against the constituents who already attend as self-selected representatives--and by setting aside more time for dialogue not based on the standard model of a university lecture panel.

./english/576.txt:74:The Forum needs to remain unexpected. It is wise for it to move to a bi-annual schedule; the annual event was growing too routine, too familiar. And it was a mistake to return to Porto Alegre. The Forum gained much in its trip to Mumbai, and its forward momentum requires that it continue incorporating greater representation from new parts of the world. The 2007 Forum, which will be held in Africa, holds much promise for this reason.

./english/576.txt:76:The need to move on is not an altogether happy truth. On the last evening of the Forum, I walked along the Guaiba feeling vaguely disappointed by the lecturing I had seen that day. But then I felt a breeze off the river and looked around at the crowds meandering in the dusk. A group in union shirts sat on curb, chatting with vendors selling grilled meat; a capoeira troop sparred on the street; anti-Bush satirists leafleted for their web site; a circle of people outside an indigenous rights tent performed a dance. At that moment, I felt sad to see it all go. Porto Alegre, no doubt, will be sad for it too.

./english/577.txt:1:The World Social Forum Sprouts Wings

./english/577.txt:4:As we walked through the venue for the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre at the banks of the Guaiba river, on January 23, it all seemed so familiar. The WSF was back in Porto Alegre, Brazil, where it had begun in 2001 and had gained strength in 2002 and 2003, after the interlude in Mumbai in 2004. But Porto Alegre 2005 could well have been Mumbai 2004. The same surging crowds – over 100,000 in number, the same cacophony of myriad voices, the same beating of drums, the same confusion, and the same determination on the faces of people who had come to celebrate protest and resistance. And the same determination with which people debated in over 2000 events, spread over four days, and organised in the sprawling venue of makeshift tents over about 4 kms of a green verge skirting the river.

./english/577.txt:6:The first message from the WSF this year was: resistance and protests that confront imperialist globalisation today have assumed truly global proportions. Two years ago in the WSF in 2003, the mention of India or Mumbai was likely to be greeted with questioning looks. No more so – after the Mumbai WSF, both are firmly on the map of the WSF. As will be Africa which shall hold the Forum in 2007, as will be numerous other places in the globe as the WSF takes wings and flies to different corners.

./english/577.txt:18:The opening march in a way depicted the diversity of the Forum, and possibly also brought out the dilemma that the Forum may face. While all those who are at the Forum (or most at least!) acknowledge the need to come together to face the imperial power of globalisation led by the US, the WSF “open space” continues to be a space that is bitterly contested at the level of ideas. The major actors in the WSF include the Left of various shades (communists, social democrats, fourth internationalists), religious groups (many ascribing to the “liberation theology” positions and genuinely opposed to imperialism) and NGOs. There are obvious differences within all these groups regarding the characterisation of globalisation, and the tactics and overall strategic understanding regarding it. So, while what knits the Forum together is an opposition to neoliberal or imperialist globalisation (there are differences among Forum participants even about the term globalisation), there is no consensus on how it is to be opposed.

./english/577.txt:22:This diversity in opinion and approach is both a strength of the Forum, as well as its principal weakness. The Forum derives strength from this diversity as it provides the opportunity for a very large number of movements and organisations to come together, each feeling that their views have a place in the open space of the Forum. At the same time the diverse trends and opinions leads, often, to a sense of frustration that the Forum is not able to hammer together a consensus regarding both a strategic understanding and tactics to be applied. This has led to a tendency to attempt to “force” the Forum to take unified positions. An example of this was the declaration of a “Porto Alegre” consensus by a few prominent individuals this time at the WSF. While the contents of the “consensus” suggested was fairly bland and not objectionable, what was problematic was the fact that this went against the grain of the way the WSF as an “open space” functions.

./english/577.txt:24:The WSF was conceived as a Forum that was not designed to lead or take decisions on behalf of movements, but rather to provide enabling conditions for movements to come together, exchange experiences and opinions, and forge alliances. The WSF space cannot and should not dictate to movements, nor should it force movements to take unified positions unless they are willing to do so. But the impatience to move forward is sometimes being translated into trying to make the WSF a body that takes decisions and positions on behalf of movements. This is a major challenge today for the WSF: how to accelerate the space for movements to forge common actions and strategies, while at the same time keeping the space friendly for everyone opposed to neoliberal globalisation to join in. Given the complex political entitities that form part of the Forum, an attempt by any force within (however well meaning) to hegemonise the Forum at the level of ideas, might well sow the seeds of the Forum’s ultimate collapse.

./english/577.txt:26:The challenge for the Forum, thus, is not of how certain kinds of ideas may dominate, but to ensure that the Forum is truly representative of the upsurge of global opinion against imperialist globalisation. Today, large mass and political movements are handicapped in their ability to participate in the Forum, because of lack of resources. As a result the Forum tends to be dominated by highly funded NGOs, largely from the North. While many of such NGOs have and are playing a major role in opposing globalisation, there is an inherent asymmetry in the participation in the Forums. It is critically important, if the Forum is to become truly representative of global mass movements that the WSF process is able to draw in a much larger participation from such movements. This is happening to an extent and the proactive manner in which mobilisation for the Forum was done for the WSF 2004 in Mumbai – where a conscious effort was made to ensure representation of mass and political movements – has contributed to this. But a lot has still to be done in this regard, and if the WSF process is to be “directed” in any manner it should be to ensure that such movements are able to come into the process in large numbers and also that they represent adequately all geographical regions of the globe. If the Forum becomes really representative, then it would really be up to the movements to use the space provided by the Forum to work out shared visions and actions. Clearly, the WSF is not going to be the forum to take forward such actions, that is something that the movements themselves would have to decide.

./english/577.txt:30:The 2005 Forum, while formulating the programme, had articulated in clearer terms the direction provided by WSF 2004 in trying to ensure that shared concerns and themes are not discussed in dispersed events. The attempt from the event registration process itself was to try to ensure that events are largely organised by combining the efforts of different organisations. This is a process that has to be accelerated, and the methodology used in 2005 to be evaluated to improve upon it further. The WSF 2005 had also departed from earlier practice by not having any events directly organised by the WSF – i.e. all events at the WSF 2005 were organised by individual participating organisations. The response to this innovation was mixed this year, and many felt that the absence of some large “unifying” events with broad political messages led to the diffusion of the political sharpness that the Forum was able to provide. This is again an issue that will have to be evaluated by the International Council of the WSF. In fact, in the absence of such unifying events, the only two large events this year were those addressed by President Lula of Brazil and President Chavez of Venezuala. While these were not formally part of the WSF programme, they drew huge crowds from WSF participants.

./english/577.txt:32:The International Council decided in its meeting just before the Forum in Porto Alegre that in 2006 there would not be a single Forum, but attempt would be to organise dispersed Forums in different continents. In 2007 the Forum travels to Africa, the venue for which is being discussed within the African Social Forum process. Mumbai had shown that the WSF can be made to be a success in a setting vastly different from Porto Alegre, and the WSF is now poised to sprout wings and fly to different corners of the globe.

./english/577.txt:34:As we prepared to leave Porto Alegre, the question on the lips of everybody who lives in the city was: is this the last Forum in Porto Alegre? We do not know the answer today. But everyone who has been in Porto Alegre for the Forum, this year or in earlier years, will hope that maybe the Forum will come back again one day to this city which embraced us all with such love and affection. Good bye to Porto Alegre for ever? Perhaps the WSF is not ready for that yet!

./english/578.txt:1:African forum must destroy the cage

./english/578.txt:6:The World Social Forum is coming to Africa in 2007. This is great news. But how exactly will the coming of the WSF to Africa in 2007 advance the struggle against neoliberalism and capitalist domination? This is an important question for people who want to stop the centuries-long pain and suffering of the masses in Africa and other parts of the world.

./english/578.txt:7:Having attended all the world social forums, I think that they continue to be an important rallying point for all struggles against neoliberalism in the world. But there are certain tendencies developing in the WSF which have me very worried. When the WSF comes to Africa, we should be able to build on its strengths and eradicate its weaknesses.

./english/578.txt:14:The African Social Forum's founding principles recognise the primacy of social movements over non-government organisations in the struggle against neoliberalism. NGOs, research institutes, individuals and academics are important but they must play a supportive role. It is the masses themselves who possess the power to liberate themselves — hence the importance of social movements and other mass organisations such as trade unions, grassroots women’s and youth groups, informal traders' associations and homeless people's federations. But it seems that the African delegations to the WSF still largely consist of NGO types. This was clearly the case in the meetings of the ASF council held in Porto Alegre during the WSF 2005.

./english/578.txt:17:If we compare Latin America's social movements with those in Africa, we must admit that ours are fledgling infants. In many countries we still do not have national social forums despite the resolutions taken by the ASF in Addis Ababa. Where they exist they are still mostly dominated by NGOs rather than by grassroots organisations and social movements. If the funding agencies could so easily dominate the WSF 2005 in its birthplace in Brazil, can you imagine what will happen in Africa? The more cynical among the pro-status quo agencies are probably banking on the Africans tearing each other to pieces fighting over which country must host the WSF in 2007. The vultures are already circling waiting for the right moment to pounce on the dead corpse of the African movement and then to triumphantly hoist their neoliberal flag.

./english/579.txt:4:There is an obvious irony in the shifting of the 4th World Social Forum (held between January 16 and 21, 2004) from Porto Alegre, the city of the participatory budget fully geared to welcome the WSF, to an indifferent Mumbai, the city most starkly symbolizing the impact of neoliberalism in India. Mumbai is a rapidly de-industrialising, financial-commercial-services centre with an expanding informal sector of self-employed and unorganized labour. It has heavy vehicular and small factory pollution with over 40 percent of its 17 million population living in slums. The choice of the WSF venue – a dusty, environment-unfriendly, long disused industrial site – completed the symbolism. But the restricted area of the venue contrasted sharply with the sprawling geography of Porto Alegre’s WSF, forcing an extraordinary physical mingling of over a 100,000 participants with more than 15,000 from outside India.

./english/579.txt:10:The Social Forum project that first emerged in South America reflected a new historical conjuncture – not just the two-decades assault of neoliberalism on that continent but also the effective disintegration of the old left and its replacement by a more inchoate, plural and diverse set of progressive actors in civil society. Their growing radicalization in the late nineties found its organizational expression in the WSF and its associated ‘politics of the open space’. India, however, is where the old left (still largely unrepentant about its Stalinist and Maoist legacies and traditions) survives as a substantial force replete with ‘their’ mass fronts of trade unions, women, peasant and student wings. Since out of a total labour force of some 340 million, only 9 million or less than 3 percent are unionized, it is hardly surprising that there also exists a breathtaking array of social movements, single issue groups, and a spectrum of NGOs from the most progressive and radical to those whose principal function is to be the new ‘privatised’ service-providers offsetting the impact of the neoliberal state’s abandonment of its multiple social responsibilities in health, education, social security, basic needs, etc.

./english/579.txt:12:All these contradictions were clearly present in Mumbai. Where else would you find, for the first time, an alternative world social forum called Mumbai Resistance (MR) being organized across the road from the official one, by a variety of Maoist groups and fronts whose principal ballasts were the Peoples War Group of India and the Communist Party of the Philippines. Much smaller, with an overall attendance in the few thousands, MR’s main purpose was to call attention to itself. Its inaugural function spent nearly as much time criticising the WSF as it did attacking neoliberalism or US imperialism.(3) But even outside the entrances of the main WSF, inconsistent certainly with the prevailing spirit of the Social Forum project, the CPI and the CPM had strategically placed (hitting visitor eyes well before the WSF signs themselves) huge billboards declaring that their idea of another world at least was the ‘Communist future’. A strongly instrumentalist attitude towards the Social Forum project still prevails amongst these left parties.

./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/579.txt:48:One of the central purposes of the Indian organizers of the WSF was that it should stimulate the further development of an ‘anti-fascist front’ nationally against the Sangh/BJP. The intent here is not an electoral bloc but the formation of a long term alliance of left parties and their mass fronts with the big social movements and a range of progressive NGOs to collectively mobilise in civil society. Has the Asian Social Forum at Hyderabad in December 2002 and WSF 2004 helped bring these forces together? Mutual suspicions and tensions remain within the social movements and parties as well as between them. There has been the constant jockeying for public representation in the ‘star system’ that is a seemingly unavoidable aspect of the Social Forum process. There are the inevitable fears about manipulation and doubts about ulterior motives. One of the important issues thrown up by the WSFs is whether it might not be better for parties to participate openly as such instead of informally exercising behind-the-scenes their substantial influence as they now do whether it is the PT in Brazil or the CPM and CPI in India.

./english/579.txt:50:This could result in a more honest dialogue between party spokespersons and others. The former could no longer dodge direct critiques of their record of behaviour in and out of office. Surely this would encourage a less manipulative relationship whereby genuine adjustments and greater mutual respect could be forged? The fear in India certainly is that Social Forums would become arenas in which the pressures of electoral/political competition would then trump efforts at accommodation still more possible if mass fronts but not parties themselves were present. Besides, it might lead to interminable arguments as to which parties to allow in or keep out. If the CPM which has made major concessions to neoliberal pressures in West Bengal is to allowed in, then why not the Congress?

./english/579.txt:54:At the international level there are parallel concerns. Greater collaboration between the main radical actors – parties, unions, movements, the best NGOs – is urgently required. The crucial task remains what it has always been – how best to combine the politics of the universal and the politics of the particular. The first is most powerful and effective precisely when it encompasses and respects the latter. Historically, the classical, indeed only, organizational form which has shown itself capable of embodying this combination has been the party. One need not assume that this must remain the case. But the principal challenge facing the Social Forum project is whether it will be able to contribute to the creation of those new organisational forms equipped with the general vision and capacity to simultaneously and systematically pursue the politics of the universal and the particular. Insofar as the state remains a crucial nodal point of concentrated bourgeois power no radical strategy can afford to merely ignore or sidestep it.

./english/579.txt:56:Rather than maintain the hectic pace of a WSF every year which drains the time and energy of too many activists away from their basic areas of implantation and concern, it would be much better after the 5th WSF in Porto Alegre next year to schedule WSFs for every second or even third year. This would allow for holding more forums at intermediate (city, provincial, national and regional) levels. The time has surely also come to take a breather and synthesise the experiences and lessons of the major local, national, continental and global forums that have so far been held.(10) The one great lacuna in the Social Forum project is the failure to extend it to North America, particularly the US. Even at the WSFs, American participation has always been disproportionately much smaller than the size and importance of the progressive sectors of American society has warranted. This insularity must be broken.

./english/579.txt:58:It can with some legitimacy be claimed that without the Social Forum project, neither the global anti-war mobilization of February 15, 2003 nor the mobilization at Cancun against the WTO in September 2003 would have been anywhere near as successful as they were. By that measure March 20, 2004 will be a major test. It need not reach the level of Feb.15. Calling for an end to the US occupation is unlikely to have the same appeal as the call not to start an avoidable war. But if a few millions can be mobilised worldwide it will give an undoubted boost to progressive forces everywhere. More than the Social Forum project is at stake.

./english/580.txt:7:While formulation the programme methodology and content for the WSF in Mumbai, there were two kinds of considerations that needed to be factored in. One was that the programme should not depart radically from the structure of the WSF in Porto Alegre -- to provide continuity and also to respect the rich experiences of the hugely successful Forums held between 2001 and 2003. At the same time it should not be a carbon copy of the Porto Alegre "model" but must build in local concerns and formatting that is required by local considerations.

./english/580.txt:13:· The need to also learn and build upon the experiences of the Asian social Forum in January 2003 in Hyderabad, India

./english/580.txt:23:Past Experiences at the WSF and Experience of the Asian Social Forum

./english/580.txt:25:As would have been evident, the programme at the WSF 2004 drew in large measure from the experience of the previous three Forums as well as the experience of the Asian Social forum in 2003.

./english/580.txt:39:The programme group was also required to draw lessons from the functioning of the Programme Committee of the ASF. While, during the ASF, we had set up thematic groups, these groups did not function optimally. As a result a bulk of the work was done centrally. The question was, is there a way to have a more decentralised manner of functioning or do we assume that this would be too difficult to attempt? Experience at the ASF also showed that programme and mobilisation often went hand in hand, i.e. the groups that got mobilised to attend the ASF were largely those who also showed interest in organising events at the ASF. The question arose as to how we could build on this experience. The ASF experience was important in this regard, because – at least in India – mobilisation efforts centred much more crucially than in the WSF on looking at the Social Forum as a process and not an event. As a result most states (provinces) in the country had their own social forum processes and some state level event preceded the Asian Forum. We will return to this aspect in slightly more detail later.

./english/580.txt:43:The Asian Forum in 2003 had also departed from the WSF format in another key area. There was a conscious effort to build in cultural programmes within the basic format of the Forum. From all accounts this was seen by a bulk of the participants as a welcome addition to the Social Forum format, and especially facilitated the active participation of marginalised groups by providing them with an alternate form of expression with which they were both more familiar and more comfortable. This does not mean that we are recommending a privileging one kind of participant (the more academically oriented for example) over another (marginalised groups, perhaps less equiped for an academic discourse) or that we are trying to privilege one type of discourse (more “academic”) over another (more rooted in popular culture). Both kinds of participation and discourse are important and necessary to promote the inclusive spirit of the WSF.

./english/580.txt:45:To recapitulate, the basic issues that emerged for the programme group keeping in mind the experiences of the previous Forums and the WSF, were as follows:

./english/580.txt:54:8) How do we build on the experience of weaving in cultural programmes within the format of the Social forum programme.

./english/580.txt:74:· As regards co-ordination with the IC/ Content commission and Asian Groups – it has to be admitted that co-ordination was sub-optimal. Two meetings were held with the Content Commission (in Perrugia and Mumbai) and two meetings with Asian Groups (in Chennai and Mumbai). But the participation in these meetings was not representative in nature. This again points to need for something raised above – finding a way to have deeper interactions at the regional and global levels for Social forum processes. However, even the limited interactions were valuable in at least, to a limited extent, injecting a global flavour into the deliberations of the programme group of the IOC.

./english/580.txt:80:· Learning from the experience of the ASF, the WSF programme provided extensive space for cultural expression. While a majority of groups that participated in this (except for in the large cultural programmes on the “main stage”) were Indian, it created a substantial impact on all the participants and opened up the possibility of different kinds of expressions and articulations for future Social Forums.

./english/580.txt:86:· Generally, it is our assessment, that the opening up of the large events for “self organisation” left a positive impact on the Forum. It allowed a large diversity of concerns not usually focused in large measure in Social Forums to be reflected in the large events – for example issues related to child rights, human rights, disability rights, concerns of sexual minorities, caste and race, etc.

./english/580.txt:90:We can identify some key reasons for this. One is to do with translations. In Mumbai a different system of translation (in fact a combination of two systems), which was much less expensive than that used in earlier Forums, was tried out. The systems did not function adequately, especially on the first day. Publicity about how to use the system and backup infrastructure was inadequate. As a result many who would have liked to participate in the large events, could not do so. Here it must be mentioned, that the new translation system, at greatly reduced costs, did finally work! This is a major investment for the future and something that future Social Forums can benefit from.

./english/580.txt:96:Many comments have been made of the “two forums” – one inside the Halls and one outside in the streets. It would be unfair to both the participants in the halls and in the streets, if we seriously argue along these lines. The lesson that emerged was that events – both in the “streets” and the “halls” – be designed to attract each other.

./english/580.txt:112:· The success of the mobilisation process in India finding a reflection in the content would need to be followed up internationally, though that would be a more difficult task. Similarly the experience of including cultural events in the format of the WSF is something that future Social forums can benefit from.

./english/580.txt:114:Suggestions for Future Social Forums

./english/580.txt:116:Based on this very limited experience that we have had, we make the following suggestions for future Social Forums to consider (we are making these suggestions very tentatively, given the wide body of experience that many parts of the world have today in organising Social Forums!):

./english/580.txt:118:· Each Social Forum work out distinct Foci given the regional and immediate concerns of the bulk the participants, with a view to deepening the expression of the Charter. Thus, for example, in Latin America concerns like indigenous people, debt, etc.

