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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:5:It was again very encouraging to see how many people have been following the Weekly Worker’s critical coverage of the ESF and by the end of the Friday we were already just about sold out of papers, back issues and books.

./english/31.txt:9:This is perhaps best illustrated by the way the supposedly non-existent ‘leadership’ of the ESF acted over the five days. Between 30 and 50 people (most of them members, though not always ‘official’ delegates, of political parties) met every day for at least three hours. Formally, they were discussing the Assembly of Social Movements (ASM), which took place on the Sunday and is not officially part of the ESF (as well as the venue for our next ESF - see below). In reality, they were talking about what is likely to happen in Europe over the next 24 months - ie, until the next ESF.

./english/31.txt:16:At the moment, there is only one way to find out what the unofficial leadership body is up to: you have to identify one of the people on it and then nag them until they tell you details of the next meeting. Sure enough, these meetings are then “open to everybody” - you just have to know when and where they take place.

./english/31.txt:24:IST leader Alex Callinicos appears as Globalise Resistance; long-standing SWP member Mike Gonzales was advertised as “university professor of Latin American literature”; Jonathan Neale these days never takes off his Campaign against Climate Change hat and Chris Nineham is of course “the representative of the British anti-war movement” (ie, the SWP-run Stop the War Coalition). The Greek SWP section, SEK, only puts on meetings under the name of its ‘anti-capitalist’ front organisation, Genoa 2001. Obviously the comrades think that their own sect-projects are not particularly attractive to young people from across Europe - and they are probably right.

./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/35.txt:20:the Defense of young people (Létforrás) on the Evictions and Poverty in

./english/35.txt:42:Peoples living below the Social Minimum (LAÉT) has presented a report

./english/35.txt:45:planned Social Europe of Peoples. In the seminar about Permanent

./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:11:• For months the procedure was blocked by people who were continuously putting veto whenever there was an effort to move forward.

./english/36.txt:23:9. The ESF would have never taken place without the active participation of all the volunteers who worked hard before and during the event. All these people worked more than they were supposed to do. It is also very important to underline the fact that it was the first time in recent years that people who are not members of any organization worked on the organization of a mobilization. If the process had not been continuously blocked the participation of such kind of people would have been even bigger.

./english/37.txt:19:suddenly after the big demonstration of 100 thousand people, we have

./english/37.txt:27:at the debate. Some people considered that the methods of Black Block

./english/37.txt:30:attacks on the people demonstrating against the war - I have asked in

./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/41.txt:38:2. In my opinion, the problem is not that the ESF does not represent the breadth of the themes of the movements, but there is so much overlap between events and that some of the people, who really ought to cooperate, within and across countries, do not even get to meet. This should be changed. Maybe, as was already mentioned above in the context of the report on the seminar on education, the style of the meetings should be changed: rather smaller groups, where everybody gets a chance to present him/herself, visiting cards can be exchanged, an e-mail list drafted, so that the same and also new people can continue to write to one another, meet and talk.

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

./english/42.txt:37:2. The seminars were well visited, at least three of them. The seminar "„The War on Terror“, new Planetary Enemies and the Human Rights" on Thu, May 4, 6 to 9 p.m., with Tariq Ali, Wolfgang Kaleck, Akin Birdal and Jim McVeigh was attended by about 300 people. The seminar "“Antiterrorist” Laws, Black Lists and the Policies of Security in Europe" on Thu, May 4, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with Wolfgang Kaleck, Ben Hayes, Iratxe Urizar and Babis Kouroundis had about 100 attendants (80 at the same time). The seminar "Political Prisoners, Special Trials and Security-Jails" on Fri, May 5, 2.30 to 5.30 p.m., with Andreas-Thomas Vogel, Ander Larunbe, a Turk comrade, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, and Joachim Rollhaeuser was visited by about 70 people. And the seminar "Criminalization of Communities and “Dangerous Populations”" on Sat., May 6, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., with Daniel Bensaïd, Les Levidow, Joachim Rollhaeuser und Martin Glasenapp found 30 interested people.

./english/42.txt:39:This means that we had a total of about 500 people in our 4 seminars (not different people since many of us attended two or more seminars). In respect of the fact that the repression issues were never a main theme in the ESF but from the beginning marginalized I think that this number is pretty good. It is even better when we consider that this was the first ESF where our Network organized such seminars.

./english/42.txt:44:After the demonstration we talked a little bit about the results. We all consider the demonstration as a big success although we don't think that the number of 100.000 people we heard is correct. Our estimation is more about 40.000 to 60.000, which would be a big success anyway.

./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:13:We know that our engagement must be total for the support of the people and the multitude of human beings who are fighting for their freedom, their autonomy and their dignity.

./english/44.txt:15:We support, with our activities, the people of Palestine, Kurdistan, The Sahara and Pakistan.

./english/44.txt:17:The peoples of the whole world must join together in a unique stream of souls and minds to determine the conditions for a world free of conflicts, racism, exploitation and social discrimination.

./english/44.txt:19:We propose an international day for the independence of peoples of the world on 4th July 2006.

./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:35:Babels has also fought to increase the number of spaces in which international communication can take place. Interpretation must be provided wherever it is needed, from large conference rooms to areas where small groups of people meet to exchange ideas, to articulate movements and to propose concrete actions.

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

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

./english/44.txt:78:1. - We considered the organisation of 4th FSE very successful and we thank all the people who contributed to this outcome.

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

./english/44.txt:136:We support the 4th International Conference Against Disappearances, which is to be held in Diyarbakir, Turkey (Northern Kurdistan, 16th-20th May 2006 organised by the International Committee Against Disappearances (ICAD) and Relatives Association of Disappeared people (YAKAY-DER), organisations struggling against political oppression and specifically disappearances during custody.

./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:140:We re-emphasize that the racist separation wall is destroying the daily lives of Palestinian people.

./english/44.txt:146:In Turkey, where there are no freedoms, the militarist fascist character of the state still continues. The increasing exploitation of the working class and the oppression of the Kurdish people has not come to an end.

./english/44.txt:184:We the participants of the 4th ESF ask people, civil societies, NGOs, political parties and governments to adopt and establish in the next revision of their national Constitutions the right and ability of a sufficient number of citizens in every state to ask their Parliaments for new Legislation, coming out of Citizens’ Legislative Initiatives, as well as to accept Referenda for the cancellation of Laws considered as being against the will of the majority of a State’s Citizens.

./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:234:On September 11th 2006 people over the world stand together for peace, justice and solidarity.

./english/44.txt:237:On that day at a meeting at the Empire Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sheth haji Habib, an Indian and South African Muslim declared his commitment to refuse non-violently, at any cost, the new laws of repression passed by the British colonial empire against coloured people in South Africa. Mohatmas Gandhi attended the meeting which became a historic step forward for people’s non-violent power in its modern form. Since then, this same force has brought down imperial rule in India and elsewhere, achieved civil rights in the USA, contributed to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa and inspired people’s struggles for justice and dignity across the planet.

./english/44.txt:239:We therefore call upon all people to join us on 9/11 2006 to commemorate the suffering of innocent victims of terror, wars and injustice and to celebrate, recreate and renew the force of non-violent struggle for our times. Let us use that occasion worldwide to demand democracy at all levels and to express our condemnation of war, particularly those in Iraq and Palestine, our solidarity with all oppressed people and our commitment to a habitable planet for human beings and other species.

./english/44.txt:248:When San Salvador Atenco’s citizens protested against violence, police brutality went beyond limits. A 14-year old boy was killed, a 30-year old man now lies clinically dead and there are 110 injured people and 213 have been arrested. Most of them are members of the FPDT (Frente por la defensa de la tierra) which had signed the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandona jungle and participates in the “Other Campaign”.

./english/44.txt:249:San Salvador Atenco is now occupied by 4,000 policemen. EZLN declared Red Alarm in the zapatistas communities and the Other Campaign and the EZLN’s “Comision Sexta” called for a solidarity demonstration nationally and internationally so that the police withdraw from the area as well as for the liberation of the arrested people.

./english/44.txt:250:We support the Other Campaign’s appeal. It is important to have an international mobilization against the criminalization of the social fight and the use of government violence against people. We resist the imposition of financial benefits against our lives.

./english/44.txt:254:-The liberation of the arrested people

./english/44.txt:255:-The respect of San Salvador Atenco’s people and their right to a life in dignity

./english/44.txt:261:We are against the military and repressive policies, which are exercised in the name of “the war against drugs” at the international level, guided by the government of the United States of America against the national sovereignty of countries and the human rights of their people.

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

./english/45.txt:22:6.2 Promoting the social inclusion of mentally ill or disabled people and protecting their fundamental rights and dignity

./english/45.txt:69:Mental Health is attached to several cultural problems in Europe. People who suffer from mental health illnesses are often excluded from social society.

./english/45.txt:79:Patient networks often can not, or hardly, exist in poor countries, because of the threat of unemployment, social exclusion and dependency. People do not speak about their weaknesses, so there is a high level of taboo. This has got a lot to do with lack of social security.

./english/45.txt:84:This view, combined with the capitalistic marketing motives, which makes concerns willing to conquer and broaden every inch of the market, leads to a society where more and more diseases are literally established. In this way, psycho oriented industry is creating a market for itself, and the interests of the market distorts to do what is best for us, the people, the patients.

./english/45.txt:89:• People who suffer from mental health illnesses are often excluded from social society.

./english/45.txt:101:In general, inside the institutions, there is not enough ability to give sufficient care and attention to the patients. Therefore a lot of force is (ab)used on psychiatric patients, mentally disabled and elder people (with Alzheimer etc) etc.

./english/45.txt:114:Psychiatry wants to break this direct link between the citizen and the government, and it achieves this with his false logic that sees people as "incapables" (that is the legal term used in Italy). (also see par 6.1.2 forceful measures should be eliminated)

./english/45.txt:121:Therefore the main function of coercive psychiatry is not to help people - that's a complete false pretext - but to statute sharp examples on bad functioning human beings in behalf to impress and shock the whole population (so called special and general prevention).

./english/45.txt:133:The diagnosis itself is THE stigma. Campaigns like Zero-Stigma by EUFAMI (sponsored by drug companies) bear the ideological roots of all stigma: the idea that some people are organically ill in a way that compromises their mental abilities.

./english/45.txt:141:Is not that we have to prove that "mentally ill" people are not, after all, "dangerous", or the like.

./english/45.txt:142:• We have to claim that there are no mentally ill people, but just people who suffer in personal ways, which are not to be subjected to a medical regime in virtue of their ideas and behaviours.

./english/45.txt:144:In the Richer countries, it is nowadays mainly due to capitalistic policies to choose the cheap way: to oppress, instead of mental health care, and to make people pay for a long-term treatment which has no healing effect for the patients. A group-activity-scheme is an easy way to claim the rules, and to keep the patients restricted, with the purpose underneath to maintain order in the institutions without high costs. (* also see 6.1.1 group activity scheme should be replaced by individual established programmes)

./english/45.txt:146:Underneath also lays a main cultural problem, which we intend to call the neoliberal explanation of “Own responsibility”, which causes individualism across society, where people are like rivals, and not helping each other. In this neoliberal climat pointing at the borders of acceptance, dropping each other down and “own responsibility” is way more accepted than to make efforts to help the not-working, and help-needing class.

./english/45.txt:148:Often the very real strengths and skills of people in this class are denied, so that the contributions they can and do make to their community, without being employed, are not valued and encouraged.

./english/45.txt:196:'Building on good practice' should mean that funding for effective mental health services, valued by the people who receive the service, is protected. This should include services which are not specifically for people with diagnosed mental health problems but which help people with social problems which can lead to mental distress- eg. helplines and services for specific issues, eg housing, or for specific groups, eg. refugees and migrants.

./english/45.txt:235:• Mental health Care should focus on individual treatments, established with joined input from the patient and the assistance and eventually more people like friends, relatives etc (in accordance with the patient).

./english/45.txt:273:Prevention means: to pick up the early signals of a crisis, to start to care in the early stages, and prevent the real crisis. This is possible with a very good communication between patient and his surroundings, eg. with family and friends involved, or well-trained or specialized personnel. (which includes people with experience based knowledge)

./english/45.txt:292:The neoliberal industrial approach is to analyse the people as a standardised medical persons, and to conquer the market with universal products for all of us. The industries sponsor the medical mental health investigations, and the market maintains itself by finding diseases for their pills.

./english/45.txt:307:6.2 Promoting the social inclusion of mentally ill or disabled people and protecting their fundamental rights and dignity

./english/45.txt:352:29. No exclusion, but more company for the people with mental health illnesses

./english/47.txt:8:A different Europe, the Europe of all of us, of all the peoples, will not be possible without the full participation and involvement of Women on the Move.

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

./english/54.txt:24:Saturday nights attracted lots of young people from Athens.

./english/54.txt:157:Assembly on the Saturday morning, attended by 400-500 people. Here speaker

./english/54.txt:211:including people who form a sort of de facto leadership of the movement,

./english/54.txt:346:* gives all the stateless peoples of Europe the right to self-determination,

./english/62.txt:91:3. This results in my position for an anarchical relation between researchers, activist researchers, activist and all the overlapping situations and perspectives. Our communication should be horizontal, open to conflict and not bound to any kind of naïve tutelage. What is missing in this session so far is that people not working in the academic area tell us what they await from research. Which questions should we research? I am very interested in suggestions, criticism or any other kind of input.

./english/147.txt:18:There is no country in Europe where, after the defeat of social democracy, there arose resistance as effective as is in Italy. The overarching mood in Italy is to try to unify workers and all marginalized groups and strata: the unemployed, the poor, industrial and intellectual workers, whites, and people of all other races, men and women, and immigrants, in a “movement of movements.” A great acceleration of efforts started in Genoa, July 2001, where the anti-corporate globalization movement resisted the G8 Summit.

./english/147.txt:24:Perhaps the most interesting part of the social movements in Italy is represented by the movement “tutte bianche” (white overalls), who have since Genoa changed their name to Disobedienti. The movement is an interesting mixture of ideas and tactics of Zapatismo, Italian autonomous Marxism, and libertarian influences. The central groups of the movement comprise Zapatista support collectives, Ya Basta! The three-plank program of Ya Basta! calls for a universally guaranteed “basic income,” global citizenship that guarantees free movement of people across borders, and free access to new technologies, which in practice implies extreme limits on patent rights.

./english/147.txt:26:Disobedienti advocates social disobedience as a means for political action expressed by white attire, which symbolizes invisibility: invisible as immigrants, workers stripped of rights, prisoners, various people who oppose genocide all over the world.

./english/147.txt:56:Movimento dei girotondi is a civic movement that attempts to include what is left of “centro sinistra” (left center). It has a lot of artists, directors, intellectuals, unionists, and judges. It is a movement for a more radical reformism, very diverse, and it’s called “girotondi,” which means “circle games,” because it has acted in the form of a big circle, which surrounds corrupt institutions. On certain occasions Movimento dei girotondi has managed to mobilize a great number of people.

./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:96:Peoples Global Action

./english/147.txt:104:A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’ struggles, advocating forms of resistance that maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism

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

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

./english/147.txt:145:ATTAC organized “summer popular universities” where hundreds of young and even younger people came. The context was marked by the Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in winter 1999. ATTAC was one of the new types of movements mobilized from solidarity with the Zapatista revolt in Chiapas.

./english/150.txt:6:Neo-liberalism is widely seen as the dominant strategy underpinning the development of policies which have been adopted by national governments and regional and global institutions alike. The austerity measures associated with neo-liberal policies have been the catalyst for many of the social struggles which have contributed to the development of organisations like Euromarch. In this sense, the Euromarch campaign has been born in a situation in Europe where over 20 million people are unemployed and 50 million live at or below the poverty line. [1]

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

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

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

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

./english/161.txt:6:This book contains some amazing and exciting stories of ordinary people

./english/161.txt:30:police, firstly when three people were shot in Gothenburg, in June 2001, and

./english/161.txt:70:This book contains the stories of how people both succeeded and failed to

./english/161.txt:117:a week. For many months before July 2005, people were meeting, discussing,

./english/161.txt:120:the months after the G8, people are still meeting, still discussing (and still

./english/161.txt:138:draws in all these resources, attracting contributions from people who did not physically

./english/162.txt:5:Among the events of recent history, few have been as surprising, as full of enigmas, as the coordinated world demonstrations known as the Global Days of Action. Immediately upon their appearance, they overflowed the organization that had called them into being: the People's Global Action (PGA), founded in Geneva in February of 1998. (1) This transnational network of resistance had adopted a new concept of solidarity advanced by the Zapatistas, who encouraged everyone to take direct action at home, against the system of exploitation and oppression which they described as neoliberalism. As early as the month of May, 1998, the PGA helped spark demonstrations against the WTO whose effectiveness lay both in their simultaneity and in their extreme diversity: street parties in some 30 cities around the world, on May 16; four days of protest and rioting in Geneva, beginning that same day; a 50,000-strong march that reached Brasilia on May 20; protests all over India after a huge demonstration in Hyderabad against the WTO on May 2. The following year, London Reclaim the Streets launched the idea of a "carnival against capital" in financial centers across the world for the day of the G8 summit, June 18: there were actions in over 40 cities, including a ten-thousand-strong "carnival of the oppressed" by Niger Delta peoples against transnational oil companies. In the face of transnational capitalism, a networked resistance was born, local and global, tactical and strategic: a new kind of political dissidence, self-organized and anarchist, diffusely interconnected and operating only from below, yet able to strike at the greatest concentrations of power. What is the strength of such movements? The improbable and serious appeal to a "do-it-yourself geopolitics": a chance for personal involvement in the transformation of the world.

./english/162.txt:9:These kinds of actions are about as far as one could imagine from a museum; yet when you approach them, you can feel something distinctly artistic. They bring together the multiplicity of individual expression and the unity of a collective will. That is their enigma, which sets up a circulation between art and solidarity, cooperation and freedom. But this enigma stretches further, into the paradoxes of a networked resistance. Because since their surprising beginnings, we have seen the movements change, we have seen them globalize. Activists from the South and the North travel across the earth in jet planes, to demonstrate next to people without money, without work, without land or papers – but who may know the same writers, the same philosophers, the same critiques of contemporary capitalism. The intensive use of Internet by the movement of movements means that dissenting messages take the pathways used by financial speculation. Sometime you wonder whether the two can even be distinguished. What are the sources of this networked resistance? And what exactly is being resisted? Is revolution really the only option – as one could read on a banner at the carnival against capital, on June 18, 1999, in the financial center of London? Or do we not become what we resist? Are the "multitudes" the very origin and driving force of capitalist globalization, as some theorists believe? (2)

./english/162.txt:28:Following the Zapatistas, people in the movement of movements tend to call the current economic structure "neoliberal." But the word evokes a political philosophy stretching back to the eighteenth century. One can speak instead of flexible accumulation, which describes the computer-linked, finance-driven, just-in-time model of the globalized economy. (6) By subordinating the other spheres of social life – education, science, culture, etc. – this organization of production and consumption produces a veritable hegemony, a mode of regulation for society as a whole. To grasp the way this hegemony is experienced by individuals, I have proposed the notion of the flexible personality. (7) It is an ambiguous notion: because although it primarily designates the managerial culture that legitimates the globalized economy, and that renders it tolerable or even attractive for those who are its privileged subjects, it also recalls the profound opportunism that this organization demands, as well as the "flexible" nature of the workforce that it subjects to increasingly individualized forms of exploitation. The flexible personality designates the lived experience of a relation of domination. It is essential to define its limits.

./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:46:It is well known that the Linux operating-system kernel, and free software generally, is made cooperatively without any money changing hands. This is something that quickly caught the attention of artists and culture critics, as in the discussions over what Richard Barbrook called the "high-tech gift economy." (13) The expression recalls an anthropologist, not Polanyi but Marcel Mauss, the author of the famous essay on The Gift. His essential contribution was to underscore, at the very heart of modern economic exchange, the presence of motives irreducible to the calculation of the value of material objects, and also of the individual interest one might have in possessing them. As Barbrook points out, the heritage of Mauss was very much alive in alternative circles, his ideas having inspired the Situationists, who passed them on to the do-it-yourself media ethic of the Punk movement. But mostly what fueled the discussion of the Internet gift economy was not theory, but the simple practice of adding information to the net. As Rishab Aiyer Ghosh explained, "the economy of the Net begins to look like a vast tribal cooking-pot, surging with production to match consumption, simply because everyone understands – instinctively, perhaps – that trade need not occur in single transactions of barter, and that one product can be exchanged for millions at a time. The cooking-pot keeps boiling because people keep putting in things as they themselves, and others, take things out." (14) By placing the accent on the overflowing abundance and free nature of the available content, Ghosh responded implicitly to one of the most contested themes in Mauss's essay, which cast each gift as the deliberate imposition of a debt on the receiver, instating hierarchies which were quite foreign to the practice of networked information exchange.

./english/162.txt:50:Today, with the popular explosion of Gnutella and other peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, these notions of the high-tech gift economy have begun to form part of common sense. It seems to admit at least a few new things: that the coded creations circulating on the Internet are never "consumed" like a cigarette would be; that use by some people in no way limits their availability for others; and that certain kinds of exchanges therefore have nothing to do with rarity and are quite possible without money. What is less often remarked, because of a denial which is characteristic of free-market rhetoric, is the fact that non-monetary models of exchange have been operating on a very large scale for as long as one can remember, for instance in the realm of academic publishing, where the primary motive for sharing information is not its monetary value but the recognition it brings – a recognition which itself is at least partially dependent on the idea of contributing something to humanity or truth. In fact there exists quite a large movement in the domain of scientific publishing aiming for online release of all the articles carried by specialized journals, in order to make the results universally accessible despite the increasing cost of many essential print publications. (15) Recently, an author by the name of Yochai Benkler has taken the twin examples of free software and academic publishing as a foundation on which to build a general theory of what he calls "commons-based peer production," by which he means non-proprietary informational or cultural production, based on materials which are extremely low cost or inherently free. This voluntary form of self-organized production depends, in his words, "on very large aggregations of individuals independently scouring their information environment in search of opportunities to be creative in small or large increments. These individuals then self-identify for tasks and perform them for complex motivational reasons." (16) Benkler's first aim, however, is not to explain peoples' motivation, but simply to describe the organizational and technological conditions that make this cooperative production possible.

./english/162.txt:60:In this sense one could say that, just like the projects of commons-based peer production, these mobilizations begin and end with the fabrication of publicly available texts. For example, the People's Summit in Quebec City in April 2001 began long in advance, with many different studies of the consequences to be expected from the future agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. These studies led to the drafting of a remarkable document, "Alternatives for the Americas," which is a counter-treaty of great precision, composed through a process of knowledge exchange and political coordination on the scale of the American hemisphere. (17) It's also true that as a direct consequence of the massive demonstration that took place during the summit, the official working draft of the FTAA treaty was made public for the first time; until then it had not even been available to elected representatives of the American peoples, but only to executive negotiating teams (and scores of corporate "advisers"). In this way the counter-globalization movements constitute a public archive. And yet between the fundamental landmarks represented by these text publications, how many face-to-face debates took place, how many moments of singular or collective creation, how many acts of courage and solidarity? And how many emotions, images, memories, and desires were created and shared during the days of action in Quebec City?

./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/162.txt:73:So now we return to the language of art, and to an art whose very essence is language. Obviously I'm talking about conceptual art. But today this most revolutionary of all art forms is considered a failure. The "escape strategies" that Lucy Lippard talks about in her famous book on The Dematerialization of the Art Object were intended to free artists from dependency on the gallery-magazine-museum circuit. It was thought that artists could motivate people to use their imagination in completely new ways, by giving them linguistic suggestions, virtual proposals that they could actualize outside the specialized institutions. But exclusive signatures rapidly took precedence over the infinite permutation of the works in the lives of the viewers/users. The necessary corollary was that the concept should refer primarily to itself, as in a famous piece composed of a chair, a picture of a chair, and a dictionary definition of the word "chair" (Joseph Kosuth, One and Three Chairs, 1965). Such a work, completing itself in a tautology that required no transformative activity from the public, could easily be presented within the existing system. Thus the conceptual escape attempt only led from market-oriented New York to the museums of Europe, then finally back to the market. In 1973, Seth Siegelaub said in an interview: "Conceptual art, more than all previous types of art, questions the fundamental nature of art. Unhappily, the question is strictly limited to the exclusive domain of the fine arts. There is still the potential of it authorizing an examination of all that surrounds art, but in reality, conceptual artists are dedicated only to exploring avant-garde aesthetic problems.... The economic pattern associated with conceptual art is remarkably similar to that of other artistic movements: to purchase a work cheap and resell it at a high price. In short, speculation." (19) Lucy Lippard, for her part, wrote in 1973 that the "ghetto mentality predominant in the narrow and incestuous art world... with its reliance on a very small group of dealers, curators, editors and collectors who are all too frequently and often unknowingly bound by invisible apron strings to the 'real world's' power structures... make[s] it unlikely that conceptual art will be any better equipped to affect the world any differently than, or even as much as, its less ephemeral counterparts." (20)

./english/162.txt:79:The examples of this revenge could be as numerous as the experiences of those involved in it. That is why I want to talk about an event in which I personally took part: the carnivalesque performance and riot in the City of London on June 18, 1999. Before it took place, this day was intensely dreamed by a multiplicity of actors, sometimes connected in constant dialogue and exchange, sometimes affected at a distance by signs that promised to break their isolation and unleash their agency. The inspiration first emerged, at least in certain versions of the story, during the summer of 1998 in conversations between members of London Reclaim the Streets and the anarchist group London Greenpeace (not the famous NGO).26 It spread through the networks of Peoples' Global Action, drawing on the suggestive potency of two key ideas. One was the "street party," as a way to refuse the domination of the city by the automobile – and of democracy by traditional party politics. The other was the phrase "Our resistance is as transnational as capital": a return of twentieth-century internationalism in red, black, and green, after a long trip through the jungles of Chiapas where the Zapatista uprising began on January 1, 1994 (the day NAFTA came into being). A complex circulation through time and space, where solidarity means respect for local autonomy and differing motivations for struggle, was encapsulated in these two key ideas. A call to action, distributed widely through the Internet, put it like this:

./english/162.txt:80:"The proposal is to encourage as many movements and groups as possible to organize their own autonomous protests or actions, on the same day (June 18th), in the same geographical locations (financial/ corporate/ banking/ business districts) around the world. Events could take place at relevant sites, e.g. multinational company offices, local banks, stock exchanges. Each event would be organized autonomously and coordinated in each city or financial district by a variety of movements and groups. It is hoped that a whole range of different groups will take part, including workers, peasants, indigenous peoples, women, students, the landless, environmentalists, unwaged/unemployed and others....everyone who recognizes that the global capitalist system, based on the exploitation of people and the planet for the profit of a few, is at the root of our social and ecological troubles." (27)

./english/162.txt:84:J18 in London was the most exquisitely planned and spontaneously realized artistic performance in which I have taken part, an awakening to new possibilities of political struggle that would be echoed throughout the world. Thousands converged in the morning at the Liverpool tube station in the City, receiving carnival masks in four different colors that encouraged the crowd to split into groups, outwitting the police by following different paths through the medieval street plan of Europe's largest financial district, then coming together again in front of the LIFFE building, the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange, which was the symbolic and real target of this protest against the global domination of speculative exchange. The choice of site was essential. Long years of effort by far-flung organizers and intellectuals had been required to understand and describe the ways in which capital had escaped its former national bounds, in order to redeploy itself transnationally in new oppressive systems; yet until the late 1990s, that knowledge remained largely abstract, floating in a deterritorialized space like the financial sphere itself. Here it was translated into tangible forms of embodied expression: transgressive dancing, defiant music, a verbal and visual poetics of resistance. For once, individual pleasure once did not appear as the negation, but rather as the accentuation of collective struggle, confronting financial abstractions which could be understood by the participants through the immediate experience of the stone-and-glass architecture, while the significance of each of their acts was multiplied by the knowledge that other, similar events were occurring all over the planet. Spontaneous invitations for passing traders to come join the party were combined with sudden attacks on private property, generating an unexpected, threatening, sympathetic and immensely confident image of revolt – a way to finally start answering the decades-old pleas for help from oppressed peoples in the South, while also responding to the unbearable social divisions that transnational capitalism imposes on countries like Britain. Of course this carnivalesque outburst was just one moment in a longer process of struggle, prepared by untold numbers of people under far harsher conditions. But the language of protest that emerged here nonetheless marked a turning point. It was the immediate inspiration for the larger and more complex confrontation in Seattle, six months later, which finally forced the messages of the global resistance movements through the frosty screens of the traditional media, opening the political crisis of global capitalism's legitimacy. A crisis which has not ceased to morph and mutate into the increasingly violent forms that it is taking today.

./english/172.txt:11:The current situation is full of opportunities but also dramatics dangers. Opposition and resistance to the war and occupation of Iraq have exposed the British and US strategy as a failure. The world is facing the nightmare of a new war in Iran. The arbitrary decision of the EU to cut funds to the National Palestinian Authority is unacceptable and exacerbates the whole situation. The oppression of Kurdish people has still not come to an end.

./english/172.txt:13:Conservative forces in the north and the south are encouraging a “clash of civilization” aimed at dividing oppressed people, which is in turn producing unacceptable violence, barbarism and additional attacks on the rights and dignity of migrants and minorities.

./english/172.txt:15:Although the EU is one of the richest areas of the world, tens of millions of people are living in poverty, either because of mass unemployment or the casualization of labour. The policies of the EU based on the unending extension of competition within and outside Europe constitute an attack on employment, workers and welfare rights, public services, education, the health system and so on. The EU is planning the reduction of workers’ wages and employment benefits as well as the generalization of casualisation.

./english/172.txt:17:We reject this neo-liberal Europe and any efforts to re-launch the rejected Constitutional Treaty; we are fighting for another Europe, a feminist, ecological, open Europe, a Europe of peace, social justice, sustainable life, food sovereignty and solidarity, respecting minorities’ right and the self-determination of peoples.

./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: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:116:Nationality was also weakly associated with the mobilization through news websites, even though this relationship was marginally statistically significant. In that respect, 25% of the respondents mobilized through news websites was French and 22.9% was Italian, while the Spanish, even though a significant percent of the sample, represent only 4.2% of the people mobilized through news websites.

./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/180.txt:52:demonstration, was 5.000 people. The groups against the war and in

./english/180.txt:142:people from Oxfam Solidariteit, Attac, the Euromarches,…) in the

./english/180.txt:167:reactions, we could consider to write a common text with several people

./english/180.txt:170:(Fabrice, René, Luc, some other people…). I limited myself to

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

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

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

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

./english/187.txt:82:They are groups of people and/or collectives that get involved with this beginning stage of the process in order to:

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

./english/187.txt:111:For those people or collectives who would like to work on this project, we suggest that you get in touch with the promotor groups that are already functioning, which until now are:

./english/192.txt:27:The ESF in London was smaller than its predecessors in Florence and Paris, which each attracted around 50,000 people. This is hardly surprising: the altermondialiste movement first began to take shape in Europe with the formation of ATTAC in France in 1998; since Genoa the movement has been strongest in Italy. In Britain there has been a very strong anti-war movement, but only a widespread, but diffuse anti-globalization consciousness.

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

./english/192.txt:31:Other problems were more subjective. Some people didn't like the way in which the division of the rooms at Alexandra Palace meant that noise from one seminar or plenary spilled over into others. Personally, I thought the noise was manageable and that it did have the virtue of making audible the diversity of voices that is such a powerful feature of our movement.

./english/192.txt:41:At different stages this process embraced a very wide range of forces - stretching from the Trade Union Congress and mainstream NGOs to autonomist groups with a history of intermittent violence such as the Wombles. Holding this coalition together would have been difficult in any circumstances. Of course, the Italian and French comrades also have developed very broad coalitions, but it was probably an advantage that these had been constructed well in advance of actually organizing the ESF, so that people had an experience of working together.

./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/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:22:Fausto Bertinotti, Secretary of the Italian Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (the refounded Communist Party), states the problem that revolutionary politics are no common political project today. The problem of capitalism existing is not articulated as political problem. Therefore the task for a radical left party is to make it a problem. But it is clear that taking the power does not mean the abolition of capitalism and revolutionary transformation. The first step is to raise some limitations to capitalism. In the face of a deep crisis of representation it is important to regain a large participation in the elections in favour of a regime change. This is still limited to the old model of representation and participation every four or five years, but tries to create or sustain spaces for everyday participation and self-organisation at the same time. But politics go further than state and parties. From Marx, we know that capitalism produces and reproduces the separation of state, bourgeois society, and economy, what leads to different forms of alienation. Therefore for a real social transformation the reconstruction of revolutionary subjects is needed, not as a monolithic one. For Bertinotti in an atrophied perspective ‘auto-organisazione’ and the reinvention of politics (as party politics) is the same. Holloway questions that: using a party (as part of the state) to construct the revolutionary subject means separating the people, means building hierarchies, means decision making in our name instead of self-construction of the subject. Changing the world therefore, a young Italian woman stated, means changing ourselves. ‘I want to be powerful – not take the power.’ Holloway: ‘Our power is no counter-power but anti-power.’ But, ‘we can not turn our back to the state, because the state will shoot us in the back, somebody else answered. To face capitalist power and state force not anti-power but counterpower is needed to defend our autonomy.

./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:51:Gramsci warned against sectarian, narrow-minded thinking: ‘A political party is not only the technical organisation of the party itself, but the whole active social bloc.’ (Gef7., H.15, 1774) In a specific hegemonic constellation ‘nobody is unorganised or independent from a party, if organisation or party is understood in its broadest sense not formally’ (Gef.4, H.6, §136). Each social bloc, as a convergence of different social groups, classes, genders etc., generates only one formation in the sense of this broader integral understanding of a party (that is nearer to the notion of social forces and movements than it is to parties in the narrow sense). All different partial formations, the non-commitment to plurality, are only transitional ‘reformist’ forms, oriented on simple negation or on transforming only partial dysfunctional elements, not the existing mode of production as a whole. Therefore a communist refoundation is more than a renewal of given party organisations (where you could become a member, pay your fee, and vote for your ‘leader’). It requires the reinvention of proletariat as Marx put in the Manifesto: ‘the proletariat recruits itself from all classes of population’ (MEW 4, 469), a diffuse milieu of released, redundant people without property except their own labour power. Under circumstances of the neoliberal, transnational mode of production this includes the increasing global industrial labour force, the modern precariat as well as the modern cybertariat, the rural labour force as well as landless people, the non-paid reproductive workers (mostly women), the migrant labour force – all of them shaped by differentiations along class, gender, race, nation, their positions in production processes, political alliances, cooptation by ruling forces, etc. If we take all these diverse fragmentations seriously we could come to a deeper understanding of a contradictory multitude that is to be worked out to a coherent social bloc of forces able to form social transformation. This new modern prince (Gramsci) cannot be understood ‘as a singular form of collective agency, for example a single party with a single form of identity’ (Gill 2003, 221). What is required is an articulation of the different political forms due to concrete situations, permanent reorganisation of organisational forms in the face of developing conditions, including the collective and individual ‘molecular change of modes of thinking and acting’, forcing this transnational partiality (Parteiung) to rearticulate again and again, arranging new and original problems to solve (Gramsci, Gef. 8, §51).11 This is not possible without involving constantly the active elements of subjectivity.

./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/195.txt:9:I think that the contrast between these substantially different ways of doing, these modes of producing events, is highly “educational” for all of us, and we can evaluate the final outcome in these terms. By focussing on process and the totality of our movements, what can we say about the ESF held in London last November? Ambiguous result. On the one hand, it has represented a clear step forward for our movement. This not only because 25,000 people have attended and all large events like these encourage encounters between people across networks. Also and especially because a section of the movement has overcome its insularity at events like these and, working with organizing principles based on horizontality, inclusiveness and participation, has broadened substantially the programme of and participation in self-managed and autonomous zones. About 5000 people, many of whom where wearing the bracelet of the “official” event, have been estimated to have participated in the broad range of activities of the autonomous zones, and defined future action programmes on crucial themes such as precarity, migration and communication rights.

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

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

./english/197.txt:31:However, even assuming people can grasp the truth of that old cliche `In unity lies strength', we must still carefully define our priorities: we cannot have an international programme that looks like a laundry list. However convinced each movement activist may be that his or her own pet issue is the most important one in the known universe, we've still got to think more about what's do-able together now that we finally have a worldwide movement; in other words, we have to proceed with PRagmatism.This means thinking about how we might start winning instead of scattering our human and material resources all over the landscape.

./english/197.txt:35:Shouldn't it be possible, with five years worth of experience under our belts since Seattle, to settle on one, at most two, initial issues that play to our strong points and take advantage of their weak ones, and then campaign on them, all together? I'm not sure the movement is yet mature enough to do this, but I am certain we must at least try to find out whether it is or not. If we find that it is, then we should decide on a couple of concrete objectives people either all over Europe or all over the world can cooperate on, objectives they want to turn into reality.

./english/197.txt:45:Debt (and its accompanying structural adjustment programmes) would have a lot of advantages as a campaign objective: it is certainly one of the most important contributing factors to hunger, collapsed health, water and education systems, plummeting commodity prices, the switch from public services to private corporate control, the freedom of capital movements and in a general way, to huge leverage for the North over the whole range of Southern policy choices. As a system of domination, debt is far more intelligent than colonialism, requiring no police, army or expatriate administration and even regularly bringing in a bit of revenue. Debt cancellation could be linked to a system requiring that the savings be spent on the priorities determined by the people of the country concerned (what I call `democratic conditionality').

./english/197.txt:51:So if we were to win on, say, debt, it would of course be only a partial victory, but it would be won against the banks still receiving comfortable interest payments, against the corporations eager for further privatisation opportunities; against the IMF, the World Bank and their cohorts of structural adjusters; against Northern governments, particularly the US; against the Washington consensus. It would be a victory for the South and, if the democratic conditionality issue were properly dealt with, for the people of the now indebted countries who would finally have the right to choose their own priorities and control where the money was going.

./english/197.txt:57:No one knows exactly why movements emerge but it's certain they are fragile, evanescent and can disappear as mysteriously as they appeared. I would suggest that the major causes of their demise are boredom, discouragement and self-indulgence. People get bored and discouraged if they never win. Self-indulgence isn't necessarily just the hippie kind (let me smoke my grass and to hell with the world). It could also mean in the 21 st century refusing to put aside one's own preferred cause, no matter how worthy, for even a short time in favour of working with others on a winnable worldwide campaign.

./english/197.txt:59:But I am hopeful. The movement is made up of remarkable people with enormous talent, knowledge and stamina. If collectively we are smart enough, mature enough, determined enough to prefer winning to mere self-indulgence, we've got a chance. And that, to introduce a final PR word, would be profound PRogress.

./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:23:That same evening I joined several hundred others from Beyond ESF for a Yo Mango Tube Party. We tried to maintain a low profile until arriving at the Circle Line, but the authorities caught on at Victoria Station. We were forced outside and reorganized into an impromptu Reclaim the Streets. Unfortunately, we were herded toward a nearby police station, where many were registered and eventually let free. I then went over to the Camden Center to check out the Indymedia Space. Unlike previous actions and gatherings where Indymedia was only a tool for reporting about other events, this year media activists organized their own schedule of activities, including a four day conference on Communication Rights. I was lucky enough to catch the end of a roundtable presentation in the main theater by activists from local struggles around the world, including Africa, Asia, and Latin America . There was also food, music, and dancing. In addition to the several hundred people gathered in the theater, hundreds more were drinking beer and sending e-mails in the bar, uploading news stories and videos upstairs, or chatting informally in the halls. Incredibly, there were just as many, or perhaps even more people than at Beyond ESF. The autonomous spaces were not only exciting and lively, they were simply overflowing, one into the other.

./english/200.txt:5:Under these conditions, a sectarian culture takes root. Inhabitants of the political ghetto are condemned to infighting instead of getting on with more significant matters. However, the situation is changing. Demonstrations on the streets of London against the war in Iraq with thousands of protesters, widespread dissatisfaction with government policy and irritation at neo-liberal reforms have shown that there are a lot of people willing to listen to the left's arguments even if the speakers are not endowed with the magical status of an MP.

./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/201.txt:13:This, I thought to myself, was the kind of small but important detail that made events like this worthwhile. This, after all, was what it was all supposed to be about: people from all across a continent sharing experiences, free space, inspiration and hot drinks in the search for a better world.

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

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

./english/201.txt: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:49:The danger, though, is that their attempts to grab this movement for themselves could drive away precisely those people who made the movement happen in the first place, and leave a hollowed-out shell of empty leftist rhetoric in its place . It would hardly be the first time.

./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: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:61:Time after time, a “line” was pushed by panels of people with virtually identical views on subjects as diverse as Israel (“apartheid state”), George Bush (a “fascist”), Iraq (“imperialist war”), immigration controls (“racist”). We have to ask, surely, not only why so few dared to challenge the consensus, but why there was a consensus at all – at least one presented so aggressively and often unthinkingly. And come to that, how can anyone over the age of 16 chant the slogan “one solution: revolution” with a straight face at an event which is supposed to be about serious analysis of what we can actually do ?

./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:87:George then followed up her warning with a number of positive suggestions, which seemed to enthuse the audience. They included a crash programme to tackle climate change ; an international clearing union to make third-world debt impossible in future; legislation to allow corporations to be closed down or “re-chartered” for transgressing; the creation of global public companies to provide obvious public goods, like software and pharmaceuticals, which the market is failing to distribute fairly; and the creation of an acceptable “inequality ratio” to ensure that concern about people falling below the poverty line should go hand-in-hand with concern about those above an acceptable wealth line .

./english/201.txt:93:On the other side there is a still-new, still-young movement of people – a new generation – who can see that the solutions to the problems of today's world will have to be new, novel and above all, democratic. Neither Castro nor Marx nor George Galloway is going to save us. Honest debate, serious analysis, damned hard work and a determination to stand up to power just might.

./english/202.txt:7:The ESF 2004 was an extremely contradictory event and process. Thousands of people found ways to use this space in the spirit of the WSF principles. They debated strategies for the anti-capitalist movement, while developing Europe-wide activist networks which could act together more effectively. Some devised alternative methods and capacities which could make another world possible. All this happened because activist gatherings generally find ways to make things happen according to the means that are available and despite the obstacles present.

./english/202.txt:9:The available means at the London ESF featured especially the numerous autonomous spaces, which attracted approx. 5000 people, many overlapping with those who registered for the official ESF. Many events and spaces encompassed broad themes which linked apparently ‘single’ issues, thus spanning the foci of existing political campaigns and coalitions. Perhaps the most notable example was the Assemby of the Precariat (and its declaration), situating precarity within an entire exploitative system which potentially threatens everyone but likewise which potentially links their struggles, depending upon the shape of capitalist strategies and our counter-strategies.

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

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

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

./english/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:29:Another force opening up the process are radical Non-Governmental Organisations like the World Development Movement, War on Want and Friends of the Earth. They do have the formal structure with which the GLA can deal. Moreover the GLA need their support for the legitimacy of their management of the process. But these NGOs - some of them part of influential international networks - are actually staffed by people committed to the ‘horizontal' methods of the movements for which the GLA and some of the unions have shown mistrust. These mainly young people have used their bargaining power to play a vital role in keeping the process open.

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

./english/210.txt:15:Because of these problems we think that the ESF must be held every year. We must admit that our arguments are not very convincing. London was tiring to prepare but most of all we see that our networks are having big problems to survive next to this huge event. We must not slow down, so the one and half-year agreement must be let to show its abilities. Especially when the Networks aren't ready yet and we think that –mostly- parties will not allow them easily to grow. We must find ways to cut down power gained by national quota, change the way plennaries are organized but not by eradicating public political debate on the needs and priorities of the movement, work harder expanding to the East and Balkans but more important than all we must be more inclusive with the social issue of Europe, with the working people that produce the wealth of society, with immigrants that seek their right to escape from poverty and not be discriminated in Europe, with the socially excluded.

./english/210.txt:17:Campaigning against the war and inventing International Days Against the War, hoping (and praying) that people will come out in the same way of 15th of February is just not doing politics and is far away from the needs of the societies.

./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/216.txt:12:2. Although the first three fora have permitted us to achieve many successes, the limitations of our work so far must also be acknowledged. In our view, the themes in focus must better reflect the breadth of struggles that people are experiencing in Europe. This would necessarily entail a different kind of balance between different issue areas, making social issues a key consideration of the process. For example, we consider it out of tune with political realities that the last ESF had so few seminars on themes such as unemployment and the struggle against pension reforms.

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

./english/218.txt:20:8) We request that for next ESF's a strong coherence would exist between discourses and practices: access for poor people, respect for environment, fair trade food, bio, mutual respect, non violence…

./english/219.txt:11:We are fighting for the withdrawal of the occupying troops in Iraq , for an immediate halt to the bombing and for the immediate restitution of sovereignty to the Iraqi people. We support the right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation.

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

./english/219.txt:21:The ESF is opposed to all forms of segregated provision for disabled people. In all work about disabled people the ESF supports the principal of ‘Nothing about us without us'. All ESF organisations should actively include disabled people. The ESF opposes all eugenics and fights for the rights to life and full civil rights for disabled people. All ESF events must be fully accessible for disabled people. We recognise that sign language is a basic necessity for the inclusion of Deaf people.

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

./english/219.txt:31:We are fighting for another Europe . Our mobilisations bring hope of a Europe where job insecurity and unemployment are not part of the agenda. We are fighting for a viable agriculture controlled by the farmers themselves, an agriculture that preserves jobs, and defends the quality of environment and food products as public assets. We want to open Europe to the world, with the right to asylum, free movement of people and citizenship for everyone in the country they live in. We demand real social equality between men and women, and equal pay. Our Europe will respect and promote cultural and linguistic diversity and respect the right of peoples to self-determination and allow all the different peoples of Europe to decide upon their futures democratically. We are struggling for another Europe, which is respectful of workers' rights and guarantees a decent salary and a high level of social protection. We are struggling against any laws that establish insecurity through new ways of subcontracting work.

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

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

./english/226.txt:14:London was a great experience for many thousands people, both politically and personally. With immense desire to be involved in discussions and great combativeness many of them made use of the offer to discuss the political issues raised. The ESF process has gained political amplitude and meaning by the active engagement of unions and many other groups and initiatives. There is a greater chance now for this new social movement to become and important political factor within Europe.

./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: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/232.txt:15:5. We reject the criminalisation of part of the movement and we denounce the absence of solidarity towards people who were held by the police in an underground station and arrested during the demo. No demo can carry on like that when some of us are in trouble only because they wanted to communicate what happened. A lot of people were really upset about the demo in itself because it didn’t express the ESF and the diversity of the movement. No speakers were agreed for the demo so there was no respect for the decisions taken.

./english/232.txt:21:8. The location and the space in the ESF has to respond to the needs of the people. In Alexandra Palace the LSF network seminar couldn’t work in the way which had been decided because the space couldn’t be used in a different way but was only suitable for an old-fashioned platform-based meeting.

./english/233.txt:23:• ‘Alternative spaces' – the Solidarity Village in Conway Hall/LSE; ‘Life Despite Capitalism' and other events at LSE, and `Beyond the ESF' at Middlesex University , all went well. Many productive discussions have now been disseminated to e-lists and web sites. Around 5000 people are thought by the various organisers to have attended these free events.

./english/233.txt:37:· The extent and form of central coordination of the event needs re-thinking. Participants in this meeting were divided between two alternative models. One is the ‘Edinburgh Festival' model in which various organisations organise various events, alone or in ad hoc groupings, and determine their own ticket prices. Once they have done this they might agree to a common ticketing system so as to create one inclusive price for a `core' list of events. Whatever the financial model, some event-organisers will always want to offer their events free of charge. A second model is to have people working on ‘thematic terrains', as the WSF now does to bring the programme together, some or all of them possibly linked to ongoing networks for particular topics. These would be linked by a central coordination space which would deal with logistics (translation, getting visas, accommodation etc) and perhaps attempt to promote sessions to fill obvious gaps in the range of proposals which emerge.

./english/233.txt:45:· Small working sessions should have more weight in the programme than plenaries. (It is understood that the WSF will in future lean towards seminars rather than plenaries). However, there is a space for ‘big-name' talks, partly for people new to politics who particularly want to hear them, but also to reflect major debates between thinkers and tendencies. Plenaries are best done in the form of a debate (which might sometimes have three rather than two speakers), rather than having 6 speakers who tend not to systematically engage with each other. There should always be plenty of time for discussion

./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/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:34:Although highly critical of the organising process, many saw the ESF as a space to network with people and then take their dialogues to open, non-fee-paying spaces. In contrast, others saw the ESF as fundamentally flawed, merely representing a space for the co-option of real struggles. Defining our group territories in this broad landscape and shaping our boundaries without creating borders took time. It was not an easy process and should not be idealised, but it was at least open and honest. Over the summer we carved out our association through sharing resources, time and energy. We collectively imagined a world, not an event, that went beyond the ESF, in life without capitalism sharing our commons, refusing a ‘pay to say’ mentality, and freeing, in all manner, our messages.

./english/237.txt:41:The AS meeting points were occupied social centres, away from the closeted safety provided by the metal detectors and body searches at City Hall, which was the meeting place imposed on the ESF process to suit the busy agendas of GLA officials. While the social centre environments were vibrant and rooted in local actions and participation, they were also subject to state scrutiny by police photographers and intelligence teams. Our meetings of mothers, academics, media workers, participatory economists and pranksters were described to curious by-passers by the police standing in front of the doors as full of ‘radical political extremists’. Of course, this encouraged quite a few adventurous people to drop in who, upon seeing the criminalisation of ‘normal people’, offered their support!

./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/237.txt:47:One of the political advancements of the AS was to gain the right to be in the official programme of the ESF, in order to reach those who were just coming for those days, young people who normally would only see the gilt facade of the event. However, to better visualise the breadth of the autonomous spaces a separate newspaper was created that gave readers a topographical vision of the spaces, with bright pink arrows as our signposts. Mapping our alternatives gave many people working on the autonomous spaces a sense of just how far and wide we had decentralised our spaces and participation. We didn’t just occupy buildings; we also occupied the streets. Most people in the queues for the official ESF took the papers, not only out of interest but because it was “free people, free spaces, free paper” - free as in freedom, not just without cost.

./english/237.txt:51:Ultimately in whatever form, the AS’s strove for a horizontal social dialogue amongst all participants in the ESF. People that spent time at, or came specifically to the AS’s, shared their struggles and resistance strategies. How to create free transport, liberate goods and services, mobilise for campaigns, use free software and dissections of radical theory. They found actions to support the border crossing of ‘stateless peoples’, questioned consumption, the sterile, styrofoam environs of Alexandra Palace and clowned about in parody at the March for Capitalism.

./english/237.txt:53:A truly internationalist spirit stood in contrast to the discussions about national quotas of speakers that occupied much of the ESF process for months. ‘Big name’ speakers were not the main priority at the AS. People came to exchanges real experiences, stories and plain words with validity and legitimacy born of their presence and action. We saw this as a way to effectively build networks all over Europe and broaden our movements in the UK.

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

./english/238.txt: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:12:Some people use specialised language in order to communicate faster with each other…but others may consciously or unconsciously use jargon to impress or to exclude. Some may simply be unable to imagine that others do not share their vocabulary, concepts and intellectual framework.

./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:26:It was complete chaos, but miraculously it worked. We had to fight the organisers just for a space to work in; eventually we took our own initiative and squatted a medieval tower. It was beautiful but freezing and we had no money, computers, phones, nothing. Coordinators hung booth planning sheets on washing lines; some people stayed up all night to finalise everything. As for the quality of the interpretation, well, that was definitely a mixed bag.

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

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

./english/238.txt:69:In general, Babels could not prevent the de facto officialisation of languages because coordinators were only provided with information about the language profiles of registered speakers and participants two weeks before the ESF took place. Prior to this, it was only able to build up a vague idea of the nationalities of people and sizes of delegations that would be attending from second-hand scraps of information. This is because from the very beginning of the ESF process, Babels coordinators were excluded from the information flows coming in and out of the ESF office, and their recommendations for how to integrate language needs into the heart of the organising process were generally ignored. Babels was also not allowed to have any autonomy over its own coordination budget. In other words, just like languages issues themselves, Babels was marginalised from the decision-making centre consisting of the Mayor of London's political office that runs the GLA, a handful of trade unions, and political sects like the Socialist Workers Party, Socialist Action and the Communist Party of Britain. These forces ultimately controlled the ESF and put up political walls and barricades around a supposedly open space.

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

./english/239.txt:25:1) Cultural groups or talented people could entertain children.

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

./english/241.txt:11:These initiatives have a variety of different objectives: preserving what happened for future memory; making accessible the knowledge spread at international meetings for people who cannot participate to them, which helps to turn them into parts of a process and not just single events; creating networking tools to enhance the effectiveness of the process itself; critical analysis that sheds light on the contradictions of the process, etc.

./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:77:Prabir Purkayastha, All India Peoples Science Network and WSF India. WSF Memory Seminar: WSF 2004 Mumbai Experience http://www.wsfindia.org

./english/242.txt:9:But this implies relating technical developments to other social practices and uses for which the tools are developed. The user must be at the starting point and not only at the end of the production process. This is why the actors of Nomad, an international network of people committed to putting essential technologies into the public domain, link their technological developments to other practices (in translation, art, media, agriculture...). Nomad activists from across the globe have been working towards developing alternative technologies aimed at general empowerment of people.

./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:46:Nomad is not a political organization but functions as a network. The activists participating in Nomad are involved within it as individuals, and if they are involved as part of a structure (e.g. Babels or Apo33), this structure will be considered as an individual group within, or associated with, the Nomad network. In no case can there be an elected representative of Nomad, nor can there be any elected representative of another group within Nomad. A Nomad activist is someone who is involved practically in the Nomad project while respecting the project's principles. Practical involvement and respect for the project's principles are the only legitimate criteria that allow people to speak as a Nomad actor. This indicates a critical position as regards to the electoral system: when we designate a representative, this has the almost automatic result of shattering the network dynamic, destroying the development of ties within a star configuration. When someone is elected, all ties tend to converge towards this single elected person (the representative), and the end result is a kind of idolization of the delegate.

./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/243.txt:5:It felt like attending a meeting at someone's house. People were sitting on the floor, communicating in a self-organised way and listening attentively to what the others had to say. But this was no ordinary activist meeting and no direct action was planned. Instead, people reported back from their working groups on the theories of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe or Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

./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/243.txt:15:There is no fixed definition of popular education. Rather it is seen as a concept that is based on the struggle of people and related to their history. Last but not least, it is used to keep people in the room despite their previous experiences with education.

./english/243.txt:29:A woman at the workshop in New York hit the point, when she said: “That's what popular education is about. We do not do it in order to get as many people as possible on a protest. Popular education is about real social change. And real social change goes together with personal transformation. Popular education is another piece of the puzzle.”

./english/244.txt:23:Some theories from the science of communication and guerrilla communication have shown us that the delivery of an argument and the multiple analyzes of the social facts that have produced this argument (like “women” and “men” are not receiving the same treatment in working places and in society in general) are not going to be accepted and integrated by an increasing number of individual receptors in a way that is proportional to its “trueness”. It is not because you multiply the supports and ways to spread a “true” fact, that you really get to provoke indignation and conscious amongst the population that is not personally involved in social transformation, people with a political restlessness. And so what? What's so new in all that? Nothing particularly, just my increasing stupefaction at the fact that spreading alter communication, contra-information, and building alternative medias ICT structures, is not perhaps the only solution we should contemplate when we want that information to become effective in a political sense. To say it another way, how can social transformation information become aggressive and perceptive enough to affect mass media information production, in other words, mass public opinion?

./english/244.txt:29:When someone gets to go to an ESF, inside or surrounding spaces like the “autonomous spaces” s/he looks for several things generally: on the one hand, to learn, hear, meet new groups, persons, activities, debates, methodologies. This means that through coming and assisting to conferences, plenaries, speeches, debates, workshops, he/she is going to enlarge and expand her/his own knowledge of the contemporary objectives of social transformation, and aims and strategies to achieve it. On the other hand, all these dynamics won't depend only of the short laps of time when you get to walk with thousands of other people from one meeting point to another one inside the related spaces of the ESF. Those processes are expanded in your daily life through your communicational habits, your inscription to mailings lists, blogs, newsletters and other online tools to receive online flows of information and data.

./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:30:The truth of these technologies however is that they do suit certain types of organising more than others. It was clear that with the London ESF there was a distinct dislike and rejection of interactive tools that facilitate open horizontal communication and participation. These were rejected in favour of strictly hierarchical models of communication and information flows. For example there seemed to be a clear unwillingness to use email lists for working groups within the organising process. Indeed when calls for an email list to be created for the Programme Working Group became too loud to ignore, one of the few people designated to deal with website based issues suggested they go away and produce a feasibility study into the advantages and disadvantages of setting up an email list! When this was rejected, they then suggested that anyone wanting to send a message to the entire working group could simply email her, and she would ensure that the email was sent out to everyone who had attended a meeting and supplied their email address. This may have been acceptable ten years ago, but not today.

