./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/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/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:45:The fact that the fourth ESF was taking place in a country presently
./english/54.txt:253:Greece, Fourth Internationalists) and the League for the Fifth International
./english/162.txt:42:This situation of suspended crisis appears likely to spread, leaving open, at least for a time, the possibility of very different responses. The illusions of the 1990s, however, are definitely over. The collapse of the stock markets, and the economic slowdown that has followed, brings a threat of deflation, unemployment and exclusion to bear on most of the world's populations. Under current political conditions, the only possible response seems to be a strengthening of the barriers that separate the privileged classes from all the others – and this, even within the richest countries. The new military posture of the United States, while directly motivated by the September 11 attacks, also represents an attempt to restructure society, and to institute a new form of discipline in the face of the void that has been left by the collapse of the speculative bubble. It is in this way that the ideological version of economic flexibility meets its own limits. This shift toward heightened military and police control takes away much of the legitimacy that flexible modes of management were able to confer on capitalist society. Still the opportunistic model of the flexible personality will probably continue to orient the behavior of privileged individuals for years yet to come, even as it subjects them to strong contradictions. Under such conditions, the various forms of resistance to capitalism will clearly intensify, not least because they find a vital energy in the feeling of absolute necessity brought on by the crisis. Now I want to deal specifically with one such form of resistance: the resistance to the privatization of knowledge, the fourth "fictive commodity" whose importance Polanyi had not yet measured. It is through the cooperative production of immaterial knowledge that we will rejoin the enigma of the networked protests.
./english/162.txt:43:Just one more thing. I do not want to accord any privilege, in what follows, to that supposedly more "advanced" fraction of the world population which is so deeply involved with electronic networks. I think the opposition between the "Net" and "Self" – between a modernizing process that enforces our abstraction from historical ad cultural traditions, or failing that, determines a desperate and regressive retreat to the fixations of local identity – is simply false. (12) More interesting is the divide between the possessive individualism of the flexible personality, and a concern for human coexistence. As we saw above, the movement of movements found one of its beginnings in a concept of solidarity arising from the Zapatista struggles, which have fundamentally to do with questions of land. But the meaning of these survival struggles of the Mayan peoples could only reach the subjects of the developed world through the Internet, where the commodification of cultural and scientific knowledge is at stake. Here the essential struggle is to overtake and dissolve the language of ¥ € $, not through a return to the closed, bureaucratic frameworks of the Keynesian state, but instead through the political development of new principles of exchange and reciprocity. Thus this fourth field of resistance, with touches closely on human language but also on technical development, seems destined to furnish elements of articulation for other struggles, in a shared search for alternatives to the systemic crisis.
./english/162.txt:51:Four attributes of the networked information economy appear as preconditions of commons-based peer production. First, information must be freely available as inexhaustible raw material for products which, in their turn, will become inexhaustible raw materials for further productions. Second, potential collaborators must be easily able to find the project that inspires them to creativity and labor. Third, the cost of production equipment must be low, as is now the case for things like computers and related media devices. Fourth, it must be possible to broadly distribute the results, for instance, over a telecommunications net. Under these conditions, quite complex tasks can be imagined, divided into small modules, and thrown out into the public realm where individuals will self-identify their competency to meet any given challenge. The only remaining requirement for large-scale production of cultural and informational goods is to be able to perform quality checks and integrate all the individual modules with relatively low effort into a completed whole – but these tasks, it turns out, can often be done on a distributed basis as well. The fact that all of this is possible, and actually happening today, allows Benkler to contradict Ronald Coase's classic theory, which identifies the firm, with its hierarchical command structure, and the market, functioning through the individual's quest for the lowest price, as the only two viable ways to organize human production. In other words, in the cultural and informational domain there is an alternative mode of production, functioning outside the norms of the state-capitalist economy as we know it, but without any rhetorical need to proclaim a clean break or an absolute division between them.