./english/580.txt:122:· The programme should be opened up for submission of proposals as early as possible – maybe by early May if the Forum is to be in January. Deadline for submissions should be around August to provide time for organisations to come together in organising their events. Special provision for extension of this deadline only for underserved areas may be made.

./english/580.txt:128:· The WSF facilitate the organisation of events by groups working on specific issues. For example, the Water Forum and the Health Forum held before the WSF in Mumbai (like the Education Forum held every year in Porto Alegre), and the Anti-war Assembly, Farmers Forum (Kisan Chaupal) held during the WSF 2004. More such assemblies/ forums can be facilitated – they are not owned by the WSF but the WSF provides the infrastructure.

./english/582.txt:4:Four images from the World Social Forum in India, and a question: how would the meeting evolve, after feeling how globalization of inequality and injustice is like?

./english/582.txt:14:A big part of the multitude will remain in this never-ending and vibrating parade for four days. Some of them will sleep on the floor every night. All of them will suffer the almost absolute lack of bathrooms. Victorio Agnoletto, spokesman of the Italian Social Forum and also member of the International Council, will tenderly say, “ In Mumbai, there wasn’t one, but two different Forums” -- the one of the formal discussions, and the one of the six streets of beaten land. José Miguel will add, about the new actors: “ What counts is to be here, to be integrated in the world of the WSF”.

./english/582.txt:24:There were 140 installations like this, and the Forum of the workshops and the seminars was as diverse, plural and colorful as those of Porto Alegre. Who walked 19th morning, along part of one of the corridors, could find debates about the increasing abortion of female embryos in India ( qualified as “ hidden femalecide”); about the international campaign against North – American bases (promoted by a 25 organizations network based in different countries); about Cordillera Peoples’ Alliance ( a Philippine woman explained, in English, that for many Asiatic communities, the concept individual, sees in each human being, a part of the community), about the new international relations system ( emerged from a refined critic about the lack of transparency and democracy in WTO, IMF and WB); about dwelling rights and livable cities ( a fiction in Mumbai), about the struggle against monarchy in Nepal ( besides the rounded faces and the hard eyes of the Nepalese, it attracted the attention the fact that they reached to understand each other, even if they were speaking so low, that many times the voices were replaced for the microphone of the room next door), about the impact of globalization among the “ untouchable” Indians ( the debates on these topics were always the most crowded and able to attract the street Forum).

./english/582.txt:43:The proposal would mobilize the intellectual energies of the WSF ( because it would demand the effort of identifying and choosing the firms). Besides, it would allow to combine diversity, one of the main marks of the Forums, with common action. To participate, none organization linked to Porto Alegre planet would be forced to leave its aims, methods or strategies aside. There would be great chances of success. An international boycott concentrated in just two firms would cause real damages: Invoicing and shares´ prices fall, flight of investment. A first success could, later, stimulate other kind of common initiatives

./english/582.txt:53:Arundathi´s answer has two tones: “ To preserve its diversity, the World Social Forum can´t move back to the practice of final statements, that eliminate diversity. And it was very good to have done it, until now, exactly in the way we did it “ she says. Immediately, she changes the tuning . “ It’s necessary to change, as the times change. Nobody can stay stuck. The Forum needs to flee from this great risk. It absorbs our best energies, mobilizes the most generous minds only for us to start thinking, after four days, about the next meeting. In that case, it wont bother our enemies. It will keep being our own music, but it will ever reach to be our struggle”

./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/586.txt:6:The Mumbai WSF succeeded in demonstrating that the spirit of Porto Alegre, while being a universal aspiration, acquires specific tonalities in different regions of the globe. Its universality is actually a product of the very reach of neoliberal globalization, which subjects every region of the world to the same economic model and its consequences: deepening of social inequalities, demoralization of the state, destruction of the environment. In this sense, the choice of Mumbai as the venue of the 2004 WSF could not have been wiser. With its population of almost 15 million, Mumbai is the living symbol of the contradictions of capitalism in our time. An important financial and technological center and the site of India’s thriving film industry — Bollywood, producing more than 200 movies a year for an increasingly global audience — Mumbai is a city whose extreme poverty easily shocks western eyes. More than half of the population live in slums (roughly two million on the streets), whereas 73 percent of the families, usually large, live in one-room tenements. The recent spread of informal economy has turned 2 percent of the population into street vendors. In India, however, the struggle against this background of inequalities gains specific nuances that have left their mark on this Forum. First, on top of economic, sexual and ethnic inequalities there are caste inequalities, which, though abolished by the Constitution, continue to be a decisive factor of discrimination. The Dalits, one of the lower castes, formerly designated as the “untouchables,” made a very strong appearance at the Forum. Of the 100.000 participants, more than 20. 000 were Dalits, who saw in the Forum a unique opportunity to denounce the discrimination that victimizes them. Second, the religion factor, which in the West tends to carry less weight in view of the secularization of power, is in the East a crucial social and political factor. Religious fundamentalism — a plague all over Asia, including India itself with the increasing politicization of Hinduism — was a major topic for debate, as was the role of spirituality in the social struggles for a better world. Third, having taken place in Asia, the Forum could not help but pay special attention to the struggle for peace, not only because it is in the West Asia, from Iraq to Afghanistan, that US’s war aggression is strongest, but also because today South Asia (India and Pakistan) is a region full of nuclear weapons. Having all this in mind, the Social Movements Assembly called a world march against the war on March 20, the first anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Fourth, at the Mumbai WSF the western conception of ecological struggles gave way to broader conceptions, so as to include the struggle for food sovereignty, land and water, as well as the preservation of biodiversity and natural resources, and the defense of forests against agro-business and lumber industry.

./english/586.txt:8:By its very success, the Mumbai WSF creates new challenges for the WSF process. I single out three main ones. The first is the Forum’s expansion. It is not just a question of geographic expansion, but the expansion of themes and perspectives as well. Meeting in Mumbai, the IC decided to encourage the organization of local, national, regional and thematic forums, in order to deepen the syntony of the “Porto Alegre Consensus” with the concrete struggles that mobilize such a diversity of social groups across the globe. Furthermore, the WSF has been collecting an impressive amount of knowledge concerning its organizations and movements, the world we live in, and the proposals that go one being presented and implemented to change it. This knowledge must be carefully evaluated to be adequately used and render the Forum more transparent to itself, thus allowing for self-learning for all the activists and movements involved in the WSF process. Finally, as knowledge accumulates and the large areas of convergence are identified, the need for developing plans of collective action increases. The issue is not so much to augment the WSF’s efficaciousness as a global actor — efficaciousness is not gauged by global as much as by local and national actions — but mainly to prepare responses to the attempts of the World Bank, IMF and the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos to coopt the agendas of the WSF and sanitize them in favor of solutions that will leave the ongoing economic disorder intact. Given its open-space nature, the WSF will not present proposals in its own name; it will rather facilitate the articulation between the networks that constitute it, in order to deepen plans of collective action and put them into practice.

./english/586.txt:10:The twofold need to evaluate and spread the accumulated knowledge and prepare plans of collective action with a sound political and technical basis led to more discussion than never before in previous Forums of the relationship between expert and grass-roots knowledge, and, more specifically, between social scientists and popular struggles. Several workshops were devoted to this general topic. One of them, entitled “New Partnerships for New Knowledges,” was organized by the Center for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra. The participants were social scientists and activists. Immanuel Wallerstein (USA), Anibal Quijano (Peru), D. L. Sheth (India), Goran Therborn (Sweden), Hilary Wainright (UK) and myself were among the social scientists; Jai Sen (India), Irene Leon (Equador) and Moema Miranda (Brazil) were among the activists. The discussion concentrated on themes that are at the core of the idea of public sociology: the relationship between expertise and engagement; from critique to plans for action; the reliability of the knowledge underlying social struggles and its critique; the impact on social scientists of their engagement with lay or popular knowledges; activists as producers of knowledge.

./english/587.txt:6:The World Social Forum, held this year in Mumbai, India, has gained an important new facet: it has demonstrated its universal dimensions. Leaving Porto Alegre, where it all started in 2001, was a huge challenge, but the WSF continues to grow as a movement of a diverse and emergent planetary citizenry. Around 75,000 delegates were there, 20,000 of them from outside India. Another 10,000 people from Mumbai city itself joined the events and demonstrations every day. All in all, some 120,000 participants were mobilised by the idea that, despite the prevailing globalisation and its evils, "another world is possible".

./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/587.txt:12:The success of the WSF in Mumbai must be judged by the determined heart-and-mind political adhesion to its message, to the dream. In fact, the cacophony was a powerful demonstration of the diversity of social individuals who hold to the idea of a different world and want a hand in its making, where the standard is all human rights for all people. Until 2003 we were mostly Latin; now we are more universal, well rooted in Asia, where half of the world’s people live. The World Social Forum has come to be adopted as a place where broad grassroots sectors can express their identities and proposals. That was a huge quality leap towards overcoming the geographical and social deficit in terms of individuals embodying the WSF.

./english/587.txt:14:The new languages and the need for translation to link between equality in diversity are the greatest political and cultural challenges that emerge from Mumbai. The strength of new languages, expressing identities unrecognised and rights denied – where the dalit movements were prominent – adding in to the gathering wave of clamour for another world, set the tone of the many marches at the WSF. From 8 in the morning to 10 at night, the dusty main street was transformed into an avenue of planetary citizenship. This was the epicentre of the World Social Forum in Mumbai. We did not need to understand literally what the marches said, it was enough to surrender to their symbolism heavy with denunciation and demands. The major events (conferences, panels and round tables) on militarism, unilateralism and war, on oppressive global power and the trenches of resistance, on movements for peace, joined them and were re-qualified by them. Meanwhile, the living laboratory of over a thousand seminars and workshops, going their own ways in their own way, but all asserting the possibility of starting here and now on building another world.

./english/587.txt:16:All in all, it was a Forum that caused impact because it was surprising. Certainly, we are still just spinning our wheels in terms of methods for dialoguing and collectively constructing proposals and strategies. We are aware that, by building on the diversity of social actors and respect for pluralism, we are grasping the opportunity to bring into being a new political culture, one that is universal, cosmopolitan, inclusive; that is, a new way of doing change-making politics. However, we have set ourselves a task that calls for more daring and radicalism than first apparent. Given the crisis besetting the dominant order that grants almost exclusive rights to capital, adhesion to the message is a guarantee of the strength of the wave of citizens action. However, we must transform that into strength for reconstructing a sustainable, democratic world in solidarity, for ourselves and for future generations. That is the main lesson to be drawn from Mumbai.

./english/589.txt:8:Beside World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai:

./english/589.txt:13:While participating in the World Social Forum 2004 in Mumbai, several members of the CADTM delegation (Committee for the abolition of the third world debt) were in touch with various NGOs and social movements in order to assess some current struggles such as the one against the Coca-Cola Company in Kerala. They tried to understand the specificity of the Indian social background, particularly the caste system, by focusing on the Dalits, who represent about 200 million inhabitants out of a total of one billion Indians. They are the victims of traditional and age old oppression, and we wished to meet the men and women among them who did something to put an end to this situation. It was also an opportunity to find out about various aspects of the Indian current reality: from the issue of street children to the effects of neoliberal policies on some economic sectors like tea production. The trip to India made it possible for us to speak with a large number of activists who are active in several fields: environment, human rights, health, education, housing, languages [1], culture, gender, religions [2]. It was interesting to try and understand how they perceive the World Social Forum and the world alternative movement in which they are actors. We started in Mumbai, the town where the fourth Word Social Forum took place. Then we travelled to the state of Karnataka, some thousand kilometres from Mumbai, to the southwest. Finally, we went to Kerala.

./english/589.txt:25:Just before the World Social Forum began, Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (Centre for Development Studies) organised series of interactive sessions and visits for CADTM delegates to familiarise with the socio–economic issues of the city of Mumbai as well as VAK’s activities.

./english/589.txt:61:The BJP, a right-wing nationalist party, has dominated the Indian political life over the past few years. It has systematically kindled the Indian nationalist feeling and launched an arms race, notably in nuclear weapons, with neighbouring Pakistan. Simultaneously, it has encouraged racist and ethnic moves on the part of the Hindu majority leading to actual pogroms in the state of Gujarat: almost three thousand people were killed two years ago, almost all of them Moslems. The persons responsible for the slaughters were encouraged and protected by the highest leaders of the BJP, some of them being ministers in the current state government. The BJP has systematically fostered communalism, that is, the use of the religious identity of a community for political purposes. During the election campaigns, there is no or almost no question of any discussion of the great social or economic issues, communalist ideas prevail. It is literally a deadly issue. The Congress Party (Gandhis and Nehrus inheritor) which had dominated political life for a long time after the independence in 1947 progressively abandoned its policy of social pact and state intervention. It no longer carries any social message. Pushed back into the opposition by the BJP at the national level (although still in power in some of the states that make up the Indian federation), it wants to return to power at all costs and makes alliances everywhere to reach that end. The traditional leftwing, essentially two communist parties (The Communist Party of India and the Communist Party of India - Marxist) are in power in West Bengal and are often in the government in Kerala. They have representatives in the National Parliament. They are sharply criticized by the social movement’s activists for their conciliatory attitude towards the neoliberal attack. They are reproached with not matching their acts to their socialistic rhetoric. Their acceptance of the increasing interference of industrialized countries’ transnational corporations into the economic life of states where they are in the government attracts particular criticism. To complete this political survey we must mention small socialist parties (two of them part of the BJP coalition in the current government, [3] and some are inspired by Gandhi), and also of a dozen radical left parties, most of them coming from the division of the two communist parties in the 1970s and 1980s. The two traditional communist parties (CPI, CPI-M), several formations of leftist radicals and some socialist parties were present at the Word Social Forum through their mass organizations (trade unions, youth and women groups).

./english/589.txt:66:Now that we have a general image of the country, we can move on to some examples of concrete actions carried out by movements that took part in the World Social Forum.

./english/590.txt:6:Member of the organising committee of the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre and one of its founders, the Brazilian Chico Whitaker proposes here a critical reading of the last book by Bernard Cassen (1) about the World Social Forums and indicates some perspectives to maintain their creativity:

./english/590.txt:8:The choice made by Bernard Cassen to write his book in the first person, without much fuss, is doubtlessly somewhat enervating and risky: it is possible that the reader experiences some resistance reading his reflections, even though correct, about the meaning of the World Social Forum (WSF). But apart from that, one can draw quite some benefit from this irreplaceable testimony of the necessary discussions and the tensions experienced.

./english/590.txt:12:The first question concerns a danger, which it is necessary to surmount and which, after Mumbai, shows itself to be particularly present. It concerns attempts which - contrary to the Charta of Principle of the WSF, to its spirit and its way of proceeding so far - try to establish a “political leadership disguised as an avant-garde, baptised Assembly of the Social Movements .” Born with the WSF of 2001, this assembly - which as Cassen remarks, should call itself “of some” and not “of the” social movements - would have the right and even the duty to exist. One of the objectives of the WSF is precisely to give birth to discussions, if these do not overthrow the whole logic of the forum. However, this assembly succeeded its most daring coup at the Mumbai Forum: its representatives, after having convinced the Indian organisers that this was nothing but the tradition of all the Forums, had taken the microphone on occasion of the closing ceremony in order to present their “Call”, thereby reducing the whole richness and diversity of the Forum to a single proposition. We can all be in agreement with this proposition, but not necessarily with the fact that it stands as the only conclusion of the Forum or maybe even that it is now treated as the priority of priorities. Of course, this occurrence provided the Agence France Press with the right to say, in its dispatch regarding that closing session, that this “assembly” is the “decision-making body of the World Social Forums” and therefore “the organ entitled to take decisions within the WSF, which itself issues no final declaration”…

./english/590.txt:14:Fortunately, this episode led the International Council of the WSF to decide, the next day, to carry out a detailed evaluation of the closing sessions of the past Forums, to well define their objectives, form and function, so as to avoid further similar surprises It nevertheless remains crucial that the organisers of the Forum should from now on give even more explanations about the true character of the Forum to possible new adherents.

./english/590.txt:16:The other question I would like to address is that of the “political expedients”, a recurrent theme since the success of the first Forum. Bernard Cassen expresses this preoccupation, when he says that the question of the “passage to action to make ‘another world a reality, remains entirely open. And it nourishes legitimate frustrations.”

./english/590.txt:18:There as well, the International Council has begun to make itself clear at Mumbai. On this subject, the book as well as a subsequent article (2) allow a certain ambiguity. As a matter of fact, they put forth the same demand as the call of the “assembly of social movements”, which Cassen criticises. He would want to let everything converge towards a few unified banners under their direction. And it is the same demand as that of many journalists, used to seeing that at the end of meetings “final documents” are issued. Cassen tells us in his article: “Everyone of us always has the greatest difficulty to explain what has “emerged” from a Forum.” Nonetheless, many among us answer without any problem that the Forums do not have “one” final document but hundreds, with a multiplicity of new initiatives of action, it bears repeating this, coming into being there.

./english/590.txt:20:In this sense, one of the ideas to which Cassen also attributes importance may create even more confusion: that of formulating a “Consensus of Porto Alegre”, counterpart of the “Washington Consensus”. The objective would be to announce a dozen of strategic objectives to be reached by the action of all involved. However, paradoxically the realisation of this idea, just as the definition of converging or even priority themes - formulated during the preparation of Mumbai but in view of the 2005 Forum - would lead us dangerously close to the “final document” that all claim not to wish. Moreover, one of the networks participating at the Mumbai Forum just circulated its “30 propositions to make an other world possible”. Should one mix these 30 proposition with the ten or fifteen of a “Porto Alegre Consensus”? And who would do it without constituting themselves as “board of directors” of the WSF, which some still seem to experience the need of? And what to do with all the other proposals for action not comprised in these two inventories and considered by its authors as really strategic to overcome neo-liberalism? The respect of diversity is not a condition solely for entering and participating in the Forums, but also to get out of them, without any impoverishing homogenisation having to take place. Of course, everybody has the right to produce syntheses, convergences and priorities. The “good ones” will be followed by those who are in agreement with them. What no one has the right to do, is to impose them on the others or to want to talk in the name of everybody.

./english/590.txt:24:As far as the need for concrete proposals is concerned, we are without any doubt in front of a problem of comprehension of the process. After each Forum, things no longer go on in the same way: participants return to their homes with a more elevated level of knowledge, conscience and articulation with others in action. Moreover, in the Forums there always come to light new initiatives and hundreds of “final documents”. What we have not yet accomplished, and is creating anxieties in observers worried by the results of the process, is to make these more visible.

./english/590.txt:27:(1) Tout a commencé à Porto Alegre: mille forums sociaux! (Everything began at Porto Alegre : a thousand social forums), Paris: Mille et Une Nuits, 2003.

./english/594.txt:6:Generally, it was felt that the World Social Forum in India was a gathering of the “Left”, in a plural sort of way, not some neutral space for academic discussion, and for many people who attended, the open debate and shared experiences should result in some sort of action towards building a better world. The fact that it was acknowledged that it was “the Left”, is a welcome development when compared to the “peoples’ assemblies” in Thailand.

./english/594.txt:10:WITHIN THE WSF: There were differences of approach to the organisation of meetings. Large meetings with full platforms, which allowed for little if no time for any serious debate and discussion among ordinary delegates were of limited benefit. It was noticeable that one important concrete decision, the 20th March world wide action against the war, came out of a different kind of forum: the general anti-war assembly, which involved much more participation and discussion by activists. Also my experiences of excellent political debates with many Indian comrades came from meetings organised in seminar rooms by the International Socialist Tendency. I’m sure other delegates had other similar experiences.