./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:36:In parallel a range of activists and individuals created another website based on wiki technology (wiki is essentially an online notepad which allows people to easily add and edit text on a webpage). For a while, this website (www.esf2004.net) became the best source of information about the 2004 ESF, carrying reports, notes, minutes, discussions and notices of meetings, many of which were lacking from the official website – all constructed collaboratively. While it is true that many projects that were critical of the ESF processes found a home on this website, it did show the wider potential of these tools, and provided a space for communication and collaboration which was sadly lacking within the official organising structures. Indeed several initiatives were set up outside of the main ESF organising process, including web facilities, to demonstrate just how easy it is to create appropriate electronic tools to aid memory reporting and archiving efforts.

./english/245.txt:57:One crucial factor for the ESF should be the involvement of the "Media of the Movements" – i.e. the progressive community media which is based in our constituency. However for the 2004 ESF these were treated as inferior cousins of the mainstream corporate press. There was an assumption that they would just provide coverage anyway. So instead of any campaign to involve them, there was little public encouragement given, until the very last minutes when some telephone calls were made to journalists of all types who attended the Paris ESF to encourage them to come to London. Press passes for the ESF were to be available to 'proper' journalists with National Press Cards, but while assurances had been given to media activists in London that community media would be able to gain press passes and access to the ESF media centre, this was never officially stated via the ESF website. Indeed during the preparatory process the media centre had been treated by many as "non-political" - as a purely practical issue disconnected from any political discourse. Some people even going as far as to ask how we can deal with ‘this problem of IndyMedia people and community media wanting to use the media centre’!

./english/246.txt:9:Since the first WSF in Porto Alegre, 2001, Social Fora have aroused great interest from people working in areas we can loosely define as ‘cultural’. There have also been since the beginning many discussions at Social Fora on the role and the present condition of ‘culture’ in our society; as well as cultural programmes that have accompanied the events. If one reads the statements issued by the culture working groups (or their equivalents) in different editions including their different spaces (Youth Camps , autonomous spaces etc.) it is easy to notice one common thread running throughout, quite often stated in similar words: that culture must be at the heart of the event, and must inform it as a whole, both in the discussions and the programme, and the way it is organised – it must not be ‘the icing on the cake’.

./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:25:The first was inspired by experiences in solidarity economy that were taking place at the time in Rio Grande do Sul and especially neighbouring Argentina, were an expressive movement of barter trade networks had appeared after the 2001-2002 crisis. At the Cultural Barter Fair, the participants could exchange both goods (either characteristic objects they had brought from their countries or things like t-shirts, crafts, cds etc. that they owned or had produced themselves) and services (such as hairdressing, skill-sharing etc.), either on a one-to-one basis, i.e., a product for a product or a product for a service, or using the social currency that circulated within the fair – called, in a rather hippy fashion, ‘Moon’. The World Social Soiree was an open-mic, open-stage, two-hour, ten-day event were anyone could show up and ‘do their thing’; the only guiding lines were a certain theme for the day, and the fact that each day was supposed to have a different movement or group as the convenor. The Flag of the Flags was produced with all the flags collected throughout the WSF, sewn together in one by a local solidarity economy enterprise, Grife do Morro da Cruz. A development of the idea of the Mosaics in the first two WSF – the Mosaic of Stones (where movements and individuals donated stones with their messages or names engraved) and the Mosaic of Books (where people were invited to donate books for a non-specified reason; later it was decided that the books would form a library that, to this day, still does not exist) – it was interesting not only for its symbolic aspect, an affirmation of unity in diversity which dissolved all particular ‘logos’ in one which, at the same time, was none; but also for the very discussion on art and culture it carried. Firstly, it was the ‘work of art’ without an artist – for who could be said to have created it, those who had the original idea, those who donated the flags, or those who sewed it? Secondly, because, unlike a ‘work of art’ (like the material produced at the Live Museum of Diversity), it was made not to be hung or shown, but to be used: to be carried in the streets, to be draped from high places in direct actions etc.

./english/246.txt:27:The success of these experiments was perhaps not great, although they did point ways forward. In general, it could be said that both working groups suffered, in different degrees and manners, from the same problem: the WSF one, being a small, geographically limited group with few connections, had to rely mostly on itself – all the spaces and activities were to a certain extent both proposed and occupied by its members; the Youth Camp one, also geographically limited and having made a decision to control and organise the spaces as little as possible so as to keep them open, had to rely heavily on the participants knowing about the existence, purpose and location of these spaces – which, owing to lots of organisational problems, did not actually happen. This meant that, on the one hand, the groups that were more involved in the organisation – like the hip hop movement – were the ones who more effectively appropriated them and were the most visible. The story-telling space functioned just once, the World Social Soiree and the Cultural Barter Fair only three times; the Instantaneous Memory space and the Living Museum of Diversity functioned for four days, but not many people knew about them as they had been placed in not very visible corners. The transversality we spoke about never really materialised; ideas such as having musical and other artistic interventions – including full-fledged decoration – in the halls where plenaries and seminars took place were never pushed forward, and if cultural issues were present in the debates and speeches, it was only in very vague and inconclusive terms. In the end, the Youth Camp was the living proof of the somewhat pointless nature of our efforts: while the spaces where activities of cultural exchange and production were supposed to happen hardly functioned at all, a short stroll around the Harmonia Park or through its central square showed that what we wanted to do was happening anyway – people sat around, chatted, played music, shared skills, exchanged gifts.

./english/246.txt:29:Needless to say, what was pointed out in subsequent evaluations is that the cultural side of the WSF/Youth Camp was once again restricted to the stages and concerts. Of course, that had not been the intention, but it is evident that, in a situation were people hardly know their way around, the only spaces that need no divulgation – because they pretty much divulge themselves – are the stages, and that is where people are bound to go; once more, culture had been ‘a bit on the side’, ‘the icing on the cake’. However, I believe those attempts, however failed they may have been, are still defensible in what they had set out to do, and even the failures themselves pose certain lessons and challenges which I will try to summarise below.

./english/246.txt:31:First of all, I believe that however clear an understanding of culture both the WSF and the Youth Camp started from, there was still one flaw in their general way of thinking, which could be phrased as the tension between specificity and particularity. It is clear that the both working groups, when speaking of culture in the sense of the whole of material and symbolic production, still considered it in specific terms; thus, there would be a ‘Brazilian culture’, an ‘Argentinean culture’, an ‘MST culture’ etc. While that is in a sense true, there is a problem in believing that this is what has to be expressed. A member of the MST will express his culture in his way of speaking, of walking, in his worldview, food etc.; this not only cannot be tapped into as something to be exposed, it probably should not be either – otherwise, we would fall into some sort of ethnological voyeurism, usually with the cultural background of the organisers appearing as the unspoken norm. What can be shown is films made by the MST, or we can listen to some of the movement’s story-tellers, or some of their many (and extremely accomplished) musicians, all particular cases of the MST specificity. What this means is that, when organising open spaces, some level of ‘closing’ must happen so that it is made sure that these people will occupy it – it is not ‘the movement’, but these particular individuals that must be contacted; it is not enough to create space and expect this or that ‘culture’ to occupy it, while at the same time the spaces must remain open to whatever can happen. Of course, this element of openness is much more effective in something like the Youth Camp, which is a living space before being a space for activities.

./english/246.txt:37:Thirdly, it is easy to see that there is still a serious barrier when talking about culture to many groups and individuals in the left. Many people still treat it as either equal to art, or as exotic specificities; and art is still treated as something with, at best, a pedagogic quality (and therefore only a medium, not a form of its own) and, at worst, a mere instrument (for mobilisation, for publicity, for propaganda).

./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/246.txt:41:These are not isolated issues, and we can only lose while we discuss them as such. Knowledge is a common par excellence – i.e., a non-scarce good that can be shared without any part having less of it than before – and not only do we have a society and an economy whose functioning is increasingly dependent on it, we also have today the technological means to develop a society where each and everyone is at once producer and consumer – ‘sharer’ – of it. Issues ranging from the medicinal knowledge of indigenous peoples to digital inclusion, intellectual property to art, alternative to mass media – all of these have essentially to do with knowledge, which is one of the most important questions for the years to come. In culture, this tends to translate as the end of mediation – the distinction between high and low art, artist and audience, producers and consumers. Perhaps a new world will see the suppression of art as we have come to know it since we have known it for the last centuries. All the better: it makes room for culture.

./english/247.txt:9:The Intercontinental Youth Camp (IYC), a space of the WSF, has since 2001 been a place for the expression of a new political generation, where different organizations and social movements question the capitalistic way of life, its values and practices, involving people in the permanent construction of alternatives.

./english/247.txt:11:In 2002, the IYC was named City of the Youth Carlo Giuliani and was occupied by 15,000 people from several countries, showing and developing concepts and innovative practices of communication, culture, architecture, computer science and the administration of residues. In contrast to the previous year, when the IYC wasn't much more than a campsite, the occupation of the Park was designed accordingly, and most of the spaces for activities were built with recycled materials and bioconstruction techniques (super adobe, techniques with bamboo, walls of earth, etc..). The residues were separated at the Recycling Shed, built in partnership with DMLU (the City Hall ' s Department of Urban Cleaning) and the National Movement of Gatherers of Solid Residues (MNCRS), demonstrating not only residues management but also a means of income generation.

./english/247.txt:15:With 30,000 people expected, the organization of the third IYC was enlarged considerably and within the Commission of Infrastructure a workgroup of Environmental Administration was formed by biology students, biologists, NGOs and social movements.

./english/247.txt:27:Of course the everyday details of the proposals were not all perfect during these three years of the process. Certainly, the environmental illiteracy of the majority of people is one of the main causes, added to by technical and administrative problems. But we believe that the difficulties faced in the IYC only reflect the social-environmental problems through which we are (ourselves) confronted in daily life, in the distancing of humans from nature, in the general lack of environmental literacy, and in the total fragmentation of debate, which means that a lot of people still don ' t see politics in the environment or, worse still, they think the search for the solution to our problems should just be made at debate tables and not in daily practices.

./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/249.txt:7:Some people claim that this year's ESF has been a tremendous success, the likes of which has not been seen before in Britain 's recent history. Others claim that it was a sheer disaster, exposing all the worst aspects of the leftist movements. Here is a picture of people who seems to be talking about two different events.

./english/249.txt:9:I have been participating in the preparatory assemblies since Istanbul in March, and have followed it from the sidelines since after Paris . I had a great time at the ESF in London , I achieved some good contacts and I also learned lots. I was with a group of newcomers to the ESF process, young union activists, who went here to learn and to enforce their activities back home. Generally, they went home with useful knowledge thanks to good people who arranged good and useful seminars and workshops. Seen from this perspective, the ESF in London was a success.

./english/249.txt:11:At the same time, it has to be noticed that far fewer people participated in London than in Paris and Florence, and the level of conflict amongst our own ranks seemed to be far, far higher. The first fact can have lots of explanations: the ESF was more expensive, it was in the north, not in the Latin speaking south, some activists may experience ESF-fatigue, but also some might have stayed away because awareness of the problems of this year's event. Seen this way, the ESF can hardly be claimed a tremendous success, though it would also be an exaggeration to say it was a fiasco.

./english/249.txt:13:But on democratic terms, I will have to say we failed. And that is serious. We claim to want to create another world, and even that this is possible. But if we can''t even create a trustworthy democratic alternative within our own ranks, how can we expect people from the outside trust us to create the conditions for a more democratic world? So what created these problems?

./english/249.txt:15:I have been told from people who participated in the first meetings after Paris , that the “ London bid” was promoted with promises of lots of money to do a great event. Obviously, there was les money to support this year's ESF than the previous years and it wasn't possible to offer free accommodation as was done in Paris . This was not a good start of the process. Before I arrived at the preparatory assembly meeting held in Istanbul in April, I joined the ESF mailing list, expecting to get information on what was to be discussed there. I never received any. Of course this made it impossible for me to discuss the ESF with my people here.

./english/249.txt:19:Then I experienced a meeting where the chair never made it clear what we were discussing and what decisions were to be made. Thus, nobody could object to the purpose of the meeting, since everybody could have their own ideas, not knowing if their idea was the same as that of the next person. A sheer waste of time. This was realized after some time by the chair, who then decided to arrange a small working group meeting to prepare the next day's meeting. Only the group did not just prepare. It actually began to make the decisions of the next day's meeting. I couldn't help thinking of the “green-room” meetings at the WTO. People present in Istanbul must have been aware of this. The working group meeting wasn't much smaller than the big meeting.

./english/249.txt:21:After the Istanbul assembly no minutes was ever made. Of course this enforces the power of the “inner circle”, making it very, very hard for new organizations or people who are not “nerds” with political meetings to have a say in the process. This was corrected after the Paris working group meeting after strong demands from several people from NGOs from different countries. We even got an agenda for the Brussels meeting.

./english/249.txt:25:Having said this, I also have to say that certain groups within the ESF have been behaving very undemocratically. Maybe those who prevented the Iraqi speaker from speaking were doing that. But surely the people producing leaflets and placates for the demo were. For example, it was a clear decision of the ESF preparatory assembly that the main slogans of the demo should be some that covered the whole ESF: war, privatization, racism. Then on the website we saw that it was “No to Bush, no to war” and a leaflet was produced giving the impression that this was the official slogan of the ESF demo. Loads of placards were also made with Stop Bush printed on them. This despite there having been a clear – not consensus, but agreement that the elections in the US should not be at the core of our demonstration.

./english/249.txt:29:My conclusions are that it is fundamental to our movement and to our chances of any success in our aims that we put forward a democratic world where people, not power or money (whether from public resources or private corporations) are the sources of decision making in our society. We need to have more clear rules of how a meeting is prepared, conducted and how the decisions are made and communicated to those not present at the meeting. And we need some kind of policy about how groups can act at ESF events in order to prevent abuse like the one made at our demo.

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

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

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

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

./english/251.txt:24:To give just one example, in August the UKCC decided to have a float at the Notting Hill Carnival. The UKCC felt that having a float at the carnival would provide the ESF with a unique chance to reach minority communities in London (the Notting Hill Carnival is an afro-Caribbean carnival attended by nearly 1 million people). Even when the price tag attached to this event was reduced by 60% (a savings that was made possible by building relationships with several black community groups who were going to share the float with the ESF), the GLA in conjunction with one of the directors of the ESF company refused to release the funds. A GLA representative (who had been appointed by the GLA to be the ESF office manager), made this decision clear when she told me that, “the coordinating committee doesn’t decide these things, I do.” She had the valid point that we needed to look at the Notting Hill Carnival in the context of the wider outreach budget, but this budget was never made available to the UKCC. The result was not only a missed opportunity to do outreach among minority communities, but also the betrayal of the relationships that the ESF had built with local community groups.

./english/251.txt:45:2. In order to have a meeting where people are able to accept decisions that are not their own preferred decisions, there needs to be commitment, patience and willingness on the part of every single member of the group to put the group first. Without this commitment and a proper understanding of what consensus is, no group can ever reach consensus. No amount of teaching, learning or discussing can change anything without this basic commitment form everyone involved.

./english/251.txt:52:There is an obvious need for clear proposals in the EPA process. We have now witnessed many complaints by new-comers and old-timers alike that it is never clear what we are talking about at these meetings; topics get interchanged with each other and there is no system in place for keeping the interventions to one topic at a time. Nevertheless, several important questions arise around the idea of proposal-based discussion. The most obvious are: how proposals are written and by whom, and when and where are they presented and to whom? It was commonplace at UKCC meetings to have proposals brought to the meeting completely ignored with a “we’ll come back to that” or a “you can’t just introduce a document in the meeting when we haven’t seen it before.” There was no clear procedure for dealing with proposals brought to the UKCC and the result was such that proposals by certain people were adopted without proper presentation or discussion while others were refused or ignored, creating subcategories of legitimate vs. illegitimate proposals depending on which side of the political divide the proposal came from. The situation was so dire that when a proposal was presented to the UKCC (often after having been circulated by email), it was refused on the grounds that providing a written and photocopied proposal and distributing it at the UKCC meeting was an “unacceptable way to make a proposal.” When I interrupted the argument to ask what the acceptable way to make a proposal was, no one could tell me. Although it did become clear over time that the ‘acceptable’ way of making a proposal was to claim to represent as many people as possible (preferably the oppressed) and to have membership of particular political organisations/parties. If we would like to have an inclusive ESF organising process, we obviously have to consider all proposals equally, even when brought forward by politically less powerful organisations/people within the ESF process. Proposals cannot be branded as illegitimate or ill timed.

./english/251.txt:54:2. The first interventions to be taken after the proposal is read should be points of clarification. Any questions people have about the proposal take priority over people who are offering their opinion about the proposal. After this, people who have problems with the proposal are first asked to explain their reservations before any further interventions are made in favour of the proposal. If it seems that the majority of the people are opposed, the proposal needs to be re-written entirely and a small group (made up of a few people who are opposed to the proposal and one of the original authors of the proposal) should leave the meeting to do this. The large meeting then carries on discussing another issue until the revised proposal can be put forward. If the majority of the people are for the proposal, those who have reservations need to state their positions to the entire meeting and if these changes are minor they can be made in a small group (again outside the large meeting, with all those who have reservations or amendments and some of the original authors of the proposal). If agreement cannot be reached, and the objections are not objections with fundamental moral implications, disagreement must be noted and the meeting proceeds to another issue. Every time a new proposal is reached, it must be re-presented to the large meeting for approval and/or further adjustments. Again, the adjustments themselves can be made outside the large meeting. There is usually no need for more than a few statements in favour of the given proposal except in as far as they clarify the proposal or are in direct response to the suggested amendments and reservations voiced. If it becomes apparent that there is enough opposition to the proposal for it to require extensive defence, a new proposal needs to be written. In this way a situation is avoided where long queues of people speak for and against a proposal that is not satisfactory to anyone or for a proposal to which no one is opposed.

./english/251.txt:56:3. Once an amended proposal is put forward, the facilitator needs to check for consensus. In order to do this, the facilitator first re-states the proposal and then asks if anyone is opposed to the proposal. If no one opposes, the facilitator can ask, ‘do we have consensus?’ if there are still no objections after a moment or two of silence, the decision is official. At this point it helps for the facilitator to re-state the proposal once again so everyone is clear what has been decided. If on the other hand, there is opposition to the proposal, the facilitator can ask those opposing to stand aside and let the group decision go through and offer to minute the non-support and the specific reservations. Under extreme circumstances, those expressing opposition can use a ‘block.’ A ‘block’ is a powerful tool in consensus decision making that in theory ensures that all people present are included and have some power over the decisions being made and not just the loudest or most articulate people. However, a ‘block’ should almost never be used and this should be made clear to everyone involved at the start of every meeting. A ‘block’ is only used when someone’s fundamental moral principles are being ignored by the decision taken and only when the person blocking is directly going to be affected by the decision made (i.e. you cannot block a decision unless that decision in some way binds you personally to act in a way that violates your principles, and even then it might be better to find a way out for yourself rather than block the group.) If a block is felt by the meeting as a whole to be disingenuous, the meeting can decide to overturn the ‘block’, to ‘counter block,’ and to go forth with the decision reached.

./english/251.txt:58:Although no recognisable consensus procedures were ever used in the UKCC, certain individuals who had the power to do so, did block group decisions on occasion. This is where the danger of consensus without consensus can be clearly seen. When there is a dramatic power inequality between the various members of a group (as there was in the UKCC) and when there are people prepared to take advantage of that power inequality, a ‘block’ can become the death of the group. In the case of the ESF, anytime a block is used after much discussion and under circumstances other than the above mentioned emergency circumstances the chair/facilitator should give all the non-blocking members of the group a chance to collectively overturn the block.

./english/251.txt:60:4. In all discussions people who have not spoken yet should be privileged and allowed to speak before others. In the case of the EPA it might be worthwhile to limit to total number of interventions each person is allowed to make in order to ensure that everyone chooses their words and the interventions wisely.

./english/251.txt:64:The problems the EPA has faced in using consensus decision-making procedures are not new problems and are quite common to consensus in any group as large and diverse as the EPA. Ideally with such a large group based across such vast geographical distances, a spokes council system could be put in place where small groups meet in a decentralised fashion all over Europe to discuss the set agenda and then people selected by each smaller group to temporarily represent them go to the larger meeting. This would create a process which could include more than only those among us who are able to travel and who are brave enough to speak in a large room on a microphone. The small meeting size and the locality make it psychologically and physically more accessible to everyone. This structure has worked for much larger groups than the EPA, including the organising of the successful WTO protests in Seattle in 1999.

./english/251.txt:68:While I have seen genuine good will on the part of most people participating in organising the ESF, there is not a commitment by everyone to put the group first or to consensus, despite it being one of the guiding principles of the ESF. And what commitment there is diminishes day by day. In Paris we witnessed a struggle to use consensus decision-making without a very good sense of how it worked, but with a genuine commitment to making it work. Since then, even the way the word ‘consensus’ is treated has shifted greatly. Whereas in Paris ‘consensus’ was used as a powerful word to invoke shared values, in London it was perceived by many of the key organisers as a problematic word used mostly by trouble-makers. If the EPA wants to decide not to use consensus as a decision-making process and to place value instead on another type of meeting or structure, then we should do so, but it must be clear.

./english/252.txt:19:b) UNFAIRNESS in the use of time. Some speakers were allowed to go on for much longer than others, the time regulation being totally at the discretion of the chairpersons. We recognise that in certain situations it might be necessary to let certain speak longer than an agreed time limit because they are clarifying key positions in a debate where hard decisions have to be made. But in London such key clarifications were cut off while people expressing arguments already brought forward were granted a lot of time.

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

./english/252.txt:47:All this should not be necessary. Because what we saw at the meeting in London, was a room full of brilliant, enthusiastic people. In spite of our political and cultural differences, we are all activists, and we have so much in common! Just think of it: How much must we not have in common, when we come together from all over Europe to sit through meetings like these? Most people wouldn't, you know...

./english/252.txt:65:6) If there is a larger number of people actively blocking a consensus, or when a debate shows that there are strong disagreements in the way, the chair should propose to the meeting that an ad-hoc Consensus Group be set up. It should be made up of (preferably) one representative of each of the most extreme viewpoints and a mediator whom both parties accept. The Consensus Group goes to work on finding a consensual proposal on how to move ahead that might be put before the meeting. In the mean time, the debate is put on hold and the meeting proceeds with other items on the agenda.

./english/253.txt:22:A key tool in this direct democracy is an electronic consultation process, though we need to find ways of ensuring that people who do not have easy access to the web are not excluded. People would register their proposed activities using keywords, spelling out their objectives and indicating how they can be contacted.

./english/259.txt:24:The toll for Catalunya’s anarcho-syndicalists was disastrous. In recent years, people have been arrested in Barcelona for anarchist activism, and to judge from the anarchist symbols graffiti-ed around the city, an undercurrent of contemporary anarchisms bubbles away not so far from the city’s surface. This accompanies widespread concern that repression and censorship has been increasing under the dictate of Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, himself a member of the fascist party during General Franco’s leadership1. As elsewhere, these trends are targetting cross-cutting precarious ‘groups’ such as immigrants, anarchists, squatters, separatists, and activists.

./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/261.txt:71:A description of a second action research based study, using a participative approach to consultation with a large and varied group of people

./english/261.txt:143:Some issues which are important at the beginning of a change program are addressed; attention is given to ways of involving people in organisational change programs

./english/261.txt:231:This technique, probably originating with Richard Beckhard, allows a group of people to pool their assumptions about various people and their attitude to change, and identify ways of approaching them

./english/269.txt:55:And sixth, we begin to consciously encounter the need to mobilize common economic and infrastructural resources. We want to be able to ‘free’ people, just like the parties do: free from illegality, free from precariousness. We could organize a marriage agency… we can disobey, falsify, pirate, shelter and whatever else occurs to us. The proposal of the Laboratorio de Trabajadores space, as well as almost any other proposal, requires money. We don’t want to fall into the star system, touring and talking and not developing the local network that is so important to us, nor do we want to fall into the dependency of subventions. The resources we’re concerned about are as much immaterial and affective as they are material. Our bid is to construct a pro comun. To do this it is necessary to collectivize knowledge and networks, breaking the logic of individual maximization to which the intellectual agencies of the city of renown have accustomed us.

./english/272.txt:15:Applied to public policy, the presumption was that social scientific laws about the workings of society could be codified and centralised and thus state and party institutions could know and adequately plan for the needs of the people.

./english/272.txt:20:2.This in turn led to a recognition of the differentiated nature of reality: people’s immediate experience of oppression and subordination was as real as the structures of class and or gender domination that produced them. Social movements of that period sought to act in a way that acknowledged all levels of reality, seeing people’s direct experience as important clues to understanding the hidden, structural causes of oppression and valuing their practical insights as vital sources of knowledge about the solutions. The new movements paid attention to language, culture and the expression of distinct identities but understood these as related to underlying structures of power. (This is in contrast to political parties dominated by a positivistic paradigm who tended to reduce reality to one level or one structure e.g. reducing gender to class, to regard direct experience as merely `proof’ or an `instance’ of a general theory; and not to value practical insight or skill as a distinct source of knowledge not anticipated by some general law and a source of potential power in the process of social transformation. It is also in contrast to the later development of a post-modernism which focused exclusively on language, discourse and meaning, denying the existence of material realities independent of our knowledge of them – I will discuss this briefly later).

./english/272.txt:22:3. Their origins as self-organised movements arising from their own experiences of subordination and exploitation led to a strong sense of themselves individually as well as collectively, as agents of social change – in contrast to the traditions of parliamentary socialism or party socialism more generally in which a culture of delegation, or deferred action was established: of simply `putting demands’ on others – leaders, governments, officials – to take action. There was a strong sense of taking personal responsibility: that people were faced with everyday choices of either being complicit in oppression – including their own – or acting to transform it. Implicitly, the movements had what is now understood as a `relational’ view of society as consisting of enduring but transformable relations that individuals either reproduced or resisted. ( Rather than the supra-individual wholes of bureaucratic collectivism or the sum of individual action of dogmatic, atomistic individualism).

./english/272.txt:24:4. This understanding of society implies a strong relationship between knowledge and action, between facts and values. It points to the value-laden character of our knowledge of the world, daily illustrated in the way that we reproduce or transform social institutions. New knowledge about the consequences of passive acquiescence in these institutions can lead people to take transformative action in their own lives. The reproduction or transformation of society depends on actors’ understandings of the relationships and structures in which they participate.

./english/272.txt:25:This implies that knowledge and action are inextricably bound up. If it is taken together with points 1 & 2, (1:the importance and social character of practical knowledge and 2: the differentiated nature of reality), it indicates a potentially powerful and radical dialectic between knowledge and action: on the one hand new knowledge can lead people to move from passive reproduction of oppressive relations to transformative action; this action can reveal deeper realities behind the immediate experience of injustice, leading in turn to new directions for action directed at the deeper causes of injustice.

./english/274.txt:14:But when faced with the question “I understand what you’re against, what are you for?” far too often radical activists and organizers on the whole are stymied; at best we end up mumbling something about a world of autonomous or semiautonomous communities based upon mutual aid, self-organization, and voluntary association. And those are all very well and good, and could form the basis of a liberatory society - but for many people such statements mean virtually nothing. It’s one thing to say that we want a world where people manage our own lives, the environment isn’t destroyed, and life is life desolate and alienating – but it’s another to start talking about what such might actually look like. And starting to

./english/274.txt:18:operated. Chances are what you’ll find is that most people have a relatively easy time imagining what a different political order might look like, how a different religion might work, and perhaps even how a family might be structured differently. But chances are they will find it difficult to imagine how a different economic arrangement or society not based around the state would work. Try it a few times. Ask someone how an economy would run if not based on private ownership. Ask them describe economics relations in Greece. Ask them how society would operate without a state. Chances are they will find it very difficult to describe, which is odd considering that for thousands of years of human history there was no state or a market economy. But yet such has become so normalized that thinking outside of such is nearly impossible for many people. Such“stateness” (and “market-ness”) has become so normalized in political theory that it is argued that that democracy itself cannot exist without a state. (Linz and Stepan 1996: 7)

./english/274.txt:36: The problem is that such an approach to envisioning radical alternatives is that it begins with abstract concepts and ideals as its founding basis, and then proceeds to try to fit life to those ideals. The danger of beginning with abstract values and goals as the basis for trying to plan social reality is that it’s very easy to get caught up in ideological conflicts through such a process, to get involved in conflicts over theoretical systems and interactions that may or may not occur when the new vision hits the pavement of actual existence. Conversely, such a process of going from abstractions can overlook very real pragmatic issues that can be glossed over in abstract models. And perhaps most important is that people don’t act like theoretical constructs – they act like people, whose behavior can never be fully described by any model of any kind. Among the areas which modern economics can be criticized for is that it is very good at creating abstract models of how an economy functions, but such do not describe (and really cannot describe) the actual functioning of the world.

./english/274.txt:51:The Non-Vanguardist Social Researcher and the Task of Utopian Vision“Rather than value being the process of public recognition itself, already suspended in social relations, it is the way people could do almost anything (including in the right circumstances, creating entirely new sorts of social relations) assess the importance of what they do, in fact, do, as they are doing it.” -David Graeber, from Toward an Anthropological

./english/274.txt:60:human history. As observed in regards to African societies, “To a greater or lesser extent all of these traditional African societies manifest‘anarchic elements’ which upon close examination lend credence to the historical truism that governments have not always existed. They are but a recent phenomena and are, therefore, not inevitable in human society.” (Mbah and Igariwey 1997: 27) This is not to say that one should go around declaring that Balinese tribes are really anarchists and just don’t know it – but that one can learn from the vast historical experience of the cooperative institutions and practices which have existed. Such grounds utopian theory and hopes not in wild speculations, but in the lived realities of daily experience, in the extension of what people already know to a broader vision.

./english/275.txt:9:In this paper, we retrace in concepts a path that we’ve followed in the experience and practice of our own lives: from activism to theory, and back again to activism, now understood in a new light. Like many people, we’ve found ourselves moving towards activism as we discovered the boundaries that our kind of societies place in the way of living fully human lives. Over time, we found ourselves asking broader questions of the world and ourselves than could be answered within the activist frameworks we had available to us at the time, and moved to draw on the theoretical resources of the past, specifically Marxism. We are now moving back towards activism, through our own participation and through social movements research. In this paper we want to see what we can bring back from our theorizing that will help us and other activists in our practice.

./english/275.txt:26:What is meant by experience? Drawing on the work of Ken Cole,8 EP Thompson,9 Hilary Wainwright10 and David Harvey,11 we want to argue for an active rather than passive concept of experience: not simply experience as ‘what happens to people’, but experience as ‘what people do with what happens to them’.

./english/275.txt:37:The real world becomes ‘problematic’ in relation to our own needs16 – those we are already aware of, and those that we discover through experience. (The other aspect of a materialist perspective, which this points towards, is that it focuses on the practical activity that people engage in to meet their needs as they understand them – and so ultimately how people respond to their experience.)

./english/275.txt:42:2.It is a concept of experien ce which emphasizes social change through human agency: the material and social world that exists out there is characterized by a constant process of people’s becoming human beings, through reflecting on their social experience, developing their creative capacities and practices, and finding new ways of socially organizing these practices – and in the process transforming their world, for good or for bad.

./english/275.txt:54:Positively, we would argue that the building blocks of the production of theory are the efforts of ordinary people to make sense of their social experience; the sites of production of theory are, then, everywhere such activity may take place; the producers of theory are – potentially – everyone who engages in reflection on their experiences so as to develop new and improved practices to problematic aspects of that experience.

./english/275.txt:55:This first approach, theory as consciously generated knowledge, is the point of departure for much radical adult education,18 community development,19 humanist Marxism20 and cultural studies,21 all of which have reflected on the ways in which working-class people and peasants have generated their own ways of understanding the world.22 An example from a very different starting point would be the development of environmental movements.

./english/275.txt:62:However, and importantly for our purposes, there will be many people operating within a negotiated reading, not being able to detach from the general assumption that strikes are bad, but nevertheless making a particular exception to the specific case (perhaps because friends or family members are involved). The weakness of this, of course, is that it denies solidarity to those who are not already known, and isolates those on strike, making it more likely that they will be defeated. It of course also makes it harder to articulate the possibility of an alternative world.

./english/275.txt:64:The difference between this negotiated reading and the oppositional one, however, is one of theory: the person who negotiates their reading has a sense of how things are for them, or for people close to them, but does not generalize this, see that others are in a similar situation, identify with those others or draw more general conclusions about the nature of the world. The oppositional reading, in its ability to oppose the media message that strikes as such are bad, draws on a theoretical understanding of how the world is structured, of the general features of being an employee, and of the structural sources of conflict.32

./english/275.txt:69:Another way of discussing this would be in terms of the extent to which people articulate their view of the world and practice, as against taking things for granted and operating in ‘traditionalized’ ways (whether their origin be recent or ancient)35. This criterion could apply equally well to radicals as to conservatives, in that within pillarised societies in particular, radical subcultures are capable of becoming thoroughly retraditionalised.36 Theory from this perspective would be articulated consciousness.

./english/275.txt:70:Lastly, we could ask how far people are able to connect to and learn from other people’s struggles and learning processes: theory as generalized consciousness. This is obviously particularly relevant at the moment in the context of the ‘movement of movements’, but it is also a more general issue, of solidarity and internationalism versus particularism.

./english/275.txt:75:Hence the value of theory is that we can transfer what we’ve learned in one situation over to another, to free ourselves from having to reinvent the wheel. Similarly, we can learn from other people’s struggles without having to go through them ourselves.

./english/275.txt:85:This is one crucial sense in which the ‘going beyond’ that defines theoretical ventures gains its meaning. Given that there are ‘levels of reality beneath and behind the world of phenomenal, directly observable events (and meanings)’,40 theory seeks to go beyond the phenomenal and directly observable towards the essential social relations that generate these events and meanings. In her discussion of Bhaskar’s version of critical realism and its development as a critique of positivism, she comments, ‘In understanding a problem … (or to put it in political terms, in developing a strategy for change), critical realism implies the need to take into account people’s own perceptions of their circumstances and to draw on other evidence and hypotheses to explore, where possible, with the people concerned, causal mechanisms, at work of which these people might not be aware.’41

./english/275.txt:86:As the rest of Arguments for a new left makes clear, the question is then where this other evidence and these other hypotheses are to be found. How is the theorist to identify causal mechanisms which other people are not aware of? What enables actors – whether social researchers, political activists or others – to see through the surface of everyday reality to social structures which operate ‘behind the backs of the actors’ is human practice of a specific kind: practice which is geared towards transforming social reality. In other words, theory is ultimately dependent on social movements.

./english/275.txt:88:If it is true that in a realist perspective the justification of theory is its ability to grasp the essential nature of social structures, then a critical realist perspective stresses that this endeavour depends on the problematisation of those structures through social practice. Without this practice those structures cannot become clearly visible to social actors. In conceptualizing them, theorists as well as others necessarily rely on the ways in which people respond to what they find problematic, and more specifically draw on the most adequate responses (eg those with the ability to mobilize people from the broadest range of social groups, those which challenge deeper structures rather than surface issues, etc.) as a guide towards that conceptualization.42

./english/275.txt:89:The inherent ‘going beyond’ of theory entails an elaboration and explanation of our actual experiences – but unlike affirmative realisms, which leave this task with theorists accredited by dominant institutions, critical realism places the emphasis on people’s attempts to go beyond their actual experiences in practice, through political action. It is this action, the hidden structures that it reveals and the alternative possibilities that it suggests, which critical theorists draw on.

./english/275.txt:96:Knowledge and action are inextricably bound up … This is daily illustrated in the way that we reproduce or transform social institutions. New knowledge about the consequences of our passive acquiescence in these institutions can lead people to take transformative action in their own lives45

./english/275.txt:127:Raymond Williams, who first coined the term ‘militant particularism’, considered this striving to go ‘beyond’ through communication to be vital: ‘People recognize some condition and problem they have in common, and make the effort to work together to change or solve it.’ He also considered it to be a defining feature of the workers’ movement:

./english/275.txt:147:Despite eco-socialist attempts in western Europe to rally social movements around the projects of Green parties,64 the process of movement fragmentation was not reversed until the Zapatistas, drawing on the heritage of majority world community development, found ways to articulate a project of cooperation between diverse actors.65 The intercontinental Encuentros of activists that they facilitated, and the People’s Global Action network that sprang from these, made it possible for activists in an enormous variety of different movements and locations to start to recognize themselves in each other and to explore ways of acting together as a ‘movement of movements’.

./english/275.txt:150:A second, ‘top-down’ way of approaching the problem is to focus on the social totality. In this perspective, it is in large part the confrontation with the core institutions of global capitalism that has made this communication between movements possible.66 Initially through the processes of neo-liberalism and war, felt throughout the globe in ways which are sufficiently similar to enable a comparison and brought about by sufficiently linked actors to enable an identification of their authors, people in many different social situations have come to experience their lot as untenable and to find themselves in each other.

./english/276.txt:17:Local rationality refers to the various oppositional ways of being and doing that people develop in their attempt to cope with experiences of frustrations, constraints and threats of and to their needs3. Militant particularisms are those forms of struggle that erupt when local rationalities are made more unitary and coherent as subaltern social groups deploy specific skills and knowledges in open confrontation with a dominant social group, in a particular place and at a particular time, in a particular conflict over a particular issue4. Campaigns are those forms of movement activity that emerge as militant particularisms communicate with and form links with each other, develop common strategies and identities across socio-spatial boundaries – i.e. the organization of a range of local responses to specific situations in ways that connect people across multiple such situations so as to challenge the construction of those situations. Social movement projects emerge from the development of a politics which connects single-issue campaigns to an ‘anti-systemic’5 politics. Social movement projects are thus defined by the following features: (a) they pose challenges to the social totality which (b) aim to control the self-production of society and (c) possess or are striving to develop the capacity for the kind of hegemony – i.e. giving direction to the skilled activity of different subaltern social groups – that would render (b) and thus (a) possible6.

./english/276.txt:19:As has been asserted by Eyerman and Jamison (1991) and Barker and Cox (2002), social movement processes are fundamentally animated by the production of knowledge. In the present approach, the point of departure is the simple assumption that people turn to activism in and through social movements because they find that something is not right in the world, and more specifically that it cannot be fixed within the normal “channels”. To become an activist, then, is to learn that the system does not “work” as it claims, and to move towards the understanding that to achieve change people need to organize and create pressure. The turn to activism and the building of social movements, then, is essentially moored in experience. Experience is here understood as the practical and tacit knowledge that we as human beings generate about the material (social and non-human) world, through our encounters with and interaction with this material world. This practical-tacit knowledge is thus ‘an attribute of individuals by reason of their social character, their participation, active or passive, in relations with others within inherited structures’ (Wainwright 1994: 107).

./english/276.txt:22:A crucial feature of experience is that it is gained by people situated in a determinate time-space location, and hence also circumscribed in the sense that it is concrete, particular, and local. By concrete, I mean that experience is drawn from what Ollman (1993: 24) refers to as ‘the world as it presents itself to us’ or ‘the world in which we live, in all its complexity’. By particular, I mean that experience is interpreted through ‘loci of consciousness formation’ (Harvey, 1985: 252) based on notions, concepts and symbols drawn form cultural and cognitive traditions that is particular to a given space, time and social group. By local I mean the – concrete and particular, as it were – social and geographical place in which people reside (Harvey, 1996: 261-264, Chapter 11).

./english/276.txt:41:The compulsion towards insurgent architecture, I submit, could also be a central aspiration and a fundamental knowledge interest in social movement research. As Barker and Cox (2002: 7) have pointed out, there is a schism dividing academic theorizing about social movements and activist theorizing for and within social movements. The former is dominated by a drive towards providing “explanations” of the “normal”, “scientific” type, and the debates within the discipline centre around the type of explanations required, and the theory it generates, is thus of a contemplative nature. Social movements are defined as objects of study to be subjected to observation, description and explanation; they are not conceived of as active processes with which people, engage, experience and transform (ibid.: 4, 5). The latter centres not on providing general scientific explanations, but on generating ‘case propositions of a very definite and practical nature’ (ibid.: 4), that is, movement theorizing produces practical and concrete proposals for action in a given, conflictual setting. Social movement practice is thus characterised by a form of knowledge produced in an attempt to answer questions emanating from an active engagement with a particular context, be it other movements or more generally the social world ‘within which those movements move’ (ibid.: 6). By positing insurgent architecture as a knowledge interest in social movement research this schism might be transcended. For social movement research this would entail putting the focus of attention of the movement process and thus on activists’ attempts to “join the dots” between the particular struggles they are directly involved in and the totality in which these struggles are embedded, and the development of practices and ideas that can match the joining of the dots. In short, social movement research as insurgent architecture would seek to develop theoretical knowledge that can enhance activists’ capacity for transcending militant particularisms, build campaigns, and develop social movement projects9.

./english/276.txt:73:The implications of transcendental realism for the social and human sciences are first and foremost rooted in the positing of the ontological as prior to the epistemological: ‘… knowledge exists as an aspect of our being in the world, and before we can know how we know, we need to have some idea how we interact with that world is such a way as to acquire knowledge of it’ (Collier, 1994: 137). The ontological orientation is thus towards an inquiry into ‘the properties that societies possess’ while the epistemological orientation is towards an engagement with ‘how these properties make them possible objects of knowledge for us’ (ibid.: 137). Hence, it is necessary to develop or acquire an idea of what societies and people actually are, and this can be discerned from the implicit knowledge we possess by virtue of being people and thus social beings. The task of transcendental realism is to render this ‘connatural knowledge’ explicit (ibid.: 137-8).

./english/276.txt:78:It is these relations that form the subject matter of the social sciences. The lattice-work of relations that constitute the structure of society can be understood as those mechanisms – ‘the real’ – which generate the events – ‘the actual’ – which are in turn the stuff that people’s experiences – ‘the empirical’ – are made of. The task of social science, then, revolves around investigations of the social phenomena that occur and that people experience and how they can be explained in terms of – but not reduced to – the social structures that endure.

./english/276.txt:80:The nature of the relationship between society/structure and individual/agency needs to be further specified. Bhaskar proposes ‘the transformational model of social activity’ [henceforth TMSA] for grappling with the task of understanding the relationship between structure and agency (Collier, 1994: 141-151). What distinguishes TMSA from the humanist assertion that societies only exist as the outcome of human agency, the structuralist assertion that human action presupposes the existence of society, and the assertion that the social process is an interaction between society and people is the argument that we should not only distinguish between human practice and social structure, but between two aspects of both structure and agency (ibid.: 145). Hence Bhaskar proposes ‘an ontological hiatus between society and people’ (cited in Collier, 1994: 147) which entails that ‘people are not relations’ and, vice versa, that ‘societies are not conscious agents’ (Collier, 1994: 147)15. The crucial logical conclusion that follows from this is a distinction between ‘the properties possessed by social forms’ and ‘[the properties] possessed by the individuals upon whose activity they depend’ (Bhaskar, cited in Collier, 1994: 147). The TMSA thus follows the logic of the RCS in that allows us to question people’s views of the reasons why they do what they do and what is the outcome of what they do in terms of underlying structural mechanisms that condition their actions and the way in which these actions contribute to the reproduction of those underlying structural mechanisms:

./english/276.txt:91:… people experience deprivation and oppression within a concrete setting, not as the end product of large and abstract processes, and it is the concrete experiences that mould their discontent into specific grievances against specific targets. Workers experience the factory, the speeding rhythm of the assembly line, the foremen, the spies, the guards, the owner, and the pay check. They do not experience monopoly capitalism (1977: 20).

./english/276.txt:95:The experiential knowledge that propels people to activism, then, should be conceived of as being a valid form of knowledge ‘not simply as a source of empirical instances, or falsifications of a general law; but as clues, signposts and stimuli to deeper understanding and theoretical innovation’ (Wainwright, 1994: 67). More specifically, if this practical, experiential knowledge is socialized, i.e. shared between actors, and combined with and interrogated through theoretical knowledge, the outcome of the process might be more adequate maps by which to chart out a course on the terrain of resistance:

./english/276.txt:102:All social structures … depend upon or presuppose social relations … The relations into which people enter pre-exist the individuals who enter into them and whose activity reproduces or transforms them; so they are themselves structures. And so it is to these structures of social relations that realism directs our attention – both as the explanatory key to understanding social events and trends and as the focus of social activity aimed at the self-emancipation of the exploited and oppressed (cited in Collier, 1994: 10).

./english/276.txt:105:One last point needs to be made. One could quite easily imagine that the critical realist approach to social movement research sketched out above can be viewed as being marred by an elitist or even totalitarian impulse. Doesn’t the above argument reflect an attitude of letting the high priests of critical realism, wielding the sceptre of privileged access to ‘the real’, loose on the imperfect world of activists, and then, after they have determined the nature of the enduring structure that causes the occurring phenomena that people react to, and inferred from this the narrow path that needs to be followed to transform this structure, having the activists follow them like obedient disciples? Well, no. There are three reasons why this argument does not hold up. Firstly, critical realism is not marked primarily by a belief in scientific knowledge where the hubris of certainty and infallibility strike the dominant chord. On the contrary, scientific knowledge – the transitive object of science – is ostensibly posited as being fallible and the scientific endeavour is not about attaining closure but about a perennial process of digging deeper, in turn rooted in the humility of the admitted fallibility. Secondly, as I hope has been made clear in the above argument, the relationship between activist attempts to “go beyond” and critical realist attempts to discern ‘the real’ is not one of qualitative difference, but of homologous affinity, which, hopefully, can constitute the basis for developing and strengthening the capacity of activists to build social movement projects. Thirdly, the knowledge interest which motivates the kind of critical realist movement research outlined in this essay – insurgent architecture – presupposes solidarity and participation – as opposed to superiority and subordination – between “researcher” (academic) and “researched” (activist). Indeed, it seeks to breach this divide as such; the insurgent architect can be an activist as well as an academic, if not both at once. However, this argument moves into the territory of research ethics and methodology, and will have to be explored elsewhere19.

./english/277.txt:54:Thirdly, social movements are not identified with any one kind of social phenomenon. They are neither specific features of a political subsystem, for example, nor particular forms of unconventional organisation. Or rather, they may at times be expressed in these ways, but they may equally be found in the normal movements of capital, the everyday organisation of needs and desires, the thoroughly institutionalised relationships of corporatism. A good example of this openness of form, I think, can be found in the juxtaposition of papers from a session at the 1997 Alternative Futures and Popular Protest conference. Colin Barker’s (1997) discussion of “moments of collective effervescence” examined those powerful moments during which social movements from below are capable of mobilising vast masses of people in dramatic challenges to the status quo. Mike Waite’s (1997) analysis of “flecks and carriers” included among other things a discussion of how movement ideas and experiences survive even in the worst periods of drought and on the stoniest ground. My own paper (Cox 1997) discussed relatively stable “movement milieux” in a time of active, but limited, social movements. From the perspective of the movement as a totality, all of these are important “moments” of a given history. Thus this perspective historicises movement activity over the lifetime of any given movement; it also historicises it, however, over the longer term, as against analyses of supposed “cycles” of movement activity (Brand 1982) or inherent “logics”, for example of institutionalisation (Scott 1990), which attempt to insulate the categories of movement activity from longer processes of historical change. Social movements, then, are not static forms, but change in both short and long historical movements in interaction with their opponents.

./english/277.txt:78:A practical illustration of the nature of this category of skill in social movement contexts can be given from my own interviews into social movement activists. Four different institutional locations were particularly mentioned in these interviews: the Dublin movement scene for its opportunity to learn from other people’s experience, the London squatting scene for the development of practical skills, literature on the American 1960s as a source for indirect experience of social change, and interaction among engineering, computer and physics students geared towards solving technical problems. One particular discussion centred on the book Ideal Home (Suspect 1986), produced by London anarchists as a guide to squatting and travelling, and described by Irish squatters in the following terms:

./english/277.txt:120:How can we understand the practice of movement research, then? What are the knowledge interests of researchers, and how does their research activity position them in relation to the movement as a whole? It is conventional to start with discussions of who the researcher is and move “outwards” from this towards a discussion of how they do their research, while ignoring partly or entirely the question of where they do their research. This order suggests a peculiarly contemplative image of research, in which the researcher is essentially unaffected by their interaction with the people they are researching, and naturally avoids the political and activist implications I have just sketched out. Reversing this ordering may be of interest.

./english/277.txt:122:Firstly, it is a strange feature of experience that reasons for selecting particular fields of study, within movement research at least, are rarely discussed. Often, it would seem, subjects for study are chosen pretty much “because they were there”, with the implication that any other subject for study would have done equally well. The image this conjures up of a ready-made theory and method which can be made to fit any particular point on the social map is perhaps unfair; in some cases at least it is clear that topics for study are chosen because of personal interest or access, yet here again this is rarely theorised, and it is unclear how far this is a question of where people happened to find themselves and how far it is a matter of a personal commitment to a particularly important project.

./english/277.txt:135:One, very obvious value is that there is no better way to improve your thinking than to have it criticised by people who know the situation you are talking about - and those are often few and far between in academia. Secondly, and perhaps less crudely, there is the issue of how we formulate and communicate our understanding. It is well known that examples, illustrations, quotes, metaphors and so on can make a text much more readable, but why? In this case at least, I think it is because this kind of struggle to communicate our meaning to the widest possible spectrum of viewpoints is effectively a “hegemonising” skill.

./english/277.txt:137:A brief research project does not necessarily contribute much in this direction. There are, then, some intellectual advantages to research on movements we are committed to and people we live with: the more important our communication with the people we are researching is to us, the more we will work on it and the harder we will think about it. “Smash-and-grab research” is precisely the activity of researchers who have no intention of maintaining contact with participants, and who only have to convince academic peers of the value of their research. This is, I think, a stronger form of reflexivity than the simple sharing of backgrounds.

./english/278.txt:33:Capitalism is not a perpetual motion machine destined to last forever and a day. But if it isn't, what is it about the way this system works and develops that will eventually bring on its destruction? Marx believed he found the answer to this question in the process of accumulation and centralization of capital (or wealth producing wealth), especially when view in connection with the limited purchasing power of the workers. This relationship is often expressed as the contradiction between social production and private appropriation. Production and consumption follow two different logics. The former is determined by profit maximization; the capitalists invest in order to make and maximize profits. While what gets bought and consumed is determined by what people, most of whom are workers, can afford. And, as the capitalist never return as much wealth to workers (in the form of wages) as the workers produce (in the form of commodities), there is a constant pressure on the system to find alternative buyers for this surplus.

./english/278.txt:35:This contradiction intensifies as the gap between the amount of wealth produced (and producible) and the amount returned to the workers as wages grows, as it invariably does, chiefly through advances in science and technology. Increases in the workers' real wages, which can occur from time to time and from place to place does not seriously impede this process. Every decade or so for the past 150 years this contradiction has resulted in a crisis of overproduction (or, viewed from the perspective of the workers, of underconsumption), with the accompanying destruction and wastage of factories, machines, goods and workers. Eventually the need to rebuild what has been destroyed or left to wear out together with the appearance of new markets makes investment more profitable. There is a renewed burst of accumulation, and the cycle starts over. The new beginning takes place on a higher level; more is invested, more people, tasks, and area are involved all around the world; more is at stake. Capitalism has been saved, but only at the cost of increasing the scale of risk in the next crisis. In Marx's estimation, capitalism is a little like a drunk who drinks in order to steady his nerves until the time that... And that time always comes. Marx's prediction of the downfall of capitalism is not to be read as the prediction of the arrival of a comet on such and such a day, but as the projection of the most likely outcome of a worsening impasse, whose development one can see and study in the past and present.

./english/278.txt:39:In capitalism, grasped in this way, class is first of all a place in the system, a property of the whole at whose core we find the interrelated functions of capital and wage-labor. The groups of people, who realize these functions, i.e., use capital to exploit workers and use labor to produce value, are the capitalists and workers. Marx often refers to capitalists and workers as "embodiments" or "personifications" of capital and wage-labor (1958, 10, 85, 592; 1959, 857f.) Without denying that these classes are composed of real people, this is a way of saying that what makes them classes is not so much the qualities of the individuals but the relation of the group, qua group, to a central organizing function of the system. It is clear that workers, in this sense, are not more male than female, white than black, unskilled than skilled. As classes, the capitalists and the workers are viewed as extensions of the functions of capital and wage-labor, which themselves are only meaningful as parts of a system whose functions they are. Marx himself goes so far as to say, "capital is necessarily at the same time the capitalist... the capitalist is contained in the process of capital" (1973, 512).

./english/278.txt:43:In dealing with the possibility of socialist revolution in the present however, whether Marx's present or our own, it is not enough to treat people as embodiments of social-economic functions. As much as this helps us understand their conditions, the pressures they are under, and their options and opportunities, the people involved must still respond to these influences in ways that make what is possible actual. In Marxist terminology, they must become class conscious. To study whether this can actually occur here and now, or at least soon, we must add a subjective, people-oriented, more directly and narrowly human element and focus to the objective, system-oriented view of class that has been presented so far. In short, in analyzing history and political economy, Marx could operate with an essentially functionalist conception of class derived from the place of a function within the system. Class here is something to which recognizable individuals are attached. In this way, incidentally, it is possible for an individual who serves more than one function (managers and wage-earning professionals, for example) to belong to more than one class. But in analyzing the present state of the class struggle and in developing political strategy, this view has to be supplemented, not replaced, by a conception of class that gives priority to the actual people who occupy this place and perform this function. Sharing a social space and functions, they also tend to acquire over time other common characteristics as regards income, life-style, political consciousness, and organization that become, in turn, further evidence for membership in their class and subsidiary criteria for determining when to use the class label. Here, class is a quality that is attached to people, who posses other qualities—such as nationality, race or sex, for example—that reduce and may even nullify the influence on thinking and action that comes from their membership in the class. Conceived as a complex social relation, in line with Marx's dialectical outlook on the world, class invites analysis as both a function and a group, that is to say, from different sides of this relation.

./english/278.txt:45:There is even a third major aspect of class, conceived of as a complex relation, which is the abstracted common element in the social relations of alienated people. Their tendency to interact with each other as instances of a kind rather than as unique individuals, a tendency that is expressed mainly through mutual indifference and competition, takes on independent form in the notion of "class". It is the alienated quality of social life of the individuals who embody the aforesaid economic functions. We will return to class as alienation later in this paper, when we discuss the various difficulties workers experience in becoming class conscious. All these aspects of class—place/function, group, alienated social relation, and there are others—are mutually dependent, but their relative importance varies with the problem and period under consideration. Each is distinctive for the dimension of reality it brings into focus. Essentially, they are different ways of cutting up the "pie". Their real content largely overlaps; though the way each organizes its content makes this difficult to recognize.

./english/278.txt:47:Returning to the example of the French Revolution, it is clear that the classes involved were not only embodiments of functions, but groups of real people and expressions of social alienation. As people they made decisions, and there was always the possibility that on any given occasion they might have chosen otherwise. However, it does not follow that each of these aspects of class should get equal treatment in an account of this event, or that the aspect of class that is emphasized for an event that has already happened, like the French Revolution, should be emphasized in trying to understand developments that lie ahead. One should be open, in other words, to using "class" in somewhat different ways when analyzing the present and/or future than when analyzing the past.

./english/278.txt:55:It can be, because class consciousness brings together (and is equally a part of) both the function and group aspects of class. To begin with, it is the understanding that is appropriate to the objective character of a class and its objective interests. We can call this the objective aspect of class consciousness. Given this is the place and function of a class and this its objective interests, its class consciousness must be such and such. The one is deducible from the other. It is an imputed class consciousness. George Lukacs (1971) is the Marxist scholar most associated with this view. However, class consciousness is also the consciousness of the group of people in a class in so far as their understanding of who they are and what must be done develops from its economistic beginnings toward the consciousness that is appropriate to their class situation. This is the subjective aspect of class-consciousness.

./english/278.txt:57:Class consciousness in this subjective sense differs from the actual consciousness of each individual in the group in three ways; (1) it is a group consciousness, a way of thinking and a thought content, that develops through the individuals in the group interacting with each other and with opposing groups in situations that are peculiar to the class; (2) it is a consciousness that has its main point of reference in the situation and objective interests of a class, viewed functionally, and not in the declared subjective interests of individual class members (the imputed class consciousness referred to above has been given a role here in the thinking of real people); and (3) it is in its essence a process, a movement from wherever a group begins in its consciousness of itself to the consciousness appropriate to its situation. In other words, the process of becoming class conscious is not external to what class consciousness is but instead is at the center of what it is all about.

./english/278.txt:59:To claim that class consciousness is a group consciousness is not to deny that individuals also have something that may be called an individual consciousness, that this may include political and social elements, and that such consciousness both affects and is affected by their group consciousness (or that they may have—really participate in—other kinds of group consciousness, racial, national, religious and sexual as well as class). Individual consciousness may also be politically in advance of or lagging behind class-consciousness. Class-consciousness, however, is something other. It is kind of "group think," a collective, interactive approach to recognizing, labeling, coming to understand, and acting upon the particular world class members have in common. It is a set of mental moves and a store of knowledge and judgments reserved for these common situations and what these situations tap or set into motion, where the individual's fate is inextricably linked with the fate of the group. It is a manner of thinking that is done in common, most of the time in a common place on common problems, phrased in a common terminology, pushed forward and held back by common pressures and constraints. It is not only the Australian Aborigines who solve problems in a group (apparently to the point that individual Aborigines have trouble taking Western IQ tests). We all do. It is, at least in part, a professional deformation of intellectuals, of people whose work involves a lot of thinking in isolation, to believe that thinking can only be done by individuals operating on their own, with the result that what I have called "group thinking" is generally either ignored or denied the honorific label of "thinking".