./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/261.txt:191:Drawing on an evaluation of a fourth-year university class by Adelle Bish, this paper briefly describes the 19 different mechanisms which (in the reports of class members) assisted learning from experience
./english/269.txt:47:Fourth, we hope to strengthen the local and international alliances we have established in the process so far. The book and the video which we have just published are meant as a means to this end. We will use the video to return to the spaces we have passed through in the past year or so, to the health center and to the neighborhood associations, in the plaza and in cyberspace, to keep open the conversations we have begun.
./english/275.txt:20:Notoriously, ‘Marxism’ as such offers relatively little in the way of explicit political prescriptions. Marx and Engels’ own political practice and writings are ‘multi-vocal’, as they say, and have been interpreted and developed in many different ways through the Second (social-democratic), Third (orthodox communist) and Fourth (Trotskyist) Internationals,5 to say nothing of the various council-communist, humanist, autonomist and non-dogmatic Marxisms with which we find ourselves in closer alignment politically.6
./english/275.txt:179:Cox, Laurence 1998 ‘Gramsci, movements and method: the politics of activist research’ in Fourth international conference on alternative futures and popular protest, edited by Colin Barker and Mike Tyldesley. Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University.
./english/282.txt:253:Lastly, a fourth kind of purpose is to give people a sense of the differences within the anarchist tradition (or, we might say, the 'legitimate' anarchist tradition, given the first purpose), and simultaneously to encourage people who think of themselves as anarchists to locate themselves within that tradition. This is achieved not so much by rejecting e.g. individualist anarchism in favour of social anarchism (the authors' own position) as by showing that social anarchists can agree with the educational, project-building side of individual anarchism while also including revolutionary elements. A similar operation is carried out with 'cultural anarchism'.
./english/316.txt:116:What is taking shape and place is certainly a new internationalism, though it might be more realistic to put this in the plural, or to distinguish it as ‘the new global solidarity’. There will be argument about whether it surpasses the First-to-Fourth Internationals or provides a basis for some kind of fifth one. However, it is also quite possible that it will reproduce the errors, and failures, of previous internationals. The GJ&SM has not, so far, proven to be a movement much aware of that history, which is also part of its own history - or at least of its inheritance. Those involved in such debates are, however, likely to agree that a movement that is not aware of its history is in danger of repeating it. (Bensaïd 2003, Löwy 2003, Waterman 1992, 2001a).
./english/332.txt:11:The answer is straightforward. It was blocked by the informal and unaccountable leadership of the “process”. This leadership is made up of thinly disguised representatives of the European Left Parties and members of the Fourth International, the International Socialist Tendency and other far-left groups.
./english/332.txt:24:The Fourth International hoped that they could “regroup” with the left reformists, who could be cajoled into an electoral block (the European Anticapitalist Left) with diplomatic phrases, plus their services as grassroots organisers and campaigners. This block, they believed, would win substantial numbers of seats in the European and national parliaments. Alas the ELP sections wanted the spoils of office not the duties of opposition. Now the Fourth International’s hopes lie in ruins – even in France. The left reformists of the RC have entered a bourgeois government, continuing the occupation and butchering of the Iraqi and Afghan people, disarming Hezbollah and pressing on with a neo-liberal cuts budget against the working class at home. The PCF will do exactly the same, if it can form a government with the Socialist Party.
./english/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/343.txt:50:- to prepare the WSF in Nairobi. In particular with regard to the agenda for the fourth day dedicated to campaigns. The assembly of social movements should allow the consolidation of the campaigns and movements and should plan the fundamental political points to be debated.
./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:9:However, the role of the “centre”, traditionally played by the centrist forces of the Fourth International (USFI) and the IST-SWP was this time only filled by the FI alone. All the SWP ‘s sister organisations –even Linksruck from Germany –boycotted the meeting.
./english/347.txt:40:In the plenary meetings of the EPA, once again as so often before, the lightly disguised reformists and the supposed- Trotskyists of the Fourth International and Attac dodged all the burning questions beyond the old calls for more “efficiency” and “transparency”. They avoided any discussion about the Italian situation and Bertinotti and the RC leaderships’ fight against our movement.