./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/595.txt:10:2. This forum was also the scenario for bringing together very different cultures and practices. Several tensions specific to massive meetings were blatantly obvious at Mumbai. Some of these divisions can be identified :

./english/595.txt:12:The divide between the activities set up by centralised organisation and those that are self-organised by myriad groups, networks, unions and organisations. It should be added that the self-organised activities springing from groups, organisations and networks based in India were often in the majority. In other words, activities “parachuted” from afar do not work at the Social Forums.

./english/595.txt:14:Another striking contradiction was that between the people who demonstrated in the streets, often shouting slogans and beating drums, and those that spoke in the conference rooms. There was something strange about the difference between the groups that sought to make themselves heard, saying “we’re here”, using slogans and drums, and those who painstakingly sought to make themselves heard in English, Hindi, Marathi, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese and so on. Diversity is one of the striking features of the Social Forums and it was very clear at Mumbai, but without dialogue between the different cultures, the participants are reduced to expressing themselves on different wavelengths, deaf to what the others are saying. Taming interculturalness requires time and cannot be improvised.

./english/595.txt:16:Another contradiction involves the means of expression. Some people expressed themselves by speaking and writing while others did it through art. During the Mumbai Forum, there were nearly 5,000 street art events several of which did not appear in the programme. In fact this is not really a contradiction. However, the task remains to create dialogue and links between types of exchange based on speech and those based on different forms of artistic expression.

./english/595.txt:22:The means for obtaining a global vision, to facilitate legibility sufficient to highlight the wealth of the debates and proposals, also remains a task on standby. Efforts have been made in the sectors of documentation and systematising the ideas formulated at the Forums since the first forum at Porto Alegre in January 2001. There is no nostalgia in this quest to keep archives on the forums. An amnesic movement is liable to become diluted, or else others will write its history. The work of archiving, documentation and systematisation is essential for emphasising the intercultural, social and political wealth contributed by the participants themselves. This effort permits proposing the new ideas and alternatives that social actors are implementing in order to respond to and overcome the policies dictated by the proponents of neo-liberal and neo-imperialist globalisation. The capacity to innovate to ensure that the programmes and methods of the forthcoming forums are genuinely original and participatory will be one of the key elements for continuing the alternative world movement.

./english/595.txt:32:Naturally, we have progressed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and apartheid in South Africa. New values have been brought to the fore, a new relationship between humanity and the biosphere has been formulated, and relations of respect between men and women have been emphasised. During the last decade we have made progress on human rights. We even believed that Pinochet was going to be judged at one point ! The International Criminal Court is now a reality. Large networks have developed, hundreds of meetings have been organised and dozens of proposal papers have been produced. All the above are significant advances and the social forums and different alliances are important, but the question remains : “What are we going to do with these forums and alliances to be equal to our hopes and expectations ? Can we really topple the empire ? Will we be able to get humanity away from its position between the devil and the deep blue sea ?”

./english/595.txt:36:To overcome this challenge, social forums and different civic movements in many regions of the world have launched wide-ranging debate on ideas and proposals. They can and must not only provide answers to these questions but also contribute towards immediately opening up new perspectives so that humanity can live in peace. This challenge has now become a question of life or death.

./english/598.txt:7:As the fourth World Social Forum in Mumbai showed, the social-forum movement continues to go from strength to strength. Hilary Wainwright explains what distinguishes this new way of organising for social justice from the labour movements and political parties of old.

./english/598.txt:9:Can you ask them to go? an anxious volunteer pleaded with Gautam Mody, trade union organiser turned honest spin doctor for Januarys fourth World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai. A group of politically motivated Buddhists were performing a dance outside the forums media centre and taking up a lot of space. Leave them, said Mody, as firmly as a conventional press officer might order a demonstration to end. Why does it take so long for people to let go of the old way of doing things? he grumbled. He went on to explain how the streets outside his union offices in Delhi are always cleared of anyone loitering with political intent. Were creating a new culture here, Mody said. In the past the labour movement too often preferred to meet behind closed doors, and we would even send people to investigate who was listening. The social-forum process is completely open. That is not always easy to accept.

./english/598.txt:11:But by the end of the Mumbai forum (five days of festival, conference, demonstration, workshop and rally declaring another world is possible, we can build it) many more people understood what makes the WSF different. The square outside the media centre became a stage squatted by any group nifty enough to get there first and perform before a motley collection of the worlds straight and alternative press.

./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:21:The organisations most challenged by the theory and practice of social forums are the traditional political parties of the left - both from the social democratic and Leninist traditions. The WSFs principles specifically exclude the direct participation of political parties. The basic idea is all about building up the power of social and trade union movements. The WSF, says the forums Charter of Principles (agreed by the WSF International Council in 2001), is a plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party context that inter-relates organisations engaged in concrete action[,] from the local to the international in order to build another world… Neither party representatives nor military organisations shall participate in the forum.

./english/598.txt:23:This does not mean that the forum is anti-party. Indeed, in Italy and Brazil many of those most energetically building the forum come from parties (Rifondazione Communista and the Workers Party, respectively) that are trying to open themselves up to the influence and activity of the social movements. Indian anti-dam campaigner Medha Patkar described the WSFs relationship to electoral politics thus: Electoral politicians are not untouchables here, but the WSF is really an expression of people power and non-electoral politics. Non-electoral politicians need to build their strength to challenge elected politicians. Those representing an alternative view of development need to realise the commonality of their ideologies and strategies.

./english/598.txt:25:In this way social forums put into practice the assertion of the womens and ethnic minorities movements of the 1970s, that movements of the oppressed and marginalised need autonomy to develop and identify their own needs, identities and sources of power. Political parties do not have a monopoly of the power to achieve change; indeed generally they have flunked the task of reform. The emergence of social forums doesnt make the political party redundant. It leaves it a distinctive contribution to the wider process of struggle carried out by a plurality of actors: the role of linking extra-parliamentary campaigning with the very different timetables and tactical necessities of electoral politics. To perform this role effectively - to act as amplifiers rather than mufflers of the movements in the streets and the workplaces - parties have to open up their methods of organising and thinking. Every way of reforming party policy has to start from an experimental approach, Rifondazione Communista leader Fausto Bertinotti told the Mumbai Forum. Practice has to come before theory. The collective intellect is the movement, and the party is helping to contribute to that, but it cannot in itself be that collective intellect.

./english/598.txt:29:By contrast, the hallmark and vital source of strength of both the new movements and the older feminist, peace, green and radical trade union movements on whose traditions they build is a fundamental belief in the importance of practical, indigenous, personal knowledge. Portuguese philosopher and activist Boaventura de Sousa Santos organised a workshop at Mumbai on combining different kinds of knowledge - the theoretical and practical. He said: There is an implicit recognition running through the way these forums are organised, especially in Mumbai, that knowledge embedded in practice cannot always be codified and documented. Indeed, the horizontal, networking ways of organising these movements is in part a result of the need for practical, non-traditional ways of sharing that knowledge.

./english/598.txt:32:The sharing of knowledge is closely linked to the discovery and creation of different sources of power. The campaigning movements and networks that met in the old warehouses and newly constructed tents at the WSF site in Mumbai do not assert a rival monopoly to that of traditional political parties. Rather, they demonstrate, in practice more than in theory, a belief in diverse sources of power. One purpose of social forums is to find ways of connecting those different sources of power and making them more than the sum of their parts.

./english/598.txt:38:Coordinating linkages that are horizontal rather than vertical, that function across popular movements rather than up from the masses to the party leadership, was the original vision of the social forum [idea/ founders]. Chico Whitaker, an activist intellectual from Brazil with a history of involvement with the Workers Party and radical movements associated with the Catholic Church, was one of those who formulated [it/ the WSF Charter of Principles]. A modest man, now in his 60s, Whitaker believes that the forum idea draws on the most important political discovery of recent times - the power of open, free horizontal structures. He told Red Pepper: It is this idea that explains the success of the first three WSFs in Porto Alegre as well as of Seattle and the 15 February demonstrations [against the war in Iraq] and now Mumbai.

./english/598.txt:42:In this way the social forums, whether internationally or locally, are experimenting (not always successfully, it must be said) with new ways of integrating the particular - ie, demands and campaigns on single issues - with the universal - the wider effort to bring about a radical transformation of the whole of society. Historically, this was exclusively the function of the political party.

./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/598.txt:46:A short history of the World Social Forum

./english/598.txt:48:The World Social Forum (WSF) developed out of the anti-capitalist movements in the late 1990s. It was organised as an alternative to the World Economic Forum at Davos in Switzerland, at which neo-liberal intellectuals and political leaders meet to discuss and supposedly solve the problems of the age.

./english/598.txt:56:2004: The fourth WSF meets at Mumbai, a city with a population of more than 30 million people governed by the extreme nationalist right. The forum is attended by more than 100,000 people.

./english/598.txt:60:2006: The sixth forum is planned for Africa. The International Council of the WSF is talking of reorganising the forum so that in future it takes place every two years instead of every year.

./english/605.txt:1:New tracks to the World Social Forum

./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:10:This Forum has definitely joined the agenda of struggle against neoliberalism with the struggle against militarization and the empire: to the delegates present in Mumbai, the struggle against poverty and exclusion resulting from capitalist globalization is inseparable from the struggle against war and imperialism. But this Forum also included issues before ignored or put aside in the global movement´s agenda, such as the struggle against cast discrimination, which keeps 200 million Indians in the edge of society and claims a rethink about the problem of racism, and the struggle against the combined effects of communalism, patriarchalism and religious fundamentalism – increased by the present path of the imperial power and the fundamentalist hindu government in New Delhi.

./english/605.txt:12:Therefore, the IV WSF was made in a context so far away from the western political culture. It was an highly popular event, militant and feminist – reinforced by the massive presence of ground popular movements, not only from India but from most parts of Asia. There, the Forum has become a space for activities which were, first and foremost, protests and invitations to political action. Mumbai and the Indian Organization Committee have qualitatively enriched the WSF process, introducing several elements that must, from now on, be considered in future initiatives.

./english/605.txt:15:The Indian Organizing Committee (formed by 48 entities) took long to choose the city to house the IV WSF, but its final decision has turned out to be more than justified. Bombay, now called Mumbai, has a weak left presence and is ruled by the extreme right – what an impact has it provoked in the Forum participants to feel the city! Even for those who have been to India before, staying a week in the neighborhood of the exhibition park Nesco Grounds, in Goregaon, north edge of Great Mumbai (30 km from Colaba, south of the peninsula, the financial and tourist “city center”) was a lively lesson about the results of the globalization suffered by billions of people.

./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:36:These were the sectors which with most highlight have brought their problems and struggles to the IV WSF – specially the dalits, who comprehended few less than half Indian delegates. The hottest problems in these people´s lives – which delegates of their organizations had understood being linked to the neoliberal globalization – were those motivating most part of the discussions realized in Nesco Grounds. In addition to the issues with a special class focus established by the communist or socialist left sectors, another great range of inquiries emerged more directly from combat to castism, communalism, religious sectarism and patriarchalism have earned centrality in the Forum.

./english/605.txt:40:For large part of the delegates present in Mumbai, the international political agenda has a clear center, the fight against Bush government, to North American imperialism and its military offensive. This was the core of the discussion over Irak, Afghanistan, Korea and Palestine, the most visible range of themes. Of course the fight against the free trade agreements that multiply in the region has found its place, as well as the struggle against expulsion of the immigrant workers in Korea or Japan, for the weapon control, for “Making Tibet a peace zone”, for food security and preservation of biodiversity and natural resources etc. But nothing has weakened the force of the fight against the threat represented by government Bush to the world. That explains the strength of the Gerneral Assembly of the Global Movement against War claim – that took part in the Forum – for a world journey of fight against the end of occupation in Irak in March 20th.

./english/605.txt:46:Besides, the Forum was preceded by a large regional mobilization, essential for the success of a national event in India, with several forums and manifestations in several Indian states. As points Pierre Rousset: “a unitary dynamic without precedents in India has created convergences among sectors and movements frequently distant one from each other. The dalits associations had organized from December 6th , 2003, the “dignity parades” converging over Mumbai, the aborigine tribes also were very active in the Forum, holding their arches and arrows. This self-affirmation of the lower casts and of the “off-casts” has assured the presence of the workers in the informal sectors of the economy, beside those of the formal sector, in midst of whom the trade unions are better established. Associations that refused every financial help from abroad collaborated with NGOs that accepted them. “Popular movements of gandhian reference had met the traditional mass movements, linked to the left parties. A double unitarian dynamic has stated itself in the WSF preparation: in national scale among quite different movements and in local scale with the multitude of regional associations” (Retour sur les conditions d´un succès in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br ).

./english/605.txt:51:The decisive logistical option in Mumbai was concentrating the activities in one place and don´t disperse them. That has made easier the effervescence and vital mood in the IV WSF. It was carried out in an abandoned textile complex that now serves as events center, creatively transformed by the Forum organizers in order to house the multiple activities to be realized. We had not had, such as in Porto Alegre, the classrooms and the PUC (University) infrastructure, but even so the result of the activities was not harmed. The critical note is related to the Youth Camp, which had much more modest dimensions than Porto Alegre Youth Camp – it had settled in the area belonging to a catholic high-school ten kilometers away, what has made difficult a better integration with the Forum ensemble.

./english/605.txt:53:Part of the popular and militant character of the IV WSF has resulted and was result also from the efforts and resources dedicated to the cultural dimension of the event, conceived not as “entertainment” or “show”, but essentially as political manifestation. Since Asiatic Social Forum it was clear that the treatment given by Indians to this issue was very different and politically more suitable than the former forums. The cultural initiatives were not shows by professional artists, but part of the present communities´ and movements´ struggles. Even the exhibition of “western” cinema were conceived by many cultural activists embraced as Forum´s organic cells.

./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:57:This network hat introduced in Mumbai, through the hands of the French collective of sound artists Apo33, a new work instrument, a computer program based in free software, called Nômade, which allows instant digitalization of every speech (from the talker and the translations too).Therefore, each room equipped with the system Nômade has a computer net which plays different functions: voice transmission (digital or FM), storage and classifying of the debates, coordination of the translation and internet transmission of sound and video archives. In India, after problems in the first day, originated specially from improvised electrical installations, it has passed the test. That allows further Forum activities to be attended in real time by people all over the world in his language, if it is among the ones adopted for the simultaneous translation. This tool opens great possibilities to the internationalist movement.

./english/605.txt:59:From the methodological point of view, the Mumbai Forum went from a situation in which the effort of activities organization fall over Organizing Committees (OC) with support of the IC for a situation in which just a few activities are organized by the OC. Among the 48 activities organized to more than 4,000 people in WSF 2004, 13 were responsibility of the COI and 35 were “self-organized” (chosen among more than 200 submitted). Nevertheless, some of these great activities had a low quorum. The dynamism of debates were, more than in Porto Alegre, principally in medium-size activities, capable of attracting general participation, but not so big to obstruct dialogue with the present.

./english/605.txt:63:The political parties and the Forum

./english/605.txt:64:Mumbai consolidated the “method” of open space established by the Charter of Principles of the WSF. Today almost everyone in the left know that the Forum do not take resolutions, that political parties and guerilla organizations do not participate in the organization and why is that so. They know, in the other hand, that political parties are not unwelcome guests – in fact they are important participators in the process with which the Forum dialogues and wants to empower. The game rules, although strange to certain political cultures, are less and less inquired.

./english/605.txt:66:In Mumbai, that originated a clear political delimitation. We had had parallel events organized with the intention of concurring with the Forum – which the Indian Organizing Committee has wisely treated as complementary initiatives. The most important one was the Mumbai Resistence 2004, convoked by a little international net of Maoist parties, through their mass fronts. They had inquired the idea of open space, the fact that the Forum does not take resolutions, its not explicit socialist character and the fact that the WSF does not valorize the armed fighting in the social change. But we also had had the II People´s Encounter, whose promoters had broken up with the WSF process because they did not accepted working with the mass organizations which identified themselves to political parties. Both events (and sectors from the Forum itself) had echoed also the critics that the international financial ties of certain organizations active in the process condition and moderate its political agenda. In the end the parallel events had had a marginal participation, which symbolizes the political delimitation established by the WSF process, of its ability of imposing a new and very united field of discussion.

./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:70:Very heterogeneous from the political point of view, the Indian left had found in the Forum´s formula a practical manner of building a process of unity that was urgent to it. Pressed upon by the hinduist fundamentalism and religious sectarism, struggling with an extreme-right government which threatens the acquisitions obtained since the Independence, the Indian left had shown that today almost every single political formations – from parties born in the official communist movement to the gandhist socialism – can deal positively with the method of the open space.

./english/605.txt:72:On the other hand, the great left traditions in the world are reacting to the reality established by the WSF process. Last year, a gathering of social-democrat streams in Belgium had defined that they should seek a more active role in the interior of the process. And in Mumbai, the communist parties had joined during the Forum, emerging the issue of the way to deal with their pasts – particularly the Soviet experience and Stalinism – with the present and the futures.

./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:76:Several of these parties have met in the IV World Parliament Forum, which had consolidated as the parallel event for the parliament members identified with the proposals debated in the Forum. The Parliament Forum has a different structure from the WSF, taking each year a final definition, sometimes after lots of polemics (such as the position about the USA attack in Afghanistan, which polarized the II WPF in the social-democrat formations and the others). This time, the debate of more united (see Final Declaration of the IV World Parliament Forum).

./english/605.txt:78:From this body of initiatives, it seems clear that slowly a very positive modus vivendi is built between political parties and the Forum process (and vice versa).

./english/605.txt:81:Mumbai has enriched the WSF agenda and integrated new and important forces in the process. But also reinforced the will of the Forum being a new and more useful tool to multiply political action and moving current correlation of forces. The more the neoliberalism seems sold out, the more this aspiration nourishes. At last, the Forum is not an end in itself, but a mean so what thousands of movements in the world can articulate and strengthen their struggles. And in Mumbai, with the consolidation of the Forum in the most conflictive and populated zone of the planet, this will has gained a sense of emergency. That has expressed in several critical discussions and self-criticism among the process protagonists, who point the need of changing directions towards Porto Alegre 2005. What balance can be made today about the Forum´s role in motivating our alternatives?

./english/605.txt:83:A first aspect seems clear: the Forum process has created spaces of encounter to the anti-systemic forces in the world – today fundamentally the annual Forum. In its very heart, took place lots of activities which have given consistency and motivated a common agenda of international mobilizations. The protests against war in January 15th 2003, as well as manifestations against OMC meeting in Cancún in September 13th, were focuses of debates in the WSF process in the years 2002 and 2003. And it came up from Mumbai activities a clear call for manifestations on March 20th 2004. Establishing a reference agenda for movements with capacity of militant convocation has been, in fact, the practical role of the assemblies in “World Net of Social Movements” and now also the “General Assembly of the Global Movement against War”.

./english/605.txt:85:But has the WSF process empowered the struggles and national mobilizations? As stated Sohi Jeon during intervention in the conference “Neoliberalism, war and the WSF meaning”, in Mumbai, “the real agent or the subjects of the change, of the constitution of alternatives, are not merely the participants in the Forum, not even the Forum itself, but the workers, the peasants, the women, those racially oppressed in each community and country. They are the subjects of the change.” (The World Social Forum at a Crossroad in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br).

./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/605.txt:89:Empower the Forum utility

./english/605.txt:90:Globally, the changes in the national field still are limited, most of times they are just promises, justifying Sohi Jeon´s question “is the WSF richness is really redirected to the mass movements in each community and nation?”. This seems to be the fundament of the demand that Via Campesina and other entities have raised as they propose a change in the periodicity in the World Forum for two years, with canalization of more energies to local processes, which should be alternated with the global ones. Not denying WSF utility as space and place of articulation, but highlighting the experience and the pedagogical process to participator, they propose moving to another phase in the process.