./english/278.txt:67:Class consciousness is also different from individual consciousness, as we said, by having its main point of reference in the situation of the class and not in the already recognized interests of individuals. It is this that enables Marx, on occasion, to conceptualize class consciousness as an aspect of class (again, grasped as a complex relation), with the implication that workers are not fully a class until they become class conscious (1934, 19). The main content of class consciousness, therefore, is not to be had by asking members of the class what they think or want, but by analyzing their objective interests as a group of people embodying a particular societal place and function. It is, again, the appropriate consciousness of people in that position, the consciousness that maximizes their chances of realizing class interests, including structural change where such change is required to secure other interests. What these same people, occupying this same place, think before they acquire this class consciousness is not really class consciousness, except in so far as it is used to highlight what is not there. In this sense, and to this degree, class consciousness is a consciousness waiting to happen. It exists in potential, not an abstract potential but one rooted in a situation unfolding before our very eyes, long before the understanding of real people catches up with it.

./english/278.txt:71:Finally, and possibly what distinguishes it most from individual consciousness as ordinarily understood, class consciousness is elastic and changing, and encompasses all the stages in the process of becoming what it potentially is along with the time it takes for this is occur. As such, class consciousness cannot be captured in any instant, nor can it be expressed in any simple, straightforward description. The time frame is stretched to cover the whole journey, but it is a journey with an end, a goal established by the situation of the class as such and evoked by all the conditions and pressures that constitute that situation, though most members of the class may not recognize this until very late. One of the most puzzling features in Marx's use of "class" is how he could claim that class is "the product of the bourgeoisie" while maintaining that "All history is the history of class struggle," and refer to various pre-capitalist groups as "classes" (Marx and Engels, 1942, 77; 1945, 12). In fact, class (in all of its aspects), class struggle, and class-consciousness all develop, mature, become over time, and only in late capitalist society do they realize their full potential. It is in this sense that each may be said to be a product of capitalism. In so far as many of their elements are present earlier, however, class, class struggle, and class consciousness can be said—if this limited sense is kept in mind—to have existed before. Moreover, viewed as historical processes, the mature form of each can be taken as present as a germ in its earlier stages and vice versa. Such is the nature of becoming as a dialectical category. As regards class-consciousness at the present time, rather than what any single person thinks, class-consciousness refers to how, when, from and towards what a whole class of people are changing their minds.

./english/278.txt:75:But why do Marxists insist on making Marx's view of the most probable future of class consciousness the key element in understanding its present form? Are we unnecessarily burdening class consciousness with something that just is not there? Why can't we be satisfied with whatever class consciousness emerges from simply questioning workers and leave it at that? Our answer can be summarized in the following points: (1) That class consciousness has a future is incontestable. (2) No one can avoid having some idea of what that will be, as evidenced by our expectations, by what surprises us, and by what developments we think need to be explained and accounted for. (3) Marx arrives at his idea of what class consciousness will become through an analysis of the changes going on in the conditions in which people live and work (this seems reasonable). (4) Non-Marxist social scientists also have an idea about the future of class-consciousness, though it is generally left implicit (see number two above). Most probably believe that class-consciousness will stay more or less the same, while some may believe that every conceivable change is equally possible. (5) The basis for the first view could only be that it is class consciousness in its present state that determines future class consciousness, or that the other conditions that influence class consciousness, whatever they are, will never change, so that the effect they have now will continue into the future. The basis for the second view could only be that there is nothing we know about our past and present that is relevant to learning about our likely future, or that what we do know suggests that no one outcome, no particular development in class consciousness, is more likely than another. On the surface, none of these arguments seem reasonable, so that the beliefs they support—that no change in class consciousness will occur, or that every kind of change is equally possible—are never openly defended.

./english/278.txt:89:What is the alternative? Until now, I have been constructing a dialectical conception of class consciousness that could be studied directly and not only as a dependent aspect of class structure or class struggle. In what follows, I sketch what such a study would look like, its advantages and problems, and its relation to political practice. The dialectical alternative to examining class consciousness in the attitudes of individual workers, then, is to study the objective aspects of class consciousness in the situation of the class, and its subjective aspects in the thinking and activity of the group of people who make up the class, and both of these over time. On the objective side, what we have called the situation of the class must be studied on two different levels of historical specificity. First, we must clearly establish the place and function of the working class together with its objective interests in capitalism as such, that is in capitalism as it has existed for the past three to four hundred years, in order to derive the class consciousness that is appropriate. Reconstructing this situation not only provides the goal or finished form of class consciousness but puts us in touch with social and economic pressures arising out of the most basic relations of capitalism that move the actual consciousness of living workers in the direction of this goal. Given our concern with class consciousness, the focus is on the workers and hence the rest of capitalist society comes into view chiefly as part of the necessary conditions and/or results of the workers appearing and functioning as they do. In reconstructing how capitalism looks and works from the vantage point of the working class, there are some tendencies that deserve special attention. Among these are the accumulation and centralization of capital, the falling rate of profit, the increasing rate of exploitation, and the immiseration of the working class (that is relative to capitalists and viewed on a world scale). Though sometimes referred to as "laws," Marx's tendencies all admit—indeed often require—counter-tendencies, and should be understood and investigated with this in mind.

./english/278.txt:93:On both of these levels, in capitalism overall as well as in modern capitalism, there are also a number of relations and tendencies that pull in the opposite direction, that make the attainment of class consciousness more difficult. As regards capitalism in general, the most important of these find expression in Marx's theory of alienation: workers are separated from—and hence lack control over—their activity, products, and other people, at work and throughout social life. While the resulting feelings of isolation and powerlessness (both subjective factors) receive most of the attention, the core of alienation lies in the workers' objective situation as workers in capitalism. Oddly enough, Marx never offered the workers' alienation as part of the explanation for the continued inability of the mass of the workers to become fully class conscious, just as he never introduced the progress many workers have made in becoming class conscious as a factor qualifying their alienation. Yet, each condition acts as a major check on the other, and until we succeed in integrating the theories with which Marx grasps these opposed developments—something that must be left for another time—we will not be able to gauge with any accuracy the real potential for change inherent in each one.

./english/278.txt:97:How these contradictory tendencies (promoting class consciousness and undermining it - whose main parts I have only been able to list) are related to each other in each modern capitalism and capitalism overall, and how the sum of the tendencies in the former facilitate, give expression to, or inhibit all the tendencies in the latter constitute the core of a Marxist study of the objective side of class consciousness. One way to bring out the objective character of these heterogeneous elements is to subsume them under the notion of class struggle. The class struggle is not, as most commentators left and right would have it, a subjective, consciously chosen form of class behavior. Rather, it is "the form of motion of classes." It is what a class—grasped as a place/function in the system, as the group of people who embody this function and who as a result tend to develop other common characteristics, and as the common element in their alienated social relations—becomes in and through its complex interaction with other classes, particularly over class interests and the conditions and possibilities for their realization. All that a class does, or what happens to it, that directly or indirectly affects its power vis-à-vis other classes is class struggle. Viewed in this way, class struggle encompasses what Gramsci calls the war of position, the adding and subtracting of advantages and disadvantages, as well as what he calls the war of movement, or those occasions when all that has been acquired (and lost) serves to fuel more direct forms of confrontation; and both of these "wars" rage throughout all sectors of society (1971, 108-110, 229-235, 238f., 243). The contradictory tendencies within class consciousness that we referred to above are recast here as internally related causes, expressions, and effects of the interaction of classes.

./english/278.txt:109:Having acquired some understanding of the objective aspects of class-consciousness, of the consciousness appropriate to the situation of the class together with everything in the situation that is working toward its full actualization, we are now ready to examine its subjective aspects. Proceeding in the opposite order, dealing with subjective aspects first, there is a serious danger of mistaking a part, usually the psychology of workers, for the whole, and ignoring the objective aspects of class consciousness or treating them as minor conditions and qualifications. Psychology today has become a lot like Pac-Man, gobbling up one discipline after another. The only sure way to avoid psychologizing social problems is by laying out the main objective conditions (pressures, constraints, and options) in and with which people think and act first. Then, and only then, can their thinking and acting be judged for what they are.

./english/278.txt:115:Dialoguing with a group of workers in a stable situation, where nothing dramatic has taken place, is less revealing but still worthwhile. Working class colleges and high schools, hiring halls, trade union meetings, welfare offices, bars and churches in working class neighborhoods, hospital waiting rooms, dances, summer camps, sporting events, funerals, over food, waiting for parades or demonstrations to begin, parks and beaches provide some of the occasions for such research. The particular locale chosen, of course, will greatly influence what can and cannot be learned. Still, each of these is an occasion for the group to interact and react to the researcher's questions and provocations as a group, and for studying class consciousness this is crucial. How many people speak, the way in which answers feed into or oppose each other, the intensity with which positions get expressed, the nods of the head as well as the expletives are all raw data for such a study.

./english/278.txt:117:It is probably worth stating once again the importance we attach to the group, and therefore to group studies, for understanding class consciousness. Class consciousness is an evolving quality of the class. It progresses in and through the class's evolving response to its determinate situation and corresponding interests. The class displays the level of its consciousness, the factors that are currently influencing it most, and the direction and pace of its development whenever workers interact with each other, which occurs in all the different subgroups in which members of this class come together. Approached on their own, individual workers may not even know or feel or be able to put this consciousness into words. For the individual, class consciousness is not so much something they have or do not have as it is something they give expression to or participate in when in a group along with other workers, when acting and thinking in their capacity as group members dealing with the situation and problems that are peculiar to the group. At these times, the people in the group both perceive what is taking place (which includes how they hear the questions of the researcher) and respond to it (intellectually, emotionally, and practically) differently than each individual does or would on his own.

./english/278.txt:119:Changes of mind, in particular, are strongly affected by the group. For example, in a group that is moving in one direction, it is easier for the individual, given some degree of identification with the group, to change his mind in the same direction than it would be if he were on his own. While in its more conservative moments, of course, a group may have just the opposite effect. Earlier, I said class-consciousness is how, when, and toward what a whole class of people change their minds. It is because most of the changes that make up the content of class consciousness take place in group interaction and can only be observed and correctly evaluated in this context that the group must be the focus of our study.

./english/278.txt:125:There are, of course, serious dangers of distortion in conducting the kind of interviews and interventions I have called for, especially those held in less conflictual situations. Here I can only sketch the most important of these. What does one do, for example, with the people who choose to remain silent, a problem that grows of necessity with the size of the group? In part, and where this is feasible, this can be dealt with by asking everyone for their opinion. Beyond this, one must be attentive to various signs and noises that show how people feel about what is being said and done. Enthusiasm, delight, anger, disgust, disappointment, and resignation are all relatively easy to detect, but the bulk of what constitutes class consciousness remains beyond our perceptual reach. An equally serious problem is that people tend to be more spontaneous and truthful in responding to questions when they are dealing with pressing life problems.

./english/278.txt:127:Caught at more relaxed moments, their responses are often shaped by demands other than truth. They may not want to appear stupid, or extreme, or to say something that will make them into outsiders in their group. Many respondents also say what they think the researcher wants or expects to hear, and/or will make the researcher like them more. In many cases, it is very difficult to get at the intensity with which people believe and feel something, and therefore to judge what actions may follow or what kind of effort is required for them to change their views. Avoiding these and similar pitfalls altogether is probably impossible, but their distorting effects can be minimized by giving careful attention to interview tactics, questions asked, language used, and the kind of credentials and prior connections with which one appears on the scene. Unfortunately, these are not matters we can address at this time.

./english/281.txt:2:BARBARA BIGLIA (Questionnaire) 1) How would you define your social class? (Explain your terminology) BARBARA BIGLIA: What is social class? I think the meaning of this category varies both culturally and geographically between north and south Europe. In my experience here in Spain (and this also applies to Italy), the class divide is not as vast as Britain. This does not mean that people are not discriminated against for lots of reasons (including economic ones), but not necessarily in the same way as Britain. To be sure there exists very rich and very poor people but the majority of people are part of the ‘middle class’. We are not rigidly defined by class from childhood. Our accent, schooling or university education does not define us for life. I believe that in the south, with the demise of farmers, the introduction of flexibility into the labor market, the increase in competition and the isolation felt by so many in urban centres, class consciousness is almost disappearing. Perhaps new immigrants could potentially constitute a class group but unfortunately, most of the time, they are divided along ethnic lines. Within this panorama, I think of myself as fortunate because I have a lot of resources at my disposal and many close friends but I am also aware that my grant is precarious and I lack an independent source of income. I recognize I am fortunate because I probably enjoy certain objective middle class privileges but, in any case, I still feel (mostly) working class.

./english/281.txt:5:3) What is your assessment of the current status of capitalism and the class struggle? BARBARA BIGLIA: I am not a political theorist and I feel uncomfortable dishing out a general ‘prescription’ on this issue. So the best I can do is to give an impressionistic account. Firstly, I believe that ethnographic differences are really important. Even if oppression is globalized, it does not hurt people in the same manner. We live within different zones of capitalism, which subjects us to a differentiated system of domination. In some areas there still exists a certain class-consciousness that seems to have died out elsewhere. The presence or absence of social networks underline cultural differences. Today the class struggle represents an interesting and potentially subversive factor in certain areas of the planet. However, in other areas we need to take onboard non-class issues in order to fight oppression imaginatively. Finally, I am pessimistic about the anti-globalization movement, which in my view is rapidly becoming a reformist project with a radical mask.

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

./english/281.txt:13:The first big set of doubts arose when I read the expression ‘class struggle’. My political engagement started years ago with the end of the strong working struggle movement in Italy. We found ourselves, in the second part of the 1980s, without the class (consciousness) that, in theory at least, is meant to be related somehow to struggle; the factories around us where closing and consciousness was almost non-existent. Most of the old activists had disappeared; some were in prison, others in exile, most dropped out of public life; almost all the ones still visible became completely institutionalised. So, as young activists, we moved from the class referent to a more complex set of references including the oppressed and marginalised- subjects more similar to us. For this reason I find it odd to talk about the ‘class struggle’ in the here and now even if it may be possible elsewhere. If Social Movements do not entirely consist of middle and upper class ‘activists’ then neither are they a genuine expression of the working classes in the ‘Marxist’ sense of the term3. The second set of doubts arose when I tried to think about Critical Psychology. What exactly is it? Does a critical psychology exist? Is it not better to talk about Critical Psychologies? Am I a critical psychologist? I can’t really give an answer to these questions because it seems to me that many people, influenced by different ideologies and practices, describe themselves as critical psychologists. Before writing this article I looked through the library database and came to the conclusion that the only thing these critical psychologists had in common was that they are not yet part of mainstream psychology. Burman4 writes, ‘Critical psychology is what people do in challenging the oppressive and disingenuous actions done by psychologists or in the name of psychology’. But in reality, being ‘critical’ is becoming fashionable and not all the people calling themselves critical have the ethical or political principles expressed by Erica. At the same time, I have the impression that sometimes tools and instruments used by critical psychologists acquire an unwarranted radical status. As Gordo-Lopez suggests,

./english/281.txt:17:Viewpoints that arise from potential subversive situations [...] are incorporated, neutralised and redefined within the discipline as methodological innovations or merely as qualitative investigative techniques (Gordo-Lopez, 2001). In other words deconstruction and qualitative methods can be used to justify reactionary practice. Deconstruction and relativism, for example, have been used by some to posit the notion that the Holocaust was an invention and to propagate their historical revisionist point of view. Has a similar process aided the reabsorption5 of critical psychology? I feel myself closest to the standpoint of ‘anti-psychiatry’ in the sense expressed by Bucalo (1997, 54), anti-psychiatry is not a theory but a practice…it is an everyday practice with which we confront other people’s experience and at the same time define our own...regarding interpersonal relations, anti-psychiatry does not limit itself to the negation of internment or the coercion of people’s subjectivities; it is furthermore an acknowledgment of those experiences/abilities within human beings. In other words being anti-psychiatry should be read as a way of being in relation to the world and the subjectivities within it. This is primarily a personal anti-psychiatry. Finally, the third set of doubts that the questionnaire evokes in me: What is the anti-capitalist movement? Is it really possible to talk about one anti-capitalist movement? For example, are the Mapuche movement, Tute Bianche or Attac part of the same struggle? Is there a lot of commonality between the anarchist perspective and NGOs’ politics? Do we fight for the same goals? Is there a common struggle? The definition of Social Movements (SM) is extremely varied and includes many groups with different styles and political positions and the attempt to find a common theory to explain them will result in homogenisation and simplification6. Even when we try to limit analysis to self-professed anti-capitalist movements we are still left with an enormous range of different groups and political options. What is the common ground? Do they work as friends or antagonists? Bearing in mind such heterogeneity, if we want to

./english/281.txt:26:9 They say activists are looking for intangible rather then material success. I think that, unfortunately, amongst activists we can find all kinds of attitudes. 10 Lots of different ethical and political positions define themselves as feminist and these distinctions are frequently so strong as to make it difficult to talk about feminism. In this context, I am referring to autonomous or radical (but not separatist) feminism. 11 This was part of the anti-psychiatric movement. The action was significant because people living in the mountains of Reggio Emilia subjected psychiatric hospitals to

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

./english/281.txt:41:17 Cecilia Cortesi (2002) e-mail to a list of younger feminist researcher (30-something) http://www.women.it/mailman/listinfo/30smthing. Reproduced with the permission of the author. 18 The law text should be found in http://www.ecn.org/telviola/L180.HTM 19 Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio (Obligatory Sanitary Therapy). A judge can decide that you have to be treated against your wishes, you can be kept in hospital and they can force you to take all the medication they believe you need. 20 Literally, ‘disqualification’. It is a judicial term meaning that disqualified people lose all legal privileges; they can’t decide on their own fate, they can’t spend their own money nor can they vote in elections. A legal guardian is designated to take all such decisions. 21 www.ecn.org/telviola 75

./english/281.txt:43:instigate difference amongst groups (the banal discourse on violence is one of them, see Lopez-Adan, 1996). However, I firmly believe that the division between ‘physical’22 and theoretical activists is the most significant factor. This is a division that academics actively encourage. This is because the intellectuals tend to reproduce exclusive jargons that continue the very technical and social divisions of labor they purport to want to deconstruct. Fearing academic manipulation, groups then tend to either evolve around identities devoid of theoretical elements, or exalt theories. Both alternatives when not destroying the subversive power of the collective imaginary at least limit its scope. An additional problem is that the ‘anti-capitalist movement’ still contains figures who consciously or otherwise wish to resurrect Marxist-Leninism’s desire to ‘educate the people’. Its more intellectual dimension tends to normalise certain positions and by default exclude other struggles as secondary. For example, women have frequently been asked to subordinate their struggles against discrimination to those of the class (Charles, 2000, Diaz, 1983, Sardella, 2001, Schuman, 1998, Vázquez et al., 1996). All this causes a separation between the alleged intellectuals and those who practice politics from within their own skin. In this context the comments of some Chilean activists that I interviewed in 2001 are of relevance23. These pobladoras24 have been fighting for years firstly against the dictatorship and today against the falsehood of the democracy and the various discriminations (class, ethnic and gender ones) that persist. They may not possess academic knowledge but if you stop and listen to their words an entire world of wisdom unfolds before your eyes. They have recounted several experiences to me when they felt excluded by professional feminist activists: They don’t look at you badly, but the discourse they use is not pluralist … it is not a discourse that involves pobladoras women…there are just a few professional women who ‘come down’ to

./english/281.txt:44:22 Physical activists are those who perform the tasks that the movement requires, those who clean the toilets, cook, work behind the bar, put their body into actions etc…Theoretical activists are those who generally plan the activities, write flyers, make contacts with other groups, talk as representatives. Women of any age, young males and people from ethical minorities or lower class background are frequently reduced to the role of physical activist. 23 This interview is part of my PhD on the reproduction of gender discrimination within the Radical Social Movement. More information on the thesis on http://www.ub.es/donesMS 24 Pobladoras is a South American term used in relation to women (pobladores is for men) that live in poor neighbours.

./english/281.txt:47:the level of the people, [but you get the impression they feel] if you aren’t a professional you are nobody. They become more enraged on hearing pious progressive discourse on an abstract poverty, ... when we are here fucking hungry and are fed an excellent discourse … [you realize how empty it is] and that you are defrauded by It … for that reason organized women don’t trust professionals very much… In this case feminist professional attitudes caused feelings of exclusion. Similarly, various anti-capitalist groups create discourses and practices that exclude people who are not used to theories. Once again the role played by intellectuals is to erect barriers that maintain the separation between ‘popular’ energies and ‘revolutionary’ discourse. Critical contradictions and travelling within/out movements Some may agree with my criticism of mainstream theories but argue that they cannot possibly apply to critical theory since the latter operates within a different schema. I believe, however, that my criticisms do apply to critical theory as well. Below I will try to expand on this. The critic frequently engages in normative practice and more specifically academics expect their students to follow their lead in their work. At the beginning it may be necessary to create a group identity to protect the minority group from the incursions of ‘official’ theories (Biglia, 2003), but later on it becomes a way of monopolising the power. One of the reasons for this process maybe the necessity of working in a relaxing way. As Ussher makes clear: […] Today critical psychology means something different to me. It is not fighting for small change, for recognition, for an inroad into the mainstream of psychology. Those endeavours are admirable, and I have nothing but respect for those who wish to pursue that path […]. But I don’t have the energy, or the inclination, any more. I have come to the conclusion that innovative, meaningful research or teaching cannot be carried out, at least without great personal cost, if critical psychologists are having to justify their existences on a daily basis; if they are having to explain, persuade and cajole, rather then engage

./english/281.txt:50:in dialogue with others of a similar disposition and intellectual bent; if they have to watch their back (p 19). It is significant that even the Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZ) which Hakim Bey (1985) wishes to see transformed into Permanent Autonomous Zones (PAZ) are generally characterised by two or three individuals in charge of hefty ideological decisions. So dialogues that Ussher wants to see develop become closed dialogues where it is advantageous to conform to the critical ‘party line’. The biggest problem is that, within supposedly horizontal groups, which are not explicitly authoritarian, it is difficult to recognise leadership and subject it to criticism. This is a strange process in which we are all ‘free to think’ as our unacknowledged leaders, otherwise we are out. Moreover, such groups tend to become endogamous in order to avoid contamination from other critical sources and frequently end up not co-operating with each other because they all believe they possess the deeper and more radical critique of the status quo. Theoretically there may not exist a separation between knowledge-theories and activism. We are critical academics so we must be on the same side as activists. We organize horizontally and we don’t want to manipulate the movement. But we celebrate our arrival to a meeting with half an hour of theoretical chat not understood by non-specialists. I want to mention two experiences in this regard, one from my activist space and the other from my academic milieu. The first experience comes from an assembly of activists I was involved with around ten years ago in Italy. In theory it was a closed group (just for militants with similar politics), organized horizontally as a response to an upcoming protest. The group consisted of about 30 people. Most of us, between 18 and 24 years old, learned about the meeting just a few days in advance. The meeting started with a 90-minute talk by two academic-activists who read from a written paper. After their talk they ask if there was any disagreement with their analysis. I felt as if they were mocking us. Obviously for me, as for most of my friends, it was impossible to understand let alone provide an impromptu critique of a highly complex analysis. Faced with this interrogation all we could do was to try to decide whether we should remain in the group or leave. Another example comes from a few years ago in Spain, during a meeting between critical teachers and students who wanted to change academia. All

./english/281.txt:56:to subvert academia by taking a radical position in the classroom and research. I agree with the criticisms friends made regarding the pessimism of this paper. Perhaps we have to look at the positive experiences being developed outside Academia. Although this article is not the space to enter into a deep analysis of that space, I like to mention it briefly. Research-militants from different disciplines are fighting against the commercialisation of knowledge and are producing shared-knowledge (e.g., the GNU Project, Copy left), organizing autonomous teams of research (e.g., Universidad Nomada, Laser, Facoltá di Fuga, Universidad de las Madres de Plaza de Mayo). And many people use shared-knowledge in their neighbourhoods or work places. Reappropriation of knowledge is a necessary tool for social transformation, nevertheless, I believe it is just as important we maintain a strong self-critical attitude. And finally what we should do as researcher-academics? …A bit less talking, a bit more doing!● Acknowledgment It would take an entire book to mention all the people that, in some way, have contributed to the formation of opinions expressed in this paper. For this reason I just make a collective acknowledgment. Firstly, to all the activists that shared with me their analyses especially friends from Italy, Catalonia, Chile, Britain, Spain and Argentina. Secondly, I owe a real debt of gratitude to autonomist feminists particularly to UEP and MPKbarna groups. At the same time I have to thanks all the people that without defining themselves as activists have a strong social commitment to everyday life. Moreover, thanks to Erica Burman and Ian Parker who introduced me to the most committed parts of critical psychology. Last but not least I would like to acknowledge Jordi Bonet-Martin, Ricard Moreno-Alegret and Laurence Cox, who commented on the first draft of the work. To all of you lots of hugs and cariños, grazie! 80

./english/282.txt:21:We owe to Gramsci (1999a: 134ff) a distinction between 'traditional' and 'organic' intellectuals. The former term refers to those who played an 'intellectual function', essentially as part of the status quo in early 20th century Italy, and the latter to those who played a similar function in popular movements and parties. By the first term, Gramsci denoted such people as university professors, lawyers, priests, and others; by the second, above all, activists of the Communist and other workers' parties. Gramsci emphasizes the 'directive' activity of intellectuals of both types - as e.g. engineers and small-town doctors but also as organizers. Eyerman and Jamison (1991) make a similar distinction between 'established' and 'movement' intellectuals. These distinctions seem quite useful. Here we will distinguish between 'academic' and 'movement' intellectuals, suggesting an initial polarity between them, in terms of the tasks they undertake and the goals they pursue, their audiences and their relationships with them, their accreditation, and - perhaps most important - the forms of knowledge they produce. And we can notice one immediate difference. To be an academic intellectual is, in a sense, always to be a member of the 'intelligentsia'; but a worker or a peasant can be a 'movement intellectual.'

./english/282.txt:47:Consider a couple of examples. The first concerns two treatments of the question of 'revolutionary situation' - in Lenin and in Tilly. Lenin (1966) argues that it is vitally necessary to recognize what is and what is not a revolutionary situation. And he offers a famous generic proposition: revolutionary situations involve the simultaneous presence of two crucial elements, the ruling class's inability to rule in the old way and the people's refusal to be ruled in the old way. If either of these is absent, says Lenin, there isn't a revolutionary situation. Lenin's definition, suitably adapted and developed, can be taken as the basis for an academic disquisition on revolutionary situations (witness Tilly 1978, 1993).

./english/282.txt:56:All of this betokens a certain 'distance' between much social movement theory and actual social movement practice. To rephrase Marx's comments in the Theses on Feuerbach (1845), social movement theory is essentially contemplative in nature, at least with respect to its subject. (6) Social movements, that is, are engaged with as objects of study to be observed, described and explained; not as active processes that people engage with, experience and transform.

./english/282.txt:73:Second, movement intellectuals produce another kind of essentially practical idea: the strategic and tactical proposal. This is a complex proposition which links together a reading of the nature of the present situation (including its relevant history) with an action plan (including a risk-assessment etc) for the movement in the immediate future. It speaks to a 'we' with which the movement intellectual claims an immediate identification. That 'we' may be a formally defined 'movement' or 'party', or may be framed as 'ordinary people,' 'workers,' 'the Catholic community', 'Blacks', etc. Such propositions take a typical form: Given the overall situation, and our purposes and resources within it, this is how we should act. The argumentation for such proposals may indeed include a whole raft of what Lofland terms 'generic propositions' of different kinds: lessons drawn from previous movement experiences as well as pieces of folk wisdom and moral homily (e.g., 'when the going gets tough only the tough keep going'). The strategic proposal seeks to grasp a sufficient account of the totality of a current situation, in order to guide action, rather than to capture a single aspect of the situation in a form where it can be compared with similar aspects in different situations. Its persuasive force depends on its capacity to combine an explanatory account of the complexities and contradictions of the recent past and present with a proposal for active intervention in the immediate future. So generic propositions are useful, but only as more or less casual supports for practical arguments. (8), (9)

./english/282.txt:95:As to how people become movement intellectuals, acquire the necessary skills and confidence, present themselves, and become accepted in the role, we can only offer some scattered suggestions. Gaining the 'right to speak' may derive from a claim to represent a specific 'community' or organization, from demonstrated commitment to a cause, from being accredited by the media or from authorship of a well-known book, etc. Nancy Naples (1998a) discusses the mentoring of potential leaders, with 'old hands' proposing them as speakers, encouraging them to put themselves forward for particular positions, introducing them to informal networks of activists, apprenticing them, giving them 'the real story' behind given conflicts, interpreting statements for them and so forth. The birth of new movement organizations may provide opportunities for individuals who were excluded from leadership in older ones: Ella Baker played foundational role in SNCC after battling against the practical sexism of the Baptist ministers who headed the SCLC; militant shop stewards may play powerful roles in 'unofficial' union movements in opposition to existing union bureaucracies.

./english/282.txt:109:For many activists, for example, it is a turning-point to be at the receiving end of police aggression and to discover that an institution they have been brought up to see as underwriting their safety and the moral order is in fact prone to violence against 'ordinary people' (as they may still see themselves), pursuing what they understand to be eminently moral (and often altruistic) pursuits. (This has been documented extensively in relation to riots (Drury 1996, Reicher 1996, Waddington 1996): police violence breaches the moral order not in relation to those who already oppose the police, but in relation to people who do not expect it.)

./english/282.txt:115:In these circumstances, Marxism may present itself as the summum of activist theory, a paramilitary organization may present itself as the peak of practical radicalism, or a new religious movement may present itself as the locus of all true knowledge. Along with these, university knowledge - perhaps particularly in peripheral societies - can also be of interest, not least because it can offer a practical and economic resolution to the problems people are struggling with, as well as an intellectual and emotional one.

./english/282.txt:119:It can also, however, find itself subject to a 'brain drain', in which people associated with movements 'migrate' to universities. This process is no doubt very different as between different movements and activists (class, for example, makes a major difference), and the nature of the migration varies: attempting to fit in to the new culture, making careers out of public critiques of ex-comrades, turning activist knowledge to academic uses, or (more positively) finding a 'day job' that enables particular kinds of activism to continue, or becoming a 'sympathetic expert'. We could then turn our initial question around and ask, 'What have activists brought to academia?'

./english/282.txt:189:'Common worldview assumptions' may not be stated explicitly, but any social science notion of 'rationality' (Weber 1984) implies that at some level we can usefully describe actors as holding implicit assumptions about the nature of the world that they operate within. Certainly it is a normal part of activist life to argue about how the world works: to point to assumptions about e.g. 'ordinary people', 'the media', 'the police', 'our members' or whatever as a foundation for claims about what we should do. Some level of cognitive praxis related to the 'cosmological', then, is certainly present in the experience of activism, even though it is often manifested in disagreements about the nature of the 'cosmos' activists operate in.

./english/282.txt:219:In more active movements, rather than 'cosmology' determining 'action', people often radicalize their understanding of how the world works through the process of conflict with adversaries and the attempt to convince the unconvinced; the 'programme' similarly is something which is often implicit in the choice of particular battles over others, the formation of particular alliances, and the creation of alternative social relations - what Fantasia (1988) has memorably called 'cultures of solidarity'.

./english/282.txt:228:Similarly, Irish working-class community organizers may refuse the term 'activist' as referring to something alien to the everyday life and culture of the communities they see themselves as part of - while nevertheless being involved in processes of discussion, disagreement, conflict and education within those communities. In these cases, people are involved in a struggle over the meaning of everyday culture, and may set limits on the extent to which movement discourses are allowed to develop independently.

./english/282.txt:236:The Anarchist FAQ, in fact, goes rather beyond this. Its primary location is not a newsgroup but a website, and printed versions are sold by anarchist groups and distributed by anarchist publishing networks. Rather than introduce people to a mailing list, it introduces people to anarchism. The document itself is produced (it is in constant development) by a number of reasonably well-known anarchist activists.

./english/282.txt:251:A third kind of purpose is to provide material for arguing in favour of anarchism in general, with people who are neither self-identified 'anarchists' nor necessarily activists of any kind: this consists of responses to common objections (e.g. human nature, the need for leaders etc.), put in the form of short, 'ready-to-use' arguments.

./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/283.txt:11:In other words, it was a place for people who desire engagement with theory/philosophy as both a practice that informs radical politics and as a locale for activism. Of course, this is not at all the same thing as saying that this is the only space for activism that ‘we’ might value or engage in. Further, a hope was for the initiative to provide an opening where it might be possible for people to communicate across - and unravel - both disciplinary divides and the activist/academic boundary.

./english/283.txt:28:In other words, for those of us attempting to utilise and practice academic/teaching/writing/theory spaces as spaces for radical and critical engagement, these in themselves constitute activist practice. But distance from this view was apparent from the comment, midway through this particular meeting, that ‘we’ve hardly talked about activism at all’! In return, several people articulated their problems with a sense of the moral burden and high ground assumed by ‘activists’. This generates insecurity about being ‘hardcore’ enough in relation to the ‘hierarchies’ of activist engagement. Some also felt that the moral high ground assumed by some activists can become a mask for other problematic behaviours (as someone said, ‘I know a fuck load of activists who are assholes’; obviously, the same is true for academics … ). Plus, as commented on in relation to Reclaim The Streets, people become involved with activist groups and networks for a whole host of reasons (social contact, desire for community, something to do, a space for the expressing of anger with multiple causes .. etc. ). Thus it might be problematic to privilege the moral as driving and explaining peoples’ (including our own) activist engagements over other reasons.

./english/283.txt:40:What’s the radical value of theory? How can theory be applied, giving currency to the notion of ‘performativity’, i.e. such that expressing something makes it actual. More to the point, how can theory be accessed and accessible - and thereby perhaps inspire and affirm radical practice - given that so many people feel alienated by the language used as well as by the styles of discussion and debate that permeate academia? Obviously this is a longstanding problem, the dynamics of which relate to things like: the divergence between an intellectual vanguard and ‘the proletariat’ in building ‘class consciousness’; the privileging of ‘expert’ knowledges in environment and development initiatives which acts to exclude and disempower local knowledges and experience; and the implications of what can been framed as a constructed gendered/masculinised style of debate in academia that has tended to valorise adversarial and interrogative practices.

./english/283.txt:56:One specific point raised was the political significance of our affective, i.e. emotional and felt, experiences. This is in relation to both understanding the ways that Empire’s biopower is variously sustained; as well as in terms of being able to draw in and validate affective domains in articulating our politics and in driving our political engagement. This means that peoples’ personal histories and experiences are important politically; particularly those that become the moments when we make conscious and embody a sense that something is not right, and that something different is possible. It perhaps even creates a radical role for the disclosure and sharing of our individual ‘stories’ in relation to our political desires and engagement, as a ‘bottom line’ for the emergence of political community. Although, ‘we’ also face a challenge in engaging with these realities if we don’t want our political encounters to become some sort of therapy group or lapse into excessive New Age self-indulgence. Here we encountered something of a perhaps predictable gender component to peoples’ appreciation of this area of discussion.

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

./english/284.txt:77:Unlike traditional folklore, Limón’s ethnography of the everyday live of a Mexican working-class community at the border is intensively reflexive. As a Mexican-American and a socially committed scholar, Limón’s presence in the text is very distinct. Since the beginning of the chapter he positioned himself at the heart of a barbeque scene. The fact that he is taking part in that intimate and exclusive activity –making tacos and laughing at chingaderas- on top of his continuous use of Spanish illustrates his intent to prove himself as not only an anthropologist but a member of that community as well. He emphasizes his sense of belonging to this subaltern class several times, presenting himself as part of it through stories and explicit terms. However, he is aware that he is not the same due to his educational and professional background as well as other opportunities which “his people” probably did not have. With the same intense feeling of belonging, he is emerged in the academic and intellectual debate showing us his knowledge about the authors and analysis of this particular topic. This tension is revealed throughout the chapter, for example:

./english/284.txt:78:“These [particular academic] discourses troubled me then for they did not speak well of these, my people, and perhaps do not speak well of me, for frankly, although with some ambivalent distance, I had a good time that Saturday afternoon” (my italics 1994: 129).

./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/284.txt:85:This reflexivity of the insider blurs the line between the observed and the observer. In a similar fashion, many of the anthropologists active in global justice movements (Barcelona, Buenos Aires, NYC, …) are embodying a more reflexive position than that of the traditional “participant observer,”. We could call this emergent ethnographic actor ‘the participant who observes’. The goal is to develop accounts of the power of grassroots movements, presenting voices of dissent and alternatives where corporate media sees marginal and unworthy people. Limón’s reflexivity is offering the possibility to envision and conceive of ethnographies of resistance from within.

./english/285.txt:28:engages with the socio-economic evolution of people and countries/ regions in the "Third World". The discipline's first constraining element is that it is closely linked with the policies of international and national aid agencies, and with the political discourse about development, and the

./english/285.txt:32:influence within mainstream institutions and the subsequent feudal warfare between various 'ideological' factions, than with any honest concern for the people being 'targeted' by development policies. In such circumstances, it is not only a genuinely critical attitude that disappears as critique must always be balanced against other, instrumental, considerations, but even theory itself, as it becomes debased into a kind of regimental battle flag to distinguish, and make shine, one 'school of thought', read: interested party, above the others (Thomas Friedman, the 'globalophile' columnist of the New York Times, latest 'Flat Earth theory' is a very good illustration of this trend) .

./english/290.txt:9:The word ≥precarias≤ means ≥precarious women workers,≤ referring to women who work in conditions of relative instability. While in many ways this is the condition of women under patriarchy and of workers under capitalism as such, the Precarias seek to analyze the present relationships of waged and unwaged work and the conditions of the women do much of this work. The phrase ≥a la deriva≤ in the name Precarias a la deriva means ≥adrift.≤ The verb ≥derivar≤ has many meanings in Spanish that do not translate clearly into English. For example, the phrase ≥derivar a otro lugar,≤ literally translated ≥drift to another place,≤ refers to when a teleoperator connects a client with someone else (a technician, etc). In instances such as this, we have translated these phrases with other less literal terms and indicated in brackets that the Spanish term was derivar. We do so to try and give some sense of the wordplay in the piece, which resonates with the groupsπ name and the conditions of being adrift that they diagnose as characteristic of many people today.

./english/290.txt:17:"[i]n the Situationist version of the drift, the investigators wander without any particular destination through the city, permitting that conversations, interactions and urban micro-events guide them. This permits them to establish a psycho-cartography based on the coincidences and correspondences of physical and subjective flows: exposing themselves to the gravitation and repulsion of certain spaces, to the conversations that come up along the way, and, in general, to the way in which the urban and social environments influence exchanges and attitudes. This means wandering attentive to the billboard that assaults you, the bench that attracts, the building that suffocates, the people who come and go. In our particular version, we opt to exchange the arbitrary wandering of the flaneur, so particular to the bourgeois male subject with nothing pressing to do, for a situated drift which would move through the daily spaces of each one of us, while maintaining the tactic's multisensorial and open character. Thus the drift is converted into a moving interview, crossed through by the collective perception of the environment."

./english/290.txt:102:* Interdependence: we take as our point of departure the recognition of the multiple dependence that is given among the inhabitants of this planet and we count social cooperation as an indispensable tool for enjoying it. The task of politicizing care leads to opening the concept and analyze the concepts that compose it: economically remunerated care, nonremunerated care, self-care and those activities that assure the sustainability of life. People depend on each other, these positions are not static and it is not only "the others" that need care. The proposal consists in destabilizing these positions, which when they are mediated by a labor relation remain even more fixed, because we want to think relations beyond those of the commodity mediations, following the logic of the gift, where one gives without knowing what, how, and when one will receive something in exchange.

./english/290.txt:126:In second place, the strike appears to us as an everyday and multiple practice: there will be those who propose transforming public space, converting spaces of consumption into places of encounter and play preparing a "reclaim the streets", those who suggest organizing a work stoppage in the hospital when the work conditions don't allow the nurses to take care of themselves as they deserve, those who decide to turn off their alarm clocks, call in sick and give herself a day off as a present, and those who prefer to join others in order to say "that's enough" to the clients that refuse to wear condoms... there will be those who oppose the deportation of miners from the "refuge" centers where they work, those who dare - like the March 11th Victimsπ Association (la asociaciÛn de afectados 11M) - to bring care to political debate proposing measures and refusing utilizations of the situation by political parties, those who throw the apron out the window and ask why so much cleaning? and those who join forces in order to demand that they be cared for as quadrapalegics and not as ≥poor things≤ to be pitied, as people without economic resources and not as stupid people, as immigrants without papers and not as potential delinquents, as autonomous persons and not as institutionalized dependents. There will be those who...

./english/292.txt:273:building which suffocates, the people who come and go. In our

./english/293.txt:33:We saw that many of these jobs in the margins: the invisible, unregulated, unmoored jobs were in no way interrupted or altered by a strike of this type, and that the precarization of the labor market had extended to such an extent that the majority of working people were not even effected by the new reforms against which the strike was directed. Therefore we tried to think of new forms of living this day of struggle by approaching and confronting these new realities. We decided to transform the classic shut-down picket into a survey-picket. Frankly, we didn’t feel up to upbraiding a precarious worker contracted by the hour in a supermarket or to closing down the little convenience store run by an immigrant because, in the end, despite the many reasons to shut down and protest, who had called this strike? Who were they thinking of? Was there even a minimal interest on the part of the unions for the situation of precarious workers, immigrants, housewives? Did the shut-down stop the productive process of domestic workers, translators, designers, programmers, all those autonomous workers for whom stopping this day would do nothing but duplicate their work the next day? It seemed more interesting to us, considering the gap between the experience of work and the practice of struggle, to open a space of exchange between some of the women who were working or consuming during that day and with those who were moving in the streets. This small, discreet sketch of an investigation was the starting point for what became the project of the ‘drifts’.

./english/293.txt:37:The exchange of that June 20th was fruitful. Not so much for what people told us here and there, or for what we made visible for ourselves and for others, as for the opening we glimpsed, the possibilities for unpredetermined encounters, the pleasure of an unclassifiable dialog, mediated by no apparatus besides the tape-recorder, camera and notepad.

./english/293.txt:109:In the Situationist version of the drift, the investigators wander without any particular destination through the city, permitting that conversations, interactions and urban micro-events guide them. This permits them to establish a psycho-cartography based on the coincidences and correspondences of physical and subjective flows: exposing themselves to the gravitation and repulsion of certain spaces, to the conversations that come up along the way, and, in general, to the way in which the urban and social environments influence exchanges and attitudes. This means wandering attentive to the billboard that assaults you, the bench which attracts, the building which suffocates, the people who come and go. In our particular version, we opt to exchange the arbitrary wandering of the flaneur, so particular to the bourgeois male subject with nothing pressing to do, for a situated drift which would move through the daily spaces of each one of us, while maintaining the tactic’s multisensorial and open character. Thus the drift is converted into a moving interview, crossed through by the collective perception of the environment.

./english/293.txt:202:In the past people struggled against the reification of daily life, primarily incarnated in work but also in the family and mass consumption, and this determined a change in business policies, particularly in the management of human resources.[13] Today security and continuity have become, in name at least, increasingly precious, although the price that must be paid for them is often too high and one ends up accepting mobility and unrestricted availability in an attempt to compose a destiny which at least is not totally prescribed. The only stable element is being in perpetual transit, the “habit of the unaccustomed”[14] which characterizes work paid by the hour, by the job, or until something better is found. Which, as our guides through the mysterious world of telemarketing commented, never really happens, such that one returns again and again to bounce off different campaigns which the virtual enterprises in the sector contract with the big communication multinationals under ever more competitive conditions.

./english/293.txt:206:In our drift through the social nursing sector, Carmen explained to us in detail how the lack of acceptable work opportunities in Spain and the demand for this kind of work in other countries is motivating a flow of young nurses who, besides working in their own field, aspire to learn languages and live in other places.[15] The passage through past and present work places –a health center in which she worked as a substitute, an attention center for drug addicts marked by organizational chaos and lack of resources, return to the health center, a training course for social workers of the IMEFE[16] for which one must sign up from one day to the next – gives the sense of the sustained unpredictability within a life which besides employment –interest, security and salary – values other types of questions: the relation with others as something which is never pre-determined and as something which is esteemed in its singularity, or this idea of “the social” as a public good which extends beyond work as socialization, learning, exchange, consciousness raising, and vital context but which, as Carmen insisted when comparing her vision with that of her mother, also a social worker, one must learn to limit, to use to one’s advantage. Carmen formulates the dilemma in this realm of action in her comparison of two interpretive frameworks: one as “working for the people” an attitude Carmen attributes to her mother, and the other “working for the system” a tactic she claims for herself. The distinction is important, demonstrating as it does how life is absorbed by work and work by life. ‘Working for the people’ one loses ones own limits with respect to work and melds one’s energies and one’s emotions in an exercise of continuous and committed sociability which attempts to overlook the mediation, in this case of the State, which exists in a health center, where the privatizing tendency has skyrocketed in recent times and where the incentive system rewards a perverse model of medicalization and neglect.[17] ‘Working for the system’, on the other hand, regulates this exercise of fusion by entering into a relation which emphasizes institutional mediation (though generally not from a critical perspective), supervising the link and embittering it by quitting from it the open, experimental and unlimited character of relation with others. We are also talking about the difference between a strictly medical focus, adjusted to the “viability” of health minimums, and a more social focus which is necessarily interwoven with the habits and histories of each and every one of the persons whom we see during our trip to the Alcobendas health center.

./english/293.txt:231:Really it’s very unpleasant, besides being an imposition. They don’t ask you if you want to wear it or not, or how you feel, or if it looks good on you or not. Nothing. They impose it upon you at some point just to make the differentiation, or to feel better, to feel that they are above this person who has her own feelings, her own ideas, who perhaps has come to do a lot of different things, to maintain her family… they don’t think about any of this, they just think in this moment that people that visit them or the family itself will see that this person is inferior, is inferior to them, nothing else.(Drift with domestic workers)

./english/293.txt:247:Image, be it for the purpose of differentiating or equalizing, is fundamental, even if one is working by telephone.[21] Image, especially if one is a woman, is part of the company, but it is also something of one’s own, something connected to the self-esteem and the perception one has of oneself in relation to others. For this reason no one wants to identify herself as a telephone operator. This double character makes it possible for the interests of the company, designed in accord with a rationalization of ‘desire’ and the ‘necessity’ to maximize profits, can appear indistinct from the interests of those who work in it: young people just passing through, university students with big plans, girls concerned about their image. This is the case of those working in telemarketing who aspire to “a better image of themselves” (in the eyes of their families, for example) who pretend they work in a “big company” in the telecommunications sector: “Nobody works for Qualytel, nobody works for Iberphone, everyone works either for Natural Gas or for Iberdrola or for Madritel or for Telefonica. Or else you can just say you work in Jorge Juan.[22]” The telephone operator, Teresa explained to us, does not identify herself by her occupation nor by her education, and certainly not by her profession, but by the name of the company that has contracted her. The important thing is to be able to speak![23]

./english/293.txt:307:“Listening and relating, especially relating with people”, thus Carmen describes what she puts to work in her functions as a nurse. Something which she shares with the telephone operators, the domestic workers, the prostitutes and other women in feminine precarious work. For us, the encounter with the telephone operators was a revelation in this sense.[27] The capacity to attend and to empathize, the anticipation of others’ desires, not so much in order to provide solutions as to make the other feel good in a more general sense, patience and the ability to produce a “telephone smile” are fundamental tools based in a common sensibility lauded by some feminists as an ‘ethics of care.’ Technical knowledge, but especially relational knowledge - something which the company rapidly skips over in a 3 day training course (unpaid and with no guarantee of work) and which is mostly learned with the help of more experienced workers - is the key to success.[28] In these training courses, and depending upon the kind of services – technical assistance, information, emergencies, sales, surveys, etc. – they establish guidelines about the length of the call, the methods of retaining, deferring or cutting the call, the line of argumentation to develop, the intonation, the prohibited words and the encouraged ones[29] or the activation of the famous ‘mute’ or ‘telephone tunnel’ through which they may leave the call on hold for any number of reasons, and to which the telephone operators have responded with Without the Mute, the title of the magazine they have produced about labor problems in telemarketing. The control over communicative capacity – emotional as well as argumentative rhetoric – constitutes a vast field for exploration.

./english/293.txt:311:Normally during the first year people see that their character gets much more dry, much more defensive, because in client attention you are the first barrier. People call you to say that something doesn’t work and you’re not there to solve the problem, you’re there to endure their anger. Then later if you can solve the problem you pass the call along or whatever you have to do, but you are there to stick it out. So its very important to differentiate, to know when you leave your work, to change and be able to smile, but its difficult… When I take a call, I know, first of all, that the guy is not mad at me, that it is not personal and that if he yells at me and then I yell at him then its going to get ugly, so I sit there with great patience and all the calm in the world, but not because they make me: because I take it like that, because I really don’t care. I understand that he has a problem but what’s it to me? It’s not my problem, so I’m going to do what I can –sometimes you can say that, sometimes no – but I have to hang on to the idea that I am going to do what I can, and even though he says I am an incompetent and I am not, I have to stick it out and not let it get to me. The problem one tends to have in this job is that you start out doing things as well as you can but you just can’t, you can’t do anything well because its really not your job to fix anything, your job is just to stick it out, and this is really hard because of course someone is there telling you something and you really do feel bad for him that his phone hasn’t worked for two days, and you can’t tell him, look, unsubscribe because no one is going to fix it. So its just a matter of putting him off, telling him that you’re going to do all that you can, and tell yourself this: that you are just doing your job. (Telemarketing drift)

./english/293.txt:323:We find ourselves once again before the dilemma of care, before the frame of mind needed to work for people and not get burned, to find some means of subjective self-preservation, of integrity in contact. As Viki explained to us, although things are bad and

./english/293.txt:327:As hard as the situation may be, you can’t fill up with resentment and bad feelings, because then those feelings bloom and you teach them. If its caring for children, you teach those children all you know. Do you understand? All that your life drags with it, and all that has made you into a special person and a particular person. You transmit to these people all that you are. But they don’t pay you for that. (Domestic work drift)

./english/293.txt:331:Another interesting element of relationship which merits further investigation is the link between people working together, which was alluded to both by the telephone operators and by our guide in social nursing. In the case of the operators, the companies attempt by all means to reduce the contact between the employees, whether by giving them little physical space to rest - as we had the opportunity to witness in situ, all squeezed together in the Qualytel office – or by using strategies oriented to generate competition and individualism, such as what they call “horizontal promotion”[30] or incentives[31] (which are also used in public health). Nevertheless, the company knows that a good portion of the work is done thanks to the exchange between the workers which assures the transmission of the savoir faire accumulated by the veterans who have been there longer, and – take note – are already more burnt-out[32], and of the information necessary in the course of the telephone calls, information which certainly does not reside in the few folders which we found in the offices, nor in the computers, but rather in the heads of those who are answering the calls. The control of this process rests in modulated management, employing surveillance techniques (listening and recording), hierarchization (operation personnel: operators, coordinators and supervisors, and structural personnel), displacement and time changes (since the job is organized by campaign some workers are located in the headquarters of the operating company while others are in the contracting company, and thus they are continually changing) and differentiation based on salary and value (of the campaign, of the sex of those who are executing it, of their wardrobe, of the company, etc.). The sense of being in transit is permanent: the scientific organization of total work.

./english/293.txt:339:Who has helped me is the team. Sometimes I wanted to go to work just in order to be with my colleagues, since I had no social life. My friends from the university have left town to work, many of my other friends too. Madrid has a super intense rhythm of work and no one has time to see each other. If I had more of my people here I’d go nuts because I couldn’t see them. So most of my emotional support is in my work. (Social nursing drift)

./english/293.txt:357:When the differences in salaries are really a minor detail because everyone is earning shit, the value of what one does, of what one is, produced inside and outside of work, becomes of primary importance. What we discussed earlier: style, bodily indications, language, cultural traditions, existential itineraries, informal competition and its reinterpretation within the bosom of social enterprise. For those people, mostly university graduates, who have worked in food service and pizza delivery and distributing flyers, this office job, say the telephone operators, represents a big improvement. We speak about “total mobilization” of a design in which everything intervenes, from environmental elements (the neighborhood, one’s appearance, the availability of various objects at one’s working station…) to the difumination of the exercise of power. Don’t deny yourself, don’t get irritated, everything is possible later…

./english/293.txt:373:It depends on the company. In some they give you a bonbon, in some they some pay more if you work on a holiday, in others you get a night supplement if you work at night, so it more or less equals out. In all the companies I think the owners have it worked out this way so each one can give some things better and some things worse. As for a general wage agreement, well, in the works committee we are habitually struggling for just that, that they fulfill the agreement to the letter. Now they’ve done something good, which is that now there’s a break from looking at the screens. Before there was a break of 10 or 15 minutes, depending on the hours you normally work, but now what there is is a five minute break for every two hours of work, to relax your eyes. Its important that people know this and that if they pressure us not to pay attention, that we have the right to the break. But what happens in this job is that if in this moment there are a lot of calls the coordinator is there to tell you “wait a moment, right now there are too many calls, or else you won’t be able to go to the bathroom.” No one knows very well what is the function of the coordinator, but that one person can tell another that she can’t go to the bathroom… anyway, with the question of the breaks, if you enter in the rhythm that everybody enters when you arrive you think, okay, I’m going to do things well and I don’t really care if I go out five minutes earlier or later, and then that is established, and very easily you end up without any break at all… So do they fulfill the agreement in general, yes, but of course its not in general, its each day of work, and since the calls are entering and you want to attend them well and they sell you this idea of professionalism… (Telemarketing drift)

./english/293.txt:405:We walk through the streets, we cross the city by bus from the zone of Embajadores to the neighborhood of Salamanca, a discrete surface but replete with marks, transitions, environmental changes inscribed in the businesses, the buildings, the urban real estate, the people. We go up Velázquez towards Jorge Juan with our noses pressed against the Christmas display windows of Loewe, a torrent of lights, golden bubbles, glitter and snowflakes swirling on the other side of the glass.

./english/293.txt:409:We pass by here every day to go to work and then to go home, so it is significant that as you go by you come across stores like this. What a display! And a purse for 100,000 pesetas. Yeah, it makes you wonder, being in this neighborhood, even for the lunch break: if you want to go down and have a coffee you know that its not going to cost what it does in the bar next to your house, so it is significant that you come here to work. At home they say “She works in Salamanca!” and it seems just like what they would have wanted, since they can’t live here they would at least like to have worked here. Many of the telemarketing companies are in la Moraleja[35] and the same thing happens, people go to work in la Moraleja, and if on top of that they go to work in a suit, imagine! The height of perfection. (Telemarketing drift)

./english/295.txt:19:I'm definitely working with some union people now. But almost all of the graduate students, the most pro-GESO and the most anti-GESO, seem to have been shocked and outraged by what happened. In fact, one of the things that has come of this, that's strangely wonderful, is that it's the first thing that really brought both sides together. The students are organizing and they've put together a petition and are already starting to take all sorts of action to try to pressure the university to reverse the decision.

./english/295.txt:25:They can tell one lie about you, get caught in it, and then next time around just make up another one and eventually the majority of the faculty will say "it doesn't matter whether what they say is true. If they hate this guy so much, then clearly his presence is divisive. Let's just get rid of him." As for the episode with the grad student: absolutely. Again, some of these people have no intellectual life. In most departments there's one or two characters like that, you know. Their power is the only thing they really have. So anyone challenges that power in any way and they react like cornered tigers. That's why they hate the union so much. That's why they go berserk if anyone stands up to them.

./english/295.txt:31:DG: If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have probably said "academics can be activists as long as they do nothing to challenge the structure of the university," or anyone's power within it. If you want to make an issue of labor conditions in Soweto, great, you're a wonderful humanitarian; if you want to make an issue of labor conditions for the janitors who clean your office, that's an entirely different story. But I think you're right, something's changing. I mean, I'm sure it's not like there's someone giving orders from above or anything, but there's a climate suddenly where people feel they can get away with this sort of thing, and the Ward Churchill and Massad cases obviously must have something to do with that. I've been hearing a lot of stories, in recent weeks, about radical teachers suddenly being let go for no apparent reason. They don't even have to dig up something offensive you're supposed to have said any more - at least, in my case no one is even suggesting I did or said anything outrageous, in which case, at least there'd be something to argue about.