./english/362.txt:81:Since then, however, though the Soviet Union disappeared, these countries have not become rivals again. This is reflected in the economic management of the global system - the functioning of the G-7, a group of the most powerful nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the WTO [World Trade Organisation]. These are not global organisations; these are organisations of the Global North - of the capitalist centre. We also do not see any major differences among these countries within these organisations. We ought to ask ourselves a number of questions. First, why are we in this situation? Second, does this mean there are no contradictions among these countries? Third, if there are contradictions, in what ways are they different from contradictions of the earlier period, in which imperialist countries were in rivalry? Fourth, how do the contradictions relate to North-South relations?
./english/363.txt:202:One common response to the notion of hegemony is the fetishisation of anti-hegemony, the fracturation of the world into non-cooperating, and non-communicating, pieces. One practical difficulty with this is that those pieces are not themselves self-sufficient, but are products of particular hegemonic modes of organising things like the world market, ethnicity, gender and so on. Hence the withdrawal can rarely, if ever (perhaps on the part of some "fourth world" peoples) be real; in practice, anti-hegemony means a failure to understand or transform the reason for one's own existence in the fetishised form, and in all probability a particularist corporatism which strengthens the overall "system", as those taken-for-granted reasons write themselves into "who we are".
./english/364.txt:71:The establishment followed up on the unexpected opportunity to reverse the crisis of legitimacy that had been wracking its system of global governance prior to September 11 by pressing the developing countries to approve a declaration launching a limited set of trade negotiations during the Fourth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha, Qatar, in mid-November.
./english/367.txt:15:Attempts were made, by different forces, to form anti-Stalinist parties [beginning mostly in the 1930s]. The three main efforts were: (1) formation of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of India, with a significant input from revolutionary nationalists who did not want to join the CPI but were becoming Marxists; (2) the Revolutionary Communist Party of India, led by Saumyendranath Tagore, who, under a pseudonym, had been a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern [in 1928], had been impressed by some of the criticisms made by Trotsky and the Left Opposition, and had been expelled for his pains when he tried, back home, to convince his comrades; and (3) the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India, the Indian Section of the Fourth International.
./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:121:The attack on the PT is also a sleight of hand. It is particularly easy in India, where few have any idea about the kind of party the PT is, or of the tendency struggles in it. For Indian readers mainly, let me therefore summarize briefly the complexities of the PT, as well as the meaning of its participation in the WSF. The PT is a new working class party. By new, I mean it was founded in 1980. It was the result of class struggle proletarian currents deciding in Brazil that the old left was not good enough, and that they needed a new party of the working class, looking neither to the Moscow bureaucrats nor the Peking bureaucrats, nor to national capitalism. Radical forces, particularly Trotskyists, played an important role inside the PT. They included the Brazilian section of the Fourth International, the current known as the Socialist Democracy Tendency (SDT). There were also others, like the International Workers League, whose comrades are no longer inside the PT, but have a fairly strong radical left party named PSTU outside the PT. The SDT, by contrast, decided to continue working within the PT and played an important role in shaping the structure of the PT, including its internal democracy, the right of organized tendencies to exist, their right to be represented in leadership bodies in accordance with the proportion of votes received at the national Congresses of the PT, and so on.
./english/367.txt:155:But there is a point in the criticisms of RUPE, or of the Gujarat-based members of the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (ICS). The latter issued a statement, falsely in the name of the entire Indian Section of the Fourth International, though they had not discussed it with anyone from outside Baroda, and not even with all their Baroda comrades. This intervention was simply one that stressed the undemocratic character of keeping political parties at arm’s length. There are real problems here. The RUPE essay similarly takes on the WSF because it excludes forces that use individual terrorism (in a somewhat different formulation). This does rule out some forces on the radical left. At the same time, some of the arguments are disingenuous. Forces like the Communist Party of the Philippines, or the PW or MCC in India, have used violence indiscriminately. They have murdered other left activists in their turf wars. Unless they show a real willingness to have dialogues with other types of radicals, unless they are serious about pluralism and wider democracy, it is difficult to see how others on the left can provide them with much space.