./english/605.txt:92:This was also the basis of the preoccupations in the IC meeting in Mumbai and the key indication to methodological and shape definitions for Porto Alegre 2005, which should stimulate, “since before and during WSF, dialogue, identification of convergences related to themes and strategies, articulations and formulation of plans of action… respected… every values signed in our Charter of Principles” (Propuestas adoptadas en la reunion del CI in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br)

./english/605.txt:94:But articulation and formulation of plans of action should be put in the right context. When one demands that the Forum make alternatives, proposals and plan of action viable , in fact, what is demanded is a change of the correlation of forces that only can come from a wide process of retro-feeding between the Forum and thousands of movements and national and local entities. Some exemplar actions, such as the proposal by Arundhati Roy in the Mumbai´s opening (Do Turkey´s Enjoy Thanksgiving? in www.forumsocialmundial.org.br) – boycotting in a systematic way two big and emblematic corporations in neoliberal globalization –, can be made viable in Forums such as the present ones. That is not the same for dozens of proposals that are already becoming patrimony of the global movement. In order to switch so much the force correlation, we should make a great political and organizational quality jump, making it possible the capillar articulation in the international processes with a great number of national processes.

./english/605.txt:96:The fact is that the Forum still is much more a sequence of events than a permanent process. As an event, it ought to have a festive and mediatic dimension, in order to multiply its impact. Some severe critics still carry their batteries against this essentially positive dimension of the process (what is different from transforming it in a show), but the backstage problem is another one, one of the structural relation between the Forum and the wider movement which gives sense to it.

./english/605.txt:98:Mumbai had given important steps in definition of a new shape for the event, based on the self-organized activities. However, moving forward in the direction of the dimension of the Forum process is not just a question of anticipation of inscription dates and fusion of activities (as correctly has been elaborated), it presupposes also the condensing of the net of relations among thousands of entities and movements all over the world. That makes the event a moment of encounter of permanent processes articulated in shape of vast nets. There already are, in a dispersed way, several thematic nets and very important campaigns. When the Brazilian Organizing Committee followed, in II and III WSF, the movement´s pressure for participation in the events promoted, it had reached more than thirty thematic nuclei. Bringing these thematic or sectorial focuses inside the Forum as open and dialogical processes, which maintain their own dynamics is, as already put by the indian female comrades, a great organizational and political challenge for the WSF. And it demands a huge investment in cheering up, permanent communication (of contents and not only of procedures) and memories of multiple kinds of processes and initiatives.

./english/605.txt:100:The internalization and articulation in the WSF process of what today is dispersed in hundreds of initiatives is related with another challenge. A net structure works only if disposes of facilitating and recognized nuclei, efficient and well positioned. The WSF architecture must evolve with the process. The initial structure of Organizing Committees and International Council had shown insufficient as long as the Forum had internationalized itself. It was introduced the figure of WSF Secretariat, today shared with the Brazilian and Indian Organizing Committees, and the International Council had structured itself in work commissions.

./english/605.txt:102:The situation today challenged is transitory. The International Council, created between the I and the II WSF, has freezed its composition immediately after the II WSF, showing great difficulty to deal with the expansion of the process and becoming more plural – what becomes unbearable with the consolidation of the Asiatic process, in which do not exist entities with the kind of structure of those which composed the IC still today (especially the international nets of NGOs and great trade union centrals with access to international trips). Besides, mentalities and postures characteristic to international organizations of hierarchical kind still shock, in their interior, with the net conceptions and practices. And, at last, the limitations of the regional processes still did not viabilize the constitution of a sufficient number of facilitating nuclei of the process, so that could become natural the redefinition of the functions between a qualitatively wider and more plural IC, with a more political and less organizational role, and these nuclei with ability of collective and quotidian acting. The process architecture will be shaped and stead, in a great measure, by development of the regional forums, by the experiences provided by them and by the constitution of organization collectives which are socially rooted and emerged as their Organizing Committees.

./english/605.txt:104:But the consolidation regional forums must still overcome several obstacles. It is not enough that a group of entities from a certain area have good will or even material resources for making viable and stable a Regional Forum process. The real processes flow through central countries in each region, in which the structure of civil society is more solid and the political situation is more cozy. The search of alternative ways may here be a disaster. Besides, the regions (almost) never are continents in the geographic sense – for example, if there is a more stable identity of the Europe (Western) or even America (Latin), there are lots of Asias, far beyond the Indian subcontinent, regions which must find their own tracks. We must find a difficult balance between resisting to substitutivism (which could take us to passivity) and effectively support the most fruitful initiatives.

./english/605.txt:106:Thus, the formatting of the WSF 2005 – as a friendly and efficient process in the articulation of proposals and political action to effective them – can only lead to a jump of quality in consolidation of the WSF process if accompanied by the internalization, by the process, of a important part of the campaign activities and more acting international nets, of changing the “institutional” architecture of the process, structuring it in a system of nets, and the consolidation of a certain number of regional stable forums inspired in their real dynamics. The challenges are not small. But are not unreacheable.

./english/607.txt:1:World Social Forum presents real alternative to globalization

./english/607.txt:4:THE 2004 World Social Forum (WSF) was for the first time held in Mumbai (Bombay), India, between 16-21 January. More than 100,000 delegates came together for the biggest anti-neoliberal globalization meeting ever, representing trade unions, environment, women, human rights, peace, alternative sexuality and other movements.

./english/607.txt:6:Poor tribals, dalits [former untouchables], street vendors, daily wage workers, rural labourers and people displaced by large projects such as mega dams were also present in force. They came together in more than 1,200 seminars and workshops, while marches, rallies, street theatre, songs and other events continued well into the nights.The plurality of this forum is its strength. It represents an ever-growing coalition of a very wide global spectrum of social strata negatively affected by globalization. Its myriad views reflect both its inclusive nature and the spread of its appeal to sectors of the population not attracted to earlier radical or anti-establishment ideologies. It initiates a search for alternatives that are not imposed from any one stream of thought but are cross-fertilized by many different intellectual currents culminating in new and innovative theories and slogans. The forums slogan - "another world is possible" - symbolizes both its rejection of globalization and the latters claim that it is the only alternative.

./english/607.txt:8:The World Social Forum contends that, instead of ensuring even in the long run, equitable development, neoliberal globalization actually globalizes poverty and aggravates inequality and oppression. Globalization is not an alternative. Only a people-friendly, sustainable, egalitarian and secular development is possible. With the diversity and complexity of the world, no one alternative or model is feasible, which is why the discussion of many alternatives makes eminent sense.Looking to Europe, the WSF seeks allies - not only in like-minded movements but also in governments and the EU - to deal with such core issues as agricultural subsidies, intellectual property rights and trade-related investment measures. There is also a need to reform and reconsider the economic models presented by institutions such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund - which are so unfriendly to the South, to a degree protested even by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz.Debate at the WSF focused on these issues and others: how much does the UN need to be changed? Is the expansion of its Security Council enough, or does the General Assembly need to be empowered so the opinion of members is not sidelined by the council? What are the specific policies and slogans that can ensure the unity of the South? How can democratic forces in the North be mobilized to support the suffering peoples of the South? Which are the most effective ways of combating religious fundamentalism and sectarianism when Muslims are being demonized in the course of the global war against terror? Can new ways of resisting militarism be more effective in isolating warmongers and replacing dominant concepts of national security and power as innovative strategies of peace?

./english/607.txt:10:The fact such issues and more were intensively debated by delegates from more than 90 countries and many political tendencies makes the WSF much more representative than the World Economic Forum to which it is in part a counterpoint. The activists and leaders represent the mass of their peoples and their aspirations far more than the finance ministers and CEOs that meet in Davos, representing the power and capital that dominates the world. The WSF is a significant effort to right this balance by facilitating dialogue and shared experience - and this was clear in Mumbai, where the poor and marginalized were present in depth.

./english/607.txt:12:It is possible the 2005 WSF will be even more ambitious, and attempt to lay the basis of a rainbow coalition against neo-liberal globalization, though such efforts may undermine the openness for which the forum is famous and attractive. In any event, it is certain that after Mumbai the forum can only move ahead.

./english/611.txt:30:That said, this WSF marked a continuing evolution of the forum process in desirable directions. The slogan "another world is possible" has now become so central and ubiquitous that it begins to grate a bit in its constant repetition. But, on the plus side, the constant repetition is provoking further elaboration. People are taking the slogan beyond assertion to description. The WSF has been propelling a mood receptive to vision and is now getting serious about pursuing vision directly. To not only assert another worlds possibility, but to also describe its main features will be very much to the good. And the same is true for the WSFs continuing impetus toward causing diverse and even mutually hostile elements to civilly attend to each others words. This too is good.

./english/611.txt:34:The response from what I think is probably a large majority of WSF organizers is that the WSF and the forum process more broadly isnt about itself becoming a new programmatic organization, or even about itself congealing a movement of movements, but is about creating a mechanism for all those who themselves might wish to do those things to interact with one another and learn from one another and create ties and then act as they deem desirable.

./english/611.txt:38:I think this formulation is reasonable. The forum process shouldnt try to become what it is too broad to sensibly attain and it should persist in what it does well. Yet, the fact remains, the glue that has held the forum process together and the innovation that has given it momentum, are beginning to lose their gloss. Something needs to be upgraded or renovated or added to provide new momentum, even while carefully avoiding risking what is still working well.

./english/611.txt:40:What about this as a possibility? The Social Forum process, at every level, is about information exchange. One big improvement would be if the information exchanged, especially that which is highlighted and emphasized in the most major and best promoted sessions, swung more toward issues of vision, strategy, and practical lessons from what people are doing, and away from descriptions of oppression and analyses of oppressions all too familiar systemic roots. But even this reorienting of focus, as positive as it would be, would still leave us with a gigantic apparatus being used only to talk, dance, sing, and otherwise experience one anothers views and styles, and to do so only for a few days each year. Cant the WSF apparatus do something that is more sustained, without pulling apart inwardly?

./english/611.txt:42:Well, if the purpose of the WSF is to debate, assess, and help people utilize information - why cant the forum movement try to facilitate worthy and inspiring information flow all the time, and not only during the events? Why cant it put its weight behind aggressively supporting alternative media, on the one hand - and behind aggressively assaulting mainstream media, on the other hand?

./english/611.txt:48:The only ideology this media movement would need is that truth in media is better than lies in media and that media concern for the well being of billions is better than media concern for the well being of thousands and that media in the hands of the people is better than media in the hands of corporate behemoths. And this ideology could be adopted without violating or even transcending the WSFs current definition - which is to facilitate honest, respectful, progressive, information exchange. A WSF media focus might provide excitement and momentum sufficient to rejuvenate and galvanize the forum process, as well as providing an immensely valuable contribution to movements worldwide.

./english/611.txt:58:As another possibility to consider - perhaps in parallel - what if we the Social Forum process began to see itself as the fledgling infrastructure of an experiment not only in international communication, but also in participatory democracy? Can we envision social forums forming locally in cities and villages all over the planet? I am told there are a hundred in Italy. Imagine that density of per capita local forums, and even four or five times that level world wide.

./english/611.txt:60:Could this wide spectrum of local forums become a layer from which are chosen bodies of, say, from 100 to perhaps 1000 recallable representatives, for each country, who would be the accountable, recallable, decision body for that countrys Social Forum? And could the country-wide forums then choose, even if by imperfect means, accountable and recallable decision bodies for regional events? And so on. It isnt hard to imagine all kinds of interesting options...once the broad idea of having the social forum structure be generated bottom up from local forums, rather than hanging top down from a yearly central forum.

./english/611.txt:62:I suspect that many other problems of the forums - such as having the same speakers repeatedly, overemphasizing analyses of ills and underemphasizing reports and lessons of activism and ideas for vision and strategy, unbalanced gender and geographic representation, and financial difficulties for attendees made bitter by bonuses for the notables, might evaporate were this kind of dynamism and exemplary participation developed. I also suspect many new innovations and exciting elaborations would percolate upward from the people who daily engage in the activities that make the forum possible. This would all be hard to do, of course. But at some point, dont we have to move from talking about people having a real say to people in fact having a real say?

./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:7:The debate on the Forum is part of a more general reflection on how to generate, from the common perspective of radical criticism to neoliberalism, spaces of inclusion that could be useful both to go deepen in the reflection and better definition of our critic, alternatives and strategy against the neoliberal model, and to make the WSF an useful tool to advance in the coordination among movements and struggles to oppose neoliberalism and war.

./english/614.txt:11:There are many questions that the four years experience of the WSF raise; however our intention is not to make a detailed assessment, but to focus on what we consider the main three points towards the future of the WSF: the ones that refer to the WSF structure, its periodicity and the role fo the International Council, which is the permanent structure between forums.

./english/614.txt:15:The experience in Mumbai has been useful to prove that the WSF is possible out of Porto Alegre, that its open character facilitates the integration of a broad plurality of many social movements, feeds the social mobilization and makes clear that the WSF globalization is not only possible but also necessary. Besides, it has made clear that the organization of the WSF is possible with distinct parameters in relation to those that had been used in Porto Alegre: to have a presence and visibility of the most oppressed social sectors, to block the space for sources of money that compromise the Forum, etc. Mumbai has also showed that there are movements that oppose neoliberalism but do not feel comfortable with the working and acting procedures of the WSF and that there are many spaces to be built in order to integrate as much movements as possible.

./english/614.txt:21:In this sense, the Conferences, seminars or debate panels, would have to combine both the reflection on the more actual issues or non-approached aspects of reality (such as the cast system this year…) form Forum to Forum, such as the confrontation on strategies and alternatives of the movements.

./english/614.txt:29:This implicates, also, that the physic spaces, the Conference rooms, should have a limited size and that to facilitate the participation of people, its necessary that the proposals can circulate before the Forum.

./english/614.txt:31:· Second, the notion that the conferences should be the space for the presentation of personalities, makes a series of unbalances that need correction to consolidate within the Forum. From those related to personalities and movements activists to those that exist among men and women, and those among the less represented young generations, the invisibility of the social sectors most affected by the system, the almost complete inexistence of certain continents…, what makes that, with unlikely frequency these central spaces within the Forum are converted into private space for intellectuals and academics, that submerge into invisibility the most affected social sectors and that kidnaps the participation of social movements.

./english/614.txt:39:The WSF periodicity and the location or, what is the same, where and when it will occur is another of the key points towards its future. Until now, it has been taking place every year, and despite the fact that in the beginning the conclusion was that the Forum would “circulate” throughout the planet, the reality is that the Forum seems to be “attached” to Porto Alegre. Nevertheless, the Mumbai experience has contributed to the future of the WSF: contact with other realities, inclusion of social movements, new dynamics; also, new problems (Mumbai Resistance, The II People’s Movements Encounter…), etc. and to this end it points out the path to follow. The best is when the new culture that presumes the accomplishment of the Social Forums (horizontality, consensus, open and plural space…) allows to generate unified and working dynamics and to feedback the mobilizations among the social movements, as has occurred in India this year.

./english/614.txt:41:These are the reasons why it worries that, after a four years trajectory and a broad umbrella of social movements actively and stably participating in the WSF, the decision concerning where to hold the Forum is limited to the framework of the International Council, from which results incomprehensible that whenever the move of the WSF to Mumbai was decided it was only with the condition to go back to Porto Alegre, when this decision could have been left open and/or directed to other continent and other country.

./english/614.txt:43:But besides this debate, which points out to us the need to democratize the structure on which the World Social Forum is based, is the debate of periodicity. To this end, we’d like to point out that:

./english/614.txt:45:The extension, since a couple of years, of the WSF to the Regional, Continental and Thematic Forums, in a tendency to ramify to the local scales, exposes the problem of how to coordinate a working dynamics between the distinct Forums. And in the present context there is no reasons that justify the undertaking of many annual Forums of different scales; otherwise, what is on the table is the need to coordinate an agenda that is capable of linking the different dynamics. Nowadays, the criteria of annual Forums results in a overwhelming and unbearable amount of work to those local social movements (right when the role of the Forums is to facilitate their development), and can only be satisfactory to those who live of, for and to the Forums.

./english/614.txt:47:The second and still in the sense of what has been said in relation to the Forum structure, that we need to move forward towards a debate on alternatives and strategies and a more participatory Forum, that is capable of integrating new problems and issues – the ones that emerge from one edition to another, but also those that have not been approached yet –, to build such a Forum demands a previous work of articulation and elaboration that can not be accomplished in the present periodicity of the Forum.

./english/614.txt:49:Lastly, from the interest in moving the Forum to different continents and countries (for what it means of enrichment to the WSF itself as well as to the country where it takes place), to its accomplishment it takes time (to establish relations with the local social movements, to facilitate their integration dynamics…); and, here as well, the periodicity of one year is a too short deadline.

./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/614.txt:55:Regarding the International Council that tutors the undertaking of the WSF with all the legitimacy granted by its history, it must not be converted neither in a private space of those who constitute it at the moment, nor in a closed space where what happens and what is to happen in the WSF is dissolved. Otherwise, after four years, it’s time to create spaces of democratic participation, both in the reflection on the future of the Forum (how to move forward in the consolidation of this process), and in the decision making process on the issues that affect it. And concerning these issues it results a contradiction that the social movements, who constitute the spine of the Forum, at the same time, except for some networks and some very concrete social movements (Via Campesina, World March of Women, CUT) are marginalized in these processes of refletion and decision making. Even more in moments when by the time that has passed and the consolidation of the WSF itself, its future is under debate and in which the International Council has been given executive functions that deeply contrast with its central role: to facilitate the accomplishment of the WSF and its development based on the criterias with which it has been created and respecting the Charter of Principles.

./english/614.txt:57:It’s not a matter of questioning the representativity of those who constitute the Council, but to coordinate a participatory process in the definition of criterias to the WSF procedures (periodicity, country, form, structure…), and to integrate in its structure the assemblies and organizing committees of those Forums that have been constituted during the past years, to integrate these experiences in the building of the WSF. In any case it seems obvious the members of Organizing Committees should be integrated that in the IC, and note that this situation has not been acepted regarding the Indian Committee, after the success of Mumbai.

./english/614.txt:63:We are all conscious that as time goes by and the more the Forum consolidates itself, the risks of institutionalization and instrumentalization raises. That’s why the evolution and the future of the WSF, its role in the struggle against neoliberal globalization, its relation to the social movements and the role of them in its development have to be permanet preocupation amongst us, but avoiding to fall in the temptation to change its open and plural character.

./english/614.txt:65:There are many aspects of this four years experience that would deserve a more specific approach and many others that refer to its future that would demand more time and space to be approched; in this contribution we wanted to focus on those three points that seem to us the most central to the immediate future. Knowing that the important is not much if we are right or wrong in the presented proposals, but that they contribute to promote the debate among the social movements and to succeed that it flows to the International Council and influences the future of the Forum.

./english/614.txt:67:But our attention can not be focused only in the future of the Forum, because the Social Movements Assembly that occurs during it has built and builds a central reference not only to those who attend the Forums, but also to the push forward in the struggles and in the development of new initiatives. And, to a large extent, one of the WSF sources of legitimacy is found in the fact that the agreements reached during this assembly have served to show the utility of the Forum as a framework to develop in practice the confrontation to neoliberalism, from a perspective of radical proposals and the flexibility at the time of building alliances.

./english/614.txt:69:There is no dout that the reiforcement of the assembly, the steps that we’ll undertake in the building of ther social movements international network and the correspondence of our agreements in the global level to the local and regional spaces, are the best guarantee to maintain the Forum in good road. Because only as far as its development has as reference the social struggles and approches the problems that the movements bring into it, the Forum will not be at risk of atrophy, but it’s also clear that its opening to an umbrella of more broad and diverse social forces will, at the same time, be source of contradictions and tensions.

./english/618.txt:1:World Social Forum at Mumbai – Reflecting on conditions for success

./english/618.txt:4:Grassroots participation in the World Social Forum at Mumbai was ensured by unifying preparation and engaging regional associations.

./english/618.txt:6:All of us who had the chance to attend the fourth World Social Forum (WSF) were struck by its scale and its markedly grassroots character. Even in India, this quasi-continent, such success was not preordained – particularly as the WSF was held in Mumbai, the country’s trade capital, where the left-wing is only a weak presence.