./english/295.txt:33:If I had to get analytical about it, maybe I'd put it this way. We're moving from the neoliberal university to the imperial university. Or at least people are trying to move us there. It used to be as long as you didn't challenge the corporatization of the university, you'd be basically okay. But the neoliberal project - where the politicians would all prattle about "free markets and democracy" and what that would actually mean was that the world would be run by a bunch of unelected trade bureaucrats in the interests of Citibank and Monsanto - that kind of fell apart. And of course the groups I've been working with - People's Global Action, the DANs and ACCs and the like - we had a lot to do with that. It threw the global elites into a panic, and of course the normal reaction of global elites when thrown into a panic is to go and start a war. It doesn't really matter who the war's against. The point is once you've got a war, the rules start changing, all sorts of things you'd never be able to get away with otherwise become possible, whether in Haiti or New Haven. In that kind of climate, nasty people start trying to see what they can get away with. "Fire the anarchist for no particular reason? Maybe that'll work."

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

./english/298.txt:100:There is a bit more work on the student as a future worker, especially as a mental labourer, but very little. It’s not framed as a question of a reserve army, but rather as a question of ‘extended youth,’ which young people are represented as ‘choosing.’ It’s really a version of the Puritan discourse, where your social and economic positioning is read as a function of your moral state. The under-employed (with ‘slack time’) are so because they’re morally slack, therefore require the benevolent intervention of work disciplines such as speed-up.

./english/299.txt:37:So we designed what would be this second phase and we spoke of giving continuity to this project in three different but not unrelated ways: (1) a second cycle of drifts, (2) a series of workshops of collective reflection open to more people and (3) some interventions that would allow us to investigate possible forms of conflict.

./english/299.txt:75:On the other hand, the pragmatism that dominates regulationist discourse ≠ in which participate, in varying ways, prostitutes, businesspeople that run places of prostitution, and some feminist organizations ≠ limits them to consider the management of this activity, something that feminists allied to prostitutes years ago linked to a wider debate in which they included other questions which, over the years, have become less important. Among these were sexual senses and practices, their historical transformations and their strategic contribution to gender. This, which could be thought out very well from prostitution and the perspective of the prostitutes, not only concerned the women directly involved ≠ no small thing ≠ but all women. The rights of prostitutes ≠ the invention of new rights ≠ like the rights of domestic workers, have stayed in the margins of legality and, therefore, of state regulation,[15] and their visibility as subjects has had to situate itself in the center of the debate. Moreover, prostitution or sex work is a privileged location from which to speak about the value and the changing dimensions of sex in patriarchal society.

./english/299.txt:105:Another significant fact is that Spanish prostitutes and prostitutes from Western Europe in general are being progressively substituted by immigrants from Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sex work is a feminine survival strategy inseparably joined to present migrations, and together with other escapes such as marriage or sexual tourism it shapes the new circuits of globalization.[18] Sex work is a flexible kind of work which could be, and in some cases is, autonomously managed, unregulated and intermittent. In this sense, it is an opportunity for many people who find their access to a decent income and basic resources restricted on the one hand by the State (immigration laws) and on the other by the labor market. Nevertheless, this same flexible and alegal character of sex work may deepen not only the stigma but also the precariousness that weighs upon workers.

./english/299.txt:217:The third element, the generalization of feminism, forms part of the subjective horizon of Spanish women and constitutes a popular and populist tool in the hands of most parties and some brands. The acceptance of womenπs autonomy as an idea has been disseminated and individualized.[35] Despite this it bumps up against feelings of stress and difficulty when one undertakes independence (young people in their parentsπ houses, married women unsatisfied with their husbands or women charged with dependents), maternity, education, equality in promotions or the division of work. Autonomy, despite its effects upon self-esteem, ends up being little more than an ideal towards which one can barely even tend, something for ≥superwomen≤, something which may even be annoying to the extent that it is unreachable. To these aspects we must add another key factor: the aging of the population[36] which together with the falling birth rate is provoking a situation of uncertainty and, as the media say, of social alarm which in the coming years may modify or at least nuance the criminalizing discourses on immigration in favor of others which place more emphasis upon the profitable character of the migrants as a labor force, and even more dangerous, as a procreative force necessary in just proportions. Probably we will witness a combination of both orientations.

./english/299.txt:221:All these elements form part of our debates, but in the last months something has changed in us. Perhaps its that weπre getting older or that talking about these things in the first person reminds us that we too will be caretakers and eventually, cared for. Or not? To varying degrees some of us already care for the people we live with, ourselves, and in a still rather lax way, members of our families. Almost none of us have children, nor could we. One of us has them on the other side of the pond and manages one of her households from a distance, with all the uncertainty which that represents. But, letπs see, what options do we have? Many of us are mortified by the thought of living with our families, even by the thought of having to care for them; weπll see how our elders get along. We flee from emotional blackmail and affirm our desire to maintain relationships which are free, that is to say, based upon affect and not obligation. Nevertheless these same relationships ≠ more insecure to the extent that they donπt produce guarantees nor are subject to formal contracts ≠ do not produce frameworks ≠ resources, spaces or bonds ≠ for care. Okay, we havenπt married, we have constructed other kinds of units for cohabitation butä how will we deal with the need for care in these environments? Will we go back to the family? To which family, if we are the youngest members? To the partners, for those that have them? Will we have partners? Speaking in the first person together has its risks. We look back to the family even when it is not grabbing our chin and turning our face, and its difficult for us to think of each other as caretakers, or of the few institutions which we generate as facilities for care. Look out: the hardcore of care is not tea and cake on a depressive afternoon.

./english/299.txt:237:äthe jobs that came up the most were as a live-in, taking care of children, with four, five kids in incredible conditions. What comes up the most is live-in work because - just imagine, if they are looking for day workers and they pay them 80,000 pesetas for example, and they pay 90,000 to a live-in ≠ with a live-in you have a slave, because the majority of live-in work, I donπt know if there are exceptions because one canπt generalize everything, but in most cases they think they are the owners of the person who is there as a live-in. The person who contracts you thinks theyπre paying you well, theyπre giving you a house, theyπre giving you food, and using uniforms, and treating you as an inferiorä So they see the case as: Which is a better deal for me, to have a live-in or a day worker? Clearly the live-in. So the number of jobs available for day work goes down and now thereπs barely no day work to be had. There are very few jobs and only in conditions in which the people say: I donπt want to have somebody, because I donπt feel like it, I donπt have the liberty ≠ but for these reasons, not because of the exploitation but because they say: I canπt, because of personal conditions, intimacy and so on, or they donπt have space to have a live-in. But in general right now it is live-in work thatπs available, either with elderly people or with children. (domestic worker, Globalized Care Workshop I )

./english/299.txt:249:The other day a colleague at my job, I work in a place where, well, people are hard-working and have had a period of more or less decent salaries and a certain status, basically middle class, anyway this woman has two children and a husband who works in a company traveling, and the kids are fourteen and eighteen and theyπre driving her crazy, and now her mother is alone and since she fell down the other day she canπt be left alone. A woman who was widowed young and so she has been very independent since she was quite youngäso my friend said to me, ≥I just donπt know what to do≤ and I said, ≥But this is appalling, nobody can live like this.≤ So she was thinking about taking a vacation to be with her mother in July and then her mother would go with the other sister in August, but this is too much, no? So then she thought about tele-assistance, but tele-assistance is no good because what her mother really needs is company. That is, the problem isnπt just taking care of an elderly person who in a given moment might hurt herself and then the ambulance would have to come, its that what she is suffering, and to some extent what she is looking for is company and affection. So she looks at the problem and in the end she will make a contract in which she pays a shit salary ≠ because thatπs the way it is - to another woman. There is this whole sector of working people who find themselves in this juncture when the kids are still not grown, the parents are already old, and they are stuck in between with men who donπt collaborate and as I see it, even if they do collaborate the pressure that exists in the labor market is such that that wouldnπt solve the problem either, so when there is not a collective resolution of ≥we are going to do this for whatever≤ then everyone fends for themselves however they can, and one of the alternatives is to contract another woman. (Feminist activist and working mother, Globalized Care Workshop III)

./english/299.txt:255:To this we must add a central question which we already pointed out in our first stutterings and which is intermixed in each and every one of the aspects which we have gone through above and to which we will continue to refer throughout this book: affect. The literature on the ≥global chains of affection≤, which we will address later, reconstructs the bonds of care in which migrant women link the family members and people being cared for in the country of origin, the families for which they presently work, and the affective relationships they establish in the places where they live. It is not exactly a transfer ≠ those that are mothers continue to act as mothers although in a different way, they continue to be university graduates although they work in domestic service; rather it is a reordering or renegotiation of roles and, in this sense, of identities.[39] Among these renegotiations, something has happened and is happening in the Spanish context with the caretaker grandmas, who are so important and of whom so little is spoken.

./english/299.txt:287:The struggles of caretakers ≠ of housewives in impoverished countries, immigrants, social workers ≠ are still just beginning, and the burgeoning experiences point to an aggregation that could interrupt the atomization and precarization of personal services, the degradation of the public and the anguish and juggling-acts required by family commitments.[43] The struggles of (under)cared-for people, which have been significantly organized in some countries of the Third World (and have barely existed in Europe, with the possible exception of France), represent the other side of the same problems: resources, quality and cooperation. In this sense, the conflicts produced by migrants and those who work in questions of care, conflicts grounded in work but above all in citizenship, in the imaginary and in lifestyle, demand a greater degree of elaboration and confluence.

./english/299.txt:331:≥In a reticulated world, social life is composed of the successive multiplication of encounters and connections with diverse groups. The encounters are temporary but can be reactivated, and are realized occasionally at great social, professional, geographical and cultural distances. The project is the occasion and the pretext for the connection, temporarily uniting dissimilar people and presenting itself as a strongly activated extremity of the network during a relatively short period of time, but which permits the forging of more enduring links which, although they remain inactive for a while, will always be available.≤ (p.155, El nuevo espiritu del capitalismo, Madrid, Akal, 2002)

./english/300.txt:22:Just prior to the emergence of its critical wing, geography during the mid 60’s was primarily seen as a spatial science fully immersed in (or taken over by) the quantitative revolution. The subject matter addressed by the discipline was varied (from the study of glaciers to neighborhood segregation) but the theoretical bases that had often given geography it raison d’être-the synthesis of the human and physical sciences- seemed a thing of the past (Harvey and Smith 1984; p. 102). The writers of the history of radical geography often give the impression that while geography had its niche, there was a feeling of a certain stagnation (Peet 1977, Blaut 1979, Harvey and Smith 1984). It is interesting to note that up until the 1960’s there seems to have not been anything that could be called a critical ‘tradition’ or lineage. Although many geographers hark back to the work of anarchist geographers such as Kropotkin and Réclus, there had not been a body of work or string of authors that one could say had picked up where those two had left off in the late nineteenth-early twentieth century. In the decades prior to the 60’s there had been individuals and small groups of people involved in critical work (Sauer, and Lattimore are cited by some) but no ‘body’ of work that could be called ‘critical’ much less ‘radical’. Blaut attempts to explain the lack of this tradition as due, at least partly, to: the cultural monotony of the professoriate (mostly white male), the affluence (in the U.S. at least) of the post-war period and McCarthyist repression (Blaut 1979; p. 160). Harvey even ventures that due to McCarthyism, at least some ‘progressive’ geographers began to “…express their social concerns behind the supposed neutrality of ‘the positivist shield’” (Harvey 2001; p. 114). To break through this ‘quiet’ then would require something fairly massive to occur, a ‘social crisis’ according to Blaut: “Radical geography certainly emerged out of such a crisis, in my view the most serious crisis yet faced by capitalist society,” (Blaut 1979; p. 159).

./english/300.txt:32:“Local people are to be incorporated as students and as professors. They are not to be further exploited. Their point of view is given first place. It is democratic also in that if planning work results, and that is one of the main purposes of the Expedition, then the planners, the geographers, are expected to live in the mess that they create. (Bunge in Peet 1979; p. 35)

./english/300.txt:35:Those members of the community participating in the expedition had a leading role in defining the issues and problems to be researched and where the efforts of exploration would be concentrated (Stephenson 1974). Possibly one of the most interesting and stickiest points of the expedition project dealt with the point of community control: “And, most importantly, the power of the expedition itself, who hires and fires, who writes checks and so forth must be in the hands of he people being explored, risky as that sounds to academics,” (Bunge in Peet 1979; p. 39 italics original). Since these expeditions also served to provide college education in ‘explored’ neighborhoods one can imagine the issues that this would raise with university administrations in terms of management, oversight, funding, etc. and this in fact came to be one of problem points where universities could pressure and speed along the closure of an expedition (Horvath 1971). Another interesting point of methodology, when comparing to historic expedition culture, was that the desire for exploration had to come primarily from organizations and activists within the community in question. “This proved to be as crucial step: we had been invited into a community; we did not simply arrive announced. An expedition must not be an invasion,” (Stephenson 1974).

./english/300.txt:40:As mentioned earlier, it was the pressure of intense social mobilization, and geographers’ participation therein, that prompted creative responses such as the Expedition movement. In a work from 1979 were Bunge reflects on some of his own experiences and influences, he cites participation in the Martin Luther King Jr., demonstrations in Chicago during 1966 as being a particularly powerful experience. Bunge’s later encounters with community organizing in Detroit, especially through the work of Gwendolyn Warren, convinced him that people were analyzing and interpreting the world all around him and that to make his own tools and expertise more relevant he had to engage with and embrace this organizing work going on (Merrifield 1995; p.53). At least in part it seems then that the recognition on the part of Bunge of the analysis and interpretation already occurring, informed the design of an expedition model were there would be a mutual recognition of knowledge and this could lead to a collaborative mix of academic and activist work.

./english/300.txt:42:Bunge’s thinking on this is interesting since he believed in the usefulness of academic geography (which was fairly rooted in quantitative methods) but increasingly felt “the urgent political necessity to ‘bring global problems down to earth, to the scale of people’s normal lives,’”. Academic geographers for him “tend to sever theory from practice and prioritize citing over sighting,” (Merrifield and Bunge in Merrifield 1995; p. 53). To help overcome this distance for Bunge then the geographers participating in the expedition could take a journey that would bring them into contact with a new reality. “The seven mile journey from rich suburban Detroit to its poor inner city is a trip half-way around the world in terms of infant-mortality rates,” (Merrifield 1995; p. 54).

./english/300.txt:59:With regards to breaking down the walls between academy and the ‘outside’ and challenging the researcher/researched divide feminist geographers have made some impressive contributions. Ideas on these issues come out very clearly in the symposium on feminist geographic research called ‘women in the field’ from 1994 in the Professional Geographer. The contributors pointed out that the political “objectives [of research] ideally work toward critical and liberatory ends, which are not formulated in terms of altruistically saving an exoticized ‘other,’” (Nast 1994; p. 57, italics original). Katz in the same symposium discusses how to establish a “mutual learning” process amongst participants in a research project particularly with reference on how each related to structures of power (Katz in Nast 1994). Nast and Kobayashi also discuss “…forging bonds between the academy (itself a ‘field’) and the world-at-large,” (Nast 1994; p. 57). Koboyashi explains “’[t]he political is not only personal, it is a commitment to deconstruct the barrier between the academy and the lives of the people it professes to represent,’” (Koboyashi in Nast 1994; p. 57).

./english/300.txt:69:Responses to these dynamics and the discussions within geography have already begun to emerge. One notable effort is the People’s Geography project organized out of Buffalo and its effort at making research and geographical concepts relevant to social struggles (see www.peoplesgeography.org). Other initial responses come from critical development work. This work is marked by efforts to construct venues for community or organizational input on development and planning work being done by geographers. One example of this is Howitt’s work in Australia on participatory social impact assessment by aboriginal communities as an empowerment tool vis-à-vis the mining and other resource extraction industries. He specifically sees his work as responding to the ‘applied people’s geography’ called for by Harvey in 1984 (Howitt 1993). More recently, the International Association for Participatory Development has promoted or collected many studies on issues dealing with community empowerment and spatial thinking in development. Some of the issues deal with participatory GIS and participatory 3-D modeling (www.iapad.org). Even more surprising was a collaborative study between two anthropologists and a Hawai`in indigenous sovereignty group on the possible uses of GIS for indigenous self-determination and even the creation of a specifically Hawai`in GIS (Cogswell and Schiotz 1996).

./english/300.txt:70:So taking into account these developments (i.e. people’s geography project and critical development work) and the discussions about how to increase collaborative projects between activism and the academy we may be seeing the beginnings of a move by a portion of critical geography into developing new ‘contact zones’. Yet as some other geographers have noted, engagement for the large part, particularly between movements of global resistance and geographers has yet to happen. “Geographers have, as yet, made only a fragmentary engagement with these movements and there has been little detailed empirical engagement with either their organizing or spatial practices,” (Featherstone 2003; p. 405).

./english/300.txt:82:[1] It is interesting to note, that as this period in history of demobilization continued, and the Reagan era began David Harvey, in his 1984 manifesto “On the History and present Condition of Geography” makes a call for creating an “applied people’s geography” and a “popular geography” that could “open channels of communication” presumably outside of academic circles (Harvey 2001). Harvey even goes on to state that “geography is too important to be left to geographers,” (Harvey 2001; p. 116). This tone could be seen as making a call to reestablish some of the same sorts of contact zones that had occurred in the late sixties. Some time would have to pass before this interpretation of Harvey’s text would gain its due currency though.

./english/302.txt:23:Thus we propose a space open to the exchange of information, support and strategies against precariousness, in which the specific counseling ­ provided by people with experience in confronting difficult situations (related to work, health, housing, migration lawŠ) ­ is not conceived as assistential or unidirectional work sustained only by Œexperts¹, but rather the collective production of practical knowledge, a ³precarious instinct² of resistance for the empowered transformation of the different precariousnesses which touch our lives. Given that these precarious situations are intertwined and are not necessarily ordered according to established categories, falling within the domain of specific professional figures, we lean towards a transversal ³precarious instinct² which might be capable of developing forms of resistance even in the cracks of a Welfare State sometimes oriented more towards control than towards the guaranteeing of rights. We depart from the articulation between different knowledges and experiences in order to construct, beyond the exchange of information and support, a space for collective self-organization. This effort has a name: Todasacien. Agency of Precarious Affairs.

./english/302.txt:36: 1. Counselling, conceived of as a space of exchange and relation between women with experience in those areas we see as prioritary (work, legal, migration, health and housing matters) and women who need to inform, communicate, place particular demands or pose particular situations. This counsel will be open during certain hours and will serve as a point of individual entry (meeting the people of the office, space/time for collecting ideas, the detection of problems which are more or less shared and those which are more or less singular within the landscapes of precariousness in which we live) and as a node of collective organizing.

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

./english/306.txt:65:We find ourselves facing innumerable problems, among them employment which is less and less secure, life which is more and more expensive, the privatization of social services and of public spaces. Well we know that women suffer disproportionately the effects of these ills, overburdened with multiple part-time employment and the domestic and caretaking tasks which, after decades of feminist struggle, are still almost exclusively women’s turf. Women, precarious people and immigrants bear the weight of each social cut-back. Housing, thanks to wide-spread speculation, is expensive. Employment is scarce and precarious and requires special training which is also expensive. Health care is minimal and its purveyors are overwhelmed. There are barely any daycare services much less services for the elderly. And for those who have time for such things, leisure activity is limited, for lack of public spaces, to consumerism, which is also expensive not to mention boring and condescending. Institutions and advertising invite us to think of this whole situation as a series of problems for each individual to manage as she can.

./english/306.txt:67:This is not so. We must insist again: in this daily life resides the political. But that it may be recognized as such, that we may build bridges and break our isolation, that this may be conceived as the practice of citizenship, there must be spaces for us to meet each other, see each other, recognize each other. They must be public spaces open to all from which to continue the thrilling labor of forming bonds and relations between different people. They must be common spaces because the social fabric is woven upon the loom of what is shared. And the better equipped these spaces are, the less their users will be obliged to battle the walls which fall down around them.

./english/306.txt:79:Our project is a bid for public and self-managed spaces in general and also a bid for this house in particular, for its history and its structure, and for this neighborhood of Lavapies with all the specific problems it faces at this historic moment. Lavapies, faces a process of ‘rehabilitation’ which denies the active participation of the residents and turns its back on the urgent necessities of the neighborhood’s present inhabitants, opting instead for a transformation of the neighborhood which will imply expulsion and homogenization of its population. Innumerable urban investigations show that the homogenization of neighborhoods, that is, the reduction of diversity both of population and of use of space, impedes the formation of social density and leaves even more vulnerable all those who are not young, mobile, male heterosexual natives with steady employment. Women, precarious workers, migrants, handicapped people and elderly people prosper in environments in which we can all live, where all can cover our needs nearby and at decent prices, where there are sufficient social infrastructures like clinics, daycare centers and parks, where there are spaces for meeting and for organizing, where it might be possible to create a social fabric of mutual care and social cooperation and not of police control. We are talking about spaces in which an active, participative citizenship might be constructed.

./english/306.txt:95:The processes which configure the space where we move, the space we inhabit, are processes saturated with power relationships. Urban space is configured through multiple transformations and political, social and economic negotiations. Urban space, then, is a non-neutral territory. In this territory the stamp of the global capitalist order is inscribed, but it is from here, also, from these micro-spaces (from the cities, from the suburbs, from the social centres, from the Karakola), where people constantly battle and renegotiate the configuration of territories. Different desires, different necessities or concerns, political practice, victories and defeats configure the terrain through which

./english/306.txt:109:nurseries, clinics. We can say Lavapiés is an area lacking in all kinds of social resources and urban plans related to the necessities and the desires of its inhabitants. This is not unintentional. It forms part of a chain of policies which consistently attend to individual and private property interests above social and public interests. Lavapiés is a privileged area for real estate speculation. Its current re-building and the commercialisation of a young, bohemian, alternative, different, multicultural imaginary, are weapons capitalism is beginning to use to sell the area as one of the hippest and most in-demand in Madrid. Thus we confront an urban rebuilding process directed to young and wealthy people, and a process of (impossible) segregation of the poorest, oldest, migrant, illegal and otherwise marginal people. A lot of residents with old rents are barred from their own houses by real state companies that sell their apartments at inaccessible prices. Conditions for those who are able to stay, are equally hair-raising: 12 square metre flats with no bathroom inside; whole buildings supported by props and in constant danger of collapse; humid flats with no smoke outlet or ventilation. All these apartments were the ones that, with the 1997 Lavapiés Plan of Restoration, began to be recognized as sub-standard housing. The Plan promised to eliminate these houses and relocate their inhabitants. To date, none of the sub-standard housing has been eliminated nor has any resident be relocated. The inhabitants cannot pay the restorations imposed upon them and the houses meant to relocate them stand empty. None of the equipment promised for the area has been built (not even the much-desired and long-promised clinic).

./english/306.txt:195:2/ Understanding and intervening in permanent global war and the quotidian war which surrounds us. The new world order begun after September 11th and the Genoa events has established a logic of war that reduces the world to two sides- terrorists and non-terrorists, violent people and non-violent people- and these have become structures for the legitimisation of the imposed order and for the criminalizing of social movements. To break these dichotomies, to seek new means of expression that will really allow us to subvert these simplifying and oppressive models, in short, to insist upon another perspective capable of confusing these simple categories and rupturing the duality of this war empire. Mobilisations against the invasion of Iraq were full of fascinating efforts to break with this discourse. For us the question was how to place ourselves within the demonstrations: to be part of the spontaneity and the flow in the streets during those days while at the same time placing ourselves in a non-neutral way, expressing our concern about the sexist and homophobic chants and slogans, placing our bodies as complex marks impossible to subject to the simplifying, divisional and criminalizing violent/non violent discourse, while at the same time expressing the need to broaden the discourse against the war. The war, we said, does not start nor end in Iraq. Women’s bodies are used as battlefields in war; but they are also where the weight of the hidden economy is borne, whether a country is in war or not. Poverty produces wars: global war also has to do with the hetero-patriarchal order. Global war, we said, is also the daily war we suffer, fight against and negotiate daily. These processes cannot be separated from the social and immediate reality of our existence, from the

./english/306.txt:201:With these questions in mind, we created a mechanism that went beyond the Karakola, and a great diversity of people joined us: Operation Pink and its weapon of choice, the para-war , a pink umbrella with which to make fun of police repression, take it out of context and ridiculize it and thereby to fight the criminalizing of social movements. But it was also a weapon to open before the sexist and homophobic chants. We made up watchwords, we

./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:21:BUDGET Framework: The project’s first phase should be structured around two sets of workshop sessions. Each one of them should comprise two weeks. These two meetings should be separated by a period of three months during which participants would go back to their respective regions with specific tasks to fulfill. Venue of first phase: Brazil Number of participants: 60, 20 from Brazil, 10 from other countries of Latin America Caribbean and North America, 10 from Asia and Oceania, 10 from Africa e 10 from Europe. Budget for 2 meetings of 14 days each, 3 months of activities in the participants’ locality of origin between the 2 meetings, and 6 months of coordination Activity Description Cost U$ (1U$=2,9R$) Travel 2 x 10 LAC e AN x U$ 1.200 2 x 10 Asia x U$ 3.000 2 x 10 Africa x U$ 3.000 2 x 10 Europa x U$ 1.300 2 x 20 Brazil x U$ 400 186.000 Bed and Board 2 x 60 people x 14 days x U$ 40 67.200 Meeting rooms (in the same location as accommodation) 2 x 1 lecture hall for 60 people + 3 working rooms for 20 people + 1 support room x 14 days 5.000 Ground transportation in country of origin and in the country where the course takes place 2 x 60 people x 4 rides x U$ 10 4.800 Per Diem (extras) 2 x 60 people x 14 days x U$ 10 16.800 Didactic material Preparation of manuals, selection of texts, photos, plays, installations, etc. 5.000 Diffusion of results Set up web page for diffusion of texts elaborated in the workshops, etc. 5.000 Administration Communication, administrative expenses, accounting 5.000 Secretariat/Staff 1 full-time secretary for 6 months x U$ 1.000 6.000 Coordination / Staff 1 full-time coordinator for 6 months x U$ 2.000 12.000 Consultants / Staff 2 part-time consultants for general advice, and on selection of topics and texts for 6 months x U$ 1.000 12.000 Facilitators/Staff 10 Facilitators/instructors to organize the debates during the 28 days of the meeting x U$ 3.000 30.000 Scholarships To support the 50 participants in activities linked to the University during the 3 months between the 2 meetings x U$ 300 45.000 Total 399.800 13

./english/313.txt:69:There is one ambit of the reporting that is currently being missed. This is the kind of technologies and other innovation that is required to take the movement of the SF forward. 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 an SF experience, in the line of systematisation of experiences methodology.

./english/313.txt:124:Although the movements generate some resistance to individual adscription of knowledge, we can not forget the important contribution of some individuals to the movements [1]. There are also the people that had been studying for many years an issue (GMO, EU lobbying) and contribute as “experts” on the area.

./english/313.txt:134:Baker and Cox (2001) presented the key different between activist theorizing and academic theorizing is that the second one is essentially contemplative, “the academic quest is for the well-formed generic proposition or the superior explanation, that is, for the theoretical concept or generalization which covers a set of seemingly dissimilar cases or processes” and “movements are seen as objects of study to be observed, described and explained, not active processes which people engage with, experience and transform” (Baker and Cox, 2001).

./english/313.txt:149:Secondly, movement intellectuals produce strategic and tactical proposals, typically of the form Given the overall situation, and our purposes and resources within it, this is how we should act. “We” may be a formally defined movement or party, or may be framed as “ordinary people”, “workers”, “the Catholic community”, “Blacks”, etc. The strategic proposal seeks to grasp a sufficient account of the whole of a situation, in order to guide action, rather than to isolate one element in order to compare it with others. Its persuasive force depends on combining an explanation of the complexities and contradictions of the immediate past and present with a proposal for active intervention in the immediate future. Generic propositions are drawn on only as supports for practical arguments” (Barker and Cox, 2001).

./english/313.txt:163:Prabir Purkayastha, All India Peoples Science Network and WSF India. WSF Memory Seminar: WSF 2004 Mumbai Experience http://www.wsfindia.org

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

./english/315.txt:19:At this point, I can only speak for my experience in the group I elected for. We began by each identifying one or two key words/ideas/concepts that we as individuals understood as being a part of this notion of ‘Radical Theory’; and/or what we might like to see as being part of this discourse/practice. Interestingly, a number of reference concepts came up more than once, which in itself is an indication of perhaps more coherence and shared concepts in people’s thinking than we might have anticipated. What emerged from this initial whip round was something like the following verbal and conceptual snapshots, each of which lend themselves to both thinking and doing practices at the core of our endeavours as theorists and activists:

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

./english/315.txt:69:The workshop also provided a space for networking and connecting with other theory/practice, scholar/activist, ideas/action initiatives in which people are already participating:

./english/315.txt:72:Peoples Global Action

./english/316.txt:36:corporate attempts to copyright genetic resources, to genetically modify foodstuffs, to commercialise them and then coerce people/s into buying them;

./english/316.txt:49:Initially appearing as a classical armed guerilla movement, based on the discriminated and land-hungry Mayan ethnic communities of Chiapas, the Zapatistas rapidly revealed entirely novel characteristics: an address to Mexican ‘civil society’, a high-profile internationalism, a sophisticated understanding and use of both the mass media and alternative electronic communications. All can be found in the speeches and writings of its primary spokesperson, Sub-Commander Marcos (Rafael Guillén), a university-educated non-indigene, trained in guerilla warfare in Cuba. Activities of the Zapatistas, particularly two international encuentros, one in Chiapas, 1996, one in Spain, 1997, gave rise, or shape, to a new wave of internationalism. The powerful, poetic and playful words of Marcos, who switches between, or combines, popular Mayan and Mexican idiom with the language of cosmopolitan intellectuals, enchanted a dulled world. It also had dramatic appeal to an international left, battered, bruised and disoriented by: the downscaling of the welfare state; the downsizing of the working class; by the halting of the forward march of labour; by the collapse of Eastern Communist and Southern Populist states; by the crisis of the international movements identified with such. Zapatista encounters also inspired at least two significant emanations of the movement, People’s Global Action(PGA) and the WSF itself. (de la Grange and Rico 1997, Holloway and Peláez 1998, Olesen Forthcoming, PGA website, Wahl 2002)

./english/316.txt:53:Finally, one has to recognise as forerunners the so-called New Social Movements, and theorising around such, in the 1970s-80s. Considered as expressing ‘identity’ more than ‘interest’, these movements – of women, of indigenous peoples, of sexual minorities, for media democratisation, on ecology and consumption – were noted in the South as well as the North. They brought to public attention hidden forms of alienation, suggested new forms of ‘self-articulation’ (both joining and expression). As much addressed to the transformation of civil society as of the economy or state, these movements raised issues that the major old international ‘interest’ movement – that of unionised labour – had long subordinated, ignored or marginalised. (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998, Cohen 1985, Melucci 1989, Omvedt 2003).

./english/316.txt:55:The rise and rise of the ‘anti-globalisation movement’ (the most common name), did not so much re-assert ‘interest’ over ‘identity’ as surpass the alleged opposition - or even the distinction. Highlighting the increasing power of corporations over states, and of their negative impact on people and peoples – North, South, East – the movement was as much a challenge to institutionalised labour and the left worldwide as to an international women’s movement suffering severe ‘ngo-isation’ (Alvarez et. al. 2002).

./english/316.txt:72:Starr and Adams (2003), from the USA, who would be ‘localists’ in the Callinicos typology, characterise the movement as ‘anti-globalisation’, and identify as significant ‘modes’ or ‘archetypes’ within it, ‘radical reform’, which is state-friendly; ‘people’s globalisation’, associated with the WSF; and ‘autonomy’, identified with the ecological friendliness and democratic qualities of freely cooperating communities (their own).

./english/316.txt:108:Leaping forward to ‘1968’, we can note the brilliant poster art, often internationalist in spirit, following the Cuban Revolution. As well as that generated by Paris 1968 itself. At the same time, however, the widespread hostility of the new left to ‘capitalist technology’ and the ‘commercial mass media’, was criticised by Enzensberger (1976). He, argued that engagement with the electronic media would allow people to mobilise themselves - to become ‘as free as dancers, as aware as football players, as surprising as guerillas’. From this period on we note the development of community-specific local-to-international radio, of ‘guerilla’ video groups and computer-communication experiments. (Ali and Watkins 1998, Art-For-A-Change website, Suarez 2003, Waterman 1992).

./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:13:The wider issue, of course, here is the alleged exclusionary, top-down, undemocratic and bureaucratic way the whole process was organized. I don’t pretend to understand the full dynamics of it and my involvement in the preparation has been partial, but I fear that a lot of people spent the preparatory months chasing spectres. True, left to their own devices, there are organizations (no, I won’t say the name!) that might like to exert much tighter control over the process. But, if anything, this movement has developed an organic intolerance of such practices. Crude manifestations of hierarchy are almost instinctively rejected and everybody knows that.

./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/320.txt:36:An investigation of the collective agency of dominant social groups can help activists in avoiding the reification of exploitative and oppressive social structures. Hegemony is not a given or the result of “conformity”; it is the (temporary) outcome of political projects to establish and maintain a certain way of socially organizing human practice through leading, organising and articulating other people’s practice. Similarly, activists are not as alone in their struggles against hegemony as they may feel. Hegemonic projects from above invariably meet with resistance from below (albeit often fragmented and isolated), from subaltern social groups struggling against exploitation and oppression:

./english/320.txt:49:In the second case – an offensive movement from above – we are dealing withpolitical projects that seek to attack the truce lines left by past movement struggles,particularly through undermining or reversing victories won by or concessions granted tomovements from below. Through such attacks, offensive movements from below seek to extend ways of socially organizing human practice that consolidate social dominance. Privatization, for instance, can be understood as one such project, where the logic of commodification is extended into more and more spheres of people's lifeworlds, thus expanding and consolidating the power of capital over labour (see Harvey, 2004). These offensive movements from above often emerge at conjunctures where an extant social organization of human practice, in whole or in part, starts to show signs of breaking down. Such tendencies towards crisis open up a space for a contestation of the existent, and in this space, movements from above will tend to clash with movements from below and their projects for social change. An example of this would be the space of contestation that emerged with the onset of the crisis of organized capitalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where the New Right emerged as an offensive social movement from above to

./english/320.txt:56:If movements from above attempt to create structures, which in turn generate routines, the activist experience in movements from below tends to reverse this order. Thus the point of departure for my approach to the understanding of the collective agency of subaltern social groups – social movements from below – is that of the existential situation of activists and the learning processes that are inherent to movement activity. I start from people's situated experiences of a social world that is problematic relative to their changing needs and capacities, and their attempts to combine with other people with similar experiences to do something about this. This can be referred to as the movement process and I propose the terms local rationality and militant particularism, campaign, and social movement project as conceptual prisms that might allow us to formulate a developmental theory of the direction of the collective agency of subaltern social groups. If we are to start with and from people’s situated experience of a given lifeworld, we start from the context of everyday lives with all their manifold practical routines and received wisdoms. Gramsci’s (1998: 333) concept of ‘common sense’ serves as an apt prism through which to view the experiential rationality that guides everyday activities and mentalities in the sense that it constitutes an amalgamation of two elements: Firstly, the established ways of doing things – that is, the routines that constitute the molecular workings of a hegemonic social organization of human practice, and its "received wisdoms" (the general outlook that this a natural way of doing things, "the way things have always been done", or "the only way of doing things"). Secondly, the practical but often tacit experience of the existent as somehow problematic in the form of "ticklish" knowledges or "grudges" that there is something wrong about the present state of affairs, that this is not due to individual maladjustment, and the subaltern skills and responses that are developed so as to act on such grudges. These knowledges and their grudges can perhaps be likened to what Scott (1985) calls everyday forms of resistance

./english/320.txt:61:I follow Gramsci's insistence that good sense constitutes 'the healthy nucleusthat exists in "common sense … which deserves to be made more unitary and coherent' (1998: 33). Thus, I want to consider the nature and origins of 'good sense' as a local rationality. A local rationality can be defined as 'a formal characteristic about the way people make sense of and engage with the world which is capable of being generalised and taking on a life of its own' (Cox, 1999: 113). In this context, local refers to the situatedness of people’s responses to given situations’, whereas rationality ‘is not a single monolithic “thing” … but rather the way that actors practically engage with their world and make sense of their actions’ (ibid.: 112). At the root of local rationalities, and across the spectrum of variations, we find those emergent radical needs that are frustrated or constrained by extant social relations – as well as existing needs under attack by offensive movements from above. Local rationalities are those oppositional ways of doing and being which people develop in their attempt to cope with such frustrations, constraints and threats – ways of doingand being that in more or less radical ways run counter to the routines and receivedwisdoms that characterize the hegemonic elements of common sense (or, in defensivesituations, attempt to reaffirm an older common sense against attempts to impose a new one fromabove – the situation captured in the original “moral economy” discussion (Thompson1993)).

./english/320.txt:69:These are processes of learning, cooperation, andorganization through which the scope of social movement activity is broadened anddeepened, i.e. they are processes through which militant particularisms communicate andinterconnect with each other, develop common strategies and identities across socio-spatialboundaries, and simultaneously deepen their self-understanding. I use the term campaign toconceptualize the organization of a range of local responses in ways that connect people across multiple such situations and challenge the construction of those situations.

./english/320.txt:95:In each of these periods, global upheavals were spontaneously generated. In achain reaction of insurrections and revolts, new forms of power emerged in oppositionto the established order, and new visions of the meaning of freedom were formulatedin the actions of millions of people. Even when these movements were unsuccessful inseizing power, immense adjustments were necessitated both within and between nation states, and the defeated movements offered revealing glimpses of the newly developed nature of society and the new kinds of class struggles which were to follow (ibid.: 6).

./english/320.txt:126:The recent cycle of protests against the summit meetings of the transnational capitalist class and the transnational state – Seattle, Quebec, Prague, Gothenburg, Genoa – and the creation of spaces and networks of communication between the many movements that animate these protests – the WSF and its regional progenies, People’s Global Action, Via Campesina – has signalled to the world that neoliberalism will not proceed uncontested. A

./english/323.txt:10:‘Others’ –women and ethnic peoples—as theory, and the relegation of these knowledges to the

./english/323.txt:156:theory, resulted once more in exclusion of peoples of colour’s writings in general and black

./english/323.txt:168:(peoples of colour and women), circumscribes their contributions to the ‘appropriate’

./english/325.txt:12:Two years ago in an article about the Dutch conference ‘Feminism and Multiculturalism’, I criticized the restricted meaning multiculturalism and feminism most of the time has in western countries (Poldervaart 2002). In dominant western debates multiculturalism is limited to the integration of non-white and Islamic people into the dominant male, white, heterosexual and middle class culture, as if multiculturalism isn’t more than differences in colour and religion. In this way the cultures of gay/queer and of protest groups criticizing dominant culture, disappear from the picture of multiculturalism. Feminism was defined by the conference-organisation as ‘striving for recognition of equality, of equal opportunities and equal rights’. This is, however, a very limited definition: most feminists want more! Moreover, such ‘equal-rights’-feminism stimulate in practice the idea that only non-white people have to struggle for feminism because ‘we, women in the west’ have equal rights already. Both restricted meanings (of feminism and multiculturalism) strengthen the difference between ‘we’ (white, supposed to be progressive) people against the ‘other’ (coloured or Islamic), make affiliation-politics between both groups very difficult, forget all other diversities between people and don’t criticize the dominance of neo-liberal politics.

./english/325.txt:14:In this paper I will elaborate the contemporary connections between different protest movements that criticize dominant western culture. I want to show that, just because these movements are influenced by postmodern notions (like rejecting uniformity and essentialistic identities and taking ‘responsibility for “otherness”’(White 1991))i, their members really try to bring multiculturalism into practice. Multiculturalism means simply: different cultures within a society. Physical characteristics or nationality have nothing to do with it (Nottelman 1996: 3). Every society has to be considered as multicultural, because within all societies there are different cultures (between classes, hetero-homo’s, rural and urban cultures, different –interpretations of- religions etc.). Also without coloured people a discussion about multiculturalism is important.ii Because this conference is about ‘new social movements and sexuality’, I restrict myself to three contemporary movements that criticize dominant culture: the squatters, queers and alterglobalists. I will start with the squatters’ movement, because for a part this movement is the oldest one.

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

./english/325.txt:20:The Dutch squatters movement was a big movement between 1976 and 1984. Squatters were large in numbers and well organized into neighbourhood groups; they had political impact and staged spectacular riots and because of that, gained a lot of media attention. The squatters’ movement disappeared as a media event after 1984 (after the eviction of their biggest building Weyers), but the (legalized) squats and networks survived and turned out to be fertile soil for other initiatives and experimental ways of life (ibid: 95). Out of the squatters’ movement sprang ‘the’ movement: a network of squats, communally owned houses, food co-ops, Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS: doing ‘work’ for each other without money), music bands, festivals, action groups, research groups, mobile kitchens, groups helping refugees etc. Within this movement, a few thousand people are nowadays on the move in Holland. Some of them out of political motives, others because they want to live their life the way they want to. They want to express and realize their desires outside of the main ideology of the market and the state, their own ways of life and living together (ibid).

./english/325.txt:22:At the end of the 1980’s when the squatters movement was declared death by the media, another important change occurred: activists in ‘the’ movement explicitly rejected the idea of one shared ideal with one common political program, one shared utopia. Yet, like Lyotard has pleaded for, the desire to create something different here and now (White, 1991) still remains. There is an ongoing discussion about the necessity of creating an alternative economy, how life can be de-economized, how you can help other people and have a good life yourself, how the street can be used for more than just traffic, also for fun, dance, laughter, social contacts and love. Using the Do-it-Yourself (DiY)-culture of the punk movement, ‘the’ movement shows that everyone can make music, records, make ‘zines. Just do it. There are enough places to live in; you only have to occupy them. Today’s movement is relatively open and because of that it also lacks the pressure for uniformity what was characteristic of the squatters movement (also of the women’s and gay movements) before. In their network of friendships the contemporary squatters undermine the prevailing relations of production, society, politics, family, the body and sex. You can’t locate ‘the’ movement permanently, but it manifests itself in the occupation of public spaces that they temporarily give the meaning of non-commercialized meeting places. Lacking a single clear goal or program, we see a multitude of struggles.

./english/325.txt:24:As said, in the eighties the squatters’ movement not only became ‘the’ movement by the involvement of all kinds of networks, also a fierce feminist struggle took place. ‘In no other movement feminism has played such a big role as in the squatters movement’ (Huijsman, 1989, p. 221). Feminist activists organised themselves in autonomous women’s groups within the squatters’ movement; at the same time they criticized the male squatters continuously for their attitude and behaviour. ‘In the squatters’ movement the men in particular are changed by the feminist women’ (ibid, p. 250). In the journals of the squatters’ movement much was written about feminism, but the regular media didn’t give attention to this aspect of the movement. Therefore only a few people know that half of the squatters have been and are women. Like in feminism, in the squatters’ movement the slogan ‘the personal is political’ became central and also the notion ‘politics start in daily life’ (Kallenberg 2001, Van Tricht 1995). In this way the alternative, but mostly male squatters’ culture changed in a culture that was more open for other experiences in daily life.

./english/325.txt:25:In the eighties the squatters’ movement had some active lesbian and gay groups too. Because the unconventional way of life and dressing of the squatters, in the movement to dress in all kinds of gender bending clothes was never a problem, or boys with make-up and girls with bold heads. In the 1990’s these gay groups seemed to have disappeared, replaced by queers. But this didn’t happen before the end of the 1990s. One interviewed squatter-queer told the researcher Van Ree (2004): ‘For a long time sexuality wasn’t a hot discussed item in the squatters’ movement, but nowadays it is. (..) We queers are the needed colour for the scene. Now the word queer is on the lips of everybody, but in the years before sexuality was considered in a more conservative way. Last year I was involved in radicalizing Dutch sexual minorities by organizing special parties. Othes have the idea that this isn’t political enough and organize something for people on a more philosophical queer levell’. And another squatter told: ‘Queer is an effort to make the struggle more playful’ (ibid).

./english/325.txt:37:Yet, nowadays a big international queer movement exists (just as the feminist movement hasn’t died when it criticized the fixed female identity). However, it took years before the gay and lesbian movement could accept transsexuals, transgenders and drag queens etc. in their movement; they were largely treated as embarrassments in their “legitimate” fight for tolerance, acceptance and equal rights. Aaron Devor and Nicholas Matte (2004) give a clear description of this struggle in the United States from the 1970s till the 2000s. In particular in the lesbian and feminist movement hotly contested battles have taken place over the question of whether or not male-to-female (MTF) transsexuals are women for the purposes of inclusion in women-only organizations. ‘Transgendered and transsexed people have posed the greatest challenges to gender definitions at a historical moment when women in general, and lesbians in particular, have begun only recently to feel that they exist as political players in their own right’ (Devor/Matte, 2004: 181). Many lesbian-feminist organizations insisted on a definition of womanhood that leaves no room for women who were born male. For example at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, a five-day women-only event run every year since 1976, from 1991 on till 2003 trans-women tried to be allowed into the festival and set up an informational and protest ‘Camp Trans’ outside the gates of the festival. Eventually the organizers of the festival bowed to the pressure and said that anyone self-defined as a ‘womyn-born-womyn’ would be allowed into the festival.

./english/325.txt:39:Also the combined gay and lesbian movement has proved resistant to aligning itself with transgendered and transsexual people. Not before 1997 more consistent progress toward unity had been made, with various gay and lesbian organizations expanding their mandate to include transgender perspectives. In September 1997 the national Gay and Lesbian Task Force amended its mission statement to include transgendered people. The same happened in 1998 with the ‘Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays’ and in April 2000 trangendered activists were allowed to speak at the Millennium March for Equality in Washington, DC. In March 2001 the Human Rights Campaign, which calls itself ‘America’s largest gay and lesbian organization’ amended its mission statement to include transgendered people. In their article Devor and Matte try to explain the important contributions of transgendered and transsexual people to the queer movement by showing the historical relationships between transgender and homosexual groups in the U.S. According to them much of the recent growth of gay and lesbian pride was built on an ethnic-like gay identity that necessarily defined inclusion by the exclusion of others. This pride has been created at least partly to counteract a society that taught gays and lesbians to be ashamed of who they are. But as they have found their pride, many have retreated in shame from the transgendered and transsexual people who had always been among them. Their idea of ‘You’re Strange and We’re Wonderful’ remains a dark corner in the struggle for gay and lesbian rights. Transgendered and transsexual people have understood the need for alliances and have made many important contributions to the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered rights (Devor/Matte, 2004: 202).

./english/325.txt:41:However, although the struggle for rights remains important, I think the importance of queer theory and -movement is that it wants more. Like Foucault states: ‘Human rights regarding sexuality .. are not solved now, still I think we have to go a step further: the creation of new forms of life, relationships, friendships in society, art, culture and so on, through our sexual, ethical and political choices. Not only do we have to defend ourselves, not only affirm ourselves as an identity but as a creative force’ (Foucault 1989/1996: 383). You can see this ‘more’ already in the slogan on T-shirts of queers: ‘Queer, the privilege to imagine more’. Perhaps you can say, as Gwen van Husen does (2004:13) that the aim of queer theory is to queer (the whole) culture. She concludes after her small research of the people visiting the Queeruption festival in Amsterdam (June 1-7, 2004), however, that the queer scene limits itself to (their own) queer culture and is unwilling to queer mainstream society. I will elaborate on this.

./english/325.txt:43:In April 1990 Queer Nation was set up by four gay men in New York, born out the radical action group ACT UP directed for the struggle against AIDS (Seidman 1997: 192). Their slogan was: ’We’re queer. We’re here. Get used to it’. In a leaflet Queer Nation states: ‘Queer means to fuck with gender. There are straight queers, bi queers, tranny queers, lez queers, fag queers, SM queers, fisting queers in every single street in this apathetic country of ours’ (Whittle 1996: 196). Within a short time many people became active in Queer Nation. They distribute leaflets in shopping centres with the slogan: ‘We’re here, we’re Queer, and we like to say hello’ and went to heterobars for kiss-ins.iii

./english/325.txt:50:Visiting this festival, Gwen van Husen describes (2004: 8): ‘The crowd wasn’t as diverse as I expected. Most people seemed to be from the squat or anarchist scene and dressed accordingly. There were more transgenders, transvestites and genderfuckers then one would normally see at a [Dutch] squat party (…) and it was a very international crowd though, especially from western countries. They were predominantly white, somewhere in their twenties and thirties, and all genders seemed to be quite evenly present’. Van Husen interviewed a dozen visitors and came to three important themes of these queers (p. 9-11):

./english/325.txt:57:This shows also a weak point of the whole multiculturalism discussion: how open the different (resistance) cultures have to be to people who belong more to the dominant culture?

./english/325.txt:71:Only the last two events mentioned haven’t a clear connection with ‘the’ (squatters)movement, all others have. Especially from 2003 on, many queer activities and initiatives arose, above all in Amsterdam (see Rianne Neering, 2004: 36). On the one hand you could state that the queer scene, in their expressed solidarity with all other oppressed groups, is open for all kinds of people. On the other hand: saying ‘I am queer’ excludes other people and goes against the destabilizing quality of queer theory. While queer theorists seem to be more open than the queer activists to the possibility that straight people could be queer as well, it seems moreover that queer activists (above all in Holland?) are especially connected with the anarchist (squatters) movement. In this way they exclude non-anarchist queers. At the same time, because in the queer movement ‘alternative social practices’ are very important, this movement is connected with (a part of) the alterglobalisation movement too.

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

./english/325.txt:76:Besides these more formal social movement organizations, all kinds of more informal groups became active. They started actions against the commercialising of practically every aspect of life in 1984, when in Canada and the United States adbusters (culture jamming) protested against the billboards in public spaces, and in 1995, when in England the ‘Reclaim the Street’-activists were demanding the streets back as public places. The rise of the Zapatistas has been an inspiration to the whole movement. This Mexican group sent their manifest against the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) into the world (via the internet) on 1 January 1994 and in the summer of that year (and again in 1996) invited ‘leftist activists, youngsters, women, gays and lesbians, people of colour, immigrants, workers, farmers around the world’ to discuss new ways of thinking about power, resistance and globalisation with them (Klein 2002: 177-188). The meeting of 1996 resulted in the foundation of the People Global Action (PGA) and many visitors of this meeting played a key role in Seattle in 1999.

./english/325.txt:79:The Do-it-Yourself-activists try to realize their ideals in the here-and-now. Although the concept DiY is invented in the North, it appears that many poor groups of the South use the same strategy. The Zapatista activist Esteva has formulated this: ‘People has been disillusioned with the ballot box for a long time, here and all around the world. And yet they are disillusioned too with rebels who come with guns and say: “give us the state, we will do it better”. So what are we seeing in Chiapas? It is an alternative to both – a new notion of doing politics. You could call it radical democracy. People take their own destinies into their own hands’ (in: Kingsnorth 2003: 42-43). Nowadays the Zapatista’s ideas about ‘taking your own destinies in your own hands’ have influenced many other groups around the world. An activist from the town Durban (South Africa) told to Kingsnorth: ‘We feel it’s time for new approaches. As a movement we need doing things ourselves, you know, Zapatista-style. Taking it back: communities doing it themselves, instead of always reacting to whatever shit the government gives them’ (ibid: 102). And a women of the Brazil Landless Movement (MST) states: ‘People have to work for their own transformation, making their own answers’ (ibid: 257). In the North the DiY-activists emphasise the importance of ‘free places’: public spaces, not belonging to the commercial trade and industry (Klein 2002: 204). All these activists have in common that they create their own alternatives, protesting against the commodification of everything.

./english/325.txt:83:-the rejection of ‘collective identities’ because identity is considered as a process of creating and maintaining borders (between women and men, gays and hetero’s, black and white people etc.) and could encourage group conformity (Heckert 2002). The ideal is not to strive for one identity but for many identities. The concept of identity is changed into affinity (McDonald 2002). The most important thing is not to be something together, but to do something together, not where you come from, to which group you belong, but what your aim is (Holloway 2002). In this way they criticize the existing intentional communities, because in general most of these ‘communes’ don’t make much of a conscious effort to reach out to people who don’t share their political and/or counter-cultural views. Unlike these kinds of communities alterglobalists plea for ‘breaking out of the ghetto, to take up the challenge of putting into practice the importance of diversity, sacrificing the security, predictability and simplicity that come from relatively closed and homogeneous collective identities (Abramsky 2001: 554, my print in italics). Their ‘free places’ they see as alternative political and socio-economic spaces with room for differences and without precise boundaries and identities.

./english/325.txt:93:-The aim of the DiY-activists is to deepen the quality of relations between people by creating diversity. One of the means to do this is the narrative, story-telling structure of their actions to give the activists the possibility to tell their personal stories (McDonald 2002). The movement has learnt that a web of testimonies and experiences is more important to stimulate the imagination of people than to command them (Jordan 2002). In their story telling culture and in their rejection of the conquest of power, the movement gives much attention to language. Above all the Zapatistas have proven that it is possible to develop a new language of resistance, a language that is full of imagination, story-telling and speaking in riddles and paradoxes and not in securities (Holloway 2002). Another means to strive for better relations between people is the continually emphasis by the activists that people often show altruistic behaviour, that people will do things for each other from which they themselves don’t benefit (de Marcellus 2003). In this way they fight against the idea that people only are calculating citizens, a supposition brought forward by neo-liberalism.

./english/325.txt:105:In the publications of the DiY-part of the alterglobalization movement only recently much attention is given to the queer movement. Yet in their criticizing collective identities, in their emphasis of imagination, their struggle to reclaim public places for fun, the deepening of relationships between people, their pink and silver clothes during actions, their tactical frivolity and emphasis on personal politics, the alterglobalization movement shows all kinds of connections with the aims of the queer movement. And also the other way around, like the queer slogan: ‘Queer, the privilege to imagine more’ and the description of Jackson (2003: 70): ‘Queer are those who knowingly occupy a marginal location’. The close connection is also expressed in the announcement of the international Queeruption festivals: queeruption is climbing over the artificial boundaries of sexuality, gender, nation, class, against racism, capitalism, patriarchy and binary gender repression; queeruption is non-commercial, is Do-it-Yourself!

./english/325.txt:107:In my opinion you can state that the queer movement and the alterglobalization movement have much in common, especially when the globalists started discussing sexuality and the queer movement started to criticize the social structures and material social practices and to express their feeling of solidarity with other oppressed groups. The question remains, however, whether the ‘free places’ of both movements are open enough to people unknown with anarchist ideas of ‘Do-it-Yourself’. If both movements really want ‘to queer the culture’ they have to accept all kinds of ‘otherness’ of people, to accept the many diversities of non-dominant cultures.v It seems the Zapatistas try to be as open as possible to these diversities. Therefore I want to end this paper with a repetition of their invitation of 1994 and 1996, directed to: leftist activists, youngsters, women, gays and lesbians, people of colour, immigrants, workers, farmers around the world. These invitation was not meant to unite them all, but to discuss new ways of thinking about power, resistance and globalization, to learn from each other and to respect their differences and autonomy.

./english/331.txt:60:Wade (2001) points to an increasing polarisation between 'zones' of peace and turmoil, resulting in a large mass of economically excluded and angry young people. These "see migration to the wealthy zone as their only salvation, and a few are driven to redemptive terrorism directed at the symbolic centres of the powerful". He argues a strong case for the World Bank to change its view that rising inequality need not be negative: it does not account for political instabilities fuelled by inequality, and "this point holds even without any reference to notions of justice, fairness and common humanity".

./english/331.txt:92:"Every progressive popular movement's goal, throughout history, has been to create a movement of solidarity that is global, in the interests of the people of the world." (quoted in Kingsnorth, 2002)

./english/331.txt:101:"In the spring of 1999, World Bank President James Wolfensohn observed of global financial markets: 'At the level of people, the system isn't working.' "

./english/331.txt:150:The Citizenship curriculum covers many abstract concepts that cannot easily be translated into concrete examples or related to pupils’ personal experience of the world. Economic globalisation is one of these. If it is the case that the higher levels of abstract reasoning are only achievable at the stage of transition from adolescence to adulthood – or indeed may not be achieved at all by some people, surely this creates an impasse. In order for pupils to benefit from the use of balanced approaches as the Crick Report recommends, they need to have developed a fairly secure ability to deal with abstract ethical principles. In practice, they should have dealt with similar issues on a ‘concrete’ or personal level and so be able to generalise from these. Alternatively they would need to be skilled in abstract reasoning and have the necessary stored knowledge of ethics to be able to apply both in a critical analysis of the information presented.

./english/331.txt:162:a)An effective grounding in absolute universal moral values such as justice, truth and compassion at an inter-personal level, enabling children to develop a personal ‘schema’ of right and wrong in their concrete understanding of the world and people around them. Strategies to begin to develop empathy (in key stage 2) from the existing ability to sympathise would be appropriate here. An emphasis on action as well as understanding; and the benefits of acting morally towards others (intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors) would be important.

./english/332.txt:16:The ESF has been a space where people deliver fiery speeches against the Lisbon Agenda but where the major parties and trade unions go home to resume their work of getting into governments implementing the neoliberal reforms. It can survive this crying contradiction between its words and its deeds only if effective criticism of them is smothered and above all if no action against the Lisbon reforms is planned or coordinated by the ESF. It is no accident that the enthusiasm for an annual ESF and regular EPAs has visibly waned since the London ESF.