./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:70:For those in Mexico who read those messages and found them accurate and inspiring, this blockage was an intolerable situation which had to be overcome in order to build support for the Zapatistas and to stop the government's repression. What they did was very simple: they typed or scanned the communiques and letters into e-text form and sent them out over The Net to potentially receptive audiences around the world.(21) Those audiences included, first and foremost, UseNet newsgroups, PeaceNet conferences, and Internet lists whose members were already concerned with Mexico's social and political life,(22) secondly, humanitarian groupings concerned with human rights generally,(23) thirdly, networks of indigenous peoples and those sympathetic to them,(24) fourthly, those political regions of cyberspace which seemed likely to have members sympathetic to grassroots revolt in general(25) and fifthly, networks of feminists who would respond with solidarity to the rape of indigenous women by Mexican soldiers or to the EZLN "Women's Revolutionary Law" drafted by women, for women, within and against a traditionally patriarchal society.(26) Again and again, friendly and receptive readers spontaneously re-posted the messages in new places while sometimes translating the Spanish documents into English and other languages. In this way, the words of the Zapatistas and messages of their communities have been diffused from a few gateways throughout much of cyberspace.
./english/369.txt:9:Following earlier conferences in Lisbon, Paris and Brussels, the Conference of the European Anti-Capitalist Left took place for the fourth time this year in Madrid on June 18-19. The organisations present were: the Red Green Alliance (RGA, Denmark), the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP), the Socialist Alliance (SA, England), the Socialist Workers Party (SWP, Britain), La Gauche/Déi Linke (the Left, Luxemburg), the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR, France), the Left Bloc (BdE, Portugal), the Party of Communist Refoundation (PRC, Italy), SolidaritieS (Switzerland), the Party of Solidarity and Freedom (ÖDP, Turkey), the Alternative Space (Espacio Alternativo, Spain), Zutik (Basque Country); and as observers: the Red Current (Corriente Roja, formerly the Plataforma de Izquierda, inside Izquierda Unida, Spain) and the United Left (Izquierda Unida, Spain). The German Communist Party (DKP) attended the meeting without being part of the conference. The Socialist Party (SP, Netherlands), absent this time, had sent a message expressing its interest in the conference and its desire to continue working with it.
./english/369.txt:13:The conference noted major progress during this fourth meeting, including: strengthening of most of the participating organisations in their respective countries; Rifondazione Comunista's entry into the conference (without its having left the GUE/NLG [European United Left/Nordic Green Left], which includes most of the European Communist parties); the participating organisations' substantial involvement in the social movement against capitalist globalisation, the anti-war movement and the movement in solidarity with the Palestinian people; and a basic consensus on the analysis of the political situation and the role of the anti-capitalist left.
./english/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/375.txt:134:Fourth contributor
./english/386.txt:34:Fourth, market responds to the needs of the rich only. By its own logic it excludes those who have no entitlements to participate in the market exchanges and the production pattern is naturally geared to meet the choices of the rich.
./english/388.txt:29:Fourthly, the question of whether universal values are western values. Michel L and Frei Betto argue that we should return to the values of the French revolution – liberty, equality and fraternity – but broaden them out so they include women, marginalised groups, people of colour and so forth. The response by Celia Amoros and others is that these values have been laden with patriarchal and colonial assumptions, so why should they be the beacons for building another world?
./english/394.txt:284:only the fourth meeting, in 2004. For this history, see Jai Sen, December 2003b – ‘The Long March to
./english/400.txt:63:The fourth cybercampaign had particular similarities with the first, in supporting 'permanently replaced' workers in the US tyre industry. In September 1998, workers at the Continental General Tires plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, voted to support industrial action in response to a deteriorating industrial relations situation following the plant's takeover by Germany-based multinational Continental AG. In the following month, the company elected to 'permanently replace' the striking USWA members (see Schulten, 1999 for a fuller account of the background to the dispute). In June 1999, ICEM launched a global cybercampaign in support of the replaced workers (ICEM, 1999) as one of a number moves to globalise the campaign and demonstrate support in other Continental-owned plants. The campaign ended in October 1999 following agreement of a contract between USWA and Continental General Tires and the reinstatement of replaced workers (ICEM, 1999c)
./english/401.txt:144: Oliveira notes the beginning of a new direction (a fourth period?), in which diverse phenomena are appearing. The first is that of the internationalism of workers within the same company, under the impact of privatization and foreign takeovers (e.g. Spanish-Brazilian bankworker internationalism). The second is the increasing relationship of North American and other unionism with the anti-globalization movement. Oliveira proposes that these latter movements have to be understood rather in terms of 'citizenship and survival' than in terms of the common material interests of industrial workers. Whilst the latter kind of internationalism can be found in the development of Mercosur unionism, such efforts 'are weak in terms of counter-hegemonic projects'.