./english/618.txt:7:When India was approached in January 2002 to initiate the WSF’s “migration” out of Porto Alegre, Indian organisations were still only marginally integrated into the international process of social forums. They had only two years to assimilate this unifying “philosophy” and to assemble the necessary conditions for success, especially of assuring the presence of delegations from all over a country in many respects as diversified as the whole of Europe. After a successful trial run – the Asian Social Forum in Hyderabad – in January 2003, social forums were organised in India’s states, very often at the grassroots level of groups of villages.

./english/618.txt:9:It was these grassroots delegations that really took possession of the space offered by the forum. Each of the delegations communicated with the others by way of their demonstrations and political and cultural activities: theatre, mime, dance. One Tamil remarked: “We can’t talk to each other, our languages are very different. But when I see them performing, I understand their message, I can recognise situations in common. We meet somewhere beyond language barriers. That’s exciting for both of us. We are glad to be here, together”.

./english/618.txt:10:This unifying dynamic has no precedent in India and created a convergence among environments and movements often far removed from each other. Since December 6, 2003, associations of dalit “untouchables” had been organising “dignity marches” converging on Mumbai; aboriginal tribes too were very active at the forum, brandishing their bows and arrows. This self-assertion by the lowest castes and the casteless ensured the presence of workers from the economy’s informal sector, joining those from the formal sector where trade unions are better established. Associations that refuse all international funding collaborated with NGOs that accept it. Gandhi-inspired “grassroots movements” met up again with traditional mass movements linked to left-wing parties.

./english/620.txt:1:World Social Forum from Porte Alegre to Mumbai: Some Reflections

./english/620.txt:4:There are certain concerns underlying the World Social Forum that needs to be brought out in order to have a meaningful discussion on the future trajectory of the Forum. Some of these concerns – by no means exhaustive – are:

./english/620.txt:6:· Should the Forum be only a reflective space for movements, groups, etc. or should it also facilitate the emergence of an anti imperialist global movement?

./english/620.txt:8:· While the diversity of the Forum is one of its strength, how do we mediate the relationships between small groups, issue based groups and larger groups?

./english/620.txt:26:Hegemony and Structure of the Forum

./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/625.txt:1:Mumbai 2004: a new step for the World Social Forum

./english/625.txt:4:Overall, it was a people’s forum; that is how the World Social Forum 2004, in India, could best be described. Over 30,000 of the participants were dalits, the poorest of an impoverished society, the untouchables excluded even from India’s rigid caste system. Meanwhile, Mumbai, the city of 14 million inhabitants that hosted the activities, is the most developed in India, and yet poverty is everywhere: on the streets, in the people, and in their homes.

./english/625.txt:6:Relocating the WSF to India literally put a “new face” on the event by concentrating Asian cultural diversity at Mumbai. Of the 80,000 people from 132 countries who were there, nearly 700 were Japanese, 500 South Korean, along with Chinese, Thais and Philippines. While previous editions of the Forum spoke Portuguese, English, Spanish and French, this year there were 13 official languages: Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Spanish, English, French, Korean, Bahasa, Indonesian, Thai and Japanese.

./english/625.txt:10:The Forum was held within the physical facilities organised for the purpose, but a lot also happened outside them. Keeping to an Indian tradition, people marched all the time, marched everywhere, as a form of grassroots participation, with slogans, with banners to be shown and signed, carrying the tools of their trades, with candles, with flowers. Children, women, peasants, people with disabilities would all march... It was spectacular.

./english/625.txt:20:The fact that all the activities were concentrated at a single venue made for sociability in a real melting pot of differences. The youth camp, however, was nearly 10 kilometres from the central Forum venue, making it difficult to integrate young people into the activities. The city also missed out, because it could not interact with the WSF as happens in Porto Alegre.

./english/625.txt:22:The Forum in India has confirmed the feeling left by Porto Alegre, that what makes the event is much more the small panel debates, workshops, debates in the corridors, sitting on the floor; the exchange of experience among the participants and the self-organized activities. At Mumbai, more than at Porto Alegre, the large conferences, led by intellectuals and internationally recognised leaders, were not very participatory, even though some did spark interesting debates.

./english/625.txt:32:On the other hand, such convergences have made it possible to devote greater attention, from one Forum to the next, to topics raised by WSF participants, and to their strategies for influence and change. This would appear to strengthen the idea of the WSF as a process, as against seeing it as just an event.

./english/625.txt:36:Considerable pressure is also being exerted by a sizeable group of institutions towards changing the frequency of the WSF global event from yearly to two-yearly. Some argue that we do not have the staying power to hold it every year, that there are no resources available and that as a result grassroots social movements are in less of a position to participate than NGOs and trade unions. Others argue that more time must be given for grassroots political work, for the day-to-day endeavour for social change. Those who are against any move away from an annual WSF argue that it would be a sign of failure, given that the Economic Forum at Davos has kept to its annual format for many years.

./english/626.txt:6:Yes, this is what you witnessed when you entered the NESCO grounds in Goregaon East, Mumbai, India - the venue of the fourth World Social Forum (WSF). The first WSF outside Porto Alegre, Brazil. The first WSF in Asia. The first WSF in India.

./english/626.txt:10:WSF 04 was not easy. It was challenging. Mumbai, a teeming city of almost 20 million, has some of the worlds worst inequality and urban poverty. The inhumanness of Mumbais poor hits you, hard. All the time. On the streets. On the sidewalks. Right outside the Forum venue. Participants saw the poorest of the poor, everyday, and winced. For many, poverty was no longer a word in development literature. It was breathing right in front of you. The feeling of horror reverberated amongst many who had never seen suffering of this magnitude before. You couldnt talk any more in workshops about the abstract poor. No, they had faces, and bony bodies. They were living reminders of the need for this "other world" we were fighting for. In some way, along with so many others, they made the Forum seem more real, more urgent, more critical.

./english/626.txt:16:Like at the last Forum, the anti-war message was loud; in fact, louder. The anti-Bush sentiment, even stronger. A popular poster read "When Bush Comes to Shove - Resist." Some felt the anti-Bush stance dominated the Forum. It might have dominated a lot of the media attention. But there was much more to the Forum than that. The participation of social movements in WSF 04 was incredible. The role of women, unprecedented. The range of workshop topics, mind-blowing. And the spirit, soul-stirring.

./english/626.txt:20:From Bhopal gas victims to Hiroshima survivors, from Narmada dam oustees to North American peaceniks, from Dalits to disabled rights advocates, from South Korean socialists to South African AIDs activists, from Peruvian peasants to Pakistani anti-nuclear activists, from Brazilian landless workers to Bombay slum dwellers, from queer rights activists to child labour abolishers, from theologians to trade unionists, from feminists to free Palestine crusaders, from anti-Coca Cola campaigners to cotton farmers… the Forum offered space for expression, for exchange, for discussion, for disagreement, for debate, for celebration.

./english/626.txt:24:I like to believe the Forum is an open space. Some would disagree. Like those who formed Mumbai Resistance. Yes, the WSF keeps some people out, officially. Like those involved in armed struggle. Because one of its charters is about non-violence. Yet, it allows everyone to come there. To share a platform. To raise a voice. To launch an idea. To build a movement. To generate solidarity. To challenge hegemony. To defy imperialism. And even to question the WSF.

./english/629.txt:1:Notes about the World Social Forum

./english/629.txt:4:The success of the World Social Forum 2003 in Porto Alegre and its process of globalization throughout the year of 2002, brought about many questions about its continuity. Many valuations have been written, pointing to different directions, as well as new proposals have been put forward for the organization of 2003, 2004 and 2005 events. In fact, the Forum faces a positive crisis, one of growth, that demands a deeper look at some of the issues remarked in its Principles Charter. To avoid the risk of destroying its potentialities, it is imperative that some ambiguities are overcome, before the process moves toward irretrievable crystallized orientations. A timely occasion for this could be the next meeting of the WSF International Council - better prepared and longer than the previous ones - expected for June 2003.

./english/629.txt:6:The present text intends to contribute for this debate, approaching three themes that have become fundamental for the continuity of the Forum process:

./english/629.txt:8:- The option between a Forum-space and a Forum-movement;

./english/629.txt:9:- The relative importance, in the Forum events, of the activities organized by the participants and of the activities scheduled by the organizing committees, and the nature of these two activities;

./english/629.txt:10:- The role of the Committees which organize the Forum events.

./english/629.txt:14:Forum: space or movement ?

./english/629.txt:16:Whether the Forum is to be considered as a space or as a movement has become a basic and preliminary option in this stage of the process. To elude our answer, by not putting it clearly, is the best way to create difficulties.

./english/629.txt:18:The Forum’s Principles Charter defines it emphatically as a space. Nevertheless, not everybody thinks and acts as if it was really only a space, or at least as if it should remain always as a space.

./english/629.txt:20:Many consider it as a space that has something of a movement. To others, it’s “still” only a space. That means, it can and should become an enormous movement, or a “movement of movements”, as some journalists name it. The resounding success of the manifestations of February 15th against the war in all the world - that leads the most enthusiastic to consider that this feat is also a result of the Forum, making them even deem it a sheer product of the Forum... - encourages still more the desire that the Forum takes up a mobilization function, like all movements.

./english/629.txt:24:The actual discussion then turns ou to be: would transforming the World Social Forum into a movement, now – or if not now, later on, as the process advances – be a good strategy to achieve the objective that aggregates all participants, that is, the overcoming of the neo-liberalism and the construction of “another possible world”? Or, inversely, would it be helpful for us, in order to attain this objective, to be able to count - now and along the development of the process – on spaces like those that are opened by the World Social Forum?

./english/629.txt:26:As far as I am concerned, there is no doubt that it is fundamental to ensure at all costs the continuity of the Forum as a space and not yield to the temptation of transforming it now - or even later - in a movement. If we maintain it as a space, neither will it prevent nor hinder the formation and the development of several movements – but rather, much on the contrary it will grant them. But if we opt for transforming it in a movement, it will inescapably fail to be a space, all the potentialities inherent to the spaces being then lost.

./english/629.txt:30:This conviction is based on the analysis of the advantages of the current character of the Forum as a space as compared to a contingent condition of the Forum as a movement.

./english/629.txt:40:The Forum as a space able to incubate movements

./english/629.txt:42:The Forum’s Principles Charter strongly opposes the assignment of any kind of direction or leadership inside it: nobody can speak on behalf of the Forum - there is no sense speaking on behalf of a space - neither on behalf of its participants. Everyone - people and organizations - maintain their right to express themselves and act during the Forum and after it according to their convictions, embracing or not positions or proposals introduced by other participants, but never on behalf of the Forum or the entirety of its participants.

./english/629.txt:44:As the squares, the Forum is an open space, as its Principles Charter also specifies. But it is not a neutral space like the public squares. The Forum opens from time to time in different parts of the world - in the events where it takes place - with one specific objective: to allow as many people, organizations and movements as possible that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and struggles of others, discuss proposals of action, to become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Thus, it is a space created to serve a common objective of all those who converge to the Forum, functioning horizontally as a public square, without leaders nor pyramids of power in its interior. All those who come to the Forum are willing to accept these conditions - for this reason, in order to join this “square”, one must agree with its Principles Charter.

./english/629.txt:46:In fact the Forum works as a “factory of ideas”, or an incubator, from which as many new initiatives as possible, aiming at the construction of another world we all consider feasible, necessary and urgent, are expected to emerge. That means we can expect the birth of very many movements, bigger or smaller, more or less combative, each one with its specific objectives, to perform their own roles in the same struggle whose development is the primary aim of the square.

./english/629.txt:48:As a matter of fact, the biggest potentiality of the Forum-space is precisely that: to create movements that amplify the struggle. Conversely, when a movement generates new movements, this happens unwillingly, against the grain, as a result of internal divisions. And that is what would occur if the Forum became a movement.

./english/629.txt:52:On the other hand, the Forum allows for the exertion of more or less fervor in the common struggle, depending on the phase each one finds oneself engaged in the pursuit, together with all humanity, for another world. Conversely, in a movement there is a natural mutual expectation between the participants.

./english/629.txt:56:The Forum’s Principles Charter reinforces even more this perspective when it deals with the question of “final documents”. Even if they succeeded in not being oversimplifying or narrowing, as it is usually the case with “final documents”, it so happens that the Forum does not have them, as a Forum. It is not a matter of non-commitment with the fight and with the mobilization needed to face the neo-liberalism, as the ones most concerned in transforming the Forum in a movement might interpret. The fact is that a square does not make “declarations”. It is clear that those inside it can do it. The participants of the World Social Forum can do whatever final declarations they wish - and these are most welcome. But they will never be declarations of the Forum as Forum. As a common space to all, it does not “speak”. Or rather, it “speaks”, and a lot, through its own existence. As more and more people and organizations get together in order to find ways to overcome the neo-liberalism, this is in itself an expressive political fact. It is needless that somebody should speak on behalf of the Forum.

./english/629.txt:58:Each and every document or declaration proposed in it will be, this way, a manifestation of those and solely of those subscribing it freely, without pressures or controls as for the positions adopted. That is why the Forum’s Charter sets forth that declarations and proposals cannot be voted or acclaimed by the participants of the Forum, as manifestations of the whole of the “visitors” of the “square”. In fact, this would lead many to leave the Forum-space, for not accepting or for not agreeing with leaders who intend to conduct them from the top of ridiculous hills and trees.

./english/629.txt:60:This option adopted in the Forum was, by the way, easily grasped by a great number of participants in its last edition in Porto Alegre, who contributed to the “panel” with “Proposals for action adopted during the 2003 Forum”. In addition to the fact that this “panel” enabled everyone to express themselves, the final proposals and declarations brought - or sent later - clearly depict the richness and the diversity of the engagement of the participants. The proposals can already be found in the Forum’s web page, but it was not possible this year to show everything that its participants decided to do as a result of the Forum, once the “panel”, as an innovation introduced in this edition, was poorly publicized.

./english/629.txt:62:Nevertheless, its present diffusion through the Internet - indicating how to contact the authors of the proposals –opens yet other perspectives: through the new contacts and relationships now made possible, it will allow the enlargement of the new articulations around the proposals during the Forum. As if the Forum’s square had become permanently open, outliving in time and space, lasting longer than the limited five-day event of Porto Alegre. The contacts may be multiplied and lead to more concrete actions, fostered by the unlimited new possibilities opened by the Internet. The same can happen with the “panel of proposals” set up in others events.

./english/629.txt:64:But the forum-space still has further advantages.

./english/629.txt:68:As an open space, the Forum has the possibility of ensuring the respect to diversity, unlike it would occur if it were a movement. The principle of respecting diversity, adopted by the WSF Charter, has, in fact, a deeper importance: it’s grounded on the conviction that one of the fundamental characteristics of the other world we intend to build - or as we also say the “other possible worlds”- must be exactly the respect to diversity.

./english/629.txt:70:As a result of this principle, the Forum also allows - without falling in the total neutrality of the public squares - each one to maintain his/her own freedom to choose the sector or the level in which to act so as to transform the reality. This action can be either very wide and comprehensive or rather restrict; it might intend to interfere both in the deeper causes of the problems the world faces, and in the superficial effects of these problems. The vast range of themes discussed during the Forum and the objectives sought in it can be thus very wide, such as is the range of changes required for the construction of a new world. Nobody in the Forum has the power or the right to tell that this or that action or proposal is more important than others, neither should he have the power or the right to give or to demand a bigger visibility to his own proposals, “usurping” to his own objectives the space that belongs to everybody.

./english/629.txt:72:This is, in fact, an issue that demands a more careful reflection, in view of what is being witnessed in the “marches” and street manifestations which tend to characterize the conclusion of the Foruns. The banners should be the banners of all, as a final visible expression of its diversity and of the variety of proposals sheltered by it or born from it. To priviledge this or that struggle, in the “commissions” to rank first in the march or in the appointment of contingent public speakers in the final acts of the marches, contradicts the principles of respect to the diversity, and conveys a vision of a Forum-movement instead of a Forum-space. But this is another question to be discussed.

./english/629.txt:74:All these features of the Forum certainly account for its great acceptance and appeal and the success of its events: its participants feel respected as for their own options, rhythms and the level of engagement. Some may come to the Forum as militants of a specific movement but the majority do not do it as an obligation or in obedience to the orders of their principals. They come to the Forum driven by their belief that it is important to come, to exchange experiences, to learn and to join others, keeping the freedom that they had before and will continue to have during and after their participation in the events. They know that in it they won’t be given orders nor will they have to follow words of command, that they will not have to render account of what they have done or not done, that they won’t have to give proofs of fidelity and discipline, nor will they be expelled if they don’t do it - much the contrary of what would occur to them had they come to participate in any meeting of an organized movement.

./english/629.txt:78:I would go as far as to affirm that it is this character of the Forum that explains the great joy that reigns in this “square”, like an enormous fair – a real party with spaces even to manifestations and “performances” of different types in the circulation spaces. Nobody is anguished because nobody has to fight to see his or her own proposals and ideas prevail over the others. Nor is one worried for having to defend oneself from others trying to control, impose orientations or rules of behavior – still less of political behavior, as it occurs in groups and “delegations” that have to get together to evaluate, decide, undertake tasks, as in good and disciplined parties or movements. Such meetings are even possible but never obligatory for those who are not militants of this or that movement. Those who want to take advantage of the opportunity to do so, also have freedom for that, provided that they limit themselves to gather their own militants with these objectives in mind.

./english/629.txt:80:It would be in fact a pity if this joy of the “square” was lost - as it would tend to occur if it wasn’t a “square” anymore. It’s a joy - the same joy that we would like to always see in the “other possible world” - that ends up by taking hold of and invigorating everybody, inspired as it is by another finding of the Forum, while destroying the divisions that segregated the struggles that the different movements fostered: the fact that we are many in the same fight. In that way, in the open space provided to all by the Forum, the militants of these different movements meet up with and recognize each other: the ones fighting for the women’s rights, for the rights of the urban and rural workers, of the environment, of the children, the ones who seek new economic domestic relations or at the level of international organizations, the ones who work for democratic participation in the governments or for the enhancement of the spiritual dimension in the human being, etc., in the great diversity of the existing “movements”.

./english/629.txt:82:Such “militants” of so many struggles - many of them long being severed due to different ideological and political options - find in the Forum an unprecedented opportunity to know each other and, if possible, to get together, overthrowing the partition to which they were driven by the dominant parties. This meeting with “old friends” - if one might put this way - is initially, for many, a surprise, followed by joy, when they realize that they are in fact united.

./english/629.txt:84:Supposing that the Forum becomes a “movement of movements”, none of these movements would be able to open this space and succeed in having all the others accept its invitation without conditions. The reunion would be curbed by the need to start belonging to another structure intending to unify, with all the rules established to make it possible- agreed among all… - And then, inside it the competition would again emerge and with it the division, as a result of the fight for space and the direction, and also for the definition of objectives of the new movement.

./english/629.txt:86:One last outcome of the character of the Forum-space is the feeling of mutual responsibility that permeates the realization of its events. The fact that it is a “square without owner” promotes this fairly easily, more than in movements where the development of this feeling is sought. In the Forum nobody can go against anybody, nor is willing to supervise each other’s commitments. Even the errors of the organizers - in general a lot, considering the dimension that the events have taken - are accepted and corrected by the initiatives and creativity of the participants. In the WSF 2003 edition in Porto Alegre a serious and involuntary mistake - that forced the organizers to make a great effort trying to minimize its effects - could have destroyed the entire event: only on the 2nd day were the workshops’ programs published. Nevertheless, the participants found ways to compensate the failure by their own, and there were even initiatives from “outside”- as the “savage” publication of the program which availed itself of the Internet information in the evening prior to the beginning of the works.