./english/332.txt:22:Of course they recognize the crisis of the ESF – who could deny it? But what do they propose to resolve this? The SWP thinks that the ESF was “too ambitious”, set itself targets that were too big. No, it was not ambitious enough. The ESF either has to become relevant to the struggles of ordinary people, to become an organising and networking centre for activists across the continent or stay as it is, organising occasional days of action but failing to connect them to the unions and mass organisations.

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

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

./english/334.txt:10:world, in the name of all people who wish for peace and democracy, we

./english/334.txt:44:Destruction. For example, in Iraq, tens of thousands of people, most of

./english/334.txt:51:that target everyday people. All economic sanctions imposed by

./english/334.txt:114: PSSP (People's Solidarity for Social Progress)

./english/336.txt:8:Crisis, but in the solution of the problems of the people: by giving them

./english/336.txt:20:to Subsistence, Peace and the collective values. People is becoming

./english/336.txt:24:way out from the crisis must be found with the People and the Society.

./english/336.txt:25:People needs to feel himself doing matter, not to be considered as a

./english/336.txt:58:evicted people before

./english/336.txt:60: -To assure the necessary food to people in need.

./english/336.txt:65:Working and Creating People to take the opportunity of our social

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

./english/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/343.txt:10:Today social movements are confronted by a new phase in the capitalist neoliberal system's offensive. This period is characterised above all by a state of permanent global war. For most of the human race this war means recolonisation. Using the 'war on terror' as a cover, this war aims at controlling natural resources by pillaging peoples the world over. American projects in the 'Greater Middle East' and South America are the most visible signs of this. Nevertheless, they cannot cover up the 'forgotten wars' in Africa and Asia. Zionist expansion is also part of this desire to subjugate the whole planet.

./english/343.txt:12:Mobilising social movements against this state of permanent war means defining new corss-border ways of ensuring solidarity with those peoples that are mounting resistance. The nature of some of these movements poses questions, especially with regard to the values that we share. We should embrace such a debate.

./english/343.txt:14:However, the violence the system uses does not just manifest itself in open warfare against 'peoples who resist neoliberal thinking'. Other weapons used to break down resistance are the repression of social movements and the restriction of basic rights. Military occupation and the establishment of foreign bases are an open attack on peoples' sovereignty and their desire to cast off the shackles of imperial domination.

./english/343.txt:16:Other forms of violence, such as the forced displacement of people and expropriation of land, are the result of a desire to commodify land, water and other natural resources. This state of war affects society as a whole and violence becomes the natural means of oppression. Women are amongst the first victims.

./english/343.txt:20:Such violence affects all aspects of social life. People who reject the privatisation of natural resources, which only benefits multinationals, are likened to terrorists. By questioning the sovereignty of the people, the use and division of their natural resources and products, the very foundations of democracy are being undermined. Dictatorships and corruption thrive in this environment. Basic rights are denied to the victims, the producing classes, small holders, etc. The poorest people are in an even more precarious position both in the global North and the global South. Billions of people are deprived of basic public goods such as education, health and the right to housing. Farmer and fishermen organisations, as well as the population as a whole, demand food sovereignty in order to satisfy their needs independently of the world market.

./english/343.txt:22:People who fall victim to these policies and the conflicts linked to them are often forced to flee their country. In the era of free movement of capital a fundamental task of the social movements we belong to is defending migrants' rights, the rights of those fleeing neoliberalism and oppression, and the rights of women fleeing from forced marriages or sexual mutilation.

./english/343.txt:28:The WTO and bilateral agreements further aggravate the situation through Economic Partnership Agreements (ECA). In areas such as agriculture, labour, environment, intellectual property, migration or the liberalisation of services, restrictions are imposed on people throughout the world. States themselves encourage these policies or even apply them.

./english/343.txt:30:The challenge for social movements is to ensure joint globlal mobilisation against these enemies both in developing countries and in developed countries, where people also suffer the effects of these policies. Producers in both the formal and informal economies have their rights restricted in the name of competitivity and competition. One of financial capitalism's main aims is reducing labour costs. Workers themselves are submitted to competition through reforms to social polices, the expansion of free trade areas and relocation.

./english/343.txt:40:2. At the same time it wants to put forward concrete proposals for the idea 'A different world is possible' by proposing alternatives that reflect development and living models that are different and based on the needs and aspirations of the people and on the respect for natural resources. What sort of trade do we want? What sort of individual and collective relationship between men and women do we want? Between peoples even? We have to develop concrete ideas to answer these questions starting from the primacy of rights for all, public goods for all and the experience gained from the social struggles themselves... The Assembly is not the only initiative and the movements concerned do not represent the entirety of their geographic regions nor all areas of struggle, not even all of the interested parties, but the fact that it exists is an achievement in our desire to rally people and expand.

./english/343.txt:156:Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign-USA, COMPA

./english/343.txt:363:National Alliance of People's Movements(NAPM),India

./english/343.txt:371:People's Health Movement

./english/343.txt:404:Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign-USA, COMPA

./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/348.txt:13:From May until now a lot of serious events take place. The most important of them was the war in Lebanon and the temporary defeat of the imperialists and their collaborators after the heroic resistance of the Lebanese people. We condemn the decisions of the so called international community to send a so-called “peace” force in to Lebanon, legitimize in that way the USA and Israeli imperialist aggression. We call for active solidarity to the Lebanese people and to participation to the Beirut Conference at 16 to 19 of November.

./english/348.txt:14:Also once again we want to support the self-determination right of the peoples like a first step for resolutions of conflicts and development of the societies. Also we support the sovereignty of the peoples, having or not having national states and all the open democratic processes as in Basque Country and in Ireland.

./english/348.txt:16:In the network meeting also it was reported from all the participants that during the last 6 months the movements and organizations of the Anti-imperialist Network participated to the actions which were decided at the Athens’s ESF (day of solidarity to the Nepalese people, day of action against the war, day of action for the rights of the refugees and the immigrants) and to all the activities against the imperialist intervention in Lebanon that tae place to the different countries.

./english/356.txt:41:We still have questions not only for the people involved in the network and

./english/358.txt:6:46 people attended the meeting and 22 took the floor. All agreed that the new draft was more compact and more readable, but it missed some points already discussed in Athens, and – more important – about which we reached a vast consensus. Therefore, we agreed to introduce some points by recovering the Athens draft or by re-writing them.

./english/358.txt:9:2. the self-determination of peoples, the collective rights of minorities which should not prevail over the fundamental rights of the person;

./english/358.txt:14:All people can take part in the drafting process by sending amendments and proposals, which will be discussed definitively in Paris on January 13-14, 2007.

./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:44:It wasn't that the people sitting around the table in Florence weren't an impressive group. They were worldly and wise and a good number of them came from movements and constituencies of great importance around the world. And it wasn't that the people at the table didn't want a more democratic and participatory approach. This desire was raised repeatedly. It was just that after a short time at that meeting it became obvious that despite the members' stature and desires, the people on the council were not the real locus of WSF power. The powers that be had some functionaries present, chairing the meeting…and it was clear that the powers that be had decided what the agenda was, what would be made known regarding the overall WSF situation to the people in the room, and what the international council could be permitted to discuss—but that those present had only very limited impact.

./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:57:At this year's WSF, just regarding the actual details of speaking, listening, eating, sleeping, and marching -- most people probably perceived great success. This is because what happened, happened well. People going to events largely enjoyed them -- whether it was marches or rallies, big panels or meetings, or the youth camp. People perceived and will report that the things they attended were carried off adequately and even smoothly. And indeed, the events that most people attended were, as they perceived, no doubt carried off well. Which is quite amazing and immensely praiseworthy.

./english/359.txt:59:But what about the 400 or so panels that were cancelled very near the time of the WSF and long after people planned to participate in them? No one attended or presented at those panels because those panels didn't take place at all. No one saw that they weren't there, other than those who suffered the cancellations.

./english/359.txt:61:What about the events that weren't on any printed schedule, and that attendees couldn't find and that therefore attracted a fraction of the participation they deserved? Only a very few people attended those events, all other people being ignorant of their existence. Though the few who did attend were quite distraught, the full loss was again unrecorded since it was a loss of the benefits that might have been had if people who didn’t know to go to sessions had been able to go, under better conditions.

./english/359.txt:72:Each year the WSF anoints a subset of events as their own. These events are all prominent in the official schedules. They all have appropriate-sized rooms and resources. Their presenters are afforded considerable comforts, including paid hotel rooms and sometimes travel allowances. Moreover, their housing was at hotels which were better the more prominent the person, not the more needy. I would guess this group's numbers to be roughly 100 people and I am quite sure that among them were some people who needed the financial aid but a great many who did not, relatively speaking.

./english/359.txt:74:On the other hand, there were the rest of the presenters. I don't know their numbers but I would guess a few thousand or so. The events that these participants planned in many cases did not even appear in the official schedules and were subject to last minute termination or, short of that, to room changes. These second-tier presenters were afforded few comforts and little financial support though they included overwhelmingly less well-off people then the 100 or so at the hotels. Gender still seems to play a horrible and destructive role in people’s roles and visibility, as well. Beyond presenters, moreover, there were the youth who were housed in a camp with barely sufficient water and barely acceptable sewage. That the roughly 30,000 people in the youth camp made it a vibrant community in which there were no hierarchies is immensely admirable, but the many virtues of those who endure harsh conditions joyfully don't excuse that they were treated as a separate entity, with little visible effort to incorporate them.

./english/359.txt:78:Without attention, layering of participants’ material circumstances abets as well even less warranted differences -- due to gender, race, class, place of origin, and fame -- in how people are regarded in general, in the media attention they are accorded, and in the visibility and promotion they receive. Often attention afforded rises in nearly inverse proportion to the activism people do, to the extent they are anti-hierarchical in their own lives, and to the lessons and insights they have to offer and to share with other people at the WSF's events. It isn't surprising that in the youth camp there is sharing and equity dwarfing what prevails in the hotels. So while it would probably be impossible to do without the hotels, it is the logic and culture at the hotels that needs examination. Of course we need presentations, sometimes even to very large audiences, but it ought to be possible to reduce or even eliminate relative passivity and subordination of those who come to the WSF mainly to listen, and of those who present but have less known names.

./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: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: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: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:44:It wasn't that the people sitting around the table in Florence weren't an impressive group. They were worldly and wise and a good number of them came from movements and constituencies of great importance around the world. And it wasn't that the people at the table didn't want a more democratic and participatory approach. This desire was raised repeatedly. It was just that after a short time at that meeting it became obvious that despite the members' stature and desires, the people on the council were not the real locus of WSF power. The powers that be had some functionaries present, chairing the meeting�and it was clear that the powers that be had decided what the agenda was, what would be made known regarding the overall WSF situation to the people in the room, and what the international council could be permitted to discuss�but that those present had only very limited impact.

./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:57:At this year's WSF, just regarding the actual details of speaking, listening, eating, sleeping, and marching -- most people probably perceived great success. This is because what happened, happened well. People going to events largely enjoyed them -- whether it was marches or rallies, big panels or meetings, or the youth camp. People perceived and will report that the things they attended were carried off adequately and even smoothly. And indeed, the events that most people attended were, as they perceived, no doubt carried off well. Which is quite amazing and immensely praiseworthy.

./english/360.txt:59:But what about the 400 or so panels that were cancelled very near the time of the WSF and long after people planned to participate in them? No one attended or presented at those panels because those panels didn't take place at all. No one saw that they weren't there, other than those who suffered the cancellations.

./english/360.txt:61:What about the events that weren't on any printed schedule, and that attendees couldn't find and that therefore attracted a fraction of the participation they deserved? Only a very few people attended those events, all other people being ignorant of their existence. Though the few who did attend were quite distraught, the full loss was again unrecorded since it was a loss of the benefits that might have been had if people who didn�t know to go to sessions had been able to go, under better conditions.

./english/360.txt:72:Each year the WSF anoints a subset of events as their own. These events are all prominent in the official schedules. They all have appropriate-sized rooms and resources. Their presenters are afforded considerable comforts, including paid hotel rooms and sometimes travel allowances. Moreover, their housing was at hotels which were better the more prominent the person, not the more needy. I would guess this group's numbers to be roughly 100 people and I am quite sure that among them were some people who needed the financial aid but a great many who did not, relatively speaking.

./english/360.txt:74:On the other hand, there were the rest of the presenters. I don't know their numbers but I would guess a few thousand or so. The events that these participants planned in many cases did not even appear in the official schedules and were subject to last minute termination or, short of that, to room changes. These second-tier presenters were afforded few comforts and little financial support though they included overwhelmingly less well-off people then the 100 or so at the hotels. Gender still seems to play a horrible and destructive role in people�s roles and visibility, as well. Beyond presenters, moreover, there were the youth who were housed in a camp with barely sufficient water and barely acceptable sewage. That the roughly 30,000 people in the youth camp made it a vibrant community in which there were no hierarchies is immensely admirable, but the many virtues of those who endure harsh conditions joyfully don't excuse that they were treated as a separate entity, with little visible effort to incorporate them.

./english/360.txt:78:Without attention, layering of participants� material circumstances abets as well even less warranted differences -- due to gender, race, class, place of origin, and fame -- in how people are regarded in general, in the media attention they are accorded, and in the visibility and promotion they receive. Often attention afforded rises in nearly inverse proportion to the activism people do, to the extent they are anti-hierarchical in their own lives, and to the lessons and insights they have to offer and to share with other people at the WSF's events. It isn't surprising that in the youth camp there is sharing and equity dwarfing what prevails in the hotels. So while it would probably be impossible to do without the hotels, it is the logic and culture at the hotels that needs examination. Of course we need presentations, sometimes even to very large audiences, but it ought to be possible to reduce or even eliminate relative passivity and subordination of those who come to the WSF mainly to listen, and of those who present but have less known names.

./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: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: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/361.txt:8:So why wouldn’t everyone concerned that people ought have appropriate control over their lives admire anarchism?

./english/361.txt:10:Problems arise because from being "opponents of illegitimate authority" one can grow movements of incomparable majesty, on the one hand, and movements that are majestically unimpressive, on the other hand. If anarchism means mostly the former, good people will admire and gravitate toward anarchism. But if anarchism means mostly the latter, then good people will have reservations or even be hostile to it. So what's the not so admirable or even distasteful version of anarchism now? And what is the admirable version? And do even the admirable strands incorporate sufficient insight to be successful?

./english/361.txt:16:They see that many and even most of our institutions, while delivering to people needed organization, celebration, food, transport, homes, services, etc., also restrict what people can do in ways contrary to human aspirations and dignity. They wrongly deduce that this must be the case for all institutions per se, so that instead of institutions we need only voluntary spontaneous interactions in which at all times all aspects are fluid and spontaneously generated and dissolved. Of course, in fact, without stable and lasting institutions that have well conceived and lasting norms and roles, advanced relations among disparate populations and even among individuals are quite impossible. The mistake is that while institutional roles that compel people to deny their humanity or the humanity of others are, of course, abominable, institutions that permit people to express their humanity more fully and freely are not abominable at all, but part and parcel of a just social order.

./english/361.txt:24:What about the good trajectory of contemporary anarchism, less visible in the media? This seems to me to be far more uplifting and inspiring. It is the widely awakening impetus to fight on the side of the oppressed in every domain of life, from family, to culture, to state, to economy, to the now very visible international arena of "globalization," and to do so in creative and courageous ways conceived to win improvements in people's lives now even while leading toward winning new institutions in the future. The good anarchism nowadays transcends a narrowness that has often in the past befallen the approach. Instead of being solely politically anti-authoritarian, as often in the old days, nowadays being an anarchist more and more implies having a gender, cultural, and an economic, as well as a politically-rooted orientation, with each aspect taken on a par with and also informing the rest. This is new, at least in my experience of anarchism, and it is useful to recall that many anarchists as little as a decade back, perhaps even more recently, would have said that anarchism addresses everything, yes, of course, but via an anti-authoritarian focus rather than by simultaneously elevating other concepts in their own right. Such past anarchists thought, whether implicitly or explicitly, that analysis from an overwhelmingly anti-authoritarian angle could explain the nuclear family better than an analysis rooted as well in kinship concepts, and could explain race or religion better than an analysis rooted as well in cultural concepts, and could explain production, consumption, and allocation better than an analysis rooted as well in economic concepts. They were wrong, and it is a great advance that many modern anarchists know this and are broadening their intellectual approach in accord so that anarchism now highlights not only the state, but also gender relations, and not only the economy but also cultural relations and ecology, sexuality, and freedom in every form it can be sought, and each not only through the sole prism of authority relations, but also informed by richer and more diverse concepts. And of course this desirable anarchism not only doesn't decry technology per se, but it becomes familiar with and employs diverse types of technology as appropriate. It not only doesn't decry institutions per se, or political forms per se, it tries to conceive new institutions and new political forms for activism and for a new society, including new ways of meeting, new ways of decision making, new ways of coordinating, and so on, most recently including revitalized affinity groups and original spokes structures. And it not only doesn’t decry reforms per se, but it struggles to define and win non-reformist reforms, attentive to people’s immediate needs and bettering people’s lives now as well as moving toward further gains, and eventually transformative gains, in the future.

./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:45:I think that it is a duty of all people, who think they should articulate an alternative, to participate, and not to boycott... I saw some people calling for a boycott of the ASF. They are wrong and sectarian. There might be a number of NGOs [non-governmental organisations], about which I personally have doubts. Some may be corrupt and may also be manipulated by imperialism. Okay, but that is life. We must realise that such organisations do not represent a major force. The major forces are the popular organisations such as the trade unions, peasant organisations, organisations of professionals, feminist movements, ecological movements and many other social groups. We have to respect diversity of concepts and views. Different points of view also need to be articulated at different levels - at the national level, but also at the global level, because globalisation is a reality. Imperialism has been a reality for a long time (laughs).

./english/362.txt:47:You have said that a unified movement of the peoples of the South is a prerequisite for change in the present situation. What is the role of the peoples of the North in this?

./english/362.txt:51:After the Second World War there was a gigantic movement of the peoples of Asia and Africa for national liberation. They had one target: independence. This was correct, because it was the first step. But the forces that united around this demand represented different classes. In countries such as China, Vietnam, and Cuba, the leadership was with the radical Left. But in countries like India the leadership was with the middle classes during the fight against British imperialism. In Africa and in the Arab countries, a variety of forces led the movement. The leadership in these countries understood that they not only needed to support one another but also build a common front after independence, based on their common demands vis-a-vis the global system. That is how Bandung happened in 1955.

./english/362.txt:61:But owing to the erosion of the leaderships' support bases, these countries entered a vacuum, resulting in regression on all fronts. Afro-Asian solidarity was also eroded. This has opened the way for other patterns of pseudo-solidarities, which are very reactionary, based on ethnic or pseudo-ethnic chauvinisms or, on religious fundamentalism. Let me put it polemically: If the majority of the Indian people accept Hindutva, if the majority of people in the `Muslim' countries accept the nonsense of political Islam, there will be no change on the world scale if these are not transgressed by another vision of human solidarity.

./english/362.txt:65:There was some room for development because colonialism resulted in low levels of industrialisation in a few countries, and none at all in many others. So, there was room for industrialisation after national liberation. But as they moved along, it became costlier, in terms of cost of investment and technology. These countries also inherited social systems with very low levels of education, which offered enormous room for upward mobility for people, through education. As long as the children of the popular classes (the lower middle class and the peasantry) could move up through education - and this happened in a huge scale in India, Egypt and many other countries - the system benefited from legitimacy. Even if they were not democratic, they were seen as delivering something. Countries that had high rates of economic growth, accompanied by not-increasing levels of inequality (I do not mean socially just), and those that offered upward mobility for large sections of society, enjoyed credibility and legitimacy. Some of these countries were semi-democratic, like India. Others, like Nasserite Egypt, were not democratic at all. But they were equally legitimate and credible because they delivered. Once the system reached a point where it could not progress within the same logic and on the same basis, the political system became more corrupt and lost legitimacy. This created a vacuum, which reactionary forces started to occupy.

./english/362.txt:69:Globalisation and imperialism are nothing new. The history of capitalism since the very beginning has been the history of imperialist expansion. And, the system was always global. The contention of some people that globalisation is something new is laughable. After all, what was the colonisation of India, if not globalisation? The building of the Americas since the 16th century was globalisation. The slave trade, which played a crucial role in the building of the Americas, was globalisation. Later, colonialism was globalisation. And globalisation has always been imperialist globalisation. It has never been achieved by peaceful and equal negotiations between peoples. That is history. But we would be wrong if we think that it is the same old story. We cannot develop an efficient counter-strategy if we do not focus on what is new.

./english/362.txt:89:You have said that there is a tendency for the "centres of gravity" of countries to fall outside the domain of nation states. What does this mean for the peoples of these nations, in terms of a search for an alternative? And, how does such a system operate and what are the contradictions in such a system?

./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/362.txt:107:The second condition that is needed for substantial change is genuine democracy. Social change in the past - whether of the Soviet or Maoist type or of the national populist types in the Third World - had very little democracy or no democracy at all. But whatever their achievements, very little was left to the initiative of the popular classes. They were controlled and directed in many ways, with varying degrees of the negation of democracy. The fact that the people want progress but that they also want liberty is also progress from the earlier situation. We cannot have a remake of the Soviet Union or a remake of Nehru's India. There are no remakes in history. Democracy in the dominant discourse is based on delinking it from the issue of social justice. That does not work, because if democracy does not result in social progress, people no longer find it credible. The main reason for the move backwards towards religious fundamentalism, ethnic solidarities and so on is the failure of democracy.

./english/362.txt:115:I am a Marxist and have always been a part of the communist movement. That is not a secret. As a child, during the Second World War, I was enthused by the Soviet resistance against Nazi Germany. In those days, Egyptian society was highly politicised; even 13-14 year-old youth were quite politicised. While in elementary school, only about 20 per cent of those in my age group were non-political. The rest were distributed equally in two camps, communists and nationalists. The nationalists used to say that the main enemy of the Egyptian people was Britain; but the communists said that capitalism, operating through Britain, was the enemy. Egyptian society is not as politicised now. Many of my contemporaries were or are communists. I came from a relatively privileged family. I came from a family of the intellectual bourgeoisie, a family of doctors. My father belonged to the Waqf party, very much like the Congress party here. My mother owed allegiance to the radical socialists, the Jacobins, in France. Incidentally, my great great-grandfather was among the first republicans in Egypt, in the 1860s.

./english/363.txt:2:"Ordinary people", movements and intellectuals

./english/363.txt:17:History, Hunter Thompson said, is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit (1972: 65). And of course there is no way that one person can reasonably hope to grasp all these different things except at third hand. We grasp the world we're in at first hand, through the politics of our own everyday situations and conflicts, and at second hand, through other people's actions and words. But what they (and we) reflect is the echo of six thousand million people, all working with their own situations and trying to make sense of them in the process. So this paper comes with no guarantees!

./english/363.txt:30:As Michael Lebowitz (1991) has argued, though, there is more to the Marxian analysis than "the side of capital". Along with the (necessary) analysis of capital's own "laws of motion", there is also, and crucially, the constant attempt on the part of the ordinary people of the planet - those of us who do not own productive property - to meet our own needs, to develop as human beings and not simply machines for the production of profit, to break free from the chains of gendered exploitation and racist divides which underpin the machine, and - who knows - even to develop sustainable forms of living which do not compromise our relationship with our own nature, or the potential of future generations. As EP Thompson (1977) put it, no worker in history ever had surplus value taken out of their hide without finding a way of fighting back.

./english/363.txt:32:This "political economy of the working class" is not simply a history of resistance to an overpowering, and increasingly out of control (Giddens 1990), juggernaut. We are not in the world of Terminator II. For that juggernaut to continue rolling, we have to continue doing things. It is, after all, made up of our actions: capitalism, patriarchy, racism are things people do as they reproduce their everyday lives. When we think this as activists, it presents simply one more challenge: not just large-scale structures, but also everyday routines need to be resisted (Lichterman 1996). But when we think this from an understanding of ourselves as being the ordinary people who do this stuff, it gives us a remarkable potential.

./english/363.txt:34:In Empire, Michael Hardt and Toni Negri (2000) argue that capitalism's creativity is largely parasitic: it takes, and feeds on, the creative acts of ordinary people as they struggle with their everyday lives. In their hands, following the Italian autonomist tradition more generally (Cuninghame 1999), this analysis is used in a sense to refuse the helpfulness of structural arguments tout court and to argue for spontaneity (see Cox forthcoming for a more detailed critique). And yet structure, as Durkheim put it (1973), is how the world confronts us.

./english/363.txt:36:I attempted a more historical reading of this problem when I was trying to make sense of how people lived their lives within the Dublin counter-culture (Cox 1999a). In essence, it seems that the challenge to organised capitalism comes first from below: it is, in fact, that event called for simplicity "1968" (see Fink et al. (1998) for a recent overview). Disorganisation from above, whose key dates are those of the oil crisis of the early 1970s, is then The Empire Strikes Back: ordinary people, in other words, are already actors, not simply victims, in the creation of the current situation. The Return of the Jedi, if that is what we are experiencing, is not a miraculous appearance of agency from nowhere, but an ordinary part of the political economy of the working class.

./english/363.txt:39:George Katsiaficas (1987) observed, more than a decade back, that global capitalism has systematically given rise to what he calls "world-revolutionary moments", when the coexistence of large numbers of people facing related problems and brought into interaction with each other precisely through the capitalist production process (as the Manifesto noted, though on a far greater scale) gives rise to near-simultaneous moments of revolt and attempts at creating another world (see also Arrighi et al; 1989).

./english/363.txt:43:Such times happen, in other words; and they have often had major and long-lasting effects on "structure", for good and for bad. They also, though, have long-lasting effects on movements, on the processes, institutions and cultures through which ordinary people develop their agency. In Ireland we do not need to be reminded of the enduring effects of the long nationalist revolution on structuring everything from land and religion to the left and literature. It is worthwhile, then, having a closer look at the "road from '68" as a way of finding out what is currently happening with popular agency.

./english/363.txt:49:Revolutionary moments are simultaneously the result of long periods of experimentation and development on the part of relatively few people, of a sudden flowering of creative energy on the part of large numbers of ordinary people, and of rapid processes of learning and making the world anew. They have their pre-histories, but they are greater than the sum of their parts, and the world after a revolution does not simply collapse back into its earlier components, because people have reorganised the ways they do things and the ways they think about their activity.

./english/363.txt:58:These movements of course represented a new kind of connection between activists remaking themselves for a new situation and ordinary people, stretching out to challenge established authorities of all kinds (state, church, science, family power, local government, etc.) As Barker and Dale observed (1997), levels of participation overall were in no way comparable to 1968. These were not, after all, revolutionary moments, even if they seemed so to some of us at the time. They were, however, remarkable moments of popular mobilisation whose effects in defining a certain kind of "social movement" as normal are necessary conditions for the current movement; and their various attempts at alliance and solidarity are theoretically and politically important markers if we want to understand where we are now (Goodwillie 1988, Antunes et al. 1990, etc.)

./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:73:A couple of years ago I attempted an "immanent critique" of contemporary movements, starting from the Irish alternative movement (Cox 1999b). The idea behind this kind of thing is to take what movements say about their goals seriously, and to think about movements as learning processes in which people try to find ways of doing things which are adequate to the goals they set themselves. Of course, there are all kinds of other processes which can divert this development (co-optation, repression, insulation, economic interests etc.), but it is nevertheless a useful sort of exercise to think "what would have to be the case if we wanted to do this?"

./english/363.txt:79:Pressures forcing the shift from "object" to "subject" for ordinary people

./english/363.txt:80:The "we" in that last sentence is us insofar as we are activists or intellectuals, but we are of course also ordinary people, with many of the same needs that other people are struggling for, the same weaknesses and often the same collusion with existing relationships of power. There is a tendency in that kind of "we" sentence to take on ourselves responsibility for somehow "making" things happen; but of course this is to seriously misjudge the situation. "We", as activists or intellectuals, do no such thing. When revolutions happen, it is because ordinary people, in their millions, their tens of millions and their hundreds of millions, mobilise themselves in new ways, challenge large-scale power structures and refuse everyday social routines. "We" cannot make that happen, though we can and should prepare for it, in the sense of developing ideas, organisations, networks, projects and cultures which could make a significant contribution.

./english/363.txt:82:Let's look at the situation from the other side for a minute. What defines the "ordinary state of affairs" is that most ordinary people are fulfilling the roles set for them, are experiencing themselves as objects rather than subjects of the social world. (This doesn't exclude insisting on "being an individual", once people treat basic things like their class situation, gender relations and ethnicity as given structures of reality that they simply have to accept). What makes a revolution is when large numbers of ordinary people come to experience themselves as subjects.

./english/363.txt:84:Inevitably, given the "object-like" character of people's everyday relations in "ordinary periods", what shakes them out of that is likely to be something they experience as coming from outside, along with the recognition of other people like them coming to act so as to change it. Globalisation of course is an excellent example of the first element, but in itself that is simply depressing and disempowering. The crucial importance of the second element - the "new movement" - is that it gives rise to the second element, the sense of being able to assert agency, to become subjects.

./english/363.txt:87:As Michael Vester (1975) wrote of EP Thompson's Making of the English working class (1963), movements are learning processes. We could add: movements in revolutionary periods are exceptional learning processes. Movements in "ordinary periods" are still hamstrung by the subject-object dilemma: they tend to take much of the social world as given; activists often talk about "ordinary people" as being simply passive objects (of the media, their jobs, peer pressure etc.); and activists tend towards an abstract voluntarism which is missing out the people who do in fact reproduce - and are hence also capable of transforming - the structures they experience.

./english/363.txt:89:In revolutionary moments lots of things become clear fairly rapidly, above all the constructed nature of the social world. Things once taken as givens are seen as up for grabs, and can be rejected out of hand. The power relations which keep things going appear in all their ugliness as petty tyrants, institutional rules and major power blocs intervene to prevent people from acting in ways that now seem right to them. Cultural codes of deference to superiors, indifference to peers and contempt for inferiors are broken, sometimes for good. People's understanding is transformed: the "lunacy" of the abstract, "masculine" attempt to put order on the world and the "idiocy" of everyday "feminine" assent to internalised power (Russ 1995) are shaken up into something new.

./english/363.txt:91:In many ways this process is similar to that familiar to community educators (Horton and Freire 1990), but speeded up and above all on a broader scale, without the "safe" boundaries of community and with the inclusion - real and virtual - of a much broader spectrum of humanity. "Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive", was Wordsworth's verdict: despite conservative clich鳬 people once mobilised tend to stay active as far as it is in their power (Gottlieb 1987; see Inglehart 1990 for a massive debunking of the "youthful radicalism" thesis) because, after all, to experience ourselves as subjects is to live a more "fully human" existence; what else are we doing here? What else keeps us going?

./english/363.txt:97:All of this might be very interesting (to a certain way of thinking), but where does it get us? It is important to see this "other history", of ordinary people struggling to (re)make their world (and themselves) as well as reproducing the status quo, and without that kind of perspective we will fall into several very old traps for would-be activists: elitism, pessimism, spontaneism and so on. But we have to locate the analysis, and ourselves within it, which is the job of the second part of this paper, before going on to think about what activists and intellectuals can do, in the last section.

./english/363.txt:115:What, finally, about that post-colonial world which makes up the vast majority of people on the planet (6) (arguably including Ireland)? It too had its Sixties: in Mexico, for example, or in the North the explosions of "68" were to become literal ones. Joe Foweraker (1995) has developed an important argument about the relationships between social movements and the state which works particularly well for post-colonial societies where the state itself is the product of a nationalist revolution, such as Latin America and in some respects the South.

./english/363.txt:127:In terms of the perspective I developed at the start of this paper, "capacity-building", a key element of community politics in contemporary Ireland, is part of the "political economy of the working class" - ordinary people developing their own ability to act as subjects rather than objects through processes which are becoming part of ordinary life in working class Ireland. In particular, the valorisation of everyday skills, and the stress placed on starting from where people are, are important means of embodying this changed situation within the routines of everyday life.

./english/363.txt:136:One reason for this difficulty in making connections at present is the relationship of "community" to nationalism - not so much the (potentially) radical nationalism of the "unfinished revolution" as the conservative nationalism of the actually-existing independent state. Here the issue may not be so much the limits of what was achieved as its extent: to bring about the remaking of Ireland which occurred in the century that includes emancipation and independence, a massive level of popular mobilisation was involved (Eagleton 1994). In a sense, Irish people learned to organise then, and that repertoire, not just of forms of protest (Tarrow 1998) but also of institutional structures, has remained dominant since then, despite (or more likely because of) its tendency to reproduce the kind of thing we already have.

./english/363.txt:140:The process of partnershipping, though, has important consequences which parallel developments within the environmental movement. The more obvious is the way the process enables the state to put its shape on the movement, defining who is in which "sector" (youth work, for example, being separated from community work) and setting people who should be close partners in competition for funds with one another. Less obvious, perhaps, is the sheer organisational challenge of "keeping up with the state": going to all the meetings, reading the material, making the funding applications, and all the rest of it - raising the individual cost of participation in ways which tend to separate off a skilled elite from an increasingly fragmented grassroots, and provoking the famous "end of volunteerism" even where unemployment is still a major problem.

./english/363.txt:143:This analysis could be extended to other kinds of movements in contemporary Ireland. For the moment, I want to point to three common kinds of weakness associated with this situation, which are certainly not particular to community politics. The first, crudely speaking, is populism. In essence this consists of a process that starts from taking people where you find them and finishes by leaving people where you found them. There is of course a tension within any movement between the immediate issues that provoke mobilisation and the broader potential that is opened up at an individual level and for the movement as a whole. What is damaging though is when the two are not effectively linked, and particularly when it is felt to be "radical" to insist on "concrete needs" at the expense of broader questions of power and economics. The net effect is of course to win ha'pennies and lose pounds.

./english/363.txt:147:The third is self-limitation as a taken-for-granted assumption. The way things are is the way things are, so the logic goes (ah sure?.), and so there is a massive disjuncture between the way people talk and what they actually do. A combination of verbal radicalism and practical conservatism is the result, and of course when the two part company it is the practical habit which wins out. And yet, and yet - despite the comforting view that Ireland is a deeply conservative place, it is one of the few countries in western Europe where the peasants won the land, where a national revolution had any success, or where nuclear power was decisively defeated. Popular action can and does on occasion win out, even on major issues.

./english/363.txt:155:This should be least of a problem for those movements with a sense of movement history (Barker 2001), and most of a problem for those movements which fetishise their own historically peculiar modus operandi as a universally valid method (which, apparently, other people were too stupid to hit upon). In fact, however, the relationships are not that linear. To mention one particularly important point: long-standing activists in movements with a developed self-consciousness have often "learned" that various things are impossible. In "downtimes" this can be developed to the point where in practice the whole spectrum of actually-existing movement activity is ruled out of order as insignificant, defeated in advance, and in general futile. It is not to deny that a sense of history is useful, handled properly, to note that there are sometimes advantages to not knowing that certain things are impossible, to not knowing that "we can't do that", and to not having learned the apparent "lessons" of defeat.

./english/363.txt:176:Working-class revolutions are not the headbirths of intellectuals; and yet intellectuals have an important role to play in them. If not as schoolteachers, then perhaps as community organisers; if not as planners, then perhaps as activists; if not as the conservative guardians of "correct strategy", then perhaps as the creative agents who help develop situations in which people can work out strategies of their own. But what does this mean in practice? Why is it worth our while being here, and talking to each other, in the first place?

./english/363.txt:192:To grasp sensibly what is meant by "intellectual" in Gramsci's formulations, it can help to recall, as Peter Mayo (19XX) does, Gramsci's continuous interest in adult education (people only familiar with his work via cultural studies might find it hard to imagine that while he was writing the Prison Notebooks he was also organising educational activities with and for other prisoners). It might also help to recall the stress that everyone is to some extent an intellectual: everyone organises and reflects on their own life, to a greater or lesser extent.

./english/363.txt:197:"The enemy", then, is this process of organising everyday participation in and consent to the structures of capitalism, patriarchy and racism. In individual terms, it is those people who devote their lives to this activity, and who will find it hardest to remake themselves, who are the de facto opponents of the new movement. The ordinary people who participate in those structures and consent to "the way things are" but do not dedicate their lives to keeping them that way are, by contrast, precisely the people who we are seeking to engage with if we are serious about changing things.

./english/363.txt:199:This is possible because of the selective and uneven nature of hegemony. Selective, because only a part (usually a limited, and limiting, part) of ordinary people's needs are met by church attendance, racist protests, the micro-politics of whose kids go to which school, late-night talk shows, and all the rest of it: hegemony consists of organising one possible expression of people's needs and practices. Uneven, because some groups do rather better out of the current situation than others, so that levels of commitment are more or less tenuous; people have more or less solid connections to the traditional intellectuals who seek to keep them in their place.

./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/363.txt:204:A second difficulty is that - true to its elitist origins - it assumes that people's participation and consent is down to simple stupidity or gullibility; it fails to recognise the (limited) rationality involved. Hegemony works, to the extent that it works, precisely insofar as people find (some of) their needs met and (some of) their responses developed in it. To oppose hegemony, then, is to develop new forms of proto-hegemony: new ways of living together which are closer to these needs and responses and less partial in selecting which find a space in the world we share with others. The responsibility for forgetting this is not only that of the movement entrepreneurs of "identity politics"; it is also, and crucially, that of an authoritarian left which forgot that historical working-class movements had always created "unity" from a very wide "diversity" (see Rowbotham et al. 1979 for an account of this failure).

./english/363.txt:208:One way of thinking about the new movement is as a kind of prefigurative politics - prefiguring not so much "the new society" as a new way of doing politics, and in particular new alliances. One aspect I have found particularly interesting is a sense of a move away from comparing "cookbooks for the future" and "red / green" debates on theology - characteristic both of periods of defeat and of elitist approaches which start from where a popular movement might finish - and towards discussions of strategy and "red / black" debates (7) which are about "what do we do?". This suggests at least the possibility of allowing people to learn from and through practice, and that agreement on where to go might emerge out of the process of struggle - which is, after all, where movement intellectuals derive their understandings from in the first place, albeit sometimes through circuitous routes.

./english/363.txt:213:Traditional intellectuals, organic intellectuals and ordinary people

./english/363.txt:214:The work of traditional intellectuals in building and maintaining consensus for the status quo through the constant organisation and reorganisation of everyday life (work practices, financial structures, domestic routines, medical self-discipline, leisure habits, religious behaviour etc.) and via the ongoing building and rebuilding of "common sense" (thinking in clich鳬 taken-for-granted assumptions about the way the world works, moral rules, ways of talking, etc.) is not going to stop. Nor, since it is what gives shape to (most) ordinary people's attempts at meeting their felt needs and developing themselves as individuals, would the sudden absence of "traditional intellectuals" lead to a spontaneous outburst of freedom - unless "organic intellectuals" were able to help people develop everyday alternatives that "worked", grounded in people's own needs and in movement skills (see Cox 1998).

./english/363.txt:216:To approach the same reflection from another angle, consider that a "world-revolutionary moment" consists of a sizeable proportion of the population of the planet - currently around six thousand million people - abandoning routines which reproduce current social relations in favour of new ones which directly challenge them. The "organic intellectuals" - activists - of new movements cannot remotely hope to bring this situation about through their own unaided efforts (though it says much about the residual elitism of some participants that they apparently believe just that: see McBride 2001 for interesting reflections on these issues).

./english/363.txt:218:What they can perhaps do is develop tools that ordinary people can learn to use when and if they feel the need strongly and clearly enough to be able to act on their own behalf: modes of organisation, processes of self-education, ways of talking, which are appropriate for the new purposes that people give themselves in such situations. Such tools are badly needed: without them, people who have not had a long experience of autonomous activity, of head-on confrontations, of working together in cooperative ways, will "reinvent the wheel" in the shape of some of the most basic mistakes of past movements (see WSM 1998 for some important reflections on this).

./english/363.txt:223:A second need is communication (see Gillan 2001). There is much concern about "media perception" of the current protests, as if any revolutionary movement had ever had the mainstream media on its side. And yet, despite state control of the broadcast media in May 1968 in Paris, or 1989 in Eastern Europe, people manage, time and time again, to make their choices and take action nevertheless. Again, the alternative and underground media were small prior to the events (see e.g. ID-Archiv 1991, Dagron 2001), but their existence made it relatively easy to "get the word out" - through flyers, posters, small magazines, pirate radios and the like - when the situation changed. A movement which does not develop autonomous means of communication is a movement which expects never to challenge the status quo except in marginal ways (see Cox 1997 for more on this).

./english/363.txt:225:Thirdly, and perhaps most neglected, is the question of self-sustainability. Movement activity puts people under pressures which are often quite outside their everyday experiences; it makes demands on people which go far beyond the modus vivendi that most people attempt to establish with their world; and it does this as something which people feel to be more or less voluntary, rather than the extreme unwilled situations of everyday life. Given this, a culture of organisational machismo or backbiting bitterness is a recipe for disaster.

./english/363.txt:233:Thirdly, thinking forwards. One of the great weaknesses of the Irish left is its tendency to project a deep conservatism onto the rest of the world: to assume, despite all the evidence, that "things never change" and hence to come to a more or less comfortable arrangement with a world and a culture which has always had a more or less comfortable space for "cynics". Any effective educator knows that it is important to respond to people's potential, not simply to how they currently present themselves (in circumstances not of their own choosing). Similarly, to base our thinking in terms of possible futures, futures already present in nuce within the present, is to act quite differently from an approach which takes the present as an eternal given. In particular, at the present time, it is crucial to "push the boat out", to say things which couldn't be said in given contexts 5 years ago - not to let the experience and needs of defeat block us from trying to connect on a basis of solidarity and commitment to change.

./english/363.txt:246:One definition of a revolutionary moment (see especially Barker n.d. and Barker and Mooers 1997) is as one when the ruling class is no longer capable of governing and the people are no longer willing to be governed. Arguably, this situation is starting to develop across the globe, as the "leaders of the free world" can no longer meet in public in any city in that free world and the range of interests represented in the protests grows. The pensée unique of neo-liberalism is not what you might call a wonderful tool for organising hegemony; historically, it has usually depended on a populist authoritarianism or the support of religion to develop mass support. In this respect at least Ireland is not particularly unique, as both elements appear significantly less well-grounded in everyday practice than even two decades ago.

./english/363.txt:248:The extent to which the people are no longer willing to be governed is another matter, though. It is a great step forward that the protests against capitalist globalisation can enable the development of new connections in Ireland, within the traditional (and traditionally sectarian) left, between "social" and "ecological" interests, and so on. At the same time, these connections are still weak and largely ad hoc; although they are giving rise to new thought processes among activists, they are not yet giving rise to new realignments. Nor are they very broad in scope: in particular, little effort has been made to connect with community activists, with feminists, or with ethnic minorities.

./english/363.txt:250:And yet, and yet ... things can change rapidly. One of the most encouraging aspects of the Tools for change workshops I ran at the Convergence fair last weekend was seeing people from "red" and "green" backgrounds capable of discussing practically issues of strategy and tactics, while at Ireland from below, only two years ago, we found it possible to discuss seriously about problems and visions, but no

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

./english/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:33:Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists from Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be among those making their way to Porto Alegre. But there will also be a sizable contingent of people from the Northern countries.

./english/364.txt:35:And the place will be graced by personalities who have come to exemplify the diversity of the movement against corporate-driven globalization—among others, activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist-feminist Vandana Shiva, Canadian people’s advocate Maude Barlow, and Egyptian intellectual Samir Amin.

./english/364.txt:59:Around this core will unfold scores of seminars, a people’s tribunal on debt sponsored by Jubilee South, and about 5,000 workshops. Marches and demonstrations of workers and peasants are also expected, led by the Brazilian mass organizations CUT (Central Union of Workers) and MST (the Movement of the Landless) that are among the key organizers of the WSF.

./english/364.txt:63:The anti-establishment forces gather in Porto Alegre after a tumultuous year. Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalization movement came during Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the third week of July, when some 300,000 people marched in the face of police tear-gas attacks. Shortly after the Genoa clashes, in which one protester was killed by police, there was speculation in the world press that elite gatherings in non-authoritarian countries might no longer be possible in the future.

./english/364.txt:69:Unnerved by the prospect of a week of massive protests that were expected to draw some 50,000 people, the Bretton Woods twins took advantage of the September 11 shock to cancel their meeting. Without a target and sensitive to the sea change in the national mood in the US, organizers cancelled the protest and held a march for peace instead.

./english/364.txt:79:Had the WSF meeting been held in late November or December, the mood of people coming would have been different. The Bush administration would have been riding high after its devastating triumph in Afghanistan. However, in the last few weeks, history, cunning as usual, has dealt Washington two massive body blows: the Enron debacle and Argentina’s economic collapse.

./english/365.txt:30:A defining quality of the network society is that individuals are likely to form political ties through affinity networks based on repertoires of these narratives. This quality of networks contrasts sharply to the “modernist” tendency to forge social and political order through mutual identifications with leaders, ideologies and memberships in conventional social and political groups. Castells (1997) has documented how these highly individualized identity processes find creative forms of empowerment through diverse organizational capacities of the Internet. In many ways, the organizational, personal, and cultural diversity of global activism reflect what Wellman calls “networked individualism:” the ease of establishing personal links that enable people to join more diverse and more numerous political communities than they would ordinarily join in the material world (Wellman, 2000, paragraph 1.6). I explore these social and identity processes in greater detail elsewhere (Bennett, 2003b). The present analysis is focused on the ways in which identity-driven communication practices characterize and organize the politics of these activists.

./english/365.txt:90:In contrast to the diversity of the A16 organization, the organizing site for the demonstration against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) meeting in Montreal in April of 2001 had a much more focused agenda aimed at mobilizing people in localities and training them in direct action and street theater tactics before they arrived in Montreal (NAFTANet - International Day of Action - Stop the FTAA.htm). The site listed a different and much smaller set of lead organizations that those involved in the IMF protests above. The Ruckus Society featured prominently in the training and local mobilizing, and the Montreal Anti-Capitalist Convergence was identified as the lead organization at the protest site. A tighter focus on specific protest themes, training, and

./english/366.txt:10:But if Seattle was the birth of this new kind of organizing, last February 15's global peace demonstration marked its coming of age. That day, some 400,000 people turned out onto the streets of New York to protest Bush's impending war on Iraq, and close to 10 million more turned out in cities across the globe. It was arguably the single largest day of protest in world history; the New York Times dubbed its participants "the other superpower."

./english/366.txt:18:Providing one place for UFPJ's hundreds of member organizations to list their actions and report their activities, the website quickly became an antiwar hub. Organizers put campaign materials and action kits online, and 15,000 copies of the February 15 flier were downloaded. People could easily find and plug into local peace activities in their towns or states, and time local events to coordinate with broader efforts. In the end, 793 protests happened around the world on that day, including more than 200 across the United States and Canada, with paid organizers put to work only on the biggest, in New York. All the others were self-organized by UFPJ affiliates--local church, labor and peace groups who used the website to facilitate their own coordination.

./english/366.txt:22:A follow-up demonstration, on March 16, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, was even more a creature of the web. A wave of candlelight vigils, following the dusk west across the Earth, involved an estimated 1 million people in more than 6,000 gatherings in 130 countries and every state in the nation. This global action was put together in even less time--six days--by an organization with only five staff people, MoveOn. What MoveOn did have was a nearly 1.5-million-person e-mail list and a piece of web software known as "the meeting tool."

./english/366.txt:28:The global vigils were but one of a string of Internet-enabled antiwar actions facilitated by UFPJ and MoveOn. MoveOn itself was founded well before the war, or even Bush's presidency, as an effort during Bill Clinton's impeachment to push Congress to censure the President and "move on." The petition went viral, gathering half a million signatures in a few weeks. After that, the group used its list to raise money for progressive Democrats, and by the time Bush was threatening war, MoveOn had become a well-oiled machine. The group raised millions of dollars online to run national TV spots and print ads, delivered a petition of 1 million signatures to the UN Security Council and got 200,000 people to call Washington on a single day. MoveOn facilitated leafleting efforts in cities and small towns across the country and coordinated volunteer-led accountability sessions with almost every member of Congress. None of this stopped the war, but it did help put antiwar sentiment squarely on the political map--and made the case for how powerful the net can be in mobilizing social protest.

./english/366.txt:30:"You could say that MoveOn has a postmodern organizing model," says Eli Pariser, the organization's 22-year-old campaigns director. "It's opt-in, it's decentralized, you do it from your home." MoveOn makes it easy for people to participate or not with each solicitation--an approach that embraces the permission-based culture of the Internet, and consumer culture itself. "If Nike hadn't already taken it," Pariser says, "our motto would be 'Just Do It.'" MoveOn has set the threshold for involvement so low that it has provoked skepticism among some activists--and jokes on The Daily Show. Nevertheless, this organizing model has allowed MoveOn to play an important role as a campaign aggregator--inviting people in on one issue--say, the war--and then introducing them to additional issues, from Bush's tax plan to the deregulation of media ownership. "We're helping to overcome the single-issue balkanization of the progressive movement," Pariser says.

./english/366.txt:36:This "tell a friend" phenomenon is key to how organizing happens on the net. It gives people who feel alienated from politics something valuable to contribute: their unique credibility within their particular circle of acquaintances. A small gesture to these friends can contribute to a massive multiplier effect. It is a grassroots answer to the corporate consolidation of media, which has enabled an overwhelmingly conservative punditry to give White House spin real political momentum, and the semblance of truth, simply through intensity of repetition.

./english/366.txt:38:MoveOn is often criticized from the left for not attempting to build permanent local structures or on-the-ground leadership. "They're great at getting new people involved, but it's not true self-organizing," says UFPJ's Dederich. The criticism is fair, but MoveOn's strength lies elsewhere, in providing a home for busy people who may not want to be part of a chapter-based organization with regular meetings. And given what MoveOn is doing--activating people on two or three different issues at a time, often for short durations as legislative targets change--it's hard to imagine a more appropriate model. By combining a nimble entrepreneurial style with a strong ethic of listening to its members--via online postings and straw polls--MoveOn has built a responsive, populist and relatively democratic virtual community.

./english/366.txt:42:Zack Exley, a former SEIU organizer and MoveOn's organizing director, says that the group reaches deep into politically disaffected middle-class constituencies--what he calls America's "silenced majority." Unlike the traditional left, he says, "we trust people. We don't think Americans are crazy or stupid or brainwashed or apathetic. We're not trying to drag them kicking and screaming over to our view. We know that there are millions of Americans in every community and walk of life who already know that something is terribly wrong with our country and who are as angry as we are and who are mostly just looking for a meaningful way to do something about it."

./english/366.txt:58:The feeling was social, almost fraternal. The agenda was simple: introductions, then, What do we like about Dean? What should we do? What the group did, given that no campaign organization yet existed in their late-primary state, was create one, appointing county leaders, scheduling tabling and showing up to local Democratic Party meetings. Subsequent meet-ups became a way to funnel new volunteers into this work; attendance grew to sixty-five in April, 150 by May, and soon meetings sprang up in cities across Georgia. Nationally, the 500 people who had signed up for Dean meet-ups in January grew to 60,000 by mid-July.

./english/366.txt:62:Matzzie says all this activity is impressive, but could prove irrelevant in the general election if it doesn't take place in the right precincts. He notes that in 2002 only 94,000 well-placed votes would have given the Democrats control of Congress. He quotes recent studies from Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies showing that e-mail on its own--just like direct mail and commercial phone banking--does not increase voter turnout. "Anyone who gives you his e-mail is already with you," says Matzzie. "The trick is to get those people to talk to their neighbors, friends and colleagues offline. Those are the people we need to mobilize." He's been growing the AFL-CIO e-mail list by hundreds of thousands in the past few months with this goal in mind. But he'll combine online work with shoe leather and door-knocking. Stanionis says the discussion among online advocacy experts is similar--how to get beyond the just-send-an-e-mail consumer model to "escalate the ask" and achieve more real-world involvement.

./english/366.txt:68:Thenmozhi Soundararajan, executive director of Third World Majority, a digital media collective, says the racial skew to who's online further limits the usefulness of using e-mail to hash out political disputes. With only 3 percent of the world's population online, the divide is even more pronounced in international campaigns. "When you're online," she says, "a whole lot of people are not in the room." Kauffman says that UFPJ organizers, conscious of these demographics, were careful to use a mix of outreach strategies for the February 15 mobilization, distributing 1.2 million pieces of literature in six languages in every corner of New York City.

./english/366.txt:70:In some ways, the debate over whether online organizing is as "real" or as effective as face-to-face organizing misses the point. What's interesting about meetup.com, the UFPJ website and MoveOn's meeting tool is how they leverage the Internet to get people together face to face in ways (and at speeds and costs) that were simply not possible before. As with the phone, the television or computer-generated direct mail, the Internet won't replace traditional organizing, but it does alter the rules in important ways. Because e-mail is near-instantaneous and costs just fractions of a penny, one can communicate very quickly with a lot of people at the speed of word of mouth. Because it is browsable from home, at any hour, it provides a much easier first point of contact between a campaign and interested participants. Because it is a peer-to-peer tool open to all, it allows geographically dispersed people to find each other easily and coordinate. Because it is still an open-publishing model, free from the constraints of corporate-owned media, it can carry the channels of alternative information essential for sustaining social movements.

./english/367.txt:17:A combination of several factors ensured that none of these could become well entrenched as alternatives to the CPI. In the first two parliaments of independent India [independence having been won in 1947], the CPI emerged as the major left-wing opposition. But this success also deepened an electoralist orientation. The supposedly deep theoretical dispute over whether the stage of revolution in India was to be “national democratic” or “people’s democratic,” and whether the section of the “progressive” bourgeoisie with which the working class was to ally itself was of one or the other kind, ultimately could be reduced to a question of which kind of opportunist alliance was to be forged — with so-called left Congress forces (the Indian National Congress being the historic bourgeois party) or with opposition bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties. This resulted in a split [during the 1960s]. However, one component of the split was disagreement over international issues.

./english/367.txt:19:The left wing in the CPI, which was critical of the excessive electoralist orientation, falsely identified Khrushchev as the inspirer of this strategy. There was good precedence for this strategy from the Stalin era, notably the People’s Front days of the 1930s and ‘40s. But the role of the Communist Party of China (CCP) was a vital factor. The CCP had the aura of a recently accomplished revolution, and it seemed to be denouncing Khrushchevite revisionism from the left. At the same time, it defended Stalin, and itself developed a “personality cult,” of Mao, which had important consequences in India.

./english/367.txt:23:The Congress Socialist Party (CSP) had been a left-wing formation inside the Congress Party, including some Marxists as well as various other currents. When a successful entry into the CSP by the CPI caused a severe decline in the strength and popularity of the CSP, anti-Communism was added to the ideological mix of the CSP. Eventually, some of its leading lights switched to Gandhism or liberalism, while others developed a concept of “social justice” that strongly emphasized caste issues, partly as a counterpoint to class, and partly in genuine recognition of the specificity of the Indian social formation. Stalinist ideology tended to view caste as an element of “feudalism” and to argue that capitalist development would automatically abolish caste discrimination. The socialists therefore saw in caste oppression both a genuine point whereby common, exploited people could be mobilized, and a point from which the socialists could claim their Indianness and superiority over “Moscow-trained” Communists. However, despite substantial western Social Democratic funding and other forms of help, the Socialists proved to be ineffectual in advancing electorally. This, together with a previous anarchist influence, led to an anti-statist, anti-party tendency among them, which, however, was surprisingly able to remain within CSP structures. After independence, the CSP merged with another party, the KMPP. But they also had a record of splits, forming the SSP (united socialist party) and the PSP.

./english/367.txt:37:Another major Maoist pole that developed was the threesome — CPI(ML) People’s War Group, or PWG; CPI(ML) Party Unity, or PU; and the Maoist Communist Center (MCC). These are the three main forces still insisting on the original armed struggle line, annihilation of the class enemy, and so on. Despite internecine turf wars among themselves, two of them, the PWG and the PU, united to form the CPI(ML) PW. These forces are extremely opportunistic. Since, according to their analysis, all other parties are bourgeois parties in the service of one or another fraction of a comprador bourgeoisie, they feel free to make any short-term alliance with any party against any other. So they make short-term alliances with various bourgeois parties in order to get footholds in different areas. In West Bengal, for example, where the CPI(M) is in power, at one stage they allied with the CPI(M), and at another stage with the right-wing regional party, the Trinamool Congress, which is a part of the BJP-led central government regime. They also use murderous violence in order to establish their control over different areas. The fact that there are extensive areas in India where even the twentieth century has hardly penetrated till now, however, gives their line of armed resistance and “protection” a seeming attraction to oppressed poor peasants and ethnic groups.