./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/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/420.txt:74:The fourth pressing problem is the fundamentalist challenge to cultural
./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/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: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/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/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/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/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/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: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/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: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/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/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/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/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: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/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/625.txt:28:After Mumbai, Porto Alegre can never be the same again – that is the feeling of those who either took part or followed this fourth edition WSF from a distance. We have to move ahead with new proposals that both rise above the limits we were running into and that embody all that is new about the Indian WSF.
./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/629.txt:12:The first of these questions is the most conclusive, once the adopted option generates different answers for the others. A fourth issue, that should be addressed, is how it should relate itself with the political parties. In the following notes I will consider only the first three themes.
./english/634.txt:10:The US delegation of 1,100 people was said to be the second largest, after having been small in previous years. Organized labor’s representation doubled to 717 organizations from 156 countries. While most labor analysts have concluded since the meetings at Porto Alegre III that organized labor still has a long way to go to catch up with the WSF and the current anti-globalization movements, I was more favorably impressed with labor’s progress, based on my frequent informal meetings with several different trade unionists from Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. Brazilians, as always, were present in huge numbers (as many as 70,000), something that will change in 2004 when the fourth WSF annual meeting takes place in India. More than 4,000 journalists attended, representing 1,423 media organizations (more than at the last World Cup Soccer matches in Japan, which is the international standard for maximum attendance by reporters). The always dynamic Youth Camp, which tented 2,500 the first year and 15,000 the second, mushroomed to 30,000 this year. I attended a meeting, as an invited guest, of young activists in a “big tent” at the Youth Camp where plans for an International Youth Network were discussed. Young women were a majority and led the discussion.
./english/634.txt:27:The fourth, and in my eyes, final “triumph” at WSF was its making significant progress in its campaigns against the WTO and FTAA and for the cancellation of Third World debt. How significant this progress turns out to be remains to be seen. As Cándido Grzybowski, charged with the task of “officially closing” the Porto Alegre III meetings, stated: “We have succeeded in delegitimizing neoliberalism before world public opinion, although we are far from a victory translated into new macroeconomic and social policies in the world” (my translation, Correo de Prensa de la IV Internacional Boletín Electrónico No 562 – América Latina y el Caribe – 30/1/03 --). Most observers are saying now that both the September 2003 WTO meeting in Cancún, Mexico, and various related “official” meetings on WTO and FTAA in the coming years may be the scenes of not only increased massive protest outside the secretive halls of the powerful but also of protest by official delegates inside them (for example, Brazil, Malaysia, and other regional influentials may balk at current WTO and FTAA plans, the way some such nations did at the WTO summit in Seattle – remember Seattle anyone?).
./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/671.txt:26:But the more important reason for a lack of confrontation may have had to do with the organizational forms that correspond to the two positions. The traditional parties and centralized organizations have spokespeople who represent them and conduct their battles, but no one speaks for a network. How do you argue with a network? The movements organized within them do exert their power, but they do not proceed through oppositions. One of the basic characteristics of the network form is that no two nodes face each other in contradiction; rather, they are always triangulated by a third, and then a fourth, and then by an indefinite number of others in the web. This is one of the characteristics of the Seattle events that we have had the most trouble understanding: groups which we thought in objective contradiction to one anotherenvironmentalists and trade unions, church groups and anarchistswere suddenly able to work together, in the context of the network of the multitude. The movements, to take a slightly different perspective, function something like a public sphere, in the sense that they can allow full expression of differences within the common context of open exchange. But that does not mean that networks are passive. They displace contradictions and operate instead a kind of alchemy, or rather a sea change, the flow of the movements transforming the traditional fixed positions; networks imposing their force through a kind of irresistible undertow.