./english/629.txt:90:To maintain the WSF as a space is then, maybe, the best way to guarantee its biggest asset, which must be preserved at any cost. Therefore, without overrating, we could go as far as to say that, those who want to transform it into a movement - will end up, if they succeed, by working against our common cause, whether they are aware or not of what they are doing, whether they are movements or political parties, and however important, strategically urgent and legitimate their objectives might be. They will be effectively acting against themselves and against all of us. They will be hindering and suffocating its own source of life – stemming from those articulations and initiatives born in the Forum - or at least destroying an enormous instrument that is available for them to expand and to enlarge their presence in the struggle we are all engaged in.

./english/629.txt:92:Initiatives taken by a certain number of movements, self-nominated “social movements”, seem however to point to this direction. Justifiably concerned with the need of a popular mobilization to fight against the neo-liberalism, they seek to absorb the Forum inside their own mobilizing dynamics, to serve their own objectives.

./english/629.txt:94:Such movements know that they don’t congregate all the participants of each event - although convening important organizations. But even so they consider that their own final document could be presented and understood as a “final document” of the Forum – once it has not its “final document”... One initiative in this sense - born in the incubator square of the 2001 Forum - has already given rise to several tensions and misunderstandings after the Forum. But the pressure in order for that to happen has been recurrent in others events, even after the 2003 Forum, although with less easiness. This last attempt nearly jeopardized the mobilizing effects and the articulations made possible with the “proposals of action’s panel”.

./english/629.txt:96:Recently the “co-ordination” of this movements has gone even farther: as members of the organization committees of the events, they propose to include in the last day of the Forum schedule their own final meeting, that is normally held in the end of the Forum. This meeting, unavoidably partial, appears - at least to the media – as the conclusive meeting of the Forum as a whole. If this orientation is adopted, it will create, in fact, a new tension: each one will feel necessary to bring to this meeting the results of his own activity, to ensure that these results will be implemented by those who would “coordinate” its effective realization, as in a good and organized movement. Focusing the attention in the end of the Forum to the meeting they organize - and that will never be joined by all the Forum participants - this meeting will, in fact, ignore or disrespect the other proposals of action advanced. Or it will create the need of “representations”, that will transform the Forum in the usual pyramid, without the joy of the horizontal “square”.

./english/629.txt:98:In fact, a great challenge emerges, in my opinion, for the continuity of the Forum process, and for the fulfillment of its vocation of “incubator” of more and more movements and initiatives: to multiply such “spaces” worldwide – genuinely open and free, without drawing the attention only to specific proposals. We must hope that nobody, however inadvertently, contributes to drive the Forum to a closing process until it disappears as an open space.

./english/629.txt:100:However,it is all a matter of choice. People and organizations who are preparing events this year or in the next ones, within the process of the World Social Forum, and the members of its present International Council or of the enlarged Council that will get together in June, may consider that they should adopt an orientation of the type proposed by the so-called “ social movements”. Nobody can prevent this decision. It’s an option. Each of the participants of the Forum process will then decide about the continuity of its own participation, for one should bear in mind that the Forum is not yet a movement and there are no rules to belong to it or of respect to majority decisions even when they are taken in a way considered democratic. What we cannot do is fail to discuss this question clearly and frankly, so that we can be fully aware of the consequences of such decisions.

./english/629.txt:106:In a Forum-space the self-organized activities would have priority, in the minds of the event organizers, once it’s with them that the WSF works more clearly as a space. However, we verify that the part of the events programmed by the organizers is over-valued, at the expense of meetings and seminaries programmed by the participants themselves. These activities, the core of a Forum-space, are treated almost with negligence. They are almost looked down on, like secondary, less important activities holding low prestige, even as if they were a load that the organizers are forced to carry, after this way of organizing the events was invented in the 2001 Porto Alegre’s Forum.

./english/629.txt:108:In fact, the choices of the themes and of the lecturers of the conferences and panels have always taken most of the organizers’ time, in all the Forums already held. This also occurred with the International Council: the meetings of Bangkok and Florence had devoted great part of their working program to this type of decision, to prepare Porto Alegre’s Forum. Long meetings beyond the Council’s schedule have become necessary, and even a special meeting, in Brazil, between Bangkok and Florence, of the new working group created for this – bringing together the “coordinators of the main themes” - with all the costs that such meetings entail. Actually, the themes and the lecturers turn out to be the “showcase” of the Forum, or the public and visible demonstration of what it deals with and what is discussed in it, and this must be carefully planned, in order to keep its positions and proposals clear. As it occurs with the Davos’ Forum, which has not self-organized activities and has to choose carefully, in each circumstance, the main theme of its events...

./english/629.txt:118:Several precautions could be taken to avoid all that. For example, the deadline for the enrollment of workshops and seminars might be fixed long before the event - at least two months in advance for the big events. This would make it possible to disseminate the proposals by the internet ahead of time, allowing inter-links to be established previously to the workshops, a distribution of places and spaces that facilitated these inter-links, and a better preparation of the participants themselves, allowing them to come to the Forum knowing already which activities they would like to join.

./english/629.txt:120:A second but equally important precaution would concern the distribution of places for the self-organized activities: these should be held in the main space of the events, in the main “square”, with better infrastructure, easy access and good divulgation. And they could not suffer the concurrence of the events oriented to all participants - as occurred in Porto Alegre’s 2003, giving reason to those who said that the big “stars” usurped the Forum...

./english/629.txt:122:Without any doubt the priority given to the self-organized activities – that expresses in the practice of the events organization the option for Forums-spaces and not for a Forum-movement - would be much conducive to accomplishing the objectives of the WSF, formulated in its Principles Charter and indicated in the beginning of this text: to allow as many people, organizations and movements that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism as possible to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and the struggles of the others, discuss proposals of action, become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Because in fact it’s in the self-organized workshops and seminars that this can occur, and not in the traditional context of large meetings and congresses, where the people listen passively to what respectable people have to say, and by chance be lucky enough to have the opportunity of formulating questions.

./english/629.txt:126:The discussion about the option of whether to be a space or a movement is also important because transforming the Forum in a movement can bear negative effects to the continuity of the process, as it opens the possibility of disputes of power, that can erode or even destroy it from inside. As the WSF Principles Charter establishes that WSF is not a space for disputing power, having – until now – the character of a horizontal and open space, this prevented the occurrence of such disputes effectively in its events. But their preparation is not immune to that.

./english/629.txt:130:There are also those who deem it necessary to bring that dispute even to the Brazilian Organization Committee – currently the Secretariat of the Forum process – and to its International Council. They even say that the present composition of the Brazilian Committee is not representative, because it does not take into account the proportional participation of all the forces or political tendencies that should be in the direction of the Forum process. They also say that the International Council should be “conducted” by some persons, or reduced to a group representing the others.

./english/629.txt:132:These proposals would only be justified if the Forum was a movement, but they are not adequate to a Forum-space, to a “square”, that, as we have already seen before, does not admit a representing “political direction”. It demands, more than anything, people and institutions willing to perform the task of organizing the use of the square without interfering in the contents discussed in it and even less in the freedom that should be granted to all participants. That is to say, it depends on people and organizations willing to devote their time and resources – as an executive body – to promote the gathering and the articulation of all people engaged in the struggle for “another world”.

./english/629.txt:134:It would seem desirable that the composition of the Organization Committees of the Forums-spaces had a diversity ensuring the respect to diversity in the events. But it won’t be necessary to count on the proportional diversity and importance of the organizations and movements that will participate in these events, as these organizations and movements will not come to the forum to receive orders. And yet, still more important than the diversity in the committees is the credibility of people and organizations composing it. They need to invite all the others without leaving any doubt about the real interest of this invitation. Or without rendering those invited afraid of the possibility of being used, by those who invite, to carry out their own real objectives – as it might happen when political parties decide to assume “generously” the support of the process.

./english/629.txt:136:In this perspective, the concept better adapted to the organization committees and also to the International Council, within the option Forum-space, is of a “facilitator”. Facilitators do not command. What they do is making it possible for the existing or future movements to progress in their struggles. In order to create incubators of movements and engagements and to build “squares” and “factories of ideas”, they don’t need confrontations among them, discussing alternatives about how to change the world, still less do they have to try to impose ideas and proposals to each other. What they need is to be concerned within the common perspective that they adopt, in making each event organized by them accomplish the objectives of the Forum itself. What they need is to choose and operate, considering the political picture of each time, the best alternatives of organizing the time and the space that will be made available and will be used by those who should and wish to come to the “square” to discuss alternatives, advance proposals of action and, get together to fulfill them.

./english/629.txt:138:Naturally other levels of organization for valuations and propositions for the Forum process, besides the Organization Committees of the events – such as enlarged committees, councils, assemblies - can amplify the effect of the process, should they manage to incorporate an even larger variety and representation of movements engaged in the construction of the “other world”. But, in an option Forum-space, those types of organization - as it occurs with the organization committees – ought not to intend to direct those movements and organizations, but only to endorse and support the creation of more and more Forum-spaces.

./english/629.txt:140:Such perspective of work is more difficult to be adopted once it is not as “heroic” as the exercise of political leadership, provided by the option Forum-movement. Its adoption would perhaps lead to a decreased interest in participating in the organization of events. Sparing the efforts and resources to amplify adhesions, links and articulations during the event would be more crucial...

./english/629.txt:142:But if at the present moment it is useful and necessary that the barriers between different types and areas of engagement are brought down; that the articulations in the struggle against the neo-liberalism are spread all over the world and get amplified, stronger and more dense; that more movements, nets and initiatives of struggle are nurtured; that the debate of proposals and ways to overcome the domination of the capital are deepened; if this is the moment we are living in, we can be sure that the task of multiplying Forum-spaces is inestimable, irreplaceable and highly commendable, in our common engagement.

./english/634.txt:4:The World Social Forum (WSF) Charter of Principles emphasizes that the WSF offers a space for anti-neoliberal capitalist globalization forces to assemble and discuss, that the WSF ‘does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants in its meetings’ nor ‘a body representing the world civil society.’ My overall impression of the third WSF annual meeting (World Social Forum website: www.worldsocialforum.org ) in Brazil this past January 2003 is that it fulfilled very well its role of offering such a space and marked a distinct but small advance over the previous two such assemblies, with several important “triumphs.”

./english/634.txt:12:But reader beware! As Naomi Klein has observed: “The key word at this years World Social Forum…was "big". Big attendance….Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky. And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected president of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit [outside the WSF, however, jc] to announce that his embattled regime was part of the same movement as the forum itself….But wait a minute: how on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?” (Klein, “More Democracy – Not More Political Strongmen” The Guardian, February 3, 2003 < More Democracy – Not More Political Strongmen>).

./english/634.txt:14:Aside from numbers and mega-male events (which were not as prevalent as Klein makes out, although the general impression is that women were less well represented than the previous year—an ominous sign!), the atmosphere at Porto Alegre III was electrifying – 5 days of multi-ethnic, multi-racial, internationalism in a country bubbling over with hope after the overwhelming electoral victory of a veritable “working-class hero” to Brazil’s presidency (Lula). Social analyst Peter Waterman has given the flavor of Porto Alegre III in this personal commentary: “[I was inspired by the] energetic and innovative social protest, and original analyses of the local-national-global dialectic in Argentina…by the Kidz in the Kamp who were discussing under a tree, and with informal translation, how to ensure that the emancipatory and critical forces have more impact on the Forum process…by the increasing number of compañer@s, of various ages, identities, movements and sexual orientations, who believe that, in the construction of a meaningfully civil global society, transparency is not only the best policy but the only one” (Waterman, “First

./english/634.txt:15:Reflections on The 3rd World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, Brazil” 06/02/2003.

./english/634.txt:19:A second “triumph” at Porto Alegre III was the WSF’s for the first time completely upstaging the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF, a club of the world’s wealthiest individuals, or “unelected Masters of the Universe" as the London Financial Times has dubbed them), held this year in Davos, Switzerland. Indeed, even the harshest critics of WSF acknowledge that in terms of world impact on both public opinion and many key power centers the WSF is beginning to leave the WEF in its wake. As one commentator noted in Terraviva (a WSF daily newspaper printed during Porto Alegre III): “Davos is discussing the crisis of confidence afflicting its own [neoliberal] model, whereas Porto Alegre shows an impressive liveliness.” WEF president Klaus Schwab reportedly said that the new year found the world at its most “fragile” and “dangerous” state in the WEF’s 33-year history. Despite this, the millionaire delegates to Davos scrambled around all the major issues of the day without coming up with anything resembling a unified leadership position to guide the world further along the paths of neoliberal globalization--this time, by their own admission, with a much needed “more human face.” The WEF once again stated its agreement with the Tobin Tax but took no action toward its implementation. On the burning issue of the US war plans in Iraq, the WEF delegates at Davos floundered completely. US Secretary of State Colin Powell “did not receive loud applause at the Davos meeting, as did many others…[who] criticized the US for ‘militarizing the world” (Terraviva).

./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/634.txt:37:Second, a kind of confusion reigns, as it always has done, in the WSF. How long any of us will put up with this almost inevitable confusion remains to be seen, but so long as pluralism holds as a basic premise of the entire WSF there is hope the WSF will at least stay together, however confused it may be, and continue winning ground in the battle of ideas as it has been doing. A decision was made at the end of Porto Alegre III to rename the WSF “the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre,” since that is how the rest of the world has come to know it even though the fourth annual meeting will take place in India. More importantly, there was a general recognition that activists must have more regional social forums, build better global networks, incorporate better representation from Asia, Africa, women, and the working poor (including organized labor), and not look at the WSF of Porto Alegre as “the center of the universe.” The WSF of Porto Alegre also decided not to hold its meetings when the WEF meets, as it had done in the past.

./english/636.txt:4:PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL -- "I will tell the people at Davos that the world does not need war, the world needs peace and understanding," said President Lula da Silva to a cheering crowd of tens of thousands in this sunny port city in Southeastern Brazil. If there is one theme that unified this years World Social Forum -- and captures the irrationality and destructiveness of letting a handful of people determine so much of the worlds fate -- it is opposition to the looming war against Iraq.

./english/636.txt:6:The World Social Forum began three years ago -- under the slogan, "Another World is Possible" -- as an alternative to the World Economic Forum, an exclusive gathering of the rich and powerful held at the same time at the mountain resort of Davos, Switzerland.

./english/639.txt:8:The key word at this years World Social Forum, held this week in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was "big". Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all. Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky. And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected president of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial president of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the same movement as the forum itself. "The left in Latin America is being reborn," Chavez declared, as he pledged to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lulas election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrezs victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castros tenacity in Cuba.

./english/639.txt:12:Of course the forum, in all its dizzying, global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing in one direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists from opposite ends of the globe excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the "big" certainly put its mark on the event.

./english/639.txt:14:Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but "new": new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that most delegates agreed on (and there wasnt much) it was that the lefts traditional methods had failed, either because they were wrong-headed or because they were simply ill-equipped to deal with the powerful forces of corporate globalisation.

./english/639.txt:16:This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some parties of the left have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the delegates at that first forum had spent their lives building labour parties, only to watch helplessly as those parties betrayed their roots once in power, throwing up their hands and implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated by global markets. Other delegates came with scarred bodies and broken hearts after fighting their entire lives to free their countries from dictatorship or racial apartheid, only to see their liberated land hand its sovereignty away to the International Monetary Fund in exchange for a loan.

./english/639.txt:18:Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire communist parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" of eastern Europe had turned into centralised, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares. And outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and energetic generation of young people who had never trusted politicians and were finding their own political voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Sao Paulo.

./english/639.txt:22:The original World Social Forum didnt produce a political blueprint - a good start - but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to be less about trusting well-meaning leaders and more about empowering people to make their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more participatory. The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and cooperative farming - a vision of politicised communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation. For a left that had tended to look to centralised state solutions to solve almost every problem, this emphasis on decentralisation and direct participation was a breakthrough.

./english/639.txt:24:At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered too: not as a heroic figure who vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an innovator whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished people to meet their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and democratic empowerment were largely absent from his campaign to be president. Instead, he told and retold a personal story about how voters could trust him because he came from poverty and knew their pain. But standing up to the demands of the international financial community isnt about whether an individual politician is trustworthy, its about the fact that, as Lula is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.

./english/639.txt:29:Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by big men and swooning crowds is that there isnt much glory in it. To work, it requires genuine humility on the part of elected politicians. It means that a victory at the ballot box isnt a blank cheque for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

./english/639.txt:31:For some, the hijacking of the World Social Forum by political parties and powerful men is proof that the movements against corporate globalisation are finally maturing and "getting serious". But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed left political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious.

./english/643.txt:6:The third edition of the World Social Forum represents an important moment in the movements history, whether for the multitude of participants, the decision to hold the next meeting on another continent, or for the institutionalisation of the parallel forums accompanying it.

./english/643.txt:12:The problem now, from my standpoint as member of the WSF International Council, is that we must begin debate on the architecture of the Forum. We must recognise that the WSF entails three equally necessary elements: mobilisation, participation, and strategies for a better possible world.

./english/643.txt:14:We wont be able to achieve these goals in a gigantic event like the WSF. The International Council decided that the Forum will not take place on the same dates as Davos anymore. During the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum there will be marches staged wherever possible around the world. We will mobilise millions more than was possible prior to the creation of the WSF.

./english/643.txt:16:In terms of participation, the decision to broaden the WSF internationally has proved positive. The various regional Forums (Europe, Asia, Africa), as well as thematic (such as Quito and the Amazon about the FTAA), or local (such as in Argentina and Palestine), have achieved much more in terms than the colossal WSF. And, in the many more forums being planned, there will always be the problem of disproportionate representation from the surrounding region.

./english/643.txt:19:We will only be able to devise the way forward if we recognise that at least one of the Forums must be much smaller, more in-depth, with a strong methodology and systematisation. There must also be horizontal communication among all Forums, whether regional or thematic, so we know what has happened in each of them.

./english/643.txt:21:But that is not where India 2004 and Porto Alegre 2005 are leading. Their success will be measured by the number of participants. Is this the path we need to achieve a better world? And when it is said that we have no proposals, that all we do is talk, will we answer that we dont want to be elitist like other Forums? The time has come for us to reflect so our route is broader, but stronger in order to challenge neoliberal globalisation and its mercenaries.

./english/644.txt:1:The World Social Forum - Another World is Possible!

./english/644.txt:6:As politicians and corporate executives met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a very different meeting took place in the city of Porto Alegre under the slogan "Another World is Possible." The third World Social Forum (WSF) brought over 100,000 people to Brazil. Participants from all sectors of civil society--trade unions, community organizations, womens groups, indigenous peoples, students, and environmentalists--discussed and debated proposals for how build and mobilize an effective movement to fight corporate globalization.

./english/645.txt:1:World Social Forum: A Not So Little Leap Forward

./english/645.txt:7:The final triumphs of the World Social Forum (WSF) were the questions with which it ended: When next? and Where? They affirmed that after three years, Porto Alegre is no longer an event but a process. There is a new eagerness to those questions now, arising from the victory of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in the Brazil elections last October. The Left is in.

./english/645.txt:9:PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 27 (IPS) - The final triumphs of the World Social Forum (WSF) were the questions with which it ended: When next? and Where? They affirmed that after three years, Porto Alegre is no longer an event but a process.

./english/645.txt:13:Lulas visit to the WSF and then days later to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos meant that the message from Porto Alegre is now direct and political.

./english/646.txt:1:World Social Forum: what should it be when it grows up?

./english/646.txt:4:The spectacular growth of the World Social Forum has outstripped its opaque structures of governance. How should it be reformed? To be effective, must it become a decision-making body, or instead reinvent itself as a smaller theatre for delegated representatives? Should it cut its shadow relationship to the World Economic Forum? These questions of governance reflect fundamental issues of political direction for movements seeking a way beyond the current globalisation model.

./english/646.txt:20:One of the most influential and controversial of them is the World Economic Forum (WEF). The first informal business gathering in Davos, a Swiss mountain town, took place in January 1971. Since 1982 the Davos meeting has focused on bringing world economic leaders to its annual meetings, and in 1987 acquired its present name.