./english/367.txt:42:Many Maoist cadres, for their part, found that in order to gain the confidence of the people, it was necessary to do something other than simply preach armed struggle — except in pockets where the level of oppression was such that armed struggle was the only road to even the faintest of reforms. Finally, from the 1970s, a series of new social movements were developing: feminism; the dalit movement (a renewed movement among the lowest castes against caste oppression); struggles of tribal peoples where tribal survival rights and environmental issues were inextricably mixed (for example, whether the tiger should be saved simply by driving out tribal populations from their long-standing areas and occupations, or whether in the name of development forests should be cut down with effects on both the ecology and the tribal way of life, as in the Chipco movement); a significant anti-nuclear movement; a growing health movement involving both radicals in medical jobs and ordinary people who felt they had a right to know what was being done to them as well as a right to a minimum of decent health care, and so on. What was common to these movements was a deep suspicion of the purely electoralist orientation of all parties, including the mainstream left parties.

./english/367.txt:56:So there began a search for funds, which led to a transformation of many of the voluntary organizations. In many of the cases this led back to the Indian state, under the claim that the state has the constitutional duty of providing for many services to the people, so there is nothing wrong with insisting that this be done partly though these voluntary organizations. In other cases there were linkages formed with like-minded people abroad, especially in the First World, and funding often came from them. However, once this funding began, and a definite structure came into existence, new dynamics began taking over. Regular funding became, from a partial goal, the central object of the fund-receiving organization. The search for donors steadily became more indiscriminate. And eventually, this meant a softening of the political stance. This happened in ways which are not unique to India. On one hand, donors began insisting on conditions to be fulfilled, and on the other hand, they began making funds more easily available for certain types of projects rather than certain other types.

./english/367.txt:73:An attempt was made to organize a second major pole, where all would be allowed to come with their own banners and leaflets, so long as they agreed to two central slogans — opposing imperialist aggression in Iraq, and opposing warmongering by India and Pakistan. This time the effort was torpedoed by a most unlikely combination. The CPI(ML) Peoples War does not function openly as a party, but only through front organizations. It, as well as the front organization of the MCC, joined hands with the West Bengal state unit of the National Alliance of Peoples’ Movements to scuttle the bid to form an inclusive bloc by arguing that neither political parties nor NGOs should form part of the alliance. Their plea to exclude parties played on the anti-party sentiment of many people, but had the ulterior motive of excluding those organizations which openly function as parties while allowing their own front groups full freedom. The National Alliance of Peoples’ Movements is of course a different type of network. It was initiated by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Campaign, one of India’s best-known pro-toiler environmentalist organizations) and it includes diverse mass organizations as well as NGOs. For the NAPM, or even for one of its units, to flatly reject working with NGOs on the ground that they are agents of imperialism, was a surprising stand, reflecting more likely the personal stand of a few leading members of the state unit. As a result, several small initiatives developed, and none could be sustained for long.

./english/367.txt:83:In hospitals, free services have been drastically cut, and the quality of the remaining free services have become such that they can lead to the demise of the recipient. Though the population of Calcutta has grown massively, in 25 years of Left Front rule no new government hospital has been opened. The government has also been moving slowly but definitely toward curbing dissent. It has freely used the terrorist tag against its opponents. And it has displayed its commitment to globalization by turning against even reformist trade union struggles for concessions for the workers, even while at the all-India level the CPI(M) continues to mouth platitudes about the rights of workers. Government efforts on environmental protection show the same upper class orientation. Several thousand people were driven out of their “illegal” shantytown dwellings, and in one case the entire massive shantytown was “accidentally” set on fire. Activists of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights, as well as other organizations like those fighting for the ousted residents, were arrested. In rural West Bengal, in the name of combating Maoism and “separatism,” a horrifying level of violence has been unleashed, justified before the bourgeois media, and thereby substantially hushed up.

./english/367.txt:101:The WSF meetings in Brazil for the past three years have tapped the widespread, inarticulate yearning for another social system. However, the very principles and structure of the WSF ensure that it will not evolve into a platform of people’s action and power against imperialism.

./english/367.txt:111:The picture presented by the RUPE, as summarized above, is substantially unreal. Of course imperialism will inevitably try to penetrate any movement. There are radicals who, while opposing imperialism, do not even take time to think whether they should criticize the Taliban. Their grounds are that the Taliban are actually fighting the U.S. Activists on the extremist fringe of Maoism have expressed anger over people’s failure to solidarize with the Taliban. What they did not mention was that they and the U.S. had both supported the Taliban once upon a time, against the secular Soviet-backed regime. It was a serious mistake, even a crime, for the USSR to have invaded Afghanistan. But revolutionary developments in Afghanistan, especially the government of Taraki, preceded the Soviet invasion, and the period that began with the 1978 revolution (which brought the Taraki regime to power) was the one in Afghan history when social progress was achieved in some measure. Imperialism opposed that regime, and funded diverse Islamic fundamentalist groups, all in the name of the right to self-determination and democracy. When imperialism fell out with the Taliban they in turn were attacked.

./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:145:The participatory budget in Rio Grande do Sul was undoubtedly an important learning experience for the workers and others who participated in the process. It undoubtedly contributed to the participants’ understanding of economic and political questions and their desire for more control over the decisions that affect their lives. And this concept was not developed by those who would ultimately surrender meekly to the IMF. However, as long as the state apparatus remains in the hands of the capitalists, the extension of democracy to direct democracy would not be as massive a change as Novak seems to have imagined. There would be a necessary conflict between the aspirations of the toiling people assembled in the participatory budget’s discussion processes, and the demands of the IMF, of imperialism, of Brazilian big capital and the central banking system.

./english/368.txt:19:Properly understood, the working relationship that has developed between the indigenous and peasant struggles in what most people think of as "primitive" or "backward" Chiapas and the "modern, high-tech" world of computer communications systems is not as surprising as many seem to think. Well before the uprising, Chiapas and its people were already connected to the rest of the world and had developed forms of grassroots organization which made such symbiosis an extension of pre-existing forms.

./english/368.txt:20:Chiapas has been an integral part of Mexican and global capitalism for a long, long time. The workers of Chiapas have provided the rest of Mexico and the world with agricultural exports such as lumber, coffee and beef and their own labor power through migration north. For quite some time, they have also been providing hydroelectric power and oil, essential components of "modern" Mexican industrialization. Locally, they have labored in that most contemporary sector of post-industrial society --the tourist industry-- providing the services required, and coming into constant contact with people from all over the world. The people of Chiapas have moved in and out of capitalist labor markets (local, national and international) with increasing sophistication, even as they have fought for land so that they could be independent of them. Behind all this waged labor lies another enormous quantity of labor which has also been integrally related to the rest of the world: the unwaged labor of reproduction --mostly performed by the women of Chiapas-- which has procreated, reared and repaired the labor power of those who have been exploited directly.(2)

./english/368.txt:22:Being at the bottom of the national and international wage and income hierarchy does not make the people of Chiapas either primitive or backward, only oppressed and exploited. Being part of that hierarchy --no matter which part-- means that their work and their struggles can only be understood properly within larger contexts, as the Zapatistas have so properly insisted.

./english/368.txt:30:The elaboration of widespread computer networks has occurred only on the basis of the personal computer which has made it possible for literally millions of people to form a populous "cyber" space. The personal computer industry itself was built on the subordination of what was originally a non-commercial "hobby" to the mandates of profit-maximizing capital. Maintaining that subordination required the harnessing of imagination, the power of invention, the creativity and the labor of vast numbers of people, at every stage of design, production and use. It involved, in other words, the conversion of whole new realms of self-activity into new forms of labor power, willing and able to work for business.

./english/368.txt:46:As The Net has become larger and more complex, its cyberspace has come to contain an incredible diversity of people, purposes and activities, generally co-existing side by side but sometimes diametrically opposed. For example, whereas ARPANET grew out of military purposes, today The Net provides cyberspaces for anti-war, pro-peace groups to share ideas and experiences and organize their opposition to military options around the globe. Indeed, one sub-network of The Net is PeaceNet, named and created for just such purposes.

./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:56:"Access", unfortunately, is not "given" to most people in the world. Indeed, most people are excluded from direct participation in cyberspace because of lack of access to The Net.(14) This problem is particularly acute in rural areas and among the world's indigenous peoples who often lack even electricity or phone lines, much less computers or the skills to operate them. Many, many communities in Chiapas, for example, are in this situation and their ability to connect to the wider world through computers depends entirely on their connections with a limited number of possible intermediaries who are connected.(15) The spread of community "Free-Nets" is one attempt to deal with this, but, as with most of computer communications, this spread has occurred primarily in the United States.(16)

./english/368.txt:58:This problem of access is great in Chiapas and for the Zapatistas. Despite all the media hype which came with the discovery of the role of cyberspace in circulating Zapatista words and ideas, Subcommandante Marcos is not sitting in some jungle camp uploading EZLN communiques via mobile telephone modem directly to the Internet. Zapatista messages have to be hand-carried through the lines of military encirclement and uploaded by others to the networks of solidarity. Similar problems of access exist within those networks. Many who might be sympathetic to the Zapatistas, e.g., various rural and urban communities of Native Americans, Mexicanos and Chicanos in the U.S. and Canada, have few means to plug into The Net. There too, access for most people must be mediated by groups of humanitarian or political activists who download EZLN Communiques and upload expressions of solidarity from off-line organizing.(17)

./english/368.txt:66:The Zapatistas and the electronic fabric of struggle When the Zapatistas suddenly appeared in San Cristobal de las Casas and several other cities of Chiapas in the early hours of January 1, 1994, they brought with them a printed declaration of war against the Mexican state and for the liberation of the people of Chiapas and Mexico. News of that declaration went out through a student's telephone call to CNN, and then as journalists arrived to investigate, stories went out via the wire services, newspaper reports and radio and television broadcasts all over the world. For the most part, however, readers and viewers of that reporting saw and heard only excerpts from the Zapatista declaration of war. They never saw the whole declaration, with all of its arguments and explanations for what were obviously dramatically surprising and audacious actions. Except for the rare exception, such as the Mexico City daily newspaper La Jornada, they only got what the editors wanted them to get, according to their own biases.

./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/368.txt:74:As the number of people involved in these processes of uploading, re-posting, translating, etc. has grown, so has their self organization. What began as, and to a degree still is, an interlinked set of spontaneous actions has become more organized. On some lists, for example, a cooperative division of labor has emerged so that a dozen or more people take individual responsibility for tapping and reposting relevant material from particular sources to a single site in cyberspace.(27) In this way the skills and resources of many separate individuals and computer systems are connected in ways that benefit everyone tapping the pooled information. In another case, the best material from a few such poolings is reposted to those who need the information but don't have time to search out even a reduced number of sites.(28) As a result of such co-operation, the work of culling The Net has been drastically reduced for the vast majority of those needing and using information about the struggles in Mexico for purposes of mobilization and solidarity.

./english/368.txt:82:Beyond this access to more diverse and critical sources of information, the various conferences and lists in cyberspace have generally archived all this material, making it permanently available for reference and study. Whereas the single story in a local or national newspaper or newsmagazine usually disappears into the trash or recycling bin in fairly short order, the archives of reg.mexico or Chiapas95 can be accessed through The Net easily and efficiently. Whereas throughout most of this century old newspaper stories or published reports had to be painstakingly dug out of microfilm files or book stacks by the few dedicated people who could make the time, this material has been kept available --for reading, downloading, or forwarding-- via a few keystrokes.(32) Such archives have generally been stored as easily transferable files at FTP and gopher sites.(33) As World Wide Web browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape have become more widely available, a variety of Web home pages have been created facilitating the interface with archived materials. These Web pages are not only more colorful --often containing photographs and other images-- but their hypertext programming makes movement among them wonderfully quick and easy through a click of the mouse button.(34)

./english/368.txt:86:At first, the most pressing issues concerned the shooting war. Mass mobilization to stop the state's military repression and force a withdrawal of the Mexican army was organized on the basis of outrage generated by detailed reports on the bloody character of that repression. Information was downloaded from The Net, gathered from other sources and transformed into flyers, pamphlets, newsletters, articles and eventually books detailing the torture, rapes, summary executions, and other violence being perpetrated by the military, the various police forces and the private "white guards" --hired goons of the big ranchers. Such material fueled the organization of mass marches in Mexico City, San Francisco, New York and other cities around the world. They fired passions that led people to candle-light vigils, letter writing and fax campaigns, Mexican consulate takeovers and other forms of protest. Stories of these actions (often ignored by the media) were then uploaded to The Net and as the reports multiplied they encouraged local militants who could see their own efforts as part of a larger movement. Taken all together, this explosive movement of solidarity certainly forced the government to back off its military solution and to negotiate with the Zapatistas. This was true in January and February of 1994 and a year later in February and March of 1995 after the Zedillo government unilaterally ruptured negotiations with the EZLN and again resorted to military violence.

./english/368.txt:90:As the dual phenomena of a rapidly growing pro-democracy movement and an increasingly unstable and desperate ruling party have became more and more apparent, peoples' sense that things could change significantly in Mexico has grown. As the multiplying flows of information, analysis and debate have provided the sense of collective concern and organizing necessary for committed forms of action, increased numbers of caravans and observers have gone to Chiapas, less to "learn what is happening" than to curb state abuses and bring aid and solidarity to those suffering the brutalities of the state's counterinsurgency strategy of so-called "low intensity warfare", i.e., a generalized terror campaign against all viewed as sympathetic to the EZLN and radical change. In turn, political innovation in Chiapas, from the CND through the formation of a Rebel Government of Transition to the EZLN's calls for a broad-based Liberation Movement and a general plebiscite have circulated to the rest of Mexico and beyond.

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

./english/369.txt:33:This episode crowns a twenty-year cycle during which social democracy systematically fought to impose neo-liberal policies on the working class. This social regression, unprecedented in the past half-century, has hit the working class terribly hard and plunged millions of workers and young people into insecurity, misery and despair. Hence xenophobia and racism were able to win over not only middle-class layers but also sectors of the working class and youth.

./english/369.txt:49:In particular, we are preparing to warn the peoples of the EU against the imminent launching of a new war against Iraq. We demand:

./english/369.txt:52:immediate withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories in Palestine, suspension of the EU-Israeli treaty, respect for democratic and human rights, and the right of the Palestinian people to organise itself in a state with minimum guarantees for its survival;

./english/369.txt:54:immediate withdrawal from NATO, leading to its dissolution. The "defence of Europe" against real or imaginary military threats and against the aggressive pressures of US imperialism cannot be carried out by preparing for war, but rather through a radical social transformation of Europe into a space where social, ecological and democratic conditions and conditions of solidarity prevail—conditions that its peoples and workers would defend tooth and nail.

./english/369.txt:57:a) The EU's governments, united for once, have decided on one of the most brutal and odious turnabouts in their recent history: to prevent and criminalise so-called "illegal" immigration by using their fleets in the Mediterranean and their armies on the borders with the east and the Middle East. But mass displacements of human beings are the direct result of large-scale surplus exploitation of a quasi-enslaved work force and the plundering of natural resources by big financial, industrial and commercial corporations, with absolutely unbearable features: endless repayment of foreign debt; hundreds of millions of starving human beings; and the new "war economy" which drives people and conscripts children into the army and the labour process. The same global capitalism that exploits, oppresses and kills arrogates to itself the right to track down, imprison, expel and over-exploit those human beings who run away from this hell in a search for refuge and survival in the countries of their "masters".

./english/369.txt:65:First, the tracking of—legal as well as "illegal"—immigrants, against a background of xenophobia and racism, creates a fertile climate to impose the application of the EU's "anti-terrorist" legislation. This is a real threat to democratic freedoms. For example, the Spanish government has finally succeeded in brutalising immigrants in Andalusia and outlawing Herri Batasuna, a legal, parliamentary party that represents a substantial sector of the Basque people. The overwhelming majority of the Basque people reject this decision and want a democratic solution involving recognition of their democratic rights.

./english/369.txt:71:In this context of anti-immigrant discrimination and worsening living conditions for native working people, neo-liberal capitalism is setting off a war in factories, working people's neighbourhoods and schools between the native-born poor and newly arriving poor. The stakes are day-to-day survival through access to a (backbreaking) job, (pathetic) wages, (ramshackle) housing, (struggling) schools and (cut-rate) medical treatment.

./english/369.txt:75:We fight against any form of xenophobia or racism, whether of state or popular origin. We extend our solidarity to all the victims of the bosses' and governments' discriminatory policies. We demand immediate equality, and full social and political rights for all men and women who live in our countries. But we are conscious that it is necessary to deal with the roots of the problem: we have to fight and organise for solidarity and unity within the world of labour. To do this the labour movement must take a radical turn and stop setting native-born workers against those who are newly arriving and male workers against female. This means making organising newly arriving workers a moral and social priority, so that they share the same struggles, the same demands, the same organisations, and the same program that puts "people before profits".

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

./english/369.txt:79:As for Turkey, its laws, rights and policies at the level of political democracy are incompatible with those of EU member states. We support all the progressive forces in this country, still dominated by the military caste, in their struggle for a radical change on these issues. In particular, we are in solidarity with the Kurdish people, which is struggling for its national-democratic, political and cultural rights.

./english/369.txt:81:3. Against the despotic Convention: it is up to the people to decide!

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

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

./english/369.txt:91:This state apparatus is neither usable nor reformable for the peoples or the world of labour. It must be overthrown, so as to open up a radical democratic constituent process from below. It is up to the peoples and the world of labour to decide what kind of Europe they want to live in, with what sort of institutional relationship among the member states, and on what social and economic bases. Such a conquest of radical democracy will necessarily go hand in hand with overturning neo-liberal policies and replacing them with a program of urgent social measures in the interests of the workers and the poorest layers of society. Starting now, we must demand that at the very least any "new treaty" or "constitution" be submitted to a referendum organised simultaneously in all member and candidate states.

./english/369.txt:93:4. Break the neo-liberal yoke: "People before profit"!

./english/370.txt:20:The idea of coding data into punched cards spread slowly during the 1800's, and by the beginning of our century it had found its way into computing machinery, first the tabulators used by Hollerith to process the 1890 United States census, then into other tabulators and calculators. In all these cases control remained embodied in the machine's hardware. One may go as far as saying that even the first modern computer, the imaginary computer created by Alan Turing in the 1930's still kept control in the hardware, the scanning head of the Turing machine. The tape that his machine scanned held nothing but data. But this abstract computer already had the seed of the next step, since as Turing himself understood, the actions of the scanning head could themselves be represented by a table of behavior, and the table itself could now be coded into the tape. Even though people may not have realized this at the time, coding both numbers and operations on numbers side by side on the tape, was the beginning of computer software as we know it. {2} When in the 1950's Turing created the notion of a subroutine, that is, the notion that the tasks that a computer must perform can be embodied into separate sub-programs all controlled by a master program residing in the tape, the migration of control from hardware to software became fully realized. From then on, computer hardware became an abstract mesh of logical gates, its operations fully controlled by the software.

./english/370.txt:35:I would indeed limit the sense of the term even more to refer exclusively to those weakly gatherings of people at a predefined place in town, and not to a dispersed set of consumers catered by a system of middleman (as when one speaks of the "market" for personal computers). The reason is that, as historian Fernand Braudel has made it clear, it is only in markets in the first sense that we have any idea of what the dynamics of price formation are. In other words, it is only in peasant and small town markets that decentralized decision-making leads to prices setting themselves up in a way that we can understand. In any other type of market economists simply assume that supply and demand connect to each other in a functional way, but they do not give us any specific dynamics through which this connection is effected. {4} Moreover, unlike the idealized version of markets guided by an "invisible hand" to achieve an optimal allocation of resources, real markets are not in any sense optimal. Indeed, like most decentralized, self-organized structures, they are only viable, and since they are not hierarchical they have no goals, and grow and develop mostly by drift. {5}

./english/370.txt:38:Herbert Simon's distinction between command hierarchies and markets may turn out to be a special case of a more general dichotomy. In the view of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, this more abstract classes, which they call strata and self-consistent aggregates (or trees and rhizomes), are defined not so much by the locus of control, as by the nature of elements that are connected together. Strata are composed of homogenous elements, whereas self-consistent aggregates articulate heterogeneous elements as such. {6} For example, a military hierarchy sorts people into internally homogenous ranks before joining them together through a chain of command. Markets, on the other hand, allow for a set of heterogeneous needs and offers to become articulated through the price mechanism, without reducing this diversity. In biology, species are an example of strata, particularly if selection pressures have operated unobstructedly for long periods of time allowing the homogenization of the species gene pool. On the other hand, ecosystems are examples of self-consistent aggregates, since they link together into complex food webs a wide variety of animals and plants, without reducing their heterogeneity. I have developed this theory in more detail elsewhere, but for our purposes here let's simply keep the idea that besides centralization and decentralization of control, what defines these two types of structure is the homogeneity or heterogeneity of its composing elements.

./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:18:In Davos, a small minority of the world’s wealthy rulers were protected by the Swiss police. They could not move without police and military protection. However, they have now been exposed by the billions of people in the world. People became aware of their lies, which they try to conceal with beautiful words such as democracy, the free market, human rights, development, etc…

./english/371.txt:24:But the crowd was not convinced. One of them shouted: “Why go all this long distance Lula? Send them an email!” and the crowd roared with laughter. Many people in Brazil consider Lula a liberal capitalist, despite the twenty years he spent leading the Worker’s Party. Power corrupts revolutionary men and women and Lula may be no exception. A Brazilian woman told me his economic policies would benefit the “nationalist bourgeoisie”. This reminded me of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s economic policies during the sixties. The Egyptian capitalists corrupted the public sector and this led to the downfall and defeat of Nasser and finally to his death on 28 September 1970.

./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:34:My talk was in a hall which seats 5,000 people. As they were giving me a standing ovation, an old German man with narrow eyes and a big nose pushed through the crowd and shouted angrily: “There’s no bridge between the First and Third World – you’d better get used to it!” I laughed. Many women and men laughed too. A young Pakistani woman with a veil hiding her face was also angry. “I chose to wear the veil: it is my personal freedom!” she said. An American woman with a coating of makeup on her face shouted: “I chose to put on make-up. Why are you against make-up? How can you call it a post-modern veil? It is a free choice! I feel I am free to do what ever I want!” I smiled: “Yes, you are free like the free market, like George W. Bush, like Ariel Sharon, like Adolf Hitler; you are free!”

./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:46:In Egypt, as in countries all over the world, the traditional left-wing (including the new anti-globalisation groups) tend to exclude women in spite of having learned new ideas from them. The traditional left-wing groups should change their old habits. Most of the people at Porto Alegre were women and youth. But there were old professional political groups there too, and they tended to regress to old habits in order to monopolise and exclude the women and young people.

./english/372.txt:23:I don't think this is just because the academy is behind the times. Marxism has always had an affinity with the academy that anarchism never will. It was, after all was invented by a Ph.D.; and there's always been something about its spirit which fits that of the academy. Anarchism on the other hand was never really invented by anyone. True, historians usually treat it as if it were, constructing the history of anarchism as if it's basically a creature identical in its nature to Marxism: it was created by specific 19th century thinkers, perhaps Godwin or Stirner, but definitely Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, it inspired working-class organizations, became enmeshed in political struggles... But in fact the analogy is rather strained. First of all, the 19th century generally credited with inventing anarchism didn't think of themselves as having invented anything particularly new. The basic principles of anarchism--self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid--are as old as humanity Similarly, the rejection of the state and of all forms of structural violence, inequality, or domination (anarchism literally means "without rulers"), even the assumption that all these forms are somehow related and reinforce each other, was hardly some startlingly new 19th century doctrine. One can find evidence of people making similar arguments throughout history, despite the fact there is every reason to believe that such opinions were the ones least likely to be written down. We are talking less about a body of theory than about an attitude, or perhaps a faith: a rejection of certain types of social relation, a confidence that certain others are a much better ones on which to build a decent or humane society, a faith that it would be possible to do so.

./english/372.txt:25:One need only compare the historical schools of Marxism, and anarchism, then, to see we are dealing with a fundamentally different sort of thing. Marxist schools have authors. Just as Marxism sprang from the mind of Marx, so we have Leninists, Maoists, Trotksyites, Gramscians, Althusserians... Note how the list starts with heads of state and grades almost seamlessly into French professors. Pierre Bourdieu once noted that, if the academic field is a game in which scholars strive for dominance, then you know you have won when other scholars start wondering how to make an adjective out of your name. It is, presumably, to preserve the possibility of winning the game that intellectuals insist, in discussing each other, on continuing to employ just the sort of Great Man theories of history they would scoff at in discussing just about anything else: Foucault's ideas, like Trotsky's, are never treated as primarily the products of a certain intellectual milieu, as something that emerging from endless conversations and arguments in cafes, classrooms, bedrooms, barber shops involving thousands of people inside and outside the academy (or Party), but always, as if they emerged from a single man's genius. It's not quite either that Marxist politics organized itself like an academic discipline or become a model for how radical intellectuals, or increasingly, all intellectuals, treated one another; rather, the two developed somewhat in tandem.

./english/372.txt:27:Schools of anarchism, in contrast, emerge from some kind of organizational principle or form of practice: Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists, Insurrectionists and Platformists, Cooperativists, Individualists, and so on. (Significantly, those few Marxist tendencies which are not named after individuals, like Autonomism or Council Communism, are themselves the closest to anarchism.) Anarchists are distinguished by what they do, and how they organize themselves to go about doing it. And indeed this has always been what anarchists have spent most of their time thinking and arguing about. They have never been much interested in the kinds of broad strategic or philosophical questions that preoccupy Marxists such as Are the peasants a potentially revolutionary class? (anarchists consider this something for the peasants to decide) or what is the nature of the commodity form? Rather, they tend to argue about what is the truly democratic way to go about a meeting, at what point organization stops being empowering people and starts squelching individual freedom. Is "leadership" necessarily a bad thing? Or, alternately, about the ethics of opposing power: What is direct action? Should one condemn someone who assassinates a head of state? When is it okay to break a window?

./english/372.txt:37:All this does not, of course, mean that anarchist theory is impossible--though it does suggest that a single Anarchist High Theory in the style typical of university radicalism might be rather a contradiction in terms. One could imagine a body of theory that presumes and indeed values a diversity of sometimes incommensurable perspectives in much the same way that anarchist decision-making process does, but which nonetheless organizes them around an presumption of shared commitments. But clearly, it would also have to self-consciously reject any trace of vanguardism: which leads to the question the role of revolution intellectuals is not to form an elite that can arrive at the correct strategic analyses and then lead the masses to follow, what precisely is it? This is an area where I think anthropology is particularly well positioned to help. And not only because most actual, self-governing communities, non-market economies, and other radical alternatives have been mainly studied by anthropologists; also, because the practice of ethnography provides at least something of a model, an incipient model, of how non-vanguardist revolutionary intellectual practice might work. Ethnography is about teasing out the hidden symbolic, moral, or pragmatic logics that underly certain types of social action; the way people's habits and actions makes sense in ways that they are not themselves completely aware of. One obvious role for a radical intellectual is precisely that: the first thing we need to do is to look at those who are creating viable alternatives on the group, and try to figure out what might be the larger implications of what they are (already) doing.

./english/372.txt:55:The historical relations between political and artistic avant gardes have been explored at length by others. For me though the really intriguing questions is: why is it that artists have so often been so drawn to revolutionary politics to begin with? Because it does seem to be the case that, even in times and places when there is next to no other constituency for revolutionary change, the one place on is most likely to find one is among artists, authors, and musicians; even more so, in fact, that among professional intellectuals. It seems to me the answer must have something to do with alienation. There would appear to be a direct link between the experience of first imagining things and then bringing them into being (individually or collectively)--that is, the experience of certain forms of unalienated production--and the ability to imagine social alternatives; particularly, the possibility of a society itself premised on less alienated forms of creativity. Which would allow us to see the historical shift between seeing the vanguard as the relatively unalienated artists (or perhaps intellectuals) to seeing them as the representatives of the "most oppressed" in a new light. In fact, I would suggest, revolutionary coalitions always tend to consist of an alliance between a society's least alienated and its most oppressed. And this is less elitist a formulation than it might sound, because it also seems to be the case that actual revolutions tend to occur when these two categories come to overlap. That would at any rate explain why it almost always seems to be peasants and craftspeople - or alternately, newly proletarianized former peasants and craftspeople - who actually rise up and overthrow capitalist regimes, and not those inured to generations of wage labor. Finally, I suspect this would also help explain the extraordinary importance of indigenous people's struggles in that planetary uprising usually referred to as the "anti-globalization" movement: such people tend to be simultaneously the very least alienated and most oppressed people on earth, and once it is technologically possible to include them in revolutionary coalitions, it is almost inevitable that they should take a leading role.

./english/372.txt:57:The role of indigenous peoples in turn leads us back to the role of ethnography as a possible model for the would-be non-vanguardist revolutionary intellectual--as well as some of its potential pitfalls. Obviously what I am proposing would only work if it was, ultimately, a form of auto-ethnography, combined, perhaps, with a certain utopian extrapolation: a matter of teasing out the tacit logic or principles underlying certain forms of radical practice, and then, not only offering the analysis back to those communities, but using them to formulate new visions ("if one applied the same principles as you are applying to political organization to economics, might it not look something like this?"...) Here too there are suggestive parallels in the history of radical artistic movements, which became movements precisely as they became their own critics (and of course the idea of self-criticism took on a very different, and more ominous, tone within Marxist politics); there are also intellectuals already trying to do precisely this sort of auto-ethnographic work. But I say all this not so much to provide models as to open up a field for discussion, first of all, by emphasizing that even the notion of vanguardism itself far more rich in its history, and full of alternative possibilities, than most of us would ever be given to expect.

./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: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: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: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/374.txt:3:First published in English by the Executive Secretariat of the Organization of the Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (OSPAAAL), Havana, April 16, 1967.

./english/374.txt:22:Under the discredited flag of the United Nations, dozens of countries under the military leadership of the United States participated in this war with the massive intervention of U.S. soldiers and the use, as cannon fodder, of the South Korean population that was enrolled. On the other side, the army and the people of Korea and the volunteers from the Peoples' Republic of China were furnished with supplies and advise by the Soviet military apparatus. The U.S. tested all sort of weapons of destruction, excluding the thermo-nuclear type, but including, on a limited scale bacteriological and chemical warfare.

./english/374.txt:42:There is a sad reality: Vietnam -- a nation representing the aspirations, the hopes of a whole world of forgotten peoples -- is tragically alone. This nation must endure the furious attacks of U.S. technology, with practically no possibility of reprisals in the South and only some of defense in the North -- but always alone.

./english/374.txt:44:The solidarity of all progressive forces of the world towards the people of Vietnam today is similar to the bitter irony of the plebeians coaxing on the gladiators in the Roman arena. It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.

./english/374.txt:46:When we analyze the lonely situation of the Vietnamese people, we are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.

./english/374.txt:52:And what great people these are! What stoicism and courage! And what a lesson for the world is contained in this struggle! Not for a long time shall we be able to know if President Johnson ever seriously thought of bringing about some of the reforms needed by his people - to iron out the barbed class contradictions that grow each day with explosive power. The truth is that the improvements announced under the pompous title of the "Great Society" have dropped into the cesspool of Vietnam.

./english/374.txt:58:What role shall we, the exploited people of the world, play? The peoples of the three continents focus their attention on Vietnam and learn theIr lesson. Since imperialists blackmail humanity by threatening it with war, the wise reaction is not to fear war. The general tactics of the people should be to launch a constant and a firm attack in all fronts where the confrontation is taking place.

./english/374.txt:68:The slogan "we will not allow another Cuba" hides the possibility of perpetrating aggressions without fear of reprisal, such as the one carried out against the Dominican Republic or before that the massacre in Panama -- and the clear warning stating that Yankee troops are ready to intervene anywhere in America where the ruling regime may be altered, thus endangering their interests. This policy enjoys an almost absolute impunity: the OAS is a suitable mask, in spite of its unpopularity; the inefficiency of the UN is ridiculous as well as tragic; the armies of all American countries are ready to intervene in order to smash their peoples. The International of Crime and Treason has in fact been organized. On the other hand, the autochthonous bourgeoisies have lost all their capacity to oppose imperialism -- if they ever had it -- and they have become the last card in the pack. There are no other alternatives; either a socialist revolution or a make-believe revolution.

./english/374.txt:78:This dual situation, a strategic interest as important as the military encirclement of the Peoples' Republic of China and the penetration of these great markets -- which they do not dominate yet -- turns Asia into one of the most explosive points of the world today, in spite of its apparent stability outside of the Vietnamese war zone.

./english/374.txt:88:All this past history justifies our concern regarding the possibilities of liberating the peoples within a long or a short period of time.

./english/374.txt:106:In this continent practically only one tongue is spoken (with the exception of Brazil, with whose people, those who speak Spanish can easily make themselves understood, owing to the great similarity of both languages). There is also such a great similarity between the classes in these countries, that they have attained identification among themselves of an international americano type, much more complete than in the other continents. Language, habits, religion, a common foreign master, unite them. The degree and the form of exploitation are similar for both the exploiters and the men they exploit in the majority of the countries of Our America. And rebellion is ripening swiftly in it.

./english/374.txt:112:But the active movement of the people creates its new leaders; Cesar Montes and Yon Sosa raise up their flag in Guatemala; Fabio Vazquez and Marulanda in Colombia; Douglas Bravo in the Western part of the country and Americo Martin in El Bachiller, both directing their respective Venezuelan fronts.

./english/374.txt:114:New uprisings shall take place in these and other countries of Our America, as it has already happened in Bolivia, and they shall continue to grow in the midst of all the hardships inherent to this dangerous profession of being modern revolutionaries. Many shall perish, victims of their errors, others shall fall in the touch battle that approaches; new fighters and new leaders shall appear in the warmth of the revolutionary struggle. The people shall create their warriors and leaders in the selective framework of the war itself - and Yankee agents of repression shall increase. Today there are military aids in all the countries where armed struggle is growing; the Peruvian army apparently carried out a successful action against the revolutionaries in that country, an army also trained and advised by the Yankees. But if the focuses of war grow with sufficient political and military insight, they shall become practically invincible and shall force the Yankees to send reinforcements. In Peru itself many new figures, practically unknown, are now reorganizing the guerrilla. Little by little, the obsolete weapons, which are sufficient for the repression of small armed bands, will be exchanged for modern armaments and the U.S. military aids will be substituted by actual fighters until, at a given moment, they are forced to send increasingly greater number of regular troops to ensure the relative stability of a government whose national puppet army is desintegrating before the impetuous attacks of the guerrillas. It is the road of Vietnam it is the road that should be followed by the people; it is the road that will be followed in Our America, with the advantage that the armed groups could create Coordinating Councils to embarrass the repressive forces of Yankee imperialism and accelerate the revolutionary triumph.

./english/374.txt:116:America, a forgotten continent in the last liberation struggles, is now beginning to make itself heard through the Tricontinental and, in the voice of the vanguard of its peoples, the Cuban Revolution, will today have a task of much greater relevance: creating a Second or a Third Vietnam, or the Second and Third Vietnam of the world.

./english/374.txt:120:The fundamental element of this strategic end shall be the real liberation of all people, a liberation that will be brought about through armed struggle in most cases and which shall be, in Our America, almost indefectibly, a Socialist Revolution.

./english/374.txt:126:But this brief outline of victories carries within itself the immense sacrifice of the people, sacrifices that should be demanded beginning today, in plain daylight, and which perhaps may be less painful than those we would have to endure if we constantly avoided battle in an attempt to have others pull our chestnuts out of the fire.

./english/374.txt:130:It is absolutely just to avoid all useless sacrifices. Therefore, it is so important to clear up the real possibilities that dependent America may have of liberating itself through pacific means. For us, the solution to this question is quite clear: the present moment may or may not be the proper one for starting the struggle, but we cannot harbor any illusions, and we have no right to do so, that freedom can be obtained without fighting. And these battles shall not be mere street fights with stones against tear-gas bombs, or of pacific general strikes; neither shall it be the battle of a furious people destroying in two or three days the repressive scaffolds of the ruling oligarchies; the struggle shall be long, harsh, and its front shall be in the guerrilla's refuge, in the cities, in the homes of the fighters - where the repressive forces shall go seeking easy victims among their families -- in the massacred rural population, in the villages or cities destroyed by the bombardments of the enemy.

./english/374.txt:134:The beginnings will not be easy; they shall be extremely difficult. All the oligarchies' powers of repression, all their capacity for brutality and demagoguery will be placed at the service of their cause. Our mission, in the first hour, shall be to survive; later, we shall follow the perennial example of the guerrilla, carrying out armed propaganda (in the Vietnamese sense, that is, the bullets of propaganda, of the battles won or lost -- but fought -- against the enemy). The great lesson of the invincibility of the guerrillas taking root in the dispossessed masses. The galvanizing of the national spirit, the preparation for harder tasks, for resisting even more violent repressions. Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

./english/374.txt:144:We all know great controversies rend the world now fighting for freedom; no one can hide it. We also know that they have reached such intensity and such bitterness that the possibility of dialogue and reconciliation seems extremely difficult, if not impossible. It is a useless task to search for means and ways to propitiate a dialogue which the hostile parties avoid. However, the enemy is there; it strikes every day, and threatens us with new blows and these blows will unite us, today, tomorrow, or the day after. Whoever understands this first, and prepares for this necessary union, shall have the people's gratitude.

./english/374.txt:150:Let us sum up our hopes for victory: total destruction of imperialism by eliminating its firmest bulwark: the oppression exercized by the United States of America. To carry out, as a tactical method, the peoples gradual liberation, one by one or in groups: driving the enemy into a difficult fight away from its own territory; dismantling all its sustenance bases, that is, its dependent territories.

./english/374.txt:152:This means a long war. And, once more we repeat it, a cruel war. Let no one fool himself at the outstart and let no one hesitate to start out for fear of the consequences it may bring to his people. It is almost our sole hope for victory. We cannot elude the call of this hour. Vietnam is pointing it out with its endless lesson of heroism, its tragic and everyday lesson of struggle and death for the attainment of final victory.

./english/374.txt:156:How close we could look into a bright future should two, three or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world with their share of deaths and their immense tragedies, their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and the increasing hatred of all peoples of the world!

./english/374.txt:158:And if we were all capable of uniting to make our blows stronger and infallible and so increase the effectiveness of all kinds of support given to the struggling people -- how great and close would that future be!

./english/374.txt:162:Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory.

./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:11:The first is that capitalism’s basic motivating force is the seizure of people’s labour – what Marx called their surplus value – which individual capitals then accumulate in competition with each other, so that the whole reality of the system is that is based upon the alienated labour, the stolen labour, of people who work.

./english/375.txt:19:Against this, whenever we have been through periods of defeats of struggles, theorists have arisen who have said it is not the working class that is at the centre, but some other force. In the late 1970s and the 1980s world wide we went through a defeat for the working class struggles – the defeat in Chile, the formation in Europe of various social democratic governments that brought back the market, that began to break up welfare systems, the bloody dictatorship in Argentina, a whole period of defeats for the working class movement. In any period of defeats the workers’ organisations fragment, workers turn upon each other, people see individual solutions, in that situation theories arise which say the working class is no longer central and that there is some other agency we can turn to.

./english/375.txt:22:As far as I am concerned we are not in a new period of struggle internationally. In some countries is it more advanced than in others. In some the crisis of the system is much greater than in others. But we are talking about a new wave of struggles of which the anti-capitalist movement and the anti-war movement are part. In this new wave of struggles people are beginning to look for new answers.

./english/375.txt:25:But the central argument in the Hardt and Negri book is that the working class is beginning to disappear, that the old notion of Marx of people concentrated together in large workplaces, where their time is measured against the clock, where their lives are fragmented between the time in which they work, when they are effectively prisoners inside the factory of the office, and the free time have to recuperate from their work, Hardt and Negri want to argue this is no longer the case.

./english/375.txt:31:We have been witnessing, world wide, changes in capitalism over the last quarter of century. This should not surprise us. The whole history of capitalism ahs been of change, with new areas of production advancing and old areas disappearing. The process always takes the form of the advance of capitalism drawing people into new workplaces, at a higher level than in the period before. This exactly true of the present period.

./english/375.txt:33:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 4If we talk about the disappearance of the traditional working class in manufacturing, mining, and so forth. The reality is that this is not a class that is disappearing. I just want to give a few figures from what is still the world’s biggest economy, the United States. At the end of the 1970s there was a panic in the United States with people talking about ‘deindustrialisation’. But in 1998 the number of people working in industry in the United States was 20 per cent higher than in 1974, roughly; 50 per cent higher than in 1950 and it was four times the level of 1900. There was this continual growth in the number of workers in old style industries – mining, manufacturing and so forth. It is true that the total number employed in the economy as a whole grew more rapidly than that. But the absolute size of the traditional industrial working class – if you want to use the Spanish term, the obreros as opposed to the trabajadores – continued to grow right up until the beginning of the recession that began two years ago.

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

./english/375.txt:36:But alongside this has gone the vast expansion in the number of people in paid employment. Again I want to give figures for the advanced industrial countries, because they provide some indication of what the general trend is.

./english/375.txt:38:The reality of service employment is very different. People confuse the categories of industry and services with the categories of manual work and white collar work. But the services have always included very large numbers of manual workers. Dockers are service workers. Bus workers are service workers. Train drivers are service workers. If you look today at the United States there are 103 million people included in service employment. It is not true that all of these are informational workers, some sort of new category. There are 18 million in occupations with a decidedly manual cast to them – janitors, ‘security personnel’, ‘food services’, cleaners, people who to fill the shelves in shops, and so on. There are another 18 million in routine clerical jobs, terrible jobs in many ways indistinguishable from manual jobs, people involved in typing, filing and so and so forth. There are another six and three quarter million sales assistants, people working on checkouts at stores. Vast groups of workers whose jobs are as routines, as

./english/375.txt:40:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 5boring, as tiring, as devastating to their lives as any traditional manual work. Something like 42 million people altogether in such jobs in the United States.

./english/375.txt:42:If you add to that other changes that are taking way, the way that jobs like teaching are increasingly subject to the payments systems that used to exist only in manufacturing or mining, payment by results, managerial supervision, managerial bullying, assessment procedures, stretching today in Britain today right up to the university level, you talking about the transformation involving more and more people being drawn into the old style of jobs. When people talk about informational jobs, I am more tempted to talk about Macjobs’, of even teaching becoming almost a Macjob, part of a production line.

./english/375.txt:44:One other thing should be said. It is often claimed that these jobs are all insecure jobs. It is said in Hardt and Negri that all these are jobs that could disappear overnight. Here we have to be careful. Everywhere those who employ workers want to create a feeling of insecurity among workers in order to break their ability to fight back. And to there has been over the last 20 or 30 years an increase in insecure employment. But it is also true that everywhere that capitalism exploits labour, it wants some degree of commitment from the workforce, some degree of stability to the workforce. And therefore you find in Europe 18 per cent of jobs are insecure jobs, 82 per cent of jobs are more or less permanent jobs. The average time for which people stay in the same job in Britain is the same now as ten years ago. This is important because the notion of insecure jobs is used in Britain by the New Labour government to say everyone has insecure jobs therefore you cannot fight to defend your job. For us it is important to understand that there insecurity and the attempt to create insecurity among workers. But at the same time there is a stable workforce that has the capacity to fight back.

./english/375.txt:46:The latest breakdown of the composition of the world’s workforce was carried out in 1995 by Deon Filmer, for the World Bank, of all things. His break down shows about a third of people in paid employment, and about half still involved in self employment on the land.

./english/375.txt:48:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 6But if you analyse the categories further, you find that in most third world countries today about half the people working the land for themselves are to some extent also dependent on waged labour. So about a third of the world’s workforce are involved in classic capitalist relations of production, dependent completely on waged labour to survive, about a third remain self employed, mainly peasants in the countryside, and third who spend part of their time working for capital, part of the time working for themselves – and increasingly under the control of multinational trading corporations, supermarket chains, and so on.

./english/375.txt:51:Within that there is a trend where people who used to work the land are forced to seek work in large cities. But that transformation does not mean there is automatic growth of the permanent workforce.

./english/375.txt:52:In most parts of the world, there is a small growth of the permanent workforce and, alongside it, a massive growth of transitory workforce, of people who either live by the most meagre forms of self employment – selling matches, shoe laces, driving taxis, or sometimes selling their own bodies – and alongside them people who try to sell their labour on a casual basis.

./english/375.txt:64:In 1983, a massive textile strike shook Bombay. It probably the biggest strike the world has ever known and it lasted for 12 months with a million workers on strike. For that period collective ideas dominated the mass of poor people in and out of jobs in the Bombay area. That strike was defeated. In the aftermath of it what came to dominate in Bombay, rooted among the poor, the self employed and so forth, was what one might call a fascist organisation called the Shiv Sena, which directed the hatred of the middle castes against the lowest, the Dalits (untouchables), the hatred of Hindus against Muslims. In the same city, the same multitude of people subjugated to capital, their lives being ruined by the system, could turn in tow directions. One to collective struggle, one to individualistic struggle. The collective struggle is beaten, the individualist struggle comes to the fore.

./english/375.txt:69:The last thing I wan to talk about is Venezuela. We’ve had an epic conflict taking place there over the last five weeks. It is conflict between the rich and the poor. The rich are backed by the United States. The poor come on the streets in support of Chavez. But it has to be said the demonstrations behind the rich and the demonstrations behind the poor have been more or less equal in size – although people argue that the recent pro0-Chavez demonstrations have been slightly larger.

./english/375.txt:70:When you just talk about multitudes, you can have a multitude to the left and a multitude to the right. You have to ask what is the dynamic that drives it forward and can carry it on. Unless you talk about people whose experience under capitalism forces them to act collectively and to provide collective alternative, you cannot talk about really changing the system.

./english/375.txt:93:Like I say, Toni and I see multitude as a class concept, as a way of seeing class and its political uses. Generally, people accept the notion there are two conceptions of class. There is one which is usually associated with Marx’s own work which we think of as the unitary model of class. This is grounded in Marx’s work when he continually talked in his work about the tendency in capitalist society for a reduction of class differences so as to tend to a two class model of capitalism, the class of those with nothing to sell but their labour power, the proletariat, and the capitalist class. So Marx talks about the reduction to the two class, or unitary model, with one class of labour.

./english/375.txt:102:First5 of all it’s important for us to distinguish the concept of the multitude from the concept of the people. What we mean is that the concept of the people has traditionally been used in political philosophy as unitary concept. In other words, the concept of the people is of a single thing abstracted from the population, and by unitary is meant self identical. National identity comes under that category.

./english/375.txt:103:The concept of the multitude is always internally differentiated. The multitude is a plurality. That is the difference between the people and the multitude. The people is one, the multitude is many.

./english/375.txt:119:I fully identify with Michael Hardt’s description of the multitude and I see it in practice where I live, where I see a movement away form what I call a platform based rigid organisation where after a platform has been established everybody has to follow it rigidly, a movement towards what I call issue based coalitions where the differences do exist and people coalesce around an issue dynamically, where today we may be one coalition about one issue, tomorrow we may be another coalition around another issue, and we may find ourselves on different sides so to speak from day to day.

./english/375.txt:130:Firstly, I’d like to bring out the point that there is not necessarily this broad commonality of interest among the working class when you look at variations in income or working conditions among the working class, like for example, the longshoremen in the United States earn a lot while the working class people and NGOs will not make a lot of money and working conditions vary. The general point is that there are plurality of interests among the working class.

./english/375.txt:131:What I wanted to say was that what unites multitudes in struggle essentially is the desire for autonomy and the ability to effect a change without the mediation of a centralised state body, or a centralised body at all. People are very interested in taking the reins into their own hands and intelligent enough to be given the power to do things without some kind of authority, and especially without an authoritarian authority telling what and when they can do something

./english/375.txt:139:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 15movement that wants to see an end to this horrible system which is inflicting harm on millions of people.

./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/375.txt:152:The notion of the multitude has a certain tradition. It was used by Spinoza in the 17th century. He has this paragraph where he says that people’s minds are not able to grasp every problem but when talk to each other and listen to each other they come to solutions which did not exist in the beginning. This is the way of functioning of the multitude.

./english/375.txt:158:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 17precisely because there is a great desire to respect the differences and autonomy of each actor and this requires a tremendous time and effort to agree a common agenda for all the actions. We can agree what we against – against the war, against globalisation – but we have a great difficulty in agreeing strategies and visions of where we want to go. In terms of that getting more numbers, certainly the mobilisation of the working class, but in terms of sustaining adhesion to an agenda, I think there are great differences. The people we are fighting against are producing changes at great speed, and we have these difficulties in arriving at what we want to do.. I would like to hear from both speakers what you think about these factors

./english/375.txt:160:I am from Buenos Aires Argentina. I remember the panel you were on last year, Michael. What I remember is how isolated you seemed in presenting the book Empire vis a vis the rest of the people on the panel. So I am happy see how this concept has been gathering more friends and supporters in the intervening year.

./english/375.txt:171:I don’t mean when I am talking about the working class, the comrade who was talking about labour struggles, industrial struggles in Argentina, said the working class does struggle and does lead certain sorts of struggles. I think that is true and I support them. I don’t ignore the fact that certain groups in certain times take a hegemonic position, and when they do people listen to them more. And there are certain groups that people listen to more. Think of the effect that the Zapatistas have had across the world. In a way they have had a hegemonic position. But this is a variable, not a permanent situation.

./english/375.txt:178:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 19This is crucial. The movement in Argentina is fantastic. I wrote a pamphlet on this a year ago extolling the movement. The question is that a year on people are dying of starvation in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in the world’s second biggest meat producer people are dying of starvation. What is to be done? That is the question that Lenin raised too. You may not want to give the same answer as he gave, but the question has to be asked.

./english/375.txt:179:The question of the Zapatistas. I’m sorry. I was in Mexico six years ago at the time when the Mexican army massacred people in Chiapas and I went on a demonstration of 10,000 people in Mexico City, and I asked, Why weren’t there half a million people demonstrating in Mexico City? What is to be done to bring forces to help these struggles? We are faced with the likelihood – I feel like saying the near certainty – I hope it’s not a near certainty – that in the next four or six weeks bombs will be falling on Baghdad. What is to be done?

./english/375.txt:183:What is our weakness? The reality is that we have not mobilised the force that capitalism itself creates. It is alright for Michael Hardt to say the working class exists. But he is ambiguous on this question. I wonder why his book is so difficult to read. I feel like asking sometimes how many people have read it from first to last page. It is difficult because of its ambiguities. The problem is not in the language, but in the thought. At one point it can say the working class is ‘close to invisible’, it can say in one passage the working class in the United States is getting smaller absolutely. When I show it is getting bigger absolutely, we are told the figures are irrelevant. They are relevant. And let’s be clear, when I speak of the working class I talk about people’s whose labour adds to the accumulation of capital. This is not just manual workers – operaios, obreros – it is also wider sections who have been drawn in. But they have been drawn into the global fordist society, into forms of exploitation that used to characterise manual workers. This is what is happening in the schools in Britain, even in the universities, among office workers on a massive scale.

./english/375.txt:184:The question for us is: how do we reach these people? It is not good saying we have movements of the multitude, of different groups doing different things, when I know in Britain that we’ve won a section of the intelligentsia against the war. How do we win the mass of people whose value keeps capital going is the central question. What is to be

./english/375.txt:186:Harman-Hardt debate/rough transcript 20done? And here we have to say that those people have a continuing relationship with capital. They have not disappeared. Their lives are still made miserable by capital. They are still concentrated in large workplaces. They still hate the system but do not know the system exists We have to pull these together.

./english/375.txt:187:The problem with 'Empire' as a book is that it evades these questions. When its says there is no longer any difference between the time we work for capital and the time we have as free time, ;you would not think that across the world people are moaning about the loss of free time as it is turned into time in which they are slaves to capital. It runs away from strategy; and from concrete analysis. And these questions are crucial for our movement.

./english/375.txt:188:When 'Empire' says the informational workers are now the ‘hegemonic layer’ I interpret that as meaning we have a movement that has come from people who have slightly less hard work than most people, have more time to think, more time to get together at meetings, more time to demonstrate, to organise and so forth and do the things we do, which is all right. But then we say ‘we are the elite’ and we can ignore the rest of people. And when people say the working class approach ingress the question of women, the fact is that women are being drawn into paid labour at the same time as they have to carry the burden of child care. The contradictory feature of capitalism is that by drawing them into waged labour it makes them more amenable to forms of collective organisation than ever before. And we have to confront this question.

./english/375.txt:189:It is not good saying we cannot talk in old fashioned terms and so forth. We have to say: What is the reality? The reality is a bigger than ever working class, a third of the world’s population, a third of the world’s population are seem-proletarian in this sense, and there are very large numbers of people who are unemployed, who have been driven to the margins of society, who can be drawn into the movement, but being marginal to society means they do not have the power to change it. How do we mobilise the force that can change it? And when people talk about mobilising against the war, there is one small example from Britain. I think the whole of the anti-war movement in Britain recognises this: when 15 traindrivers refused to transport weapons for the war, everyone in this is the way forward. How do we transform that into a mass movement of people refusing to use their labour for the war. It is not easy. There are not automatic answers. But unless we approach it in those terms, we are ducking the issue. And Empire ducks the issue.

./english/375.txt:194:There have been discussions on what are the definitions of the oppressed classes, the working class, and whatnot. I believe there are not several classes. There is only one class – the oppressed. I believe the struggle must be for the freedom of all peoples, I do not think we must restrict that struggle. When you see people with hunger, you do not ask what class they are. You want to help those people.

./english/375.txt:199:Some people have referred to workers taking over their factories in Argentina. There are fantastic actions there. But you can’t just sit there. You can’t just take over one factory. You still have to deal with the question of repression in Argentina, you still have to deal with the question of the United States's ability to wage war on whoever they want to get whatever they want, their ability to squeeze people economically. We do need to be able to organised, to engage in collective organising. The concept of multitude rejects that collective organising. That’s why I think we have to have a class analysis.

./english/375.txt:214:If you take the word hegemonic that has been used over and over again, I think the word has a useful genealogy within Marxism. It was about how the ruling class rules by having everybody in society conceiving themselves as individuals , as not part of a collective that constitutes the majority and therefore can overthrow the rulers. On the other hand, the other part of the classical understanding of hegemony was how the working class acts as a unify of all other forms of struggles. And that was not an organisational question be instruction – and the legacy of Stalinism over the last 70 years meant that was precisely was did happen. I think that Marxism cannot be used for such an understanding by decree, that you can make people follow the working class, whatever that might mean. That is why I am making some critique of Michael’s position. One the other hand if we have the understanding that all forms of opposed groupings and struggles, if we do not se

./english/376.txt:28:the interest of the giant corporations; oppose the tightening of the so-called intellectual property rights regime which strangles the knowledge commons; oppose the short-sighted adoption of proprietary software by many governments; oppose the normalisation of the discourse of 'public-private-partnership' that makes privatisation seem inevitable and avoids talk of communication systems focused on people before profits.

./english/376.txt:32:Promote communication as a human right and as a public good; promote and protect non-commercial, non-profit information, communication, and media systems (while taking care to avoid monopoly control by the state); promote regulation at international, national, and local levels to block the concentration of media ownership in the hands of the multinational conglomerates; promote alternatives to intellectual property rights including limiting such rights to individuals (not corporations); promote the knowledge commons, fair use, and copyright exemptions for poor countries; promote free and open source software; advance the discourse and practice of the global justice movement in taking the battle against neo-liberalism to the field of communication systems, and demand communication systems that serve people before profits.

./english/376.txt:42:5. Insist on the full and meaningful inclusion of women, youth, indigenous, ethnic minorities, sexual minorities, migrants, the homeless and landless, poor people, and all excluded and marginalised groups at all levels of discussion, decision-making, and implementation:

./english/376.txt:55:It is unclear how important WSIS will be. Some see activity outside the process as a way to increase pressure on the inside and help advance our concerns in the WSIS Declaration and Action Plan. Many prefer to think of it as an opportunity in terms of people who will be concentrated in Geneva, and in terms of international press coverage of the summit that can be used to inject our concerns into global media space. Others see it as an appropriate moment to push forward the growth of the global media justice movement in many parallel local events, or to advance the idea of a human right to communicate.

./english/376.txt:68:* A video conference with the presence of spokespeople from regional meetings

./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:14:But for those who were in it for the first time, and given visibility and voice in large tents holding thousands of people, sprinkled with delegates from other countries, it was a resounding moment of self-empowerment, of celebrating their particular experience, whether as victims, or part of collectivities like dalits or displaced persons. It was also an eye-opener to them that they were part of diverse struggles – one ocean of several streams.

./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:20:Whether it was Medha Patkar of the NBA or Thomas Kocherry of the fisher people’s struggles or Aruna Roy of the MKSS or Ravivarma Kumar, dalit advocate and Ruth Manorama of the dalit struggles, or Thelma and Ravi Narayan struggling to argue for the primacy of health over other services for the poor; or Jean Dreze for food, or Samy of the National Centre for Labour for protecting the dignity of work – at the ASF they were recharging their batteries. Kocherry to defend the fisher people on the island in West Bengal, Medha to work for a development mode which did not displace, in other words against the style in which the large infrastructure projects are put on the ground, Aruna for accountability, and a host of persons for rebuilding the collective united Asian front against war and violence of other kinds, against the international labour protocols, and a host of other areas.

./english/377.txt:30:Was there sufficient attention to the post-September 11 reassembled world? Since some of the language was from the old categories of capitalist, imperialist, the analysis also came from the classical mode which divided the global landscape on those lines. The reconfiguration of the world powers, the new hegemony, where location and religion superceded the ownership of capital; where political leaders were unselfconscious in using the language of hate, where the sovereignty of nations was crumbling, and where conservatism in political leadership was being supported by citizens, did not challenge the intellectual speakers to redefine globalisation. It was not moved from its simplistic characteristics of privatisation and liberalisation to its new face of militarisation and unipolarity. Not enough attention was paid to the design of a response, the importance of a comity of sovereign, independent even in economic terms, nations who could challenge this new monolith; thus the importance of building strong states, but with a political leadership which was different from what was in existence. Politicians were denigrated, but the strategy for political alternatives not developed. The potential within the people’s movements for entering the campaigns for electoral reform, for strengthening grass roots democracy, for releasing new energies into formal politics, through campaigns to fill the elected bodies with women, excluded groups, leaders of movements for social justice, what Gandhi called constructive workers was not central to the agenda as the mood was anti-state and therefore anti-politics.

./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: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:15:This was no mean feat; as one of the participants noted, for a column of many thousands of people to pass through a medieval city was barely possible, because these cities were specially built to make sure that columns of people could not march through them. As it happened, there was no need for concern, since the route was chosen so as to bypass the historical area of Florence.

./english/378.txt:21:Finding our way around in it was hard, since there was no guide. The registration of the participants was chaotic. Topping off everything, however, was the decision to close the gates of the fortress during the afternoon of 9 November. The organisers had decided that too many people were packed into the fortress, and that no-one else should be admitted. As a result, some people could not enter, while others could not leave.

./english/378.txt:23:Swearing blue murder, people swarmed over the fortress wall. The journalists and camera operators were in hysterics. Appointments and prearranged interviews fell through.

./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:27:General statements were delivered from the podiums. Successive speakers voiced delight at how many of us there were, and how young and good-looking we all were. Initiating serious debate in the halls full of thousands of people, warmed up by mass-meeting rhetoric, was impossible.

./english/378.txt:33:Of course, there are contrary examples as well. The most impressive of them are the left youth from Sweden and the socialist youth from Norway. The few dozen serious Scandinavians, however, were lost in the mass of enthusiastic young Italians. Meanwhile, the movement faces a serious problem in the shortage of middle-aged activists and leaders. In the early 1990s members of the left were worried because they were almost unable to attract young people to their side. Now there are more than enough youth, but the losses of the past decade are not so easily made up.

./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:37:The growth of the movement is in fact being accompanied by a decline in its effectiveness. Seattle and Prague were real victories for the movement, as even its opponents were forced to admit. A new round of talks on the liberalization of world trade was postponed for several years because of the huge protests in Seattle. Politicians and business people began trying to excuse and justify themselves. However, the other side is learning too.

./english/378.txt:41:The speeches were full of ambiguities. If we are right in asserting that the leaders of the US are irresponsible adventurists, that they are indifferent to people's fates and to democratic values, then we can hardly expect that protest marches will be able to stop the war. Even enormous protest marches. The antiwar movement has accumulated a considerable arsenal of methods of civil disobedience (including the closure of roads, blockades of military bases, and so forth).

./english/378.txt:57:As Russia's recent history shows, authorities can go for years without heeding public opinion while still retaining the appearance of democratic "legitimacy." The West is not Russia, of course. Western politicians have to pay more attention to what their people have to say. But in the past two years, the West has started to look a lot more like the East. The political establishment senses its independence and invulnerability.

./english/378.txt:63:It must figure out how to cooperate with various organizations and agencies, political parties and the press. It must not only win the support of a disorganized public, but the backing of the majority -- people who realize that their very freedom is at stake.

./english/379.txt:10:åA community will evolve only when a people control their own communication.π

./english/379.txt:16:As the third millennium unfolds, one of the most dramatic technological and economic revolutions in history is advancing a set of processes that are changing everything from the ways that people work to the ways that they communicate with each other and spend their leisure time. The technological revolution centres on computer, information, communication and multimedia technologies. These are key aspects of the production of a new economy, described as postindustrial, post-Fordist and postmodern, accompanied by a networked society and cyberspace, and the juggernaut of globalization. There are, of course, furious debates about how to describe the Great Transformation of the contemporary epoch, whether it is positive and negative, and what are the political prospects for democratization and radical social transformation.[1]

./english/379.txt:20:In this paper, I will engage some issues involving globalization, technological revolution and the alleged rise of a new economy, networked society and cyberspace in relationship to the problematic of revolution and the prospects for a radical democratic or socialist transformation of society. Globalization and the rise of a new computer and information technology-based economy and society is interpreted in both popular and academic literature as a revolution in which new technologies are transforming every mode of life from how individuals do research to how people communicate and interact socially. There is some truth in this notion, but it is also true that the technological revolution perpetuates the interests of the dominant economic and political powers, intensifies divisions between haves and have nots, and is a defining feature of a new and improved form of global technocapitalism.

./english/379.txt:32:Consequently, in this paper, I focus on the ways that an oppositional politics can use new technologies to intervene within the global restructuring of capitalism to promote democratic and anti-capitalist social movements aiming at radical structural transformation. I would argue that globalization and technological revolution are in some ways inevitable -- barring an apocalyptic collapse of the global economy -- but the forms that they take are not. That is, I think that the trends toward a more global economy and culture, a networked society, and the continued flow of commodities, images, cultural forms, technology and people across the globe will continue apace, as will intense technological revolution. Both take the form of what Schumpeter called åcreative destructionπ and guarantee that the next decades will be highly turbulent, contested and full of struggle and conflict. But the forms that globalization and technological revolution will take are neither fixed nor determined. Hence, I would argue that it is perfectly reasonable to oppose corporate capitalist globalization and its market model of society, its neoliberal laissez-faire ideology and its putting profit, competition and market logic before all other aspects of life. I will accordingly focus on the ways that technopolitics can and are being used for anti-capitalist contestation, while noting the limitations of this conception.

./english/379.txt:46:Given the extent to which capital and its logic of commodification have colonized ever more areas of everyday life in recent years, it is somewhat astonishing that cyberspace is by and large decommodified for large numbers of people -- at least in the overdeveloped countries like the United States. On the other hand, using computers, transforming information into data-packets that can be sent through networks, and hooking oneself up to computer networks oneself, involves a form of commodified activity, inserting the user in networks and technology that are at the forefront of the information revolution and global restructuring of capital. Thus the internet is highly ambiguous from the perspective of commodification, as from other perspectives.

./english/379.txt:54:Obviously, much of the world does not even have telephone service, much less computers, and there are vast discrepancies in terms of who has access to computers and who participates in the technological revolution and cyberdemocracy today. As a result, there have been passionate debates over the extent and nature of the ådigital divideπ between the information haves and have-nots. Critics of new technologies and cyberspace repeat incessantly that it is by and large young, white, middle- or upper-class males who are the dominant players in the cyberspaces of the present. While this is true, statistics and surveys indicate that many more women, people of colour, seniors and individuals from marginalized groups are becoming increasingly active.[3] In addition, computers may become part of the standard household consumer package in the overdeveloped world, although studies are emerging that indicate that large numbers of individuals claim that they have no intention of purchasing computers and using the internet. Yet in the light of the importance of computers for work, social life, entertainment and education, no doubt growing amounts of people will continue to go on-line. Further, there are plans afoot to wire the entire world with satellites that would make the internet and new communication technologies accessible to people who do not now even have a telephone, TV or even electricity, and wireless, interactive technologies are touted as the next stage of networked communication.[4]

./english/379.txt:58:However widespread and common computers and new technologies become, it is clear that they are of essential importance already for labour, politics, education and social life, and that people who want to participate in the public and cultural life of the future will need to have computer access and literacy. Although there is a real threat that the computerization of society will intensify the current inequalities in relations of class, race and gender power, there is also the possibility that a democratized and computerized public sphere might provide opportunities to overcome these injustices. Cyberdemocracy and the internet should be seen therefore as a contested terrain. Radical democratic activists should look to its possibilities for resistance and the advancement of political education, action and organization, while engaging in struggles over the digital divide. Dominant corporate and state powers, as well as conservative and rightist groups, have been making sustained use of new technologies to advance their agendas. If forces struggling for democratization and social justice want to become players in the cultural and political battles of the future, they must devise ways to use new technologies to advance a radical democratic and ecological agenda and the interests of the oppressed.

./english/379.txt:104:Furthermore, the internet provided critical coverage of the event, documentation of the various groupsπ protests, and debate over the WTO and globalization. Whereas the mainstream media presented the protests as åanti-tradeπ, featured the incidents of anarchist violence against property, and minimized police brutality against demonstrators, the internet provided pictures, eyewitness accounts and reports of police viciousness and the generally peaceful and nonviolent nature of the protests. While the mainstream media framed the Seattle anti-WTO activities negatively and privileged suspect spokespeople like Patrick Buchanan as critics of globalization, the internet provided multiple representations of the demonstrations, advanced reflective discussion of the WTO and globalization, and presented a diversity of critical perspectives.

./english/379.txt:116:The movement against capitalist globalization used the internet to organize mass demonstrations and to disseminate information to the world concerning the policies of the institutions of capitalist globalization. The events made clear that the protestors were not against globalization per se, but were against neoliberal globalization, opposing specific policies and institutions that produce intensified exploitation of labour, environmental devastation, growing divisions among social classes and the undermining of democracy. The emerging anti-globalization from above movements are locating these problems in the context of opposition to a restructuring of a neoliberal market capitalism on a worldwide basis for maximum profit with zero accountability. The anti-capitalist movements, by contrast, have made clear the need for democratization, regulation, rules and globalization in the interests of people and not profit.

./english/379.txt:176:[3] In August 1999, a widely-publicized US Department of Commerce report contended that the ådigital divideπ between the information haves and have-nots was growing; by November, there were critiques that the survey data was severely out of date and that more reliable statistics indicated that the divide was lessening, that more women, people of color, and seniors were connected to the internet, and that more than half of the United States was connected by late 1999. In 2000, several surveys indicated that the digital divide was mainly structured by class and education, and not by race. One should, however, be suspicious of statistics concerning internet access and use, as powerful interests are involved who manipulate figures for their own purposes. Yet there is no doubt that a ådigital divideπ exists and various politicians, groups and corporations are exploiting this problem for their own interests.

./english/379.txt:178:[4] On the growth of wireless, see the discussion in Best and Kellner forthcoming. It was announced in April 1997 that Boeing Aircraft had joined Bill Gates in investing in a satellite communications company, Teledesic, which planned to send up 288 small low-orbit satellites to cover most of the Americas and then the world by 2002. This project could give up to 20 million people satellite internet access at a given moment; see USA Today, 30 April 1997. In May 1998, Motorola joined the åinternet in the Skyπ Project, scrapping its own $12.9 billion plan to build a satellite network capable of delivering high speed data communications anywhere on the planet and instead joined the Teledesic project, pushing aside Boeing to become Teledesic's prime contractor (New York Times 22 May 1998). An åInternet-in-the-Skyπ would make possible access to new technologies for groups and regions that do not even have telephones, thus expanding the potential for democratic and progressive uses of new technologies. On the other hand, there are reports that the corporations proposing such projects are not pursuing them and thus, once again, state intervention may be necessary to develop progressive technologies that will serve all.

./english/379.txt:192:As early as March, activists were hitting the news groups and list-serves -- strings of e-mail messages people use as a kind of long-term chat -- to organize protests and rallies.

./english/380.txt:21: I wish to sketch aspects of a critical theory of globalization that will discuss the fundamental transformations in the world economy, politics, and culture in a dialectical framework that distinguishes between progressive and emancipatory features and oppressive and negative attributes. This requires articulations of the contradictions and ambiguities of globalization and the ways that globalization is both imposed from above and yet can be contested and reconfigured from below. I argue that the key to understanding globalization critically is theorizing it at once as a product of technological revolution and the global restructuring of capitalism in which economic, technological, political, and cultural features are intertwined. From this perspective, one should avoid both technological and economic determinism and all one-sided optics of globalization in favor of a view that theorizes globalization as a highly complex, contradictory, and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social relations, as well as involving flows of goods, services, ideas, technologies, cultural forms, and people (see Appadurai 1996).

./english/380.txt:33: For critical social theory, globalization involves both capitalist markets and sets of social relations and flows of commodities, capital, technology, ideas, forms of culture, and people across national boundaries via a global networked society (see Castells 1996, 1997, and 1998 and Held, et al 1999). The transmutations of technology and capital work together to create a new globalized and interconnected world. A technological revolution involving the creation of a computerized network of communication, transportation, and exchange is the presupposition of a globalized economy, along with the extension of a world capitalist market system that is absorbing ever more areas of the world and spheres of production, exchange, and consumption into its orbit. The technological revolution presupposes global computerized networks and the free movement of goods, information, and peoples across national boundaries. Hence, the Internet and global computer networks make possible globalization by producing a technological infrastructure for the global economy. Computerized networks, satellite-communication systems, and the software and hardware that link together and facilitate the global economy depend on breakthroughs in microphysics. Technoscience has generated transistors, increasingly powerful and sophisticated computer chips, integrated circuits, high-tech communication systems, and a technological revolution that provides an infrastructure for the global economy and society (see Gilder 1989 and 2000; Kaku 1997; and Best and Kellner 2001).

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

./english/380.txt:73: Some poststructuralist theories that stress the complexity of globalization exaggerate the disjunctions and autonomous flows of capital, technology, culture, people, and goods, thus a critical theory of globalization grounds globalization in a theory of capitalist restructuring and technological revolution. To paraphrase Max Horkheimer, whoever wants to talk about capitalism, must talk about globalization, and it is impossible to theorize globalization without talking about the restructuring of capitalism. The term "technocapitalism" is useful to describe the synthesis of capital and technology in the present organization of society (Kellner 1989a). Unlike theories of postmodernity (i.e. Baudrillard), or the knowledge and information society, which often argue that technology is the new organizing principle of society, the concept of technocapitalism points to both the increasingly important role of technology and the enduring primacy of capitalist relations of production. In an era of unrestrained capitalism, it would be difficult to deny that contemporary societies are still organized around production and capital accumulation, and that capitalist imperatives continue to dominate production, distribution, and consumption, as well as other cultural, social and political domains.[3] Workers remain exploited by capitalists and capital persists as the hegemonic force -- more so than ever after the collapse of communism.

./english/380.txt:97: The terrorist acts on the United States on September 11 and subsequent Terror War dramatically disclose the downsides of globalization, the ways that global flows of technology, goods, information, ideologies, and people can have destructive as well as productive effects. The disclosure of powerful anti-Western terrorist networks shows that globalization divides the world as it unifies, that it produces enemies as it incorporates participants. The events disclose explosive contradictions and conflicts at the heart of globalization and that the technologies of information, communication, and transportation that facilitate globalization can also be used to undermine and attack it, and generate instruments of destruction as well as production[k1] .[4]

./english/380.txt:105: The use of powerful technologies as weapons of destruction also discloses current asymmetries of power and emergent forms of terrorism and war, as the new millennium exploded into dangerous conflicts and interventions. As technologies of mass destruction become more available and dispersed, perilous instabilities have emerged that have elicited policing measures to stem the flow of movements of people and goods across borders and internally. In particular, the USA Patriot Act has led to repressive measures that are replacing the spaces of the open and free information society with new forms of surveillance, policing, and repression (see Kellner, forthcoming).

./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:169: Globalization is thus necessarily complex and challenging to both critical theories and radical democratic politics. But many people these days operate with binary concepts of the global and the local, and promote one or the other side of the equation as the solution to the world's problems. For globalists, globalization is the solution and underdevelopment, backwardness, and provincialism are the problem. For localists, globalization is the problem and localization is the solution. But, less simplistically, it is the mix that matters and whether global or local solutions are most fitting depends on the conditions in the distinctive context that one is addressing and the specific solutions and policies being proposed.

./english/380.txt:177: Furthermore, the Internet provided critical coverage of the event, documentation of the various groups' protests, and debate over the WTO and globalization. Whereas the mainstream media presented the protests as "anti-trade," featured the incidents of anarchist violence against property, while minimizing police violence against demonstrators, the Internet provided pictures, eyewitness accounts, and reports of police brutality and the generally peaceful and non-violent nature of the protests. While the mainstream media framed the protests negatively and privileged suspect spokespeople like Patrick Buchanan as critics of globalization, the Internet provided multiple representations of the demonstrations, advanced reflective discussion of the WTO and globalization, and presented a diversity of critical perspectives.

./english/380.txt:197: In particular, the movement against capitalist globalization used the Internet to organize mass demonstrations and to disseminate information to the world concerning the policies of the institutions of capitalist globalization. The events made clear that protestors were not against globalization per se, but were against neo-liberal and capitalist globalization, opposing specific policies and institutions that produce intensified exploitation of labor, environmental devastation, growing divisions among the social classes, and the undermining of democracy. The emerging anti-globalization-from-above movements are contextualizing these problems in the framework of a restructuring of capitalism on a worldwide basis for maximum profit with zero accountability and have made clear the need for democratization, regulation, rules, and globalization in the interests of people and not profit.

./english/380.txt:276: In relation to education, the spread and distribution of information and communication technology signifies the possibility of openings of opportunities for research and interaction not previously open to students who did not have the privilege of access to major research libraries or institutions. The Internet opens more information and knowledge to more people than any previous institution in history, although it has its problems and limitations. Moreover, the Internet enables individuals to participate in discussions, to circulate their ideas and work, that were previously closed off to many excluded groups and individuals.

./english/380.txt:284: Hence, a critical theory of globalization presents globalization as a force of capitalism and democracy, as a set of forces imposed from above in conjunction with resistance from below. In this optic, globalization generates new conflicts, new struggles, and new crises, which in part can be seen as resistance to capitalist logic. In the light of the neo-liberal projects to dismantle the Welfare State, colonize the public sphere, and control globalization, it is up to citizens and activists to create new public spheres, politics, and pedagogies, and to use the new technologies to discuss what kinds of society people today want and to oppose the society against which people resist and struggle. This involves, minimally, demands for more education, health care, welfare, and benefits from the state, and to struggle to create a more democratic and egalitarian society. But one cannot expect that generous corporations and a beneficent state are going to make available to citizens the bounties and benefits of the globalized new information economy. Rather, it is up to individuals and groups to promote democratization and progressive social change.

./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: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/383.txt:87:Research on cooperation between groups of people is usually driven by two

./english/383.txt:90:intervention. Analyzes how a group of people might commit to cooperation and consequently

./english/385.txt:4:"I was at the jail where a lot of protesters were being held and a big crowd of people was chanting 'This Is What Democracy Looks Like!' At first it sounded kind of nice. But then I thought: is this really what democracy looks like? Nobody here looks like me."

./english/385.txt:7:In the vast acreage of published analysis about the splendid victory over the World Trade Organization last November 29-December 3, it is almost impossible to find anyone wondering why the 40-50,000 demonstrators were overwhelmingly Anglo. How can that be, when the WTO's main victims around the world are people of color? Understanding the reasons for the low level of color, and what can be learned from it, is absolutely crucial if we are to make Seattle's promise of a new, international movement against imperialist globalization come true.

./english/385.txt:11:Rank-and-file U.S. workers of color also attended, from certain unions and locals in certain geographic areas. There were young African Americans in the building trades; blacks from Local 10 of the ILWU in San Francisco and Latinos from its Los Angeles local; Asian Americans from SEIU; Teamsters of color from eastern Washington state; members of the painters' union and the union of Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees (H.E.R.E.). Latino/a farmworkers from the UFW and PCUN (Pineros and Campesinos del Noroeste) of Oregon also attended. At one point a miner from the South Africa Labor Network cried, "In the words of Karl Marx, 'Workers of the world, unite!'" The crowd of some 25,000 people cheered.

./english/385.txt:13:Among community activists of color, the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) delegation led by Tom Goldtooth conducted an impressive program of events with Native peoples from all over the U.S. and the world. A 15-member multi-state delegation represented the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice based in Albuquerque, which embraces 84 organizations primarily of color in the U.S. and Mexico; their activities in Seattle were binational.

./english/385.txt:15:Many activist youth groups of color came from California, especially the Bay Area, where they have been working on such issues as Free Mumia, affirmative action, ethnic studies, and rightwing laws like the current Proposition 21 "youth crime" initiative. Seattle-based forces of color that participated actively included the Filipino Community Center and the international People's Assembly, which led a march on Tuesday despite being the only one denied a permit. The predominantly white Direct Action Network (DAN), a huge coalition, brought thousands to the protest. But Jia Ching Chen of the Bay Area's Third Eye Movement was the only young person of color involved in DAN's central planning.

./english/385.txt:17:Seattle's 27-year old Centro de la Raza organized a Latino contingent in the labor march and local university groups, including MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan), hooked up with visiting activists of color. Black activists who have been fighting for an African American Heritage Museum and Cultural Center in Seattle were there. Hop Hopkins, an AIDS activist in Seattle, also black, made constant personal efforts to draw in people of color.

./english/385.txt:21:Yet several experienced activists of color in the Bay Area who had even been offered full scholarships chose not to go. A major reason for not participating, and the reason given by many others, was lack of knowledge about the WTO. As one Filipina said, "I didn't see the political significance of it how the protest would be anti-imperialist. We didn't know anything about the WTO except that lots of people were going to the meeting." One of the few groups that did feel informed, and did participate, was the hip-hop group Company of Prophets. According to African American member Rashidi Omari of Oakland, this happened as a result of their attending teach-ins by predominantly white groups like Art and Revolution. Company of Prophets, rapping from a big white van, was in the front ranks of the 6 a.m. march that closed down the WTO on November 30.

./english/385.txt:23:The problem of unfamiliarity with the WTO was aggravated by the fact that black and Latino communities across the U.S. lack internet access compared to many white communities. A July 1999 federal survey showed that among Americans earning $15,000-$35,000 a year, more than 32 percent of white families owned computers but only 19 percent of black and Latino families. In that same income range, only 9 percent of African American and Latino homes had internet access compared to 27 percent of white families. So information about WTO and all the plans for Seattle did not reach many people of color.

./english/385.txt:25:Limited knowledge meant a failure to see how the WTO affected the daily lives of U.S. communities of color. "Activists of color felt they had more immediate issues," said Rashidi. "Also, when we returned people told me of being worried that family and peers would say they were neglecting their own communities, if they went to Seattle. They would be asked, 'Why are you going? You should stay here and help your people.'" Along with such concerns about linkage came the assumption that the protest would be overwhelmingly white as it was. Coumba Toure, a Bay Area activist originally from Mali, West Africa, said she had originally thought, "the whites will take care of the WTO, I don't need to go." Others were more openly apprehensive. For example, Carlos ("Los" for short) Windham of Company of Prophets told me, "I think even Bay Area activists of color who understood the linkage didn't want to go to a protest dominated by 50,000 white hippies."

./english/385.txt:27:People of color had reason to expect the protest to be white-dominated. Roberto Maestas, director of Seattle's Centro de la Raza, told me that in the massive local press coverage before the WTO meeting, not a single person of color appeared as a spokesperson for the opposition. "Day after day, you saw only white faces in the news. The publicity was a real deterrent to people of color. I think some of the unions or church groups should have had representatives of color, to encourage people of color to participate."

./english/385.txt:31:In retrospect, observed Van Jones of STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement) in the Bay Area, "We should have stayed. We didn't see that we had a lot to learn from them. And they had a lot of materials for making banners, signs, puppets." "Later I went back and talked to people," recalled Rashidi, "and they were discussing tactics, very smart. Those folks were really ready for action. It was limiting for people of color to let that one experience affect their whole picture of white activists." Jinee Kim, a Korean American with the Third Eye Movement in the Bay Area, also thought it was a mistake. "We realized we didn't know how to do a blockade. We had no gas masks. They made sure everybody had food and water, they took care of people. We could have learned from them."

./english/385.txt:35:Few predominantly white groups in the Bay Area made a serious effort to get people of color to Seattle. Juliette Beck of Global Exchange worked hard with others to help people from developing (third world) countries to come. But for U.S. people of color, the main organizations that made a serious effort to do so were Just Act (Youth ACTion for Global JUSTice), formerly the Overseas Development Network, and Art and Revolution, which mostly helped artists. Many activists of color have mentioned Alli Chaggi-Starr of Art and Revolution, who not only helped people come but for the big march in Seattle she obtained a van with a sound system that was used by musicians and rappers.

./english/385.txt:37:In Just Act, Coumba Toure and two other members of color-Raj Jayadev and Malachi Larabee-pushed hard for support from the group. As a result, about 40 people of color were enabled to go thanks to special fundraising and whites staying at people's homes in Seattle so their hotel money could be used instead on plane tickets for people of color. Reflecting on the whole issue of working with whites, Coumba talked not only about pushing Just Act but also pushing people of color to apply for the help that became available.

./english/385.txt:39:One of the problems Coumba said she encountered in doing this was "a legacy of distrust of middle-class white activists that has emerged from experiences of 'being used.' Or not having our issues taken seriously. Involving people of color must be done in a way that gives them real space. Whites must understand a whole new approach is needed that includes respect (if you go to people of color thinking you know more, it creates a barrier). Also, you cannot approach people simply in terms of numbers, like 'let's give 2 scholarships.' People of color must be central to the project."

./english/385.txt:41:Jia Ching Chen recalled that once during the week of protest, in a jail holding cell, he was one of only two people of color among many Anglos. He tried to discuss with some of them the need to involve more activists of color and the importance of white support in this. "Some would say, 'We want to diversify', but didn't understand the dynamics of this." In other words, they didn't understand the kinds of problems described by Coumba Toure. "Other personal conversations were more productive," he said, "and some white people started to recognize why people of color could view the process of developing working relations with whites as oppressive."

./english/385.txt:43:Unfortunately the heritage of distrust was intensified by some of the AFL-CIO leadership of labor on the November 30 march. They chose to take a different route through downtown rather than marching with others to the Convention Center and helping to block the WTO. Also, on the march to downtown they reportedly had a conflict with the Third World People's Assembly contingent when they rudely told the people of color to move aside so they could be in the lead.

./english/385.txt:45:Yet if only a small number of people of color went to Seattle, all those with whom I spoke found the experience extraordinary. They spoke of being changed forever. "I saw the future." "I saw the possibility of people working together." They called the giant mobilization "a shot in the arm," if you had been feeling stagnant. "Being there was an incredible awakening." Naomi, a Filipina dancer and musician, recalled how "at first a lot of my group were tired, grumpy, wanting to go home. That really changed. One of the artists with us, who never considered herself a political activist, now wants to get involved back in Oakland. Seattle created a lot of strong bonds in my small community of coworkers and friends."

./english/385.txt:47:They seem to feel they had seen why, as the chant popularized by the Chicano/a students of MEChA goes, "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'Cause the power of the people don't stop!"

./english/385.txt:49:There must be effective follow-up and increased communication between people of color across the nation: grassroots organizers, activists, cultural workers, and educators. We need to build on the contacts made (or that need to be made) from Seattle. Even within the Bay Area, activists who could form working alliances still do not know of each other's existence.

./english/385.txt:55:Many examples of how WTO has hurt poor people in third world countries were given during the protest. For example, a Pakistani told one panel how, for years, South Africans grew medicinal herbs to treat AIDS at very little cost. The WTO ruled that this was "unfair" competition with pharmaceutical companies seeking to sell their expensive AIDS medications. "People are dying because they cannot afford those products ," he said. A Filipino reported on indigenous farmers being compelled to use fertilizers containing poisonous chemicals in order to compete with cheap, imported potatoes. Ruined, they often left the land seeking survival elsewhere.

./english/385.txt:60:WTO policies encourage privatization of health care, education, welfare, and other crucial public services, as well as cutbacks in those services, so private industry can take them over and run them at a profit. This, along with sub-livable wages, leads to jeopardizing the lives of working-class people and criminalizing youth in particular.

./english/385.txt:62:WTO has said it is "unfair trade" to ban the import of gasoline in which certain cancer-causing chemicals have been used. This could have a devastating effect on people in the U.S., including those of color, who buy that gas.

./english/385.txt:64:Armed with such knowledge, we can educate and organize people of color. As Jinee Kim said at a San Francisco report-back by youth of color, "We have to work with people who may not know the word 'globalization' but they live globalization."

./english/386.txt:18:The basic argument of this policy is fairly logical within the neo-liberal paradigm but adversely affects peoples lives and depends on the following propositions:

./english/386.txt:24:Give absolute precedence to the preservation of macro-economic objectives and policies, while neglecting the social cost to people in their everyday life.

./english/386.txt:27:The developmental model based on the neo-liberal paradigm has not only widened the social and economic disparity but also forced new groups of people into poverty and dislocated local communities and traditional support systems.

./english/386.txt:52:Look at what we are as a nation, 291 million adults and still illiterate and substantial majority of them are females whose capabilities are the key to transforming society: 45 million children were out of Primary Schools in 1995. Nearly one third of children under 16 are forced into child labour. 135 million people are denied access to primary health care, 226 million are without safe drinking water, 640 million lack basic sanitation and so on (see Mahbub ul Haq (1997)), that 350 million people "live" below a poverty line which views people only as a statistical or biological entity and not as a social individual with self-respect. Ironically, the same India which houses the largest number of world's poor was ranked first in arms India imports among the developing countries.

./english/386.txt:101:There are serious political consequences inherent in the emerging nexus between new institutional arrangements, new values and new individual drives through which people are being `marketised'. Quite apart from the decline in the role of the State in preserving spaces for the underprivileged and protecting peoples and cultures from globalising trends, there is the danger of the whole normative framework of democracy being undermined.

./english/386.txt:107:As the sense of insecurity among the people grows, alongside persisting poverty, unemployment and increasing injustice and discrimination, it pushes the poor and the unemployed into a culture of protest, anger and desperation.

./english/386.txt:114:The globalisation programme needs to be criticised because it firstly reduces the controls over economic activity, including prices, supply, employment conditions, wages etc. that the government can have and secondly because it produces structural distortions in the economy, and thirdly because it increases the vulnerability of the economic activity to vagaries of international market and finance. All these effects are detrimental to the interests and welfare of the people.

./english/386.txt:116:People's Movement and Resistance to Globalisation

./english/386.txt:119:These struggles by and large have been reactive and defensive in nature against unemployment, job security and rapidly worsening social conditions around public sector undertaking facing disinvestment and the insurance and banking sectors. Defensive struggles while necessary in sustaining elementary living conditions against the onslaught of globalisation provide short term victories. The defence of these interests in the long run requires radical restructuring of the structures of world capitalism by uniting the toiling people with an internationalist program and united struggle. This calls for not only the re-orientation of strategies but more fundamentally the ideological and cultural education of toiling people in values of solidarity, co-operation and egalitarianism.

./english/386.txt:121:Various mass organisations in the country in recent past have risen against globalisation in whatever manner they could. These movements have made certain impact by offering resistance to invasion of Global Capitalism by highlighting and struggling on issues affect the everyday life of the people.

./english/386.txt:133:As in the case of the fishworkers' movement, movements against export-oriented aquaculture also have formed a national network, People's Alliance against Shrimp Industry (PAASI) and they have also initiated joint activities with similar struggles in the third world. Attempts are also made to generate awareness among shrimp consumers in the West, according to Vandana Shiva.

./english/386.txt:137:Globalisation has been very rapid in Indian infrastructure sectors like power. Transnational corporations have been able to make great inroads into the power sector as exemplified by the Enron project in Maharashtra and the Cogentrix project in Karnataka. These mega power projects are also centres of people's resistance; the struggle against Enron being able to catch wide national attention. Apart from these there have been other struggles against TNCs like the one against DuPont in Goa.

./english/386.txt:139:The various social movements in the country have effectively challenged the neo-liberal paradigm which more or less uniformly marginalised communities of people from resources and power. The neo-liberal globalist vision of governance through "market" faces serious challenge and the re-emergence of new politics that requires the construction of new kinds of social and political institutions which will create a real space for the articulation and mobilisation of the poor and the most socially oppressed sections of society.

./english/386.txt:141:This new politics is not an "end state" but the affirmation of the State as an instrument of peoples' power, peoples' democracy and peoples' empowerment. It also means reaffirming the States' obligation of justice for the people from where it supposedly derives its legitimacy and power according to the democratic traditions and challenging and altering the development paradigm that argues for the market as the only provider and the new answer to the problems of economic development.

./english/386.txt:147:The immediate struggles will have to focus on the questions of survival and sustenance; on economic and social rights, on human rights including the right to self-determination. Alongwith protecting the sovereignity of the state against force of international capitalism and compel the state to fulfil its obligation to the people, to provide them social security and welfare, to meet their minimum needs. Also prevent the state to fritter away our natural resources and our environment in the name of development to transnational or indigenous capital. The content cannot be exhausted by these immediate needs. A goal of a new universal culture and a new internationalism will be necessary components of the vision.

./english/386.txt:149:Alliance building and people's solidarity is a focal point for promoting movement for justice concerns and build-up people's resistance against the forces of globalisation across nations. This alliance should be based on people-to-people contacts rooted in a culture of friendship and partnership that transcends borders and sectoral and organisational concerns. This calls for an attitude to learn from each others struggles and strengthen the relationships and alliances already underway in our own societies. We are challenged to be open to other cultures and experiences in our efforts to link not just ideas but persons; to support and contribute rather than merely expect support; to give meaning to language and communication between peoples; and to be open to initiatives and alternatives coming from all levels.

./english/386.txt:162:VAK is currently handling an ambitious project of conducting a mapping of the state to find out the resources of the people and alternatives available for the people.

./english/387.txt:19:In Ecuador the peasant and Indian movements spearheaded the movement that forced the resignation of President Bucaram, on corruption charges and attempts to impose an IMF free market agenda on the people.

./english/387.txt:20:In Brazil, the MST has settled over 150,000 families representing almost a million people on uncultivated lands through direct action—land occupation movements. Through actions in 21 states the MST has pushed land-reform to the center of political debate. One indicator of its success is found in recent polls in Sao Paulo (Brazil’s largest city) which indicate that over 75 percent of the population support land distribution favoring landless farm workers.

./english/387.txt:43:What became clear, however, in the course of the discussions was a profound difference between these militants and the public figures that the Western mass media present as “Indian spokes people.” For example, the Bolivians spoke disparagingly of the so-called “Quechua-speaking vice-president” who talks to the Indians and works for the rich foreigners. The Guatemalans were very critical of Rigoberta Menchu for her embrace of symbolic “Mayan” cultural changes divorced from the larger political-economic and human rights issues. And the Ecuadorean FONIC-I leaders spoke critically of two Indian leaders of the umbrella CONAI movement who were co-opted by the corrupt free market Bucaram regime. The leaders of the Indian movements at the CLOC congress were not falling victim to the “cultural identity” politics designed to divide and co-opt local leaders in order to undercut the movement’s demands for land rights.

./english/387.txt:58:But the new peasant movements have grown, even against the repression of the new civilian regimes. In Santa Carmen there had been a land occupation where peasants with their machetes were clearing the land and feeding each other through a common kitchen. In August 1996, the Army invaded and killed three peasants, destroyed their crops and houses, and drove scores of families off the land. Several months later the peasants re­occupied the land and organized a national conference attended by over 1,000 people including students, professionals, progressive businesspeople, and peasants from all over the country. They formed a national coordinating committee for agrarian reform.

./english/387.txt:60:Likewise, in Brazil in Para, 18 landless peasants peacefully blocking highways were butchered by the military police under orders from the governor. A photographer videotaped the event. A national outcry ensued. Massive demonstrations took place in Sao Paulo, Rio, and other cities. Public opinion polls demonstrated overwhelming support for the MST. They organized a march on the capital and were joined by over 100,000 people, including trade unionists and urban slum dwellers. President Cardoso, who denounced the MST as an “anachronistic movement” fighting outdated battles (like land reform), faced with the mass protests, invited one of the leaders to the Presidential Palace to discuss the best way to implement the reforms. The 15 member national leadership showed up to demonstrate that there is no single leader and refused Cardoso’s offer to sign an agreement suspending land occupations in exchange for settling 49,000 families camped on contested terrain. As Joao Pedro Stedile, an MST leader, said later, “It is necessary to negotiate but never at the price of demobilizing the movement. Otherwise you have nothing to negotiate in the future.”

./english/387.txt:64:In Peru, the Peasant Confederation of Peru (CCP) is in the process of regrouping forces, battered by assassinations by the Fujimori regime, Sendero Luminoso the fanatical Maoist sect, and the political divisions provoked by the Leftist electoral parties cannibalizing members. In some regions the CCP has organized “rondas campesinos,” peasant self-defense groups to resist paramilitary forces and the “exemplary actions” of Sendero sectarians. Lopez and other peasants are critical of the trajectory of former movement leaders who gain elected office. “The closer to parliament the further from the people.”

./english/387.txt:75:Peasants have learned from the past that even well meaning progressive professionals have used their support for peasants to build a political or lucrative professional career as a foreign consultant or expert. That doesn’t mean that peasants are turning their back on intellectuals or professionals. The main difference is that they want the intellectuals to be resource people for the movements, rather than the movements serving the intellectuals and professionals as sources for outside grants.

./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: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/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: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:63:WF: Diversity of views, diversity of participation – those are the key things. That it’s not the same people coming every time, or the same leaders, and that it’s not the same ideas being recycled. I would think that success means that you have an increasing number of people who feel that they can participate, and that they participate to their benefit in the sense that they learn things or build new networks. So I don’t know how you would measure it, because no one has actually counted if there have been more networks created. But that’s what I would see as success.

./english/388.txt:73:The heart of the difference lies in this: is the WSF a process, an open social movement, or a powerful institution? Clearly, if it were the latter then it would be able to do things and achieve things. Some people would like to see it become the institution that would then be able to make another world emerge.

./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:89:WF: I think it obvious when you’re here that people connect to Lula and that his election is something they see as being very positive. But I would be very cautious about reading too much into that. We can see the election of a president from one party at one specific time and then the election of one from an opposing party the next time. Lula’s election should give some inspiration, but the movement at the heart of the WSF should be seen as a long, ongoing, never-ending struggle. It is not as if somehow the election of Lula has made another world possible and changed things. I don’t think we would agree with that view. But clearly, it has fuelled the spirit of this particular WSF.

./english/389.txt:2:Putting People First in the Information Society

./english/389.txt:9:The World Summit on the Information Society proposes to develop “a common vision and understanding of the information society and the adoption of a declaration and plan of action.” A vision of society must necessarily have people at its center and an understanding of the fundamental rights and needs of humankind. The goals of such a society should be based on principles of social, political and economic justice.

./english/390.txt:13:Let me illustrate what I mean. India — the world’s biggest democracy — is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization project. Its "market" of one billion people is being prized open by the WTO. Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by the Government and the Indian elite.

./english/390.txt:17:The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of corporate globalization rips through people’s lives in India, massive privatization, and labor "reforms" are pushing people off their land and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation deaths are coming in from all over the country.

./english/390.txt:39:Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their borders and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. After all they have to make sure that it’s only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized. Not the free movement of people. Not a respect for human rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, or — god forbid — justice.

./english/390.txt:49:And the world’s gaze is on the people of Argentina, who are trying to refashion a country from the ashes of the havoc wrought by the IMF.

./english/390.txt:67:Empire may well go to war, but it’s out in the open now — too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It won’t be long before the majority of American people become our allies.

./english/390.txt:69:Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million people marched against the war on Iraq. Each month, the protest is gathering momentum.

./english/390.txt:71:Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret history. Secret especially from its own people. But now America’s secrets are history, and its history is public knowledge. It’s street talk.

./english/390.txt:75:Killing people to save them from dictatorship or ideological corruption is, of course, an old U.S. government sport. Here in Latin America, you know that better than most.

./english/390.txt:101:When George Bush says "you’re either with us, or you are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank you." We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.

./english/391.txt:18:The third element, defining proposals and strategies hasn't been resolved yet and doesn't seem to worry most people. There were 1,714 panels and seminars in this year's WSF. Is this proof of strength? If nobody can keep track of what went on in so many debates, I have my doubts. This atomisation of dialogue means that many valuable proposals were lost.

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

./english/392.txt:15:approached to do so by the WSF Council, nor of how the people invited to that meeting were

./english/392.txt:57:people in India to build bridges both within the country and with activists, movements, and

./english/392.txt:58:people in other countries across the globe, and to contribute to building both within the

./english/392.txt:126:Unfortunately, although we too talk of ’rainbow coalitions’ − just as people in other

./english/392.txt:276:(The present reality in India in these terms is that some people who attended the first

./english/392.txt:282:website, India supposedly has an MC and one of the two concerned people are identified

./english/393.txt:109:peoples.

./english/393.txt:117:sovereignty of peoples.

./english/393.txt:122:positions of political responsibility, mandated by their peoples, who decide to enter into

./english/393.txt:204:Human Rights, for peaceful relations, in equality and solidarity, among people, races,

./english/393.txt:205:genders and peoples, and condemns all forms of domination and all subjection of one

./english/393.txt:211:solidarity, among people, ethnicities, [Changed] genders and peoples, and condemns all

./english/393.txt:216:in them, except organizations that seek to take people’s lives as a method of political

./english/393.txt:244:activity and political action on meeting the needs of people and respecting nature.

./english/393.txt:248:building to centre economic activity and political action on meeting the needs of people and

./english/394.txt:48:whole of the subsequent year, reached tens of thousands of people in the country.

./english/394.txt:58:Principles’ since this might confuse people. The document, issued in July 2002, was accordingly

./english/394.txt:66:number of people.

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

./english/394.txt:111:take part in them, except organizations that seek to take people’s lives as a method of political

./english/394.txt:137:It is therefore very likely, given the history, that the majority of these people have the ‘old’

./english/394.txt:143:the sheer scale of India and region, it could even mean that half the people in the world who today

./english/394.txt:146:possible that different people with different interests will find different changes of significance. The

./english/394.txt:163:people’s lives as a method of political action” would seem to have been replaced by the emphasised phrase

./english/394.txt:166:This change is likely to be of special interest to many people in India, and perhaps in many

./english/394.txt:182:affiliated or sympathetic to the PWG, the People’s War Group, the most active and militant Maoist

./english/394.txt:295:WSF. Perhaps putting together all peoples implied, including our Secretariat (to whom I am sending also

./english/394.txt:315:17 International League for People’s Struggles (ILPS), World People’s Resistance Movement (WPRM), South

./english/395.txt:40:to and exchange with the vast majority of people who have not yet fully made up their minds about

./english/395.txt:75:where people can dream of other worlds, individually and collectively and struggle to forge ways of

./english/395.txt:122:themselves off from ordinary people, defending themselves with their militia.

./english/395.txt:165:depredations; and that there are alternatives. And, that people all over the world are now mobilising

./english/395.txt:197:that ‘another invisible hand is possible’: that if people come together in a large open space, they will

./english/395.txt:224:made up of a small number of people, to control things: by making opaque closed-door decisions

./english/395.txt:279:who wish to take part in them, except organisations that seek to take people’s lives as a method of

./english/395.txt:322:For the most part it is hoped that people entering the space will observe the rules and that force will

./english/395.txt:358:always open to all those who wish to take part in them, except organisations that seek to take people’s lives

./english/395.txt:366:While a literal interpretation of this provision (“organisations that seek to take people’s lives

./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:527:virtual organisations and networks — where people are increasingly not belonging to organisations

./english/395.txt:565:‘to push organised people to come [forward] and to avoid transforming the Forum into a traditional

./english/395.txt:598:the world). Beyond this, in this day and age, we know that the vast majority of people in most

./english/395.txt:656:movement organisations, which overtly ‘represent’ large masses of people, are increasingly

./english/396.txt:457:· Politically pre-established ideological contents that are sexist, violent and that alienate people.

./english/396.txt:573:Each day there are millions of conversations through the NET; adult and young people, women and men, people connected from within their homes, from their workplaces, in different parts of the world, whether they know each other personally or not, people that shares their language, multicultural people. They all have in common they seek to communicate and to be heard, and they are learning to use the new venue to do it.

./english/396.txt:610:(From the USA): I traveled more than 1,400 miles to attend the Feminist Expo 2000 in Baltimore, Maryland, not knowing what to expect. I knew little to nothing about the many women’s organizations that have empowered women and impacted their lives…because I was unaware of the women’s movement, I never actively did anything to help its progress and never would call myself a feminist…At the Feminist Expo, I was able to participate in a FIRE broadcast, which gave me the feeling that I was actually doing something to help dispel the false labels attached to the word feminist. Even if only one person learned something from that broadcast, or took a thought or an idea from it, the broadcast was successful. FIRE inspired me to examine what else I can do to educate people about feminism…From Melanie Schneider, Senior Journalism student, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, Illinois.

./english/397.txt:66:Most energy, however, still goes into building the blockade. Liverpool was the only port in Britain still unionized. Their own union, the Transport and General, says it cannot make the dispute official because of Britain’s anti-union legislation. Sue Mitchell, reflecting the anger this has caused, comments bitterly: ‘I’m fed up with them hiding behind those laws. They must have millions in their funds. I mean, my husband paid into that union for 31 years. I can’t understand why they can’t have the backbone to just say: “Let’s stick together and stand up for these people.” What else are unions for?’ Unlikely to get supporting action in Britain without official backing, the dockers have turned to building the international blockade.

./english/398.txt:4:After the euphoria of gathering thousands of people from all corners of the globe at the second WSF at Porto Alegre it was time for activists to reflect hard about the shape and future direction of the entire movement.

./english/398.txt:14:Answering the question from the audience on what the WSF movement hoped to 'win' Emilio Tadei of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences said that one should not talk in terms one 'big victory' but about a series of smaller victories from the individual to the international level. These victories he said would be about winning various rights and social advancement for the people while at the same time 'carrying out a revolution in our daily lives'.

./english/399.txt:34:You'll find the term 'Situationist' liberally sprinkled throughout contemporary agit-prop/pop culture. A lot of people name drop it but what it actually means and where it comes from is never properly explained and mapped out for people. This particular effort is going to be no exception to that. However "Situationist" is most definitely not some arty term that Malcolm Mclaren dreamed up to con people. It goes back many years before Talky Malky's reign of terror and had already been used to far greater effect.

./english/399.txt:36:The term came to the attention of certain sectors of the British populus, 5 years before Malcolm Mclaren borrowed some situationist ideas for the Sex Pistols, when on the night or January 12th, 1971 the country, and more specifically the house of Robert Carr, Ted Heath's Secretary of State for Employment, was rocked by two bomb explosions. Old Blighty had, of course, already felt the anti-imperialist anger of the I.R.A. in a similar way. But this was different. The IRA used bomb attacks for very specific purposes; troops out and home rule. The Carr Bombing was undoubtedly connected with Carr's controversial industrial relations bill, but the people responsible were not part of any traditional revolutionary group. All Special Branch had to go on was a communiqué from an organization calling itself "drumroll." "The Angry Brigade- Robert Carr got it tonight. We're getting closer."

./english/399.txt:38:Special Branch had heard or them before, but always dismissed them as (relatively) harmless anarchistic cranks. After the Carr Bombing they took them rather more seriously, asking themselves if this was the beginning of something big - the Revolution that people had been predicting throughout the 60's? Special Branch informants and files on political groups were useless. In fact the only real clue they had was a list of targets included in an earlier communiqué: "Embassies, High Pigs, Spectacles, Judges, Property." The third from last term "Spectacles" intrigued one enterprising Special Branch sergeant, who started visiting Liberatarian bookshops and sifting through underground magazines and literature.

./english/399.txt:44:On the surface the Situationists appear as extremely cynical fatalists. They began by condemning as redundant and articulately destroying anything that came before them. Everything from the Surrealists and the Beat Generation fell in their wake. Yet they had a fundamental, utopian belief that the bad days will end. Their criteria was basically, "if we explain how the nightmare works, everyone will wake up!" An inevitable optimism absent, by the very fact of their existence, from traditional political groups: who always operate on the premise that people are too thick to decide for themselves.

./english/399.txt:48:Debord saw the end result as Alienation. Separation of person from person; crowds or strangers, laughing and crying together but ultimately isolated from everybody and everything. The Spectacle makes spectators of us all, because we've been conned into substituting material things for Real experiences. However, Debord felt this feeling of alienation could eventually break the stranglehold of the Spectacular society. People were already rebelling against being kept apart by mass culture/ commodity/ consumer society. In the early 60s thousands of young americans questioned their role in middle morality America and dropped out in the anonymous tenements of Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. In 1965, in the Watts suburb of Los Angeles, thousands of black kids burnt down their schools and factories.

./english/399.txt:52:For example alternative lifestyles can be turned into commodities. The Haight-Ashbury hippies were eventually packaged off into commodity culture, as, of course, the London punk rockers were a decade later. And, with a lifestyle safely recouperated, after a certain amount of time it can be dusted off and sold back to people, inducing a yearning for the past. The Spectacle had gone that whole step further. For those bored with the possession of mere things, it was now capable of packaging even the possession of experiences: package holidays, community schemes, pop culture.

./english/399.txt:54:Spectacular Society is made complete by the recuperation of the environment in which all this must be experienced: The Recouperators realized that people would no longer accept the damage the growth of the Spectacle: heavy industry: was doing to their physical surroundings: the world. Hence environmental recuperation or "Urbanism." This consists of replacing disordered urban-sprawl with more manageable structures; factory-towns, new-towns, shopping-malls, super-markets. Huge areas designed solely for the purpose of work and the creation of profit, with total disregard for the needs or the people forced to service it. The workers kept apart in 'new architecture, traditionally reserved to satisfy the ruling class...for the first time, directly aimed at the poor: 'Dwelling Unit, Sweet Dwelling Unit.' Rabbit hutches designed soullessly to isolate and instill formal misery.

./english/399.txt:56:The Situationists' answer to "Urbanism" 'was the reconstruction or the entire environment, according to the needs of the people that inhabit it. Their answer to modern society was to be nothing short of the "REVOLUTION OF EVERYDAY LIFE" (the title of the companion book to 'The Society Of The Spectacle' by Raoul Vaneigem). Unlike traditional revolutionary groups, the Situationists were not concerned with the improvement of existing society, or reforming it. They were interested in destroying it completely and pulling something new and better in it's place. No half measures. No gestures. No immediate solution.

./english/399.txt:109:The minister replied, "I'm quite willing to discuss this matter with responsible people, but you are certainly not one of them. I myself prefer sport to sexual education. If you have sexual problems, I suggest you jump in the pool."

./english/399.txt:127:The rioting spread throughout the Latin Quarter and at the end of the day 597 people had been arrested and hundreds more injured. The Authorities heavy handling of the situation had provided tens of thousands of young parisians with something concrete to release their pent-up anger/ frustration/ alienation/ resentment on. The cry of 'Liberez nos Camarades!' went up and the students held their ground for a week; during which more and more young people joined their increasingly militant demonstrations. Finally, on May 11th, M. Pompidou withdrew the police from the Latin Quarter and said the case of the arrested students would be reconsidered and the University reopened.

./english/399.txt:129:As news of the Events spread, via TV-footage of the burning barricades and street battles, thousands of young people from, not just France but, all over Europe made for Paris. Many of them from affiliated student groups but also individuals drawn by something relevant to their own situation. Amongst the English contingent were John Barker, Anna Mendelson and Christopher Bott, who would put the ideas they experienced into practice back home and go down in history (as well as literally) as part of "The Stoke Newington Eight" Also, if you believe the story, Malcolm McLaren was given a guided tour of the barricades by his art school buddy Fred Vermorel and returned to put the ideas in practice in a different way.

./english/399.txt:133:This is how another english student described it in 'Solidarity': "First impression was of a gigantic lid being lifted, pent-up thoughts and aspirations suddenly exploding, on being released from the realm of dreams into the realm of the Real and Possible. In changing their environment people themselves were changed. Those who had never dared to say anything before suddenly felt their thoughts to be the most important thing in the world and said so. The helpless and isolated suddenly discovered that collective power lay in their hands...People just went up and talked to one another without a trace of self-consciousness. This state of euphoria lasted throughout the whole fortnight I was there."

./english/399.txt:143:"THE COMMODITY IS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE,"

./english/399.txt:157:The SI and Les Enrages at the Centre Censier tried to show how it could be followed up by producing leaflets on self-management and workers' councils. Whilst, at the same time, denouncing the leftist recouperators who were trying to take the credit and manipulate things for their own party political ends. The Communist Party, who refused to acknowledge any individual revolutionary activity actually by the people, were having decidedly unproductive dialogue with Cohn-Bendit. Dany the Red ended up calling them "Stalinist Filth" and the big Communist Trade Union, the CGT, refused to back the Revolution because it wasn't under the control of their central committee. The same story as the Spanish Civil War where the communists blew it because it wasn't on their terms. But at least they did'nt back the elections called for by the opposition.

./english/399.txt:165:The physical recuperation took several months: State property had to be reclaimed, slogans painted over and foreign students deported; including Dany Cohn-Bendit and John Barker. But with France back in the grip of a right-wing, nationalistic fervour (which it has never really shook off to this day), the show was over. (The Situationist International itself, which had already split in 2, was further decimated by various expulsions, resignations and scissions until it's eventual demise in 1972 - It seems that half the fun of having an International in the first place is so you can expel people). From this point on the action moved with John Barker and chums, to England. A certain group of germans also incorporated some situationist ideas and, in America, groups such as the Yippies, Motherfuckers, SLA and The Weathermen (but by 1969 the hippies had been recuperated to such an extent that there wasn't anywhere much to intervene in America).

./english/399.txt:167:The legacy of May '68 was to be felt for some time yet. The nights on the barricades and the exhilaration of new ideas had proved to the people there that revolution/ change was possible, not only possible but inevitable, and that capitalist society was in it's death throes. The situationist idea of intervening in a situation, with deliberate and systematic provocation, as put into practice by the 22nd March Movement, had been proven to work very effectively and very dramatically.

./english/399.txt:169:Where Paris had succeeded and the most important lesson of May '68 was final proof that the traditional revolutionary groups were now as outmoded, institutionalized and oppressive as the capitalists in power and were just as much slaves of the Spectacular Society. Final proof, that since the halcyon days of Marx, Bakunin and Lenin, they too had been recouperated and indeed become recouperators in their own right. They lost face to thousands of young people when they came out in their true colours, against the anti-hierarchy, self-management notions of the 22nd March Movement. And especially when it was proved, contrary to communist dogma, that self-management does in fact work. Why not let the people decide?

./english/399.txt:171:"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal or constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."

./english/400.txt:11:Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1998a, 1998b) have elaborated an analytic framework for the study of information warfare. While they approach the topic primarily from a military and strategic studies perspective, they claim a wider applicability for their framework, in particular emphasising its usefulness in analysing the growing importance of non-state actors such as terrorist groups, criminal networks and, of particular interest here, non-governmental organisations. This framework comprises three levels of analysis - organisational, strategic and doctrinal. The analysis of these three levels is underpinned by a general conceptual approach which distinguishes two views of information: an information processing view which concentrates on the organisation, storage and transmission of particular pieces of information; and a 'structural' view of information which addresses meaning and values, and the ways in which information is embedded and embodied in organisations, artefacts and people (Arquilla and Ronfeldt 1998a). These structural and processing views are presented as complementary, rather than rival, ways of looking at information and provide a way of integrating technological and organisational emphasises in discussions of information warfare.

./english/400.txt:29:Transnational networks comprised solely of labour activists may face fundamental problems. Apart from 'elite' actors who operate at transnational levels, most trade unionists remain located in diverse national contexts. Collective action among these nationally-situated actors requires the development of trust, reciprocity and a shared 'cultural learning'. The circumstances in which these can develop may prove to be very limited (Tarrow, 2000). Arquilla & Ronfeldt suggest (1998a) it is not necessarily the case that networked organisation is the only possible mode of organisation in information-intensive conflict, but that mastery of its techniques are essential. The combination of hierarchical and decentralised organisation ultimately may prove to be effective in transnational labour organising: campaigns in support of Guatemalan coffee workers benefitted on the one hand from the rapid transfer of information, decision making and grassroots involvement of workers and other social groups, and on the other hand with the ability to mobilise people and to provide financial and infrastructure resources possible from the more traditionally accountable IUF (Kidder & McGinn, 1995). Similar relationships between centralised hierarchies and decentralised networks can be seen in the apparently decentralised networks of 'new' social movements. For example human rights, issue-based networks may include decentralised organisations linked to local social movements typically concerned with struggling to establish or defend their own human rights, alongside organisations, such as international governmental organisations and private foundations concerned with the defence of others' rights (Sikkink, 1993; Sharpe, 2000). The environmental movement similarly includes organisations such as Greenpeace which has a highly centralised organisation in combination with a decentralised global network of local groups and activists (Castells, 1997).

./english/400.txt:73:Given the focus of the paper - a single trade union body - the campaigns share many organisational features. The actors include ICEM and typically officers at national and local levels of affiliated unions. In cases A and D, with their primary emphasis on a specific local dispute, and relatively limited duration, the networks established through international meetings, speakers tours and use of communications technologies have not (at least yet) developed into more established networks. In one case (Campaign C) the campaign has been closely associated with the establishment of a more formal network, co-ordinated by ICEM, of affiliated unions organising in the company. Campaign C also aimed to mobilise wider constituencies including environmentalists, indigenous peoples' groups and most particularly, company shareholders in support of some union demands. In Campaign B, ICEM worked at an international level with the ICFTU and researchers in the UK and Russia to raise the situation of Russian workers in the ILO, bringing a case against the Russian government.