./english/646.txt:26:In February 2000, Bernard Cassen, chair of Attac and director of Le Monde Diplomatique, met in Paris with Grajew and Francisco Whitaker, of the Brazilian Justice and Peace Commission (CBJP), to discuss the possibility of such a forum. They shared three ideas: it should be held in the south, in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre; it should be called the World Social Forum to target its adversary; and it should coincide with the staging of the WEF to attract global media attention.

./english/646.txt:38:Most people calculate that the thousands of visitors filling local hotels, restaurants and other commercial establishments bring in much more money than whatever is spent by the local authorities in organising the forum: a major reason for municipal and state governments of different political backgrounds to have a welcoming attitude toward the WSF. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Brazil’s president during the first two forums, however, has upbraided local authorities for misallocating taxpayers’ resources.

./english/646.txt:40:Whereas in short-term commercial terms the WSF is considered a good deal by most locals, in ideological terms not everyone agrees. Two months after the WSF 2002, various business organisations and right-wing groups of Rio Grande do Sul organised what they christened a Forum of Liberties, with positions openly critical of the World Social Forum. And during WSF 2003, a bomb threat paralysed proceedings momentarily, until it was established that it was probably a “joke of bad taste” by some participant of the forum. Despite such marginal expressions of animosity, many seasoned international participants can testify to the warm welcome of Porto Alegre residents – one of the most pleasant aspects of the event.

./english/646.txt:44:Naomi Klein has characterised the structure of he first World Social Forum as “so opaque that it was nearly impossible to figure out how decisions were made”. Similar critical remarks have been raised by many others in every annual edition of the WSF event. According to the WSF Charter of Principles the forum “does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants”. Nevertheless, disputes of power do exist. Formal decision-making power has been mainly in the hands of the Organising Committee (OC), consisting of the Central Trade Union Confederation CUT (Central Única dos Trabalhadores), the MST and six smaller Brazilian civil society organisations. In terms of sheer numbers of affiliates, there is a huge difference between the two big ones and the others.

./english/646.txt:50:According to some definitions, IC members should be regional or global networks rather than purely national organisations, but this criterion has not been strictly followed. Instead, in the Miami meeting of the WSF International Council in June 2003, when some official procedures for incorporating new members were finally made, nationally-based organisations were not excluded. Apart from the proper members, there are fifteen observer organisations, mostly representatives of regional and thematic social forums in various parts of the world.

./english/646.txt:58:The underlying assumption in this working method is that the World Social Forum is not a deliberative body or actor that would take political stands and that it therefore needs no rigorous decision-making procedures. Until now the system has worked relatively well, making decisions through what some Brazilian organisers call construção, constructing them in a critical debate and sometimes laborious consensus-building. The IC is not supposed to have mechanisms either for disputing representation, or for voting. The only vote ever taken was to decide whether the meeting following the first IC meeting would take place somewhere in Europe or in Dakar. The overwhelming majority voted for Dakar.

./english/646.txt:60:So far, the most difficult decision the IC has made was in January 2003 when it decided to organise WSF 2004 in India. A small, vociferous minority argued strongly against the decision until the very end – the strongest opposition being voiced by some Cuban delegates arguing that Latin America was the traditional stronghold of radical movements, and that the Forum would be removed from Porto Alegre at its peril.

./english/646.txt:68:One aspect of decision-making somewhat neglected in the WSF process is the possibilities opened up by information technology. Of course, much of the informal decision-making and strategic planning of the forum takes place through e-mail. The organisers have, however, been reluctant to explore ways in which cyberspace could be used in organising more formal decision-making processes. Peter Waterman has argued insightfully and provocatively that the WSF “uses the media, culture and cyberspace but it does not think of itself in primarily cultural/communicational terms, nor does it live fully within this increasingly central and infinitely expanding universe”. He sees the WSF as “a shrine of the written and spoken word”

./english/646.txt:74:For many, however, the steadily increasing numbers of participants has been one of the most important assets of the WSF: numbers often used in the press to indicate the success of these events. The first World Social Forum in January 2001 attracted some 5,000 registered participants from 117 countries as well as thousands of Brazilian activists. For the second forum, the figures had grown significantly, rising to over12,000 official delegates from 123 countries and tens of thousands of total participants, mostly from Brazil. The third forum in January 2003 was even more massive, with over 20,000 official delegates and roughly 100, 000 total participants.

./english/646.txt:78:Michael Albert has made a more concrete proposal that the annual WSF gathering should be made a delegate event. In Albert’s vision, the WSF event would be attended by 5000 – 10,000 people “delegated to it from the major regional forums of the world”.

./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:88:Another controversy related to plans to organise a social forum event in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2002. The event was to focus on the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), coinciding with a FTAA ministerial meeting. During early 2002 the Quito event made it onto the semi-official list of WSF events, but by mid-year it had been taken off. There was no visible public debate, but one of the main reasons was the insistence of some IC members that the Quito event would be too focused on one particular issue (FTAA) and with too narrow an organisational basis. Nevertheless, the event, and many of its slogans and other symbols spread the word throughout the WSF process, even if it was not in the semi-official list.

./english/646.txt:92:Apart from the semi-official list of regional and thematic forums, a myriad of local events have been organised under WSF banners. Many of these events have neither received, nor asked for official recognition by the WSF governance bodies. Their proliferation is one of the most vital signs that the WSF process is indeed expanding. But the fact that they are often beyond the control of any centralised WSF body complicates the attempts to see the WSF as a movement of movements, with a more or less clearly defined political strategy.

./english/646.txt:96:The WSF provides a flexible space for actors who may wish to construct projects in very different contexts, local and global. Those organisers emphasising such flexibility urge the WSF to avoid issuing declarations of support for any one political process. As Cândido Grzybowski puts it, “political action is the responsibility of each individual and the coalitions they form, not an attribute of the forum”. Sensing a more pronounced dichotomy between forum as a space and forum as a movement, Chico Whitaker meanwhile has criticised the “self-nominated social movements” that “seek to put the forum inside their own mobilising dynamics, to serve their own objectives.”

./english/646.txt:100:One of the reasons for the reluctance to become an explicitly political actor is that the WSF does not have internal procedures for collective democratic will-formation. No one, therefore, can legitimately claim to represent the WSF’s multitude of movements. However, those who acknowledge this lack of a democratic mandate draw different conclusions. Many in its governing bodies would rather see the WSF avoid becoming a political actor. More critical voices argue that the correct way forward is to create mechanisms for democratic participation within the political architecture of the forum, as a driver for a collective movement.

./english/646.txt:106:George Monbiot has suggested that the WSF process could contribute to the building of a “world parliament in exile”. Some others who locate the WSF more explicitly in the historical traditions of socialist movements have envisaged it as an “opposition party” or “radical international”. From this perspective, it is particularly important to modify its organisational design and the way its decision-making structure functions. The fear of many is that the politicisation involved in such a process could destroy the forum as a relatively neutral space that facilitates encounters between different kinds of civil society actors.

./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.)

./english/646.txt:116:There have also been other controversies on hierarchies and partial exclusions within the WSF, based for example on the celebrity status of some participants. During the first forum a group of young and angry participants assailed the VIP room through one of the busiest corridors of the main forum venue. The room (with glass ceilings) had become the most visible symbol of the forum’s status differences.

./english/646.txt:120:It was therefore not surprising that the Cuban representatives no longer had a prominent official role in 2002, even though Cuba’s delegation was more numerous than the year before. The island’s political visibility has in the last two forums been clearest in the marches and the environs of the venue, where one could observe plenty of Che Guevara paraphernalia displayed by participating organisations.

./english/646.txt:122:During the first WSF, FARC guerrillas received a lot of sympathy from some participants. In Brazil, relatively strong anti-US sentiments are often reflected in solidarity attitudes towards Colombian rebels. Unofficial moves were even afoot to recruit internationalist brigades to travel to Colombia. Not all participants, however, were happy with the presence of a group accused of committing atrocities. For the second and third World Social Forum, FARC representatives were not officially allowed to register as participants. The WSF Charter of Principles, drafted between the first two forums and approved by the International Council in June 2001, excludes the participation of armed organisations. The mistaken endorsement of armed Basque registrations was also cancelled, as soon as their identity was discovered in 2002.

./english/646.txt:130:The participation of Lula da Silva in WSF 2001 and 2002 was technically as the representative of an NGO he had once founded. Once elected as president of Brazil, his participation in WSF 2003 changed. The role of the host government, from municipal to federal levels, was given a special status in recent semi-official formulations of the WSF. It was on this basis that Lula was included in the official WSF programme, whereas Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez (who arrived unexpectedly in Porto Alegre during the forum) was not accorded a space within the official Forum. Participation of various ministers of the French government in WSF 2002 was criticised by many delegates, and the Belgian prime minister, who had announced a visit, was told not to come.

./english/646.txt:136:The question of how to relate to the WSF’s original symbolic adversary has also been repeatedly debated and modified. One of the motivations for the naming and timing of the first WSF in Porto Alegre was to attract media attention. But this oppositional stance toward the World Economic Forum in Davos was always combined with a quest for critical dialogue, as reflected in the televised debate between Davos and Porto Alegre.

./english/646.txt:140:The global media impact of the second and third Porto Alegre forum was significantly stronger than in 2001. If there were fewer attempts in the second and third year to interact with the WEF, this reflected a growing self-confidence of the organisers, some of whom liked to repeat that “from now onwards Davos will be the shadow event of Porto Alegre”.

./english/646.txt:160:It is frequently assumed that in the anti/alternative divide of globalisation debates, being “anti” represents more radical and revolutionary options, whereas the “alternatives” are on the side of more superficial reforms. In terms of thinking about how to democratise the world, this assumption is not very helpful. While anti-globalisation people can be pro-capitalist, pro-globalisation people may be anti-capitalist. Some of the debate and divide between the “anti” and the “alternative” is due to confused semantics or distorted categorisations. In order to fundamentally democratise the world, people who have chosen to regard globalisation as a term that has been too polluted by its dominant usage and those who think it can still be given more progressive meanings can often work together. In principle, the World Social Forum offers many opportunities for this to happen.

./english/646.txt:162:Despite various references to the necessity of imagining and constructing a different world, the issue of democratic global order has not had a very high priority in the agenda of the WSF. There have been claims by intellectuals and groups working on issues of global democracy that the WSF process has been too much dominated by nationalists whose discourse is dominated by anti-globalisation themes. As noted by Michael Hardt, those who “advocate strengthening national sovereignty as a solution to the ills of contemporary globalisation” have dominated the representations of the Forum. More polemically, he also claims that while the “non-sovereign, alternative globalisation position” has not obtained a prominent place in the Forum, it may well have been the position of the majority of the participants.

./english/646.txt:164:Be this as it may, one of the intellectual problems the World Social Forum poses has been the surprising lack of one debate in particular – open debate between different visions of how the world should be concretely reorganised if, as WSF’s main slogan says, another world is to be possible.

./english/651.txt:6:The World Social Forum is part of that process. Its short trajectory is indicative of how expectations regarding globalization are shifting. As a Forum, its aim is precisely to enable a global agenda to be built up in a process of dialogue among the whole diversity of civil networks, public campaigns, alliances and coalitions that, in their specificity and differences, stand in opposition to the dominant globalization. That purpose was helped by identifying as anti-Davos, as counter to the ideas and perspectives issuing from the World Economic Forum. That is how it was in 2001, at World Social Forum I in Porto Alegre, which surprised by its innovation and multiple potential. Now, from January 31 to February 5, at World Social Forum II, once again in Porto Alegre, adhesion to the idea of the Forum and the major impact it has had in the world media have turned the tables. Although it has existed for only two years - negligible against the 32 of the World Economic Forum at Davos - the World Social Forum at Porto Alegre now seems to be dictating the agenda. Now it is from their side, from Davos, that the opposition - anti-Porto Alegre - has to come...

./english/651.txt:8:Like it or not, the Porto Alegre Forum has become a global reference for an emerging conviction that "another world is possible". Is that a small matter? Certainly it is not enough, but enormous creative energies are awakened by our coming to believe collectively that we are not condemned to become one super-casino at the hands of large economic and financial groups that commodify life and speculate with human beings and whole peoples. What is more, at an admittedly difficult juncture, we have restored globalization itself to the centre of world debate, thus evading the trap of the logic of terror and war into which religious and trade fundamentalists were leading us after the fateful events of September 11, 2001. One telling response by the World Social Forum to the dominant globalization was to show that diverse and emotionally charged expressions of culture, song and dance also are constitutive of the globalization we want, grounded in the ethical principles of human solidarity with freedom and equality, in the diversity of cultures and situations we live in.

./english/651.txt:12:The World Social Forum, as one of the pillars in the construction of a new global agenda, is beginning to make its contribution. The ample participation in WSFII - upwards of 15,000 delegates from more than 5,000 civil society organizations in over 130 countries, in addition to 35,000-plus spectator-participants - is indicative of its potential. We have embarked on an extensive mapping of issues, analyses and proposals, and of the collective subjects who embrace them, in the most diverse domains of human activity. We are starting to recognize who we are, what we do and how we act.

./english/651.txt:14:The strategic challenges facing us are considerable. The global, citizens agenda we want to pursue depends precisely on the strength of our social and cultural diversity and of the multiple responses that grow out of it as counter proposals to the one-dimensional thinking of prevailing globalization. The distinguishing mark of the World Social Forum resides precisely in our ability to build the space necessary for global networks and movements to meet, dialogue and exchange while respecting and strengthening their own diversity and autonomy. The greatest challenge is to build bridges for convergence in diversity. That is something we are just starting to invent. The results and the impact are not seen, however, by those who are decidedly in the opposing trenches or by those who - worse still - do not believe in the difference they can make by participating as citizens in determining the course this world will take. Being among those who believe than another world is possible is in itself already very gratifying and encourages us to put our best efforts into seeing that wave grow.

./english/654.txt:4:In the program "Roda Viva", produced by the public broadcasting system "TV Culture", in São Paulo, which was recorded after the World Social Forum 2002, Boaventura de Souza Santos was asked if the Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores - PT) had manipulated the Forum in its own interest. The portuguese sociologist, who was an important celebrity in that meeting, answered saying that the PT is too small for that. In an interview given to the newspaper "Folha de São Paulo" on the same occasion, Tarso Genro, mayor of Porto Alegre, declared that all left-wing parties of all the world, united, would not be able to call together something like the World Social Forum.

./english/654.txt:5:Even if we only consider the numbers, the Forum was an unquestionable success. Boaventura and Tarsos statements are based on such verifications, but they also refer to the reasons for the success of the Forum.

./english/654.txt:7:Figures increased spectacularly from the first to the second meeting of the World Social Forum. The participants, for example, went from 20,000 in 2001 to 50,000 in 2002. About 35,000 listeners from Porto Alegre, other places in Brazil and also from the bordering countries, came along, many having to endure long bus trips, just to see and hear in person the people they admire and to enjoy the energizing atmosphere of this huge worldwide meeting.

./english/654.txt:9:But this increase is even more meaningful if we consider the increase in the number of delegates, that is to say, the number of people registered in the Forum as representatives of entities and movements of the civil society: they went from 4,000 in 2001 to 15,000 in 2002, representing 4,909 organizations from 131 countries. In fact, what attracted so many delegates were the innovative characteristics of the Forum: its pluralistic and non-directive character, which unifies while respecting diversity; its openness to all those who want to participate - except representatives of governments, political parties and military organizations; and the fact of being an initiative of the civil society for the civil society, that created a new meeting place - the first and may be the only one of this kind in a worldwide level - without the control of any governments, movements, parties or national or international institutions which dispute political power.

./english/654.txt:11:In fact, for those delegates the Forum was really what its organizers intended it to be: a horizontal space in which the delegates could freely put forward their proposals and struggles - without considering any of these issues to be more important than others and without anyone imposing their ideas or their pace on the others -, to exchange experiences, to learn and to develop themselves through knowing about the struggles, hopes and proposals of others, to deepen their analysis about the issues that arise in their fields of action, to articulate themselves at national level and especially at the worldwide level . That is to say, to gain effectiveness and to move forward in their work of social transformation. There would not be so much interest in participating in this event if it were only about taking orders, or being having each ones options controlled, or being pushed to disciplined actions and mobilizations, or having to approve statements and motions or collective positions - which does not imply the lack of commitment to action. This is why the organizers of the Forum wrote in its Principles Charter that the Forum should not take positions as the Forum itself, that no one should speak on behalf of the Forum and that in none of its meetings should time be invested in discussing and passing "final documents".

./english/654.txt:13:This Charter explicitly states that the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre does not have a deliberative character. The same happens with the World Economic Forum, in Davos, to which the Forum of Porto Alegre is proposed as an alternative (and it is to highlight this aspect that it is held on the same days). To all participants, those days simply represent a stronger and more intensive opportunity to deepen their commitments and articulations, on a worldwide level, within an effort which already existed and will continue to exist after the Forum It is obvious that behind this similarity there exists a huge difference: the participants of Davos aim to maintain and increase the domination of the capital - which they control - over the human beings of the whole world, as well as the expansion of their private business. The Porto Alegre participants, feeding on the increasing protests that come up everywhere against a globalization dictated by the interests of that capital, want to move forward in their proposals to build another world, centered on human beings and respectful of nature, a world which is not only seen as possible but also necessary and urgent and which, in fact, they are already building in their practical action.

./english/654.txt:15:This difference in objectives and contents lead to a difference in method, too: the main activity developed in Davos consists in conferences and debates on previously defined issues, to which the organizers invite great intellectual representatives of the neo-liberal "unique-monolithic thought", the most powerful nations political leaders and great multinationals owners or executives. In the Porto Alegre Forum an important space is also given to conferences and debates, as well as to testimonies of people with significant experiences or reflections. In order to do that, Porto Alegre, like Davos, invite people who have already reflected or are already acting in domains relevant to the issues being discussed - though in 2002, the Porto Alegre conferences have being conducted not by isolated people but by great world nets. But the most enriching activity in the World Social Forum is the one related to the workshops and seminars freely proposed and organized by the participants themselves: 400 in 2001 and 750 in 2002. In fact, it is the joyful people movement around these workshops and seminars that create the atmosphere of enthusiasm of the World Social Forum, in the corridors and gardens where the Forum is held, with a variety of sounds and colors, good spirited protests and presentations of proposals and actions, as well as unexpected performances and events - exactly the opposite of what happens in the well-bred gray of Davos. Obviously, these organizing options of the World Social Forum are not carried out without misunderstandings, pressures, deviations and even attempts at manipulation of the Forum as a whole. Its large scale induces greed and its horizontal character puts in a uncomfortable position those who are in a hurry to see changes taking place and were also brought up within the traditional paradigms of political action.

./english/654.txt:17:Most journalists, for example - and this appeared in the coverage they gave to the Forum -, used as they are to interview leaders and gurus or to highlight struggles for power, do not understand why there is not a "final document" or "concrete proposals" of the Forum. They do not ask for the same in Davos, but they do want it in Porto Alegre. They find it hard to understand that the World Social Forum is not a summit, but one of the bases of a social movement that, in order to develop itself, cannot have summits or bosses. A "final synthesis" after five days of work, with 15,000 or 50,000 people, would necessarily mean an impoverishment and could only be approved through some kind of manipulation; and everybody leaves the Forum happier than if they had had to fight to include at least one line of their proposals in the final document...

./english/654.txt:19:In fact, there are hundreds of concrete proposals in the Forum, and even specific mobilizations, like the one this year against the FTAA. Or even new reflections, such as the one that came up this year about the inner change of those who are fighting to change the world. This issue, which was dealt with in several workshops and seminars, was the object of a conference that gathered more than 2000 people. But none of those proposals or reflections is an expression of the Forum as such. They are under the responsibility of those who presented or adopted them. All those who decide to support them will do so as groups or individuals responsible for their decisions.

./english/654.txt:21:Naturally, there are other tensions that come up even among those who organize the Forum or those who come to help them. For instance there are those who would prefer the Forums International Advisory Council to become a new world direction of the struggle against neo-liberalism, controlling and guiding that process. The perspectives of continuity assumed by the organizers seem to aim in another direction, with the consolidation of the method oriented by the Forums Principles Chart. It is more and more accepted that the Forum is a process and not an event or a new international organization directed by the leaders of a substitutive "unique-monolithic thought", which would be fatal to the Forum itself. It is also necessary , for example, to see to it that the conferences dont end up with guiding syntheses, voted by their respective audiences, or that they do not prevail over the workshops. At the same time, the decisions taken by the organizers so far aim at enabling the power of attraction of the Forum to generate in other parts of the world the same mobilization it has engendered in Brazil. The 2003 Forum will probably start with some ten regional or thematic Forums in the different geopolitical areas of the world, from September to December 2002, before a new world Forum, to take place once again in Porto Alegre. In September 2003 it would start in the same way, with the possibility of finishing it with a world meeting in India in 2004.

./english/654.txt:23:In fact, the biggest challenge for the organizers of the World Social Forum does not consist in defining new and better contents that could lead to even more concrete proposals, but to guarantee the continuity of the form the Forum was given - a case in which the means are determinant for the aim to be reached. The contents will naturally arise from the process thus launched, within mankinds struggle towards another world, and they will necessarily lead to the different editions of the Forum, with matters common to all and with the specific issues of each region of the world where it will take place. What is most important is to ensure that that new paradigm of political transforming action, created by the World Social Forum, is not absorbed by the "old models".

./english/654.txt:26:Francisco Whitaker is executive Secretary of the Brazilian Committee of Justice and Peace of the CNBB, and member of the Organization Committee of the World Social Forum

./english/658.txt:4:After having read the different texts published in the evaluation section of the World Social Forum Web site, I would like to share the following thoughts.

./english/658.txt:6:I have decided not to stress the enormous social and political contributions produced by the Forum dynamics. All the articles sent in to evaluate this experience, underscoring the many facets of the event, have already done just that, much better than I possibly could.

./english/658.txt:15:Naturally, the purely quantitative aspects are not the most important, but in several articles, figures were mentioned to show that the second Forum was greater in numbers than the first. However, a close analysis of the numbers reveals a lack of balance in the proportions. Obviously, the Forum assembled mostly Brazilians (8,503 delegates out of a total of 15,230) followed by Italians (993), Argentines (924), and French (718). These four groups accounted for approximately 80% of the total attendance. I dont have the exact information, but I believe there was a total of 200 Asians. In the meeting of delegates by continents, there were more or less 100 from Asia. From India, there were about 30 and from China less than a dozen (at very the most). Certainly, there were more Africans than the previous year, but given the increase in "Latins" from America and Europe, proportionately, the Africans presence was smaller.

./english/658.txt:22:The Forum is bringing together increasingly diverse actors from a great variety of social sectors: artists, intellectuals, leaders of native-population movements, parliamentarians, etc. (even though "etc." is not a good expression to qualify the other actors). However, a few key sectors are still absent or are barely represented. Of these I shall mention only one: that of the military in favor of peace. I realize that mentioning this sector can be controversial, but I am convinced that if we obtain the participation of more military sectors in favor of peace, we shall reinforce the dynamics of the World Social Forum tremendously. This year, in the conference on Militarism and Globalization, a French General who played a significant role in the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the Balkans, General Jean Cot, gave a very important speech, which was strongly applauded. The challenge is to find out how to go beyond these almost exceptional cases. Also, it will be important not increase distances, which could weaken the effort of the whole: I am referring in particular to the fact that it does not seem appropriate that the Forum should be limited to a world of adults and that young people should have to meet separately, remaining more or less away from the debating centers or playing a secondary role. Genuine innovations could very well be hatching in the Youth Forum. If so, so much the better, but let us not stand outside.

./english/658.txt:25:This is a challenge that was raised since the first Forum. Several of us have highlighted that the World Social Forum is not just a protest movement. It is, of course, but its purpose is to go further and to also be a process of elaboration of plural and diverse proposals to face and overcome neoliberalism. This year, we took a significant step by endeavoring to leave a written record of the results of the debates, not only of the conferences but also of the seminars and workshops. But a look at the page on the conferences on this Web site shows that some of the reports of the conferences of the last two days are not still available and that translations are not systematically provided. Reinforcing the teams that help to produce these written records, resulting from the debates, will be a key task for the next events. By the way, these written records are just that: written records of the different, and hopefully contradictory, exchanges -- we cannot expect them to be summaries, which would drown the diversity of opinions. But it is better to leave a written record, that to leave no record at all.

./english/658.txt:31:Moving toward the globalization (as its name implies) of the World Social Forum

./english/658.txt:33:The perspectives are promising. The Indians have already offered, during a press conference in Porto Alegre, to organize the 2004 Forum in India. This news was carried by the press in Porto Alegre and in India, and Siddhartha reaffirmed it in his speech during the beautiful closing ceremony. In addition, the African members of the International Council of the WSF also stated their will to organize the 2005 Forum in some African country. To enlarge the Forum, to make it known in China and in India and in other big and small regions not only of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Arab world, but also even of Europe, especially of Eastern and Northern Europe, and of the American continent, above all in United States, is a "historical task" of the next months and years. To succeed in having the Forum assumed as an own claim by the people, by the simple people, is an indispensable step if we expect to counter the capitalist globalization, which has, on its part, been extended all over the world and has penetrated all the different aspects of peoples daily life. Now that we are opening a new stage, let us do all we possibly can to give birth to three, four, five, and more "Porto Alegres"... in the most diverse and populated regions of the world, embracing the greatest variety of actors, and leaving the plural records of the proposals elaborated and carried forward by the people.

./english/668.txt:6:The only way to really describe the World Social Forum (WSF), that just ended here in Brazil, is a global political "carnaval." Not that there was much of the glitter and hedonism associated with that most famous Brazilian street party which begins later this week. Rather, inside the conference halls and out, this astounding event--part-political convention, part-art and music festival, part-intellectual gathering of social movements, was in a state of nearly perpetual celebratory protest for five days and five nights.In the friendly territory of the socialist-run Porto Alegre government, one demonstration followed another. Protests spilled into the streets for womens rights, Indigenous rights, Palestinian rights and for land reform.

./english/668.txt:8:Protestors marched against fundamentalism of all sorts, against hunger and genetically modified agriculture, the IMF, the Free Trade Area of the Americas and much more. The vibe was almost always near-euphoric with horns blaring, hands clapping, feet dancing, flags waving and chants singing out regularly in at least four languages.Sharp Contrast to World Economic ForumThe World Social Forum began last year to provide a counter vision and voice to the World Economic Forum a staid corporate and government gathering designed to informally facilitate corporate globalization. And while "Davos" -- along with the protestors against it -- grabbed the lions share of the corporate-media headlines by switching its venue to New York City this year, Porto Alegre was a cauldron of ideas, creativity and debates all under the slogan "Another World is Possible."Candido Gryzbowski, director of the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Analysis, one of the events main organizers, went so far as to assert that Porto Alegre had left the World Economic Forum in the dust. "We dont need them. Our message, our concerns are more comprehensive," he noted. "We want to create alternatives, not just to neo-liberalism, but also to various types of fundamentalism and un-democratic governments."Certainly, the World Economic Forum 3,000 person event in New Yorks Waldorf Astoria was a significant gathering of powerful world players. But the sheer magnitude of the Porto Alegre event far surpassed Davos this year, becoming so large as to be difficult to comprehend, even for its most avid participants.The program of conferences, workshops and seminars, along with films, music and artistic events ran more than 70 tabloid pages in each language.

./english/668.txt:9:While last year 15,000 people showed up, this year, all told more than 51,000 people from 131 countries officially participated in the World Social Forum. In the virtual realm, the WSF website found itself hosting another half million visitors a day. Overall, the event was extremely well organized, with barely any noticeable glitches or conflicts.Tens of Thousands in the Streets -- PeacefullyIn contrast with the streets of New York City -- or for that matter Seattle, Prague or Genoa -- police presence in Porto Alegre was once again nearly non-existent as huge marches peacefully wound through the street. The opening ceremony saw more than 40,000 people demonstrating. The anti-FTAA protest, held on the final day, gathered about 10,000. The beautiful and inspiring closing ceremony, held in a giant hall at the main venue -- the beautifully appointed Catholic University -- was packed with a diverse group of 6,000 people; it was simulcast to thousands more at two other venues.This being a left-political gathering in the heart of Latin America, Che Guevara was everywhere.

./english/668.txt:13:A forum of local government leaders from around the world. And there were planning sessions for upcoming international events such as the Johannesburg Earth Summit.Focus on AlternativesBy most accounts, the World Social Forum evolved in sophistication and approach from a year ago. This was most evident in the growing focus on alternatives.

./english/668.txt:17:"La Boca Fundamental" (Fundamental Mouth) movement held a series of creative demonstrations and workshops under the slogan, "your mouth is fundamental to fight fundamentalism of all types." Guacira Cesar de Olivera explained to CorpWatch that "everyone has their own, Single Truth -- be it the Taliban, the IMF or the Catholic Church -- and we believe that women suffer most from all types of fundamentalism." These fundamentalisms, she argues, share the basic characteristics of exclusion and domination. The Fundamental Mouth movement took over the inside of the main conference hall one afternoon, urging everyone, women and men to use their mouths to speak out against fundamentalism.Coming Soon to a Venue Near YouOverall, its impossible to quantify or even articulate the "results" from Porto Alegre. The mainstream Brazilian media even criticized the absence of a final declaration. But to reduce the diversity of cultures, the plurality of ideas and opinions, the cacophony of alternative visions to a simple declaration would have been counterintuitive to the World Social Forums "big tent" vision.

./english/668.txt:18:Instead, the international organizing committee for the event decided to hold a series of regional World Social Forums over the next year. This increasingly decentralized process will culminate in the 3rd World Social Forum, to be held once again in Porto Alegre this time next year. "An important part of the World Social Forum process," says Atila Roque, an event organizer and CorpWatch adviser in Brazil, "is developing new ways to organize internationally and regionally -- we are at the beginning stages of figuring it out."And despite the lack of "concrete" results, most here agreed that the World Social Forum is of immense value. Its importance of the ongoing nature was perhaps best summed up by a delegate from India, who told the closing ceremonys jubilant and massive crowd that it has become an symbolic landmark for those working for social change everywhere. "As we move into the 21st century," he told the cheering throng, "Porto Alegre will be etched into the collective historical memory of all those working for a different world."

./english/671.txt:4:Rather than opposing the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre to the World Economic Forum in New York, it is more revealing to imagine it as the distant offspring of the historic Bandung Conference that took place in Indonesia in 1955. Both were conceived as attempts to counter the dominant world order: colonialism and the oppressive Cold War binary in the case of Bandung, and the rule of capitalist globalization in that of Porto Alegre. The differences, however, are immediately apparent. On one hand the Bandung Conference, which brought together leaders primarily from Asia and Africa, revealed in a dramatic way the racial dimension of the colonial and Cold War world order, which Richard Wright famously described as being divided by the colour curtain. Porto Alegre, in contrast, was a predominantly white event. There were relatively few participants from Asia and Africa, and the racial differences of the Americas were dramatically underrepresented. This points toward a continuing task facing those gathered at Porto Alegre: to globalize further the movements, both within each society and across the worlda project in which the Forum is merely one step. On the other hand, whereas Bandung was conducted by a small group of national political leaders and representatives, Porto Alegre was populated by a swarming multitude and a network of movements. This multitude of protagonists is the great novelty of the World Social Forum, and central to the hope it offers for the future.

./english/671.txt:6:The first and dominant impression of the Forum was its overflowing enormity; not so much the number of people therethe organizers say 80,000 participatedbut rather the number of events, encounters and happenings. The programme listing all the official conferences, seminars and workshopsmost of which took place at the Catholic Universitywas the size of a tabloid newspaper, but one soon realized that there were innumerable other unofficial meetings taking place all over town, some publicized on posters and leaflets, others by word of mouth. There were also separate gatherings for the different groups participating in the Forum, such as a meeting of the Italian social movements or one for the various national sections of ATTAC. Then there were the demonstrations: both officially planned, such as the opening mass May Day-style parade, and smaller, conflictual demonstrations against, for example, the members of parliament from different countries at the Forum who voted for the present war on terrorism. Finally, another series of events was held at the enormous youth camp by the river, its fields and fields of tents housing 15,000 people in an atmosphere reminiscent of a summer music festival, especially when it rained and everyone tramped through the mud wearing plastic sacks as raincoats. In short, if anyone with obsessive tendencies were to try to understand what was happening at Porto Alegre, the result would certainly have been a complete mental breakdown. The Forum was unknowable, chaotic, dispersive. And that overabundance created an exhilaration in everyone, at being lost in a sea of people from so many parts of the world who are working similarly against the present form of capitalist globalization.

./english/671.txt:8:This open encounter was the most important element of Porto Alegre. Even though the Forum was limited in some important respectssocially and geographically, to name twoit was nonetheless an opportunity to globalize further the cycle of struggles that have stretched from Seattle to Genoa, which have been conducted by a network of movements thus far confined, by and large, to the North Atlantic. Dealing with many of the same issues as those who elsewhere contest the present capitalist form of globalization, or specific institutional policies such as those of the IMF, the movements themselves have remained limited. Recognizing the commonality of their projects with those in other parts of the world is the first step toward expanding the network of movements, or linking one network to another. This recognition, indeed, is primarily responsible for the happy, celebratory atmosphere of the Forum.

./english/671.txt:10:The encounter should, however, reveal and address not only the common projects and desires, but also the differences of those involveddifferences of material conditions and political orientation. The various movements across the globe cannot simply connect to each other as they are, but must rather be transformed by the encounter through a kind of mutual adequation. Those from North America and Europe, for example, cannot but have been struck by the contrast between their experience and that of agricultural labourers and the rural poor in Brazil, represented most strongly by the MST (Landless Movement)and vice versa. What kind of transformations are necessary for the Euro-American globalization movements and the Latin American movements, not to become the same, or even to unite, but to link together in an expanding common network? The Forum provided an opportunity to recognize such differences and questions for those willing to see them, but it did not provide the conditions for addressing them. In fact, the very same dispersive, overflowing quality of the Forum that created the euphoria of commonality also effectively displaced the terrain on which such differences and conflicts could be confronted.

./english/671.txt:13:The Porto Alegre Forum was in this sense perhaps too happy, too celebratory and not conflictual enough. The most important political difference cutting across the entire Forum concerned the role of national sovereignty. There are indeed two primary positions in the response to todays dominant forces of globalization: either one can work to reinforce the sovereignty of nation-states as a defensive barrier against the control of foreign and global capital, or one can strive towards a non-national alternative to the present form of globalization that is equally global. The first poses neoliberalism as the primary analytical category, viewing the enemy as unrestricted global capitalist activity with weak state controls; the second is more clearly posed against capital itself, whether state-regulated or not. The first might rightly be called an anti-globalization position, in so far as national sovereignties, even if linked by international solidarity, serve to limit and regulate the forces of capitalist globalization. National liberation thus remains for this position the ultimate goal, as it was for the old anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggles. The second, in contrast, opposes any national solutions and seeks instead a democratic globalization.

./english/671.txt:15:The first position occupied the most visible and dominant spaces of the Porto Alegre Forum; it was represented in the large plenary sessions, repeated by the official spokespeople, and reported in the press. A key proponent of this position was the leadership of the Brazilian PT (Workers Party)in effect the host of the Forum, since it runs the city and regional government. It was obvious and inevitable that the PT would occupy a central space in the Forum and use the international prestige of the event as part of its campaign strategy for the upcoming elections. The second dominant voice of national sovereignty was the French leadership of ATTAC, which laid the groundwork for the Forum in the pages of Le Monde Diplomatique. The leadership of ATTAC is, in this regard, very close to many of the French politiciansmost notably Jean-Pierre Chevènementwho advocate strengthening national sovereignty as a solution to the ills of contemporary globalization. These, in any case, are the figures who dominated the representation of the Forum both internally and in the press.

./english/671.txt:17:The non-sovereign, alternative globalization position, in contrast, was minoritarian at the Forumnot in quantitative terms but in terms of representation; in fact, the majority of the participants in the Forum may well have occupied this minoritarian position. First, the various movements that have conducted the protests from Seattle to Genoa are generally oriented towards non-national solutions. Indeed, the centralized structure of state sovereignty itself runs counter to the horizontal network-form that the movements have developed. Second, the Argentinian movements that have sprung up in response to the present financial crisis, organized in neighbourhood and city-wide delegate assemblies, are similarly antagonistic to proposals of national sovereignty. Their slogans call for getting rid, not just of one politician, but all of them que se vayan todos: the entire political class. And finally, at the base of the various parties and organizations present at the Forum the sentiment is much more hostile to proposals of national sovereignty than at the top. This may be particularly true of ATTAC, a hybrid organization whose head, especially in France, mingles with traditional politicians, whereas its feet are firmly grounded in the movements.

./english/671.txt:19:The division between the sovereignty, anti-globalization position and the non-sovereign, alternative globalization position is therefore not best understood in geographical terms. It does not map the divisions between North and South or First World and Third. The conflict corresponds rather to two different forms of political organization. The traditional parties and centralized campaigns generally occupy the national sovereignty pole, whereas the new movements organized in horizontal networks tend to cluster at the non-sovereign pole. And furthermore, within traditional, centralized organizations, the top tends toward sovereignty and the base away. It is no surprise, perhaps, that those in positions of power would be most interested in state sovereignty and those excluded least. This may help to explain, in any case, how the national sovereignty, anti-globalization position could dominate the representations of the Forum even though the majority of the participants tend rather toward the perspective of a non-national alternative globalization.

./english/671.txt:21:As a concrete illustration of this political and ideological difference, one can imagine the responses to the current economic crisis in Argentina that logically follow from each of these positions. Indeed that crisis loomed over the entire Forum, like a threatening premonition of a chain of economic disasters to come. The first position would point to the fact that the Argentinian debacle was caused by the forces of global capital and the policies of the IMF, along with the other supranational institutions that undermine national sovereignty. The logical oppositional response should thus be to reinforce the national sovereignty of Argentina (and other nation-states) against these destabilizing external forces. The second position would identify the same causes of the crisis, but insist that a national solution is neither possible nor desirable. The alternative to the rule of global capital and its institutions will only be found at an equally global level, by a global democratic movement. The practical experiments in democracy taking place today at neighbourhood and city levels in Argentina, for example, pose a necessary continuity between the democratization of Argentina and the democratization of the global system. Of course, neither of these perspectives provides an adequate recipe for an immediate solution to the crisis that would circumvent IMF prescriptionsand I am not convinced that such a solution exists. They rather present different political strategies for action today which seek, in the course of time, to develop real alternatives to the current form of global rule.

./english/671.txt:28:Like the Forum itself, the multitude in the movements is always overflowing, excessive and unknowable. It is certainly important then, on the one hand, to recognize the differences that divide the activists and politicians gathered at Porto Alegre. It would be a mistake, on the other hand, to try to read the division according to the traditional model of ideological conflict between opposing sides. Political struggle in the age of network movements no longer works that way. Despite the apparent strength of those who occupied centre stage and dominated the representations of the Forum, they may ultimately prove to have lost the struggle. Perhaps the representatives of the traditional parties and centralized organizations at Porto Alegre are too much like the old national leaders gathered at Bandungimagine Lula of the PT in the position of Ahmed Sukarno as host, and Bernard Cassen of ATTAC France as Jawaharlal Nehru, the most honoured guest. The leaders can certainly craft resolutions affirming national sovereignty around a conference table, but they can never grasp the democratic power of the movements. Eventually they too will be swept up in the multitude, which is capable of transforming all fixed and centralized elements into so many more nodes in its indefinitely expansive network.