./english/400.txt:77:All three of the industrially-focussed cybercampaigns (A, C & D) adopted corporate-campaign style approaches to identifying the adversary, broadening the campaign beyond the company directly involved to include variously shareholders, bankers, suppliers, distributors, regulatory bodies, politicians and diplomats. Campaign C in particular sought to draw attention to wider issues than simply the company's approach to industrial relations, including health and safety, indigenous peoples' rights and environmental issues (ICEM, 1997; 1998). The focus on shareholders extended to submitting two resolutions to the company's 2000 AGMs in Australia and the UK, including a motion to commit the company to complying with a range of ILO resolutions (Taylor, 2000).

./english/400.txt:87:The Campaign B pages similarly included protest links, this time primarily to email addresses and web sites of the Russian government and intergovernmental financial institutions. The Web pages had a greater informational component than the industrial campaigns. They provided detailed background information and briefings on the developing economic and political situation in Russia, with a strong emphasis on the protests of Russian trade unions (derived both from first-hand reports from affiliates and from international newswires and news databases). As with the other campaigns, the pages invited visitors to send protest messages, this time to national and international institutions involved in or influencing Russian economic policy. Given the emphasis on providing information to an international audience, the pages were predominantly in English though some were also available in Russian. The site attracted substantial interest from academics, business people and labour activists with an interest in Russia. The campaign attained a greater profile on the Internet with prominent links from major sites with an interest in Russia, as well as recommendations and listings in Russian sections of Web directories such as 'Excite' and 'Yahoo!', and the Web sites of conventional media organisations. Numbers of visitors to the campaign pages showed substantial increases during high-profile activities in Russia such as the national Day of Action by Russian trade unions on October 7, 1998 and the campaign pages continued to attract substantial traffic into early 2000.

./english/401.txt:78:While technologically advanced countries seek to extend intellectual property rights and patent law to biodiversity - there have already been attempts to patent human gene sequences - some peripheral countries, indigenous peoples groups and NGOs on their behalf are seeking to guarantee the conservation and reproduction of biodiversity by granting special protection status to the territories, ways of life, and traditional knowledges of indigenous and peasant communities. It is increasingly evident that the new cleavages between the North and the South will be centered around the question of access to biodiversity on a global scale.

./english/401.txt:177: Dietrich and Nayak/Fishworkers in India. Focused on the non-industrial fisherpeople of Southern India, D&N reveal how their fate has been largely determined by the inter/national capitalist market and both Northern and Indian state development and/or modernization policies. Far from accepting this fate, however, fishworkers have been attempting, for 30 years or more, to organize themselves both for defense, within the existing structures, and processes and counter-assertion beyond such. Their struggles have been rich, complex and even contradictory, since they have had to come to terms with class identity/divisions, and with communal identities (ethnicity, caste, residence, religion). They have also had to negotiate with the local and national state apparatus, and with organizers/intellectuals from the church, parties, unions. In so far as Kerala has been a progressive state within India, and that unions of the left have a major presence there, the fishworkers have also had to confront the statist and developmentalist left:

./english/401.txt:183:Beyond India, the movement has had to find itself in relationship to inter-state organizations (particularly the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO), with their opposite numbers in countries as different as Senegal, Brazil and Canada, and with (foreign-funded?) international/ist support NGOs. Within India their movement has been an active member of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), a body that is itself playing an active role within the anti-globalization movement. D&N, activists long present within the local-national-international fishworkers and allied movements, handle the complexities of this case study by drawing selectively on theories/strategies from Marxism, Feminism, Environmentalism and other sources. They conclude:

./english/401.txt:193: L&W establish the credentials of SIGTUR by reference to the classical socialist values of international labor solidarity and social emancipation, to its chequered history, and to recent social theorizing on globalization, the discontents it creates and the movements it provokes. It is the last of these sources – or discussions - that is most challenging since it leads them to criticize a common 'infatuation with new information systems' in such theorizing, and to argue for the necessity of the new networked, global and social movement to be based on, or grow within, the historical union institutions. L&W also favor a 'grounded' approach to globalization and opposition to such, which seems to mean a focus on 'globalization from below', as it expresses itself where people live and work. They see this as both justifying their approach and expressed by SIGTUR itself.

./english/401.txt:232:Dietrich & Nayak: IndianFisherpeople LaborOrganization South/India National to International Petty-commodity Feminism, Environmentalisml, Socialism

./english/401.txt:256:The studies certainly reveal the unions as either defenders of worker and democratic rights under neo-liberal or global attack, or as proponents of a deeper or more extended democracy. The attachment to democracy, the attention to citizenship, the extension of those addressed from union members to working people, women, children and others – all these are new, notable and valuable. In many cases, however, what the unions are trying to establish is a meaningfully liberal democracy in situations where this does not yet exist. Given the multiple shortcomings of liberal democracy, as revealed yet again by its globalized war against Afghanistan, this is a utopia turning into a distopia: islands of political democracy in oceans of social fascism - as Sousa Santos somewhere declares) – with the implication that the two spheres are inter-dependent. Even where the talk is of 'counter-hegemony', this is mostly in recognition of its non-achievement. And, even where it is seen as being achieved, such 'counter-hegemony' does not seem to amount to either the old socialism, nor a post-capitalist political alternative - nor even the old union utopia of the welfare state! The issue of 'international', 'cosmopolitan' or 'global democracy' does not arise here. Moreover, the extension or transformation of democracy within the trade unions is hardly (if at all) mentioned, though this has been recognized as the problem of unionism ever since the classical formulation of the 'iron law of oligarchy' early in the last century (Michels 1915).

./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: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: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:24:Is the network going to be primarily political/institutional or primarily communicational? In the first case, communication is likely to be made functional to the political/institutional. In the second case, we may be into a different ballgame or ballpark. In the first case, there is likely to operate a ‘banking’ model of information, in which maximum information is collected, to be then dealt out to customers in terms of power and profit. In the second case, there can operate the principle of the potlatch, or gift economy, in which individual generosity is understood to benefit the community. The understanding here is a common African saying: I am who I am because of other people.

./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:40:The open secret of the electronic media, the decisive political factor, which has been waiting, suppressed or crippled, for its moment to come, is their mobilising power. When I say mobilize… namely to make [people] more mobile than they are. As free as dancers, as aware as football players, as surprising as guerrillas. Anyone who thinks of the masses only as the object of politics, cannot mobilize them. He wants to push them around. A parcel is not mobile; it can only be pushed to and fro. Marches, columns, parades, immobilize people […] The new media are egalitarian in structure. Anyone can take part in them by a simple switching process […] The new media are orientated towards action, not contemplation; towards the present, not tradition […] It is wrong to regard media equipment as mere means of consumption. It is always, in principle, also means of production […] In the socialist movements the dialectic of discipline and spontaneity, centralism and decentralization, authoritarian leadership and anti-authoritarian disintegration has long ago reached deadlock. Networklike communication models built on the principle of reversibility of circuits might give indications of how to overcome this situation. (Hans Magnus Enzensberger 1976:21-53)

./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/403.txt:11:the fabrication and utilization of material connections and communications that destroy isolation and permit people to struggle in complementary ways — both against the constraints which limit them and for the alternatives they construct, separately and together (see also the interview with Cleaver in De Angelis 1993).

./english/403.txt:45:Expectations are being raised, moreover, in regard to the quantity and quality of information needed before a plausible case can be said to exist. As one respondent noted, people want more and more information before taking action. But there is a point at which one has enough information to act; the acquisition of more information beyond this point can be confusing and paralyzing — and can actually block the taking of effective action.

./english/403.txt:47:Jim Walch (1997: 72) has noted the range of strategies for dealing with information overload that he has observed in activist circles. For the most part, these tend to involve shifting responsibility elsewhere (into electronic folders, onto other people, or blocking certain information flows altogether through the use of filtering software). While conceding that these are understandable coping strategies, he argues that such efforts to ‘manage’ information flows also carry risks, both in terms of the construction of meaning, and of denying access to ‘new and unexpected information and contacts’. Walch’s concerns here echo those of Howard Besser, who has asserted that

./english/403.txt:49:One of the identifying characteristics of the information age is to get people directly to the information they need without exposing them to tangentially interesting or relevant material (Besser 1995: 70).

./english/403.txt:73:It is important that the knowledge … can be kept alive through the periods of low activity. How do social movements manage that? It is clear that this has more to do with cultures and people than with simple information technology solutions.

./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:18:Besides this, there is a growing feeling that "market democracies" are just empty shells. Decisions that really matter are taken without the people's representatives and against their interests. The US, the country that most embodies the capitalistic ideal, is now identified by most people as a symbol of injustice and brutality. Much is said about building direct forms of democracy and stigmatising the use of force, but these two ideas have meanings that are not compatible with alienation and inequality.

./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:12:If Seattle was, for many people, the coming-out party of a resistance movement, then, according to Soren Ambrose, policy analyst with 50 Years Is Enough, "Porto Alegre is the coming-out party for the existence of serious thinking about alternatives." The emphasis was on alternatives coming from the countries experiencing most acutely the negative effects of globalization: mass migration of people, widening wealth disparities, weakening political power.

./english/409.txt:14:The particular site was chosen because Brazils Workers Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores, the PT) is in power in the city of Porto Alegre, as well as in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The conference was organized by a network of Brazilian unions and NGOs, but the PT provided state-of-the-art conference facilities at the Catholic University of Porto Alegre and paid the bill for a star-studded roster of speakers. Having a progressive government sponsor was a departure for a group of people accustomed to being met with clouds of pepper spray, border strip searches and no-protest zones. In Porto Alegre, activists were welcomed by friendly police officers and greeters with official banners from the tourism department.

./english/409.txt:23:Part of the challenge was that the organizers had no idea how many people would be drawn to this Davos for activists. Atila Roque, a coordinator of IBase, a Brazilian policy institute and a member of the organizing committee, explains that for months they thought they were planning a gathering of 2,000 people. Then, suddenly, there were 10,000, more at some events, representing 1,000 groups, from 120 countries. Most of those delegates had no idea what they were getting into: a model UN? A giant teach-in? An activist political convention? A party?

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

./english/416.txt:19:We necessarily need to think about broadening our Network. We must win more people and from more and various structures for the support of our work. We must achieve a more productive and effective work. The issues of repression should not get lost inside the ESF process.

./english/417.txt:44:  300 meetings were held, 77.000 people participated in the march. This ESF was not

./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:105:  The people working on an ALIS were part of the organizing committee and worked

./english/417.txt:141:3000 people attending), 1200 activists from Turkey participated in Athens, this had a mobiliz-

./english/417.txt:148:ESF’s are valuable means for mobilizing people, however, the potential is not used

./english/417.txt:150:-> Transversal debates should be arranged so that people meet and talk who wouldn’t do so

./english/417.txt:155:+ Regional enlargement was a success, the atmosphere was good, the decision that the people

./english/417.txt:185:tential synergies are developed and offered. Right now there are people and networks not at-

./english/417.txt:188:-> The Forum needs to be organized as a public space for very different people

./english/417.txt:210:The participation of trade unionists, of people from Turkey and Eastern Europe have to be

./english/417.txt:218:Networks were not prepared to work collaboratively with other networks/people

./english/417.txt:311: organized as a public space for very different people

./english/417.txt:330:  Transversal debates should be arranged so that people meet and talk who wouldn’t do

./english/417.txt:358: work collaboratively with other networks/people

./english/417.txt:415:vergence of different movements and people not only in Germany but also in Europe. Here

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

./english/418.txt:6:The Algerian Delegation has come to represent all the members of the society and the principal political movements, in order to ratify the unconditional support from Algeria towards the fair cause of the Saharawi people. Delegates from South Africa have taken part in the conference too.

./english/418.txt:7:The conference remembers us the basic right of the Saharawi people to self determination. This is a recognized right for all colonies and defended by the Assembly of Resolutions of United Nations.

./english/418.txt:8:The EUCOCO Conference greets the resistance of the Saharawi People in the occupied territories and pays tribute to the victims of the Moroccan repression. The conference also denounces the massive violations of the human rights by the Moroccan authorities in the occupied territories, as well as the systematic and bloody reprisals that Saharawi people suffer. The conference informs us on the violence against women; 35% of missing people are women. The conference welcomes the associations and the Moroccan political parties that defend the right of the Saharawi people to self determination.

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

./english/418.txt:11:The Conference accuses the double faced policy of the international community (double standard). Under this policy, peace forces and protection is opened out only in certain regions depending on their interests on them. In the meanwhile, other people are left on their own to confront repression and occupation, as it has been happening in Western Sahara for more than 30 years.

./english/418.txt:14:The Spanish position supports Moroccan’s occupation of Western Sahara. The conference ask the Spanish government to consider its policy as soon as possible, and to give a response to an important sector of the civil society, giving Saharawi people full, clear and active help in order to achieve self determination, through a free and democratic referendum.

./english/418.txt:17:The conference demands the revision of the agreement. Moreover, it asks the EU to adopt a policy in accordance to the international legality and find a fair and lasting solution based on the Saharawi People’s right of self determination, freedom and construction of a legal and fair society for men and women.

./english/419.txt:9:IG. 6. Some people said Porto Alegre charter is not enough respected. For some people Porto Alegre Charter is impeding us to go ahead

./english/419.txt:12:IG. 9. No implication of young people in the process

./english/419.txt:31:IM. 11. Need to better prepare the seminars and self-managed areas, too many repetitions, no space for debate for the people participating, too little space for the assembly f the movements and to prepare actions at the ESF and between one and an other ESF

./english/419.txt:40:IE. 2. Role of EPAs: it’s working to prepare ESF. The process needs to improve and involve more people, being open, efficient and inclusive.

./english/419.txt:41:IE. 3. Difficult to understand how EPA functions for external people (lack of information in the web-site, not possible to access information about networks, no agenda……)

./english/419.txt:45:IE. 7. Normally the people who can participate are the ones who have big organisations who can pay for them. How to involve all in the process

./english/419.txt:53:PG. 1. Some suggested next ESF focussed on youth people, some focused on East/West Europe

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

./english/420.txt:156:rabble-rousing. People who proclaim against their better knowledge that the

./english/467.txt:5: While economists laud the recently deceased Milton Friedman for being “a champion of freedom whose work transformed economics and changed the world,” as a full-page advertisement in the New York Times put it, people in the South will remember the University of Chicago professor as the eye of a human hurricane that cut a swath of destruction through their economies. For them, Friedman will long be associated with two things: free-market reform in Chile and “structural adjustment” in the developing world.

./english/467.txt:27: The radical Friedman-Pinochet phase of the Chilean economic counterrevolution came to an end in the early 1990’s, after the Concertacion came to power. In violation of classic Friedmanism, this center-left coalition increased social spending to improve Chile’s income distribution, bringing down the proportion of people living in poverty from 40 per cent to 20 per cent of the population. This modification, which increased internal purchasing power, contributed to the post-Pinochet average yearly growth rate of six per cent a year.

./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:19: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/470.txt:35:It wasn't that the people sitting around the table in Florence weren't an impressive group. They were worldly and wise and a good number of them came from movements and constituencies of great importance around the world. And it wasn't that the people at the table didn't want a more democratic and participatory approach. This desire was raised repeatedly. It was just that after a short time at that meeting it became obvious that despite the members' stature and desires, the people on the council were not the real locus of WSF power. The powers that be had some functionaries present, chairing the meeting…and it was clear that the powers that be had decided what the agenda was, what would be made known regarding the overall WSF situation to the people in the room, and what the international council could be permitted to discuss—but that those present had only very limited impact.

./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:47:At this year's WSF, just regarding the actual details of speaking, listening, eating, sleeping, and marching -- most people probably perceived great success. This is because what happened, happened well. People going to events largely enjoyed them -- whether it was marches or rallies, big panels or meetings, or the youth camp. People perceived and will report that the things they attended were carried off adequately and even smoothly. And indeed, the events that most people attended were, as they perceived, no doubt carried off well. Which is quite amazing and immensely praiseworthy.

./english/470.txt:49:But what about the 400 or so panels that were cancelled very near the time of the WSF and long after people planned to participate in them? No one attended or presented at those panels because those panels didn't take place at all. No one saw that they weren't there, other than those who suffered the cancellations.

./english/470.txt:51:What about the events that weren't on any printed schedule, and that attendees couldn't find and that therefore attracted a fraction of the participation they deserved? Only a very few people attended those events, all other people being ignorant of their existence. Though the few who did attend were quite distraught, the full loss was again unrecorded since it was a loss of the benefits that might have been had if people who didn’t know to go to sessions had been able to go, under better conditions.

./english/470.txt:61:Each year the WSF anoints a subset of events as their own. These events are all prominent in the official schedules. They all have appropriate-sized rooms and resources. Their presenters are afforded considerable comforts, including paid hotel rooms and sometimes travel allowances. Moreover, their housing was at hotels which were better the more prominent the person, not the more needy. I would guess this group's numbers to be roughly 100 people and I am quite sure that among them were some people who needed the financial aid but a great many who did not, relatively speaking.

./english/470.txt:63:On the other hand, there were the rest of the presenters. I don't know their numbers but I would guess a few thousand or so. The events that these participants planned in many cases did not even appear in the official schedules and were subject to last minute termination or, short of that, to room changes. These second-tier presenters were afforded few comforts and little financial support though they included overwhelmingly less well-off people then the 100 or so at the hotels. Gender still seems to play a horrible and destructive role in people’s roles and visibility, as well. Beyond presenters, moreover, there were the youth who were housed in a camp with barely sufficient water and barely acceptable sewage. That the roughly 30,000 people in the youth camp made it a vibrant community in which there were no hierarchies is immensely admirable, but the many virtues of those who endure harsh conditions joyfully don't excuse that they were treated as a separate entity, with little visible effort to incorporate them.

./english/470.txt:67:Without attention, layering of participants’ material circumstances abets as well even less warranted differences -- due to gender, race, class, place of origin, and fame -- in how people are regarded in general, in the media attention they are accorded, and in the visibility and promotion they receive. Often attention afforded rises in nearly inverse proportion to the activism people do, to the extent they are anti-hierarchical in their own lives, and to the lessons and insights they have to offer and to share with other people at the WSF's events. It isn't surprising that in the youth camp there is sharing and equity dwarfing what prevails in the hotels. So while it would probably be impossible to do without the hotels, it is the logic and culture at the hotels that needs examination. Of course we need presentations, sometimes even to very large audiences, but it ought to be possible to reduce or even eliminate relative passivity and subordination of those who come to the WSF mainly to listen, and of those who present but have less known names.

./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: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: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: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: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:21:Indeed, the range of views and discussions at the WSF reflects the serious thinking among those present in search of fresh, sustainable, people-centred models of globalisation. But when all regional, national and even local particularities are taken into account, it has become clear that there can be no single “alternative” model. Any innovative socio-economic approach in western Germany would differ from that in the country’s eastern region, as both would from experiments in different parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas.

./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:17:Participatory ideology and practice are a common goal. Advocates argue that in a democracy, people should deliberate collectively and should, to the extent possible, determine government decisions directly rather than through elected representatives. This means participation at all levels of government as well as unofficial civil-society-based structures.

./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: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: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: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:52:Undoubtedly, such a large event makes the full consultation of all potential participants impossible. It is difficult for such a process to function in an open, deliberative way or, even more, to give such a huge constituency a say in advance planning. Critics from the direct action movement, however, insist that anarchists have adopted consensus mechanisms that give representation and create unity among a large number of tight-knit affinity groups in massive demonstrations. According to David Graeber of the activist network, Peoples’ Global Action, these mechanisms provide a model for democratic deliberation in large assemblies. But they have rarely been applied in anything more than short-term actions.

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

./english/473.txt: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: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: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: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:10:As part of the offensive, which also involves the current wave of centre-left or leftist governments in Latin America, Torres mentioned "the consolidation of a common space for grassroots groups to meet up." He was not only talking about the annual WSF gatherings, but also the "people's summits" held in opposition to the periodic Summits of the Americas.

./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: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/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/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:22:The wish to expand the geographic scope of the WSF was behind the move to Mumbai, and it was a spectacular success. In 2002, according to the chief Indian organizer, not 200 people in India had even heard of the WSF. In 2004, hundreds of organizations, and more than 100,000 Indians alone attended it, coming from every conceivable social group - at least 30,000 dalits (untouchables), adivasi (tribal peoples), and women everywhere.

./english/477.txt:18:The wish to expand the geographic scope of the WSF was behind the move to Mumbai, and it was a spectacular success. In 2002, according to the chief Indian organizer, not 200 people in India had even heard of the WSF. In 2004, hundreds of organizations, and more than 100,000 Indians alone attended it, coming from every conceivable social group - at least 30,000 dalits (untouchables), adivasi (tribal peoples), and women everywhere. Furthermore, against all of previous Indian political culture, they represented a wide range of political views, working together. The WSF will return to Porto Alegre in 2005 and is planning to go to Africa in 2006.

./english/480.txt:18:‘open’ spaces; so as to politicize people, engage in politicized activity and enable a broader

./english/480.txt:19:people to become critically aware of the hegemonic narratives that naturalize the current world

./english/480.txt:20:posit that ‘There Is No Alternative’. Clearly, a wide spectrum of people, both in the metropolis

./english/500.txt:8:More than 15,000 people, mostly from the French-speaking parts of Africa, including farming villages, attended a series of 600 meetings during the Bamako WSF on Jan 19-23. A further 100,000 people participated in the Caracas event immediately after that.

./english/500.txt:10:About 30,000 people are now converging for the Karachi leg, initially scheduled for January as well, but postponed due to the earthquake in Pakistan.

./english/500.txt:42:She said that the WSF had tremendous impact in its early meetings to challenge neo-liberal economics. ''It brought together diverse groups with different ideologies and the events had a lot of creative energy,'' she told IPS. ''But when you don't have anything to unify the groups, it becomes difficult to mobilise people constantly and regularly.''

./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/500.txt:50:While recognising the benefits of a polycentric approach, he warned that ''if you have too many things going on, you are going to lose focus and people will lose the sense of the WSF being a specific apex gathering of all social movements in the world.''

./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:18:Besides this, there is a growing feeling that "market democracies" are just empty shells. Decisions that really matter are taken without the people's representatives and against their interests. The US, the country that most embodies the capitalistic ideal, is now identified by most people as a symbol of injustice and brutality. Much is said about building direct forms of democracy and stigmatising the use of force, but these two ideas have meanings that are not compatible with alienation and inequality.

./english/512.txt:24:Their severity varies in different parts of the world, as does the importance of the mechanisms or instruments that perpetuate them. But they affect all peoples. They feed on one another and they worsen, as a result of the same egoistic, competitive and suicidal logic that leads capitalism.

./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: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: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/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: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: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/519.txt:10:Due to the high level of confrontation, the global movement (or alter-globalization), which struc-tured itself as from the Seattle protests, is facing – since mobilizations against the Iraq invasion on February 15th, 2003 – difficulties regarding political initiatives and is aware that international initia-tives, which structure the movement, are dispersed. Mobilizations that are centralized for “counter-summits” such as the ones that occurred parallel to the WTO in Cancun (August, 2003) and Hong Kong (December, 2005) were very limited and had little effect on the events’ dynamics; the same occurred during the 4th Summit of the Americas, in Mar del Plata (November, 2005). The evalua-tion of the protests that took 250 people to the streets against the G8 in Edinburgh is an ambiguous one, but it does not repesent the Seattle-Geneva cycle’s recovery. The result brought by these meet-ings was determined by disputes among governments and groups of governments.

./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: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:50:Some IC members see the WSF as a possible new historical subject of the 21st century’s struggle for emancipation. They think of its constitution as a similar one to the 20th century’s internationals. But the subjects (plural) of contemporary people’s struggle have already shown themselves at the WSF, uniting in a flexible manner, up to the extent in which their political understanding points to this direction. Institutionalizing the WSF as “the” subject, allowing the space to debate and articu-late in overlap with its actors, would prevent these subjects from developing, whereas these subjects should be strengthened, by getting closer to a wider number of struggles and regional, national and local movements.

./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: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: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: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:84:[5] The six organisations have set up the Awami Jamhoori Tehreek (AJT) (Peoples Democratic Movement). They are the National Workers Party (NWP), the Labour Party Pakistan (LPP), the Awami Tehreek (AT), the Pakistan Mazdoor Kissan Party (PMKP), the Pakistan Mazdoor Mehaz (PMM) and the Meraj Mohammed Khan group (MMKG).

./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:17:Debt cancellation and a call for a forceful response to shameless robbery in the exploitation of Africa’s natural wealth (“how is it possible that we who possess the biggest natural wealth on the whole earth are the poorest continent at the same time?” a participant wondered). There was an appeal to develop Africa’s full potential, taking as a basis precisely those youth who are now looking for possibilities elsewhere due to lack of work. A primary issue then is education – “Eduquer ou périr” (educate or perish) the African philosopher Ki Zerbo said already fifty years ago – but directly connected with work. This implies changes in the political, economic, and socio-cultural environment. Remarkably, participants did not just see African culture as a good thing but also as an impediment for initiatives coming from people themselves. The individual deserves respect, not just as a member of a group, but also based on her own values and dignity. Organizations for human rights implementation are active all over the continent, also precisely in the struggle against poverty.

./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:10:These questions have to be looked at and they are discussed at different seminars at the fora. Mobilisations of thirty, fifty or more than a hundred thousand people certainly are very encouraging, but they are also very expensive. Meetings without any perspective on real change might not be the best way to prepare ‘another world’. ‘Another world is possible’ is a very motivating slogan, but has time not come to say how it can come about?

./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: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:40:This debate was highly favoured by the ‘horizontalists’ who believe in a self-managed and autonomous movement. Horizontalists look at states and political parties as parts of the oppressive system of capitalism. The hierarchies they conceal are said to be hindering the emancipation of people and thus have to be dismantled.

./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:64:In order to understand this reasoning, one should not forget that the Mexican Zapatista movement is seen as one of the founders of the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement. Their theoretical background has been excellently worded by John Holloway in his book on how to change the world without taking power. Holloway refers to the numerous local initiatives and the resistance of normal people. These practices change people and make them understand that another world is indeed possible. However, how the other world finally comes about is not explained in the book.

./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:72:Once again, this has stirred a huge debate. The movements that made the proposal are being blamed for trying to impose a single programme to the movement. Their answer is a denial. Everything seems to depend on the interpretation one gives to the ‘historical subject’ they see emerging from the collective conscience that the WSF is building. Most probably, the traditional Marxist terminology that is used in the text is what disturbs most people. Samir Amin pretends that a new era of socialism is now beginning. In the same way, in Caracas, Chavez gave a new interpretation to ‘Socialism or death’. According to the Venezuelan president, we have no choice but to introduce socialism if we want to avoid that the environmental degradation kills us all.

./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:80:In fact, the strategy of the WSF has not yet become a real issue, precisely because some people think that there should not be any strategy.

./english/527.txt:82:Nevertheless, we should ask ourselves how the other world can come about? It cannot be a spontaneous process, the simple result of 100.000 people shouting that another world is possible. What the different movements in the WSF are talking about is, one way or another, linked to power relations. Those who have power never give it away willingly. Which means that nothing will change unless – as a start - the 100.000 people go and shout their slogans at the front door of the World Bank or the IMF.

./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:22:The overwhelming feeling of solidarity which pervaded the whole event, was especially important given the context in which it was held, -the extremely precarious and divisive Pakistani political situation. For Pakistanis to meet so many fellow actists was more important than the big picture discussion. Although some people might believe the pipe dream that what ails Pakistan, -multiple independence struggles, environmental and natural catastrophe, widespread poverty and illiteracy, and the leadership of an unelected, uniformed USA-Puppet general commanding a military junta can be solved within any existing democratic process they are wasting irreplaceable time. It’s abundantely clear that no politics can deal with, or is even recognizing what will happen to Pakistan’s, or any other economy in the world, once the price of fuel, doubles, triples or quadruples, as it may well do this very year There is no political system in the world that can deal with this, nor have any even begun to consider it.

./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:17:freedom of movement and freedom of communication [...] the everyday struggles of millions of people crossing borders as well as pirating brands, producing generics, writing open source code or using p2p-software.[6]

./english/532.txt:25:political delineation into the traditional political categories of left, right or centre [...but] has been embraced by a wide range of people [...] This has enabled FLOSS to explode from a niche and academic endeavour into a creative sphere of socio-political and technical influence bolstered by the internet.[9]

./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/532.txt:31:In the social movement thus defined, openness is clearly becoming a constitutive organising principle, as it connects with the hopes and desires circulating around the idea of the ‘multitude’, a term whose post-Spinozan renaissance has been secured by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s book Empire. The multitude is a defiantly heterogeneous figure, a collective noun intended to counter the homogenising violence of terms such as ‘the people’ or ‘the mass’. For many thinkers in the post-Autonomist tradition, this multitude is a way of conceiving the revolutionary potential of a new ‘post-Fordist proletariat’ of networked immaterial labourers. In certain circuits within the social movement, pace Schneider and Lovink, FLOSS organisation is seen as the techno-social precondition of a radical democracy in becoming. However tenuous this assemblage may be, it goes some way to explaining the way in which FLOSS and openness have become quite central rhetorical terms in the struggle to produce an identity for the networked, anti-capitalist movement. But it is also true that certain characteristics of the idea of openness have genuine organisational influence within the movement. A study of openness in this context is useful in three degrees: first, to the social movement itself ‘internally’; second, to ‘outsiders’ wanting to gain a good understanding of ‘what it is’; third as a critique of those who would seek to represent the movement with, or attempt to manipulate it through, a particular deployment of the idea of openness.

./english/532.txt:52:Even some ‘actions’ – concentrated interventions usually involving smaller numbers – are ‘open’, using the above methods to organise themselves and, if the action is ongoing, even allowing new people to participate.

./english/532.txt:56:Some of these attitudes and principles derive from the People’s Global Action (PGA), an influential ‘instrument’ constituting a visible attempt to organise around networked openness. The organisational philosophy of PGA,[10] which was formed after a movement gathering in South America in August 1997, is based on ‘decentralisation’. With ‘minimal central structures’, the PGA ‘has no membership’ or ‘juridical personality’: ‘no organisation or person represents’ it, nor does it ‘represent any organisation or person’. It is a ‘tool’,

./english/532.txt:65:4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements’ struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximise respect for life and oppressed peoples’ rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism.

./english/532.txt:76:works on the principle of OPEN PUBLISHING, an essential element of the Indymedia project that allows anyone to instantaneously self-publish their work on a globally accessible web site. The Indymedia newswire encourages people to become the media [...] While Indymedia reserves the right to develop sections of the site that provide edited articles, there is no designated Indymedia editorial collective that edits articles posted to the [http://www.Indymedia.org] news wire.[15]

./english/532.txt:93:This problem runs through the temporary constitutions and dissolutions of ‘open’ organisations that make up the social movement. The avowed ‘absence’ of decision-making bodies and points of centralisation can too easily segue into a concealment of control per se. In fact, in both the FLOSS model and the social movement, the idea that no one group or person controls development and decision making is often quite far from the truth. In both cases it is formally true that anyone may alter or intervene in processes according to their needs, views or projects; but practically speaking, few people can assume the necessary social position from which to make effective ‘interventions’. Open source software is generally tightly controlled by a small group of people: the Apache Group, for example, very open-handedly controls the development of the Apache Web server, and Linus Torvalds has the final say on the Linux kernel’s development.[19] Likewise, in the social movement, decision making often devolves to a surprisingly small number of individuals and groups who make a lot of the running in deciding what happens, where and when. Though they never officially ‘speak for’ others, much unofficial doctrine nonetheless emanates from them. Within political networks, such groups and individuals can be seen as ‘supernodes’, not only routing more than their ‘fair share’ of traffic, but actively determining the ‘content’ that traverses them. Such supernodes do not (necessarily) constitute themselves out of a malicious will-to-power: rather, power defaults to them through personal qualities like energy, commitment and charisma, and the ability to synthesise politically important social moments into identifiable ideas and forms.

./english/532.txt:124:[11] ‘Sophie’, ChiapasLink UK, ‘We are everywhere! People’s Global Action meeting in Cochabamba, Bolivia’, posted to A-infos list, 8 Dec 2001. [http://www.ainfos.ca/01/dec/ainfos00120.html]

./english/532.txt:131:[18] Sans Titre, ‘Open Letter to the People’s Global Action’, 05-09-02.

./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: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: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: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: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/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/535.txt:30:The WSF clearly has the ability to bring progressives from social and political movements, intellectuals, and grassroots activists from all over the world to come together as an alternative to globalization and the neoliberal agenda. The question is - can the WSF shift gears and move the left to develop a unified strategy and tactics that will counter this system which has created so much inequality, poverty, and war? Perhaps the better question is - does the WSF even want to move beyond providing an opportunity for people to come together to discuss issues and network?

./english/535.txt:32:If the WSF continues to bring 100,000 people together each year and give them hope and inspiration, that is a good thing. It is unknowable whether attempting to develop a strategy to counter US imperialism would improve the WSF or if the effort would be divisive and lead to the organizations ruin. What we do know is that the next WSF will be held in January 2006 in Kenya, Africa.

./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:12:Since the WSF has not claimed to be working to devise coherent strategies or formulating a specific programme of action, there can be no formal yardstick to measure its success or failure. Given its abhorrence of hierarchical structures and its penchant for networking on a horizontal plane, the WSF tends to be informal in its approach. Its goal is to provide an open space for the underprivileged of the world to come and raise their voices. In that respect the WSF succeeded in its mission. A common complaint was that it was somewhat chaotic. By its very nature, a process of this kind cannot be regimented and squeeze people into tight, rigidly-organised programmes.

./english/544.txt:14:But in the chaos traditionally there in the WSF, a semblance of order normally emerges to enable the moot to play its due role of allowing social movements to interact with one another and create awareness among the people and mobilise them. Regrettably, this proved to be the weakest spot of WSF 2006 (Karachi). The organizations which attended - those working for landless peasants, bonded labour, fisherfolks’ rights, the Baloch, the Sindhis’ and the Kashmiris’ rights - were delighted with this opportunity to meet and strengthen their movements. But their message didn’t spread far and wide as it could have. This is a pity because so much human energy was available, waiting to be harnessed. There were so many issues waiting to be raised to create public opinion in favour of a struggle.

./english/544.txt:18:As a result, not all the 500-plus sessions that were announced could be held. The organisers claim that 75 per cent were held but the disappointed prospective audience from Karachi dispute that claim. There were many people who went to attend a seminar and found that it had been cancelled. Bad management. The grounds of the Sports Complex were always brimming with life. The stalls - food and handicraft exhibits for sale - were never short of customers. The protesters and demonstrators made their noisy presence felt in a big way with their slogan chanting, banners and flag waving. The cultural celebrations which add life and colour to such gatherings became a central attraction.

./english/544.txt:20:But those present were not mobilised to attend the sessions which were in any case poorly organised. The programme was made available late and then too it was constantly being changed. The failure to observe schedules drove away many people. Unsurprisingly, the mobilisation that was expected to take place as was needed for an event of this proportion was absent.

./english/544.txt:22:Pakistani NGOs have never been famous for mobilising the masses for any cause. The process of creating awareness and bringing people together for social change has not been easy in this country. The basic tool used by activists, namely interpersonal meetings, has had limited application in a society where community participation and social capital have not been its strength. The agencies which facilitate these contacts, such as trade bodies, students unions, human rights groups, have been destroyed over the years by oppressive governments that feared their power. Another tool used by social activists, namely, lobbying to influence policymakers has been more widely used. But in the absence of mobilisation and the backing of a large number of people, the lobbyists have at times not had the political clout that is needed to persuade those in office to change policies.

./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/544.txt:30:The experience of the WSF session in Karachi highlights the organisational challenges the PSF faces. The most vital issue that will determine the future course of social change in Pakistan is the capacity of organisations working for change to mobilise at the grassroots level. Owing to the factors listed above and the lack of political will in the mainstream parties it is becoming increasingly difficult for NGOs and political parties to bring people together for a common cause. Small wonder then that it is not possible to draw a decent crowd for a protest demonstration against the American war on Iraq - something for which it would be impossible to find even one supporter in this country.

./english/544.txt:34:It is not that there is no pool of human resources to mobilise in Pakistan. The WSF meeting in Karachi and the response to the earthquake in the north in October 2005 amply prove that the people would participate in a public process if they are provided direction and leadership. On both occasions young people from all walks of life and of all classes turned up, be it the WSF venue or the earthquake relief centres to participate in the activity announced.

./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: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/549.txt:39:· True reforms of the international system as opposed to merely cosmetic temporary transfers of funds would set good examples of concrete action where the majorities of the world would eventually be heard (people living in the South, young, women and non-white)

./english/550.txt:110:(Universities) ; To give again to people a confidence in their future

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

./english/553.txt:124:Therefore the Commission will open up the EU, but will seek transition periods, safeguards, etc. It promises to equip some people for these changes with education and active labour market policies through the so-called Globalisation Adjustment Fund. For those who will find no jobs, no policy is developed, even while an increasing number of economists are starting to worry about jobless growth, the working poor and the lack of distribution of wealth. For consumers, the Commission promises measures so that the positive effects of trade opening and lower prices from lower tariffs “are not captured by specific interests”.

./english/553.txt:171:The clearest example of how this will affect Europe is to be found in Mandelson’s plans for the downgrading of EU standards and regulations. The deregulation agenda forms a central part of Mandelson’s agenda for Europe, euphemistically described as “an open and flexible approach to setting our rules”. The fixation with minimising inconvenience to business even at the risk to public health, workers’ rights or the environment pervades the Mandelson vision, and forms the most immediate threat to people across the EU.

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

./english/553.txt:219:We would like to invite all progressive forces in Europe and internationally, all our allies working in farmers’, workers’, consumer, women’s, environment, development and public services networks, to join us in the analysis of the EU’s trade policy and its assault on the vast majority of people and the environment. We would like to invite all these forces to prepare a space that allows us to start a Europe-wide debate for spring 2007 and to discuss how we can work together to resist this aggressive agenda and to work for alternatives that are based on human rights, solidarity and sustainable economic activity.

./english/565.txt:100:developers and users, rather than having people rely on experts. It is

./english/565.txt:160:majority, but it also involves allowing a tiny group of people to decide

./english/565.txt:196:of them are part of international networks such as People's Global

./english/565.txt:247:higher, while denying access to people in need. In opposition to that,

./english/565.txt:382:Commercial trends keep forcing new hardware down people's throats while

./english/565.txt:387:another demonstration of the irrelevance of productivism, when people

./english/565.txt:395:officials might also pretend to do so when walking people around

./english/565.txt:396:supermarket Internet, others prefer to arm people with awareness on the

./english/565.txt:417:people across the country, coordinated through an open mailing-list and

./english/565.txt:418:contributing their skills; with a particular focus on meeting people &

./english/565.txt:516:people into active journalists and passive consumers, Indymedia allows

./english/565.txt:536:like-minded alternative news sites, by re-routing people's habits away

./english/565.txt:561:2004 [47]. Gathering a few "angry people of the net", the demonstration

./english/565.txt:670:through computers, but shouldn't they also involve technical people

./english/565.txt:723:[14] People's Global Action (PGA) is an international network of

./english/565.txt:785:allowing people to test and use GNU/Linux without affecting their

./english/565.txt:821:for real people. Pedestrians, public transport and pushbikes on the

./english/566.txt:31:people and involve them intensively in the hiring process, you'll get

./english/566.txt:32:more great people. We started building this positive feedback loop

./english/566.txt:47:course, there are many conference rooms that people can use for

./english/566.txt:72:creative people to be creative. One of our not-so-secret weapons is

./english/566.txt:73:our ideas mailing list: a companywide suggestion box where people can

./english/566.txt:86:in every organization, people are passionate about their views. But

./english/566.txt:119:team member. Many of our best people are terrific role models in

./english/569.txt:7:As two participants from Britain, we greatly enjoyed sharing all this, well as encountering once again the warmth and hospitality of the Brazilian people and the dynamism of their social movements. It is clear that the ideas and agenda of the global justice movement have as wide an appeal as ever. All the same, there was another side to the 5th WSF, one that raises serious concerns about its potential impact on the world-wide movement against neo-liberal globalization and imperial war.

./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/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:75:The WSF V, back in Porto Alegre in January 2005 and bigger than ever before, has also received an overwhelming amount of positive commentaries, especially by people who were already articulated within the networks that constitute the “planet of Porto Alegre”. For casual observers, the event may have seemed somewhat chaotic. For those more involved in the process it was a good (even if limited) example of the methodology that emphasized constructing processes. The particular WSF events are excellent opportunities to meet and debate, but the emphasis is increasingly in the intellectual and political activities that continue all year round.

./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:21:In practice, the new methodology was only half implemented – more of the self-management than the co-ordination and facilitation. The electronic tools had not been developed for people to use the website to make connections and mergers. And the facilitators were generally not very active.

./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:27:But it was clear that people had come primarily to talk to each other, across cultures, experiences and projects, to organise, to plan and collectively to find the tools to make their visions feasible. The desire to connect was strong. People invented their own ways of building cohesion, using the bare framework provided by the organisers. For example in each terrain there was a well sign-posted tent where people wrote up the proposals coming out of their activity on a specially provided `wall.’ The aim was to create a living memory or the five days’ collective work. How useful it will be will depend on how well the hundreds of proposals are collected and presented on the web-site.

./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/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:14:"I am a political militant," said Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, clad in a white jacket, as he addressed a stadium full of people during the first day of workshops. "I belong here." Downplaying the roaring PT loyalists, the press would overstate the impact of a small but energetic section of protesters who chastised Lula for continuing to pay Brazil's foreign debt and for failing to buck the economic policies prescribed by the IMF. It is nevertheless true that the President, a former metalworker and union leader who many viewed as a leftist icon when he took office two years ago, had the record of his administration critically scrutinized by a variety of panels throughout the week. As in the past, Lula also visited Davos this year. He went, he said, on a mission to confront wealthy leaders with the same demand of eradicating poverty that he championed in Porto Alegre and to elaborate a "new geography" of politics in which Southern countries would not submit to being considered inferior.

./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: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:57:When Linda Sippio, a leader at the Miami Workers Center, visited a once-idle farm near Porto Alegre that had been taken over by the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement (MST), she saw links to her own people's struggle to hold ground in their rapidly gentrifying Florida neighborhoods. "We're meeting Brazilian groups that are organizing like we are, and we're showing our support," she said. "That helps us both build power."

./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:61:Stanford Professor and free software guru Laurence Lessig wrote on his blog of walking through the Youth Camp with Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil. Gil was alternately protested by angry young people demanding free radio (Gil relished the debate) and asked to perform songs from his pop opus (the whole crowd sang along). "Here's a Minister of the government, face to face with supporters and opponents," Lessig wrote. "There is no 'free speech zone.' No guns, no men in black uniform, no panic, and plenty of press. Just imagine."

./english/576.txt:69:The original concept of the event remains sound. There is value is having a place for those social movements that spring out of hope and need to converge, a place that invites people who sacrifice their energies to these movements to devise transnational strategies for confronting globalized problems. Against the riches of Davos, there is need for a place that draws legitimacy from its participatory character.

./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: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:16:The differences were there for all to see. Not just in the different languages that people spoke, in the many different ways they expressed themselves, the different ways in which they dressed, but also in the political articulation of the way forward. Possibly nothing captured this as well as the massive 100,000 strong opening march of the WSF on January 23. In 2003, the opening rally was akin to a victory celebration for the then recently installed Lula government in Brazil. Posters of Lula and flags of the PT (the Partido dos Trabalhadores or Workers Party which Lula represents) dominated the march in 2003 and vied for attention with the sea of Che Guevara posters and green Palestinian scarves. In 2005 Che still dominated the march, the Palestinian scarves were as prominent, but the posters of Lula were few and far between. Instead there were far louder voices questioning the policies of the Lula government, some claiming that the government was pursuing the same neoliberal policies of the previous government. The PT was there in force with T-shirts that had “100% Lula” stamped on them, declaiming their support for the government. The PCDoB (the Brazilian Communist Party) had a huge contingent that marched behind a massive truck from where slogans were raised that underlined their critical support for the Lula government. The CUT (the central federation of trade unions in Brazil) also had a huge presence, with a prominent participation by large numbers of youth – both men and women. Between this huge political mobilisation of different hues marched those who espoused a large variety of causes – anti-war and anti-Bush protestors, anti-WTO activists, environmentalists, for cancellation of global debt, for a sovereign Palestinian state, a dignity rally led by the landless peasants movement (MST) in Brazil with a large Indian participation from dalit groups, and so many others. With them marched artists who performed dances, skits and mimes throughout the route, some walking on ten feet high stilts. But not just these – one could also hear a few chants of Hare Krishna from saffron robed men and women and also a handful of saffron clad Ananda Marg activists.

./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:11:There was a beautiful moment when Coumba Toure of Senegal, during the G-CAP launch, sang a freedom song and then told a story about how we should destroy the cage imprisoning all the birds, rather than pay 50 cents to buy a single bird's freedom, as people seeking luck do in the streets of Dakar.

./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:19:As the ASF we should be aware of these dangers and take vigorous steps to circumvent them. In all that we do let us put the interests of the African masses first. This means the interests of the working class and its constituent elements, namely, employed and unemployed workers, the landless peasants, women, youth, informal traders, cross border traders, the aged, people living with HIV/AIDS and all the social groups smashed by capitalism. None of these sectors can truly advance their cause so long as capitalism is the dominant economic system in the world.

./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:73:7. Godhra,a town of roughly equal proportions of Hindus and Muslims has a long history of communal tensions and violence usually triggered by some ‘provocation’ or the other. Tensions had been building up over the week as a result of a Sangh Parivar (the Hindutva family of organisations of which the main components are the cadre-based Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the BJP and the lumpen storm-troopers of the Bajrang Dal) ‘March on Ayodhya’. Sangh activists and their families as well as ordinary passengers were returning by train to Gujarat when a molestation of a Muslim girl on the platform of Godhra station provided the spark igniting an already simmering situation, leading to the burning of one railway bogey suspected of harbouring the molesters.58 people including women and children were burnt to death. The same afternoon the Gujarat government deliberately decided to inflame the situation by calling for a state-wide ‘bandh’ or closure of all public activities on Feb. 28th when orchestrated violence on Muslim neighbourhoods began, spread throughout Gujarat into the villages and lasted for over a month. Enormous documentation of the atrocities now exists and is easily available. For a detailed account of Godhra and its immediate aftermath including the extent to which the police and bureaucracy of Gujarat (up to its highest officer levels) was suborned, see “Gujarat Carnage 2002: A Report to the Nation”, April 2002, prepared by an Independent Fact Finding Mission comprising Prof. Kamal Chenoy (Jawaharlal Nehru University), S.P. Shukla (former Finance Secretary in the Central government and former member of the Planning Commission of India), K. S. Subramanian (retired as Director-General of Police in Tripura state) and Achin Vanaik.

./english/580.txt:17:Let us now turn back to the first issue, i.e. the need felt to capture the concerns being most prominently articulated in the region, i.e. India, South Asia and Asia. The WSF 2004 programme, in choosing its Foci, deepened the reflection of the WSF Charter of Principles in the programme format and methodology. The WSF Charter sees the WSF as an "open space" that articulates opposition to imperialist globalisation. The Foci for the WSF 2004 programme -- neo-liberal globalisation, war and militarisation, patriarchy, caste and race, sectarian violence based on religion, ethnicity, etc. -- constituted a deeper exploration of the Charter. While the last four foci are not explicitly part of the Charter as focal issues for the WSF open space to discuss, all of them are part of the running current in the Charter. The intent, then, while choosing these foci was to make explicit the various dimensions of imperialist globalisation and its impact on people. The intent was clearly not to look at these foci as "water tight compartments" but rather to explore how imperialist globalisation deepens and helps spread the tentacles of patriarchy, war and militarisation, exploitation based on caste and race, and religious and ethnic sectarian strife.

./english/580.txt:37:While working on the format and the structure of WSF 2004, it was anticipated that the IC would possibly wish to play a greater role in the programme of the WSF. But with the International Sectt. being located in Brazil, it was also felt that close interaction with the WSF Sectt. would be more problematic (this discussion was before the Miami IC meeting where it was decided that the Indian Committee and the Intl. Sectt. in Brazil would constitute the new Intl. Sectt.). Moreover, it was felt that as the major reason for many people wanting the WSF in India was to foreground concerns of Asian and African groups in the WSF. Thus ways of ensuring this was another concern.

./english/580.txt:94:A third reason is the emerging de facto structure of the WSF — a tendency towards gigantism. We believed that spaces for large events must be large, but were not able to assess how large! 1500 people in a panel is a lot of people, but in a hall of 5000 people, they look few in number. Perhaps in the future, there can be a balancing out of large events and seminars and workshops in terms of the size of the venues.

./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/582.txt:8:“ Planet Porto Alegre needed to step on beaten earthen floor, to breathe this dust, to fell the smell of the people” says the Cuban José Miguel Hernandez, who represents the Pan-American campaign against FTAA at the International Council of the WSF. He is in the geographical center of WSF 2004: a huge map of the facilities of Nesco Conventions Ground, the exhibition park of about one kilometer square, chosen to host the event. In front and behind him, there are two of the not many permanent constructions of this huge open field: Hall 1, the mega-auditorium for 8 thousand people, and the building that shelters the Media Center and the Organizing Committee of the event.

./english/582.txt:10:Around Jose Miguel there is an anthill of people, a whole parade with hundreds of cords of people following and entwining each other. Even if remarkable ( here is an advance, for example, with the call for the international day of protest against war for March 20th, anniversary of Iraq invasion) the blocs that express explicit political demands are the minority. Much more larger are those who want to show to the WSF – and maybe mostly to themselves - that they have identity, beauty, culture, expression. They emerged from the abysmal poverty to say that they do exist.

./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:28:Thanks to the All India’s People Science - an organization with 300 thousand members than promotes alphabetization and political formation all around India – it was inaugurated the practice of cultural workshops. Along the four days, one of the 140 rooms, was the scenario of a series of amazing music, dance and theatre spectacles, performed not by professional artists, but by Indian communities. Although amateur, the performances were produced carefully: uniformed, practiced, and proud groups. The public frequently invaded the scenario, to sing and dance. The aim of the organizers was to show, through art and emotion, that Indians must be proud of the extraordinary diversity of the country – instead of shutting in the peculiarity of the local traditions.

./english/582.txt:34:He impresses for the rich information that he has, for the agility with which he manages, for his capability to formulate concrete alternatives. He already defended the creation of a Word Taxes Organization ( to fight the fiscal wars between countries), a new IMF, an international mechanism to automatically interrupt the currencies negotiations, when they are under speculators attack. But one of his information will cause special impact on the public. The international financial order in force nowadays is so unfair, explains Sonny, that, under it, is India who aids to support the consumptions and the investments of North American people ( including the arms race) and not vice- versa

./english/582.txt:47:To obstruct public opinion, specially of the poorest people and of those of the lowest castes, the government instigates hate, simultaneously, to Hindus and Muslims. Arundathi accuses the supporters of the PJP, the party in power, of being responsible of a massacre that only in one day, took 2 thousand people’s life, in the Gurajat state, some months ago. Nobody was punished. In the former elections for governors of the states , the PJP and the Congress Party, also supporters of neoliberal ideas, extended the control they have over Indian politics.

./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:8:The first impression was of cacophony. India itself is more than 1 billion people, a diverse world speaking many languages – more than 40, nearly half of them official – with its castes, the social exclusion of dalits (untouchables or casteless people) and around 300 million living in abject poverty. At the other extreme, around 200 million are integrated with the globalised market. The impact is culturally and politically staggering, especially to the heightened perceptions of activists of an emerging planetary movement. Inevitably, we are led to ask ourselves whether we do enough, whether we are outraged enough at the inhumanity that so many women and men - children, adults and elderly - are condemned to and whether we are truly radical in our proposals for change.

./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/589.txt:19:Mumbai (Bombay at the time of the British Empire) has about fourteen millions inhabitants and is the capital of the state of Maharashtra (100 million inhabitants). Half of the inhabitants of Mumbai live in subhuman conditions. In fact, seven million people live in slums where they crowd in utterly precarious conditions. Eight inhabitants out of ten in the slums depend on the public tap to get water. Its distance from dwellings is on an average seventy meters and women to get water must stand in a queue for one and a half hour every day. You get up before dawn in Mumbai to use and store water for the day because the public authorities supply the precious liquid only between five and seven o’clock in the morning. You need to see Mumbai to understand the inhuman character of a system that generates permanent injustice. You face utter poverty wherever you go in Mumbai: you cannot escape the appalling view of the hundreds of thousands of people living along the roads just beside open-air sewage exuding putrid stench. Underfed people, with no possibility to take a bath, are busy around their ‘homes’, which often consists of a length of plastic stretched between two wooden poles. Promiscuity is common. To preserve a sense of dignity is a battle every moment for those million damned of the earth.

./english/589.txt:21:But what do public authorities do? Obviously, their reluctance to intervene led them to give up investing in collective water supply and sewage system. Public transport is limited to a minimum. Schools and hospitals cruelly lack all necessary amenities. The textile and steel plants, which once generated tens of thousands of jobs over decades, have (almost) all been closed down. Millions of people live off small jobs in the informal sector. Air pollution in Mumbai takes appalling proportions. Mexico or Bogota, though highly polluted, look like countryside compared with the Indian megalopolis.

./english/589.txt:28:Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK), member of CADTM international network, is a secular voluntary organisation established in 1981 to be an interface between Scholars, Academics and Social Activists; to initiate the process of social awakening through critical reflection and alternative discourse thereby contributing to strengthening people’s struggles towards the goal of a just and more humane social order.

./english/589.txt:31:Geographically, though VAK’s activities have focused primarily on the region of Western India – Maharashtra, Goa and Gujarat – the orientation and spread of a number of its activities have been essentially of a national character. The choice of the region of Western India was primarily because of its economic, ecological, cultural etc. similarities between these regions, and their people who have also been linked through popular movements.

./english/589.txt:50:This entails developing and promoting more focussed advocacy, lobbying and campaigning strategies ranging from Dalit to gender rights and from rights of minorities and children to the struggles of the people for livelihood and against suppression of human and democratic rights and erosion of cultural values. The programme also seeks to promote and strengthen civil society organisations in building solidarity- action networks on critical issues affecting the lives and “rights” of the people, to challenge the structures, cultures and dynamics of violence, inequality and injustice, and for the promotion of participatory, democratic politics and economics which makes people as the centrality of the social process.

./english/589.txt:59:A visit to the slum was a very deep experience for the CADTM delegates. It was not the worst of slums, far from it. The presence of a majority of stone-built homes and of numerous little shops testifies to the age of this area where more than five hundred families are gathered. They have organized themselves to make the most of what little they have but the sight is nevertheless desolating. Open-air sewage, lack of drinking water, underfed children and adults. The visit to the area hospital led by Mercy Muricken, the wife of the director of Vikas, made tears come to the eyes of the ten foreign visitors. The hospital, which consists of a room of ten to five, receives dozens of patients every day. Among the most frequent diseases, we find diarrhoea due to unsafe drinking water, worms in the stomach, serious anaemia, lack of weight (malnutrition), tuberculosis, malaria. The mortality rate reaches thirty per cent in the area. The number of poor people who commit suicide to escape poverty is high. The African delegates of the CADTM who came from Kinshasa, Brazzaville, Abidjan, Niamey and Bamako were unanimous: what they saw in Mumbai was far beyond the overwhelming poverty in their countries. Victor Nzuzi of the Democratic Republic of Congo asked: "How can the authorities of a country that built the nuclear bomb, which produces millions of cars and computers, which owns great drug industries, allow such a situation to last?" We must look for the answer in the abysmal inequality in the share of wealth and incomes, in the greed for maximum profit, in the state’s failure to fulfil its duties towards the citizens of this country, in the massive privatizations and in the opening of the Indian economy to transnational corporations. Samba Tembely from Mali was thinking aloud after the visit: "Our African governments try to justify the insufficiency of public services on grounds of the poverty of the country and the state. This is not convincing even if their words are not unfounded. But here in India, an industrialised country of the third world endowed with important natural resources, we can understand more clearly that it is the capitalistic system itself which is responsible for the misery of the majority of the population. Here the conditions are such that every inhabitant can have a decent life and yet the majority live in want”.

./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:78:Imagine the picture. When we entered the room, the girls were all sitting in the lotus position on mats along three walls. Some were very young (four or five), others were already teenagers. They introduced themselves with their first name and age. Then we duly introduced ourselves. We talked for about an hour. It is not easy to move from Africa and Europe to the world of these girls, but with lots of smiles, we managed. The girls started a very long and very beautiful song, which gave us an opportunity to look at them properly and experience wonder and awe. They sang that all children have a right to education and culture, that child labour should be abolished. Their faces radiated the beauty of joy. Their eyes had the direct look of people who feel at one with themselves and we could cry when we thought of the terrible life of pain and suffering they were escaping. One of them, aged four, as cute as anything, could hardly speak, probably as a result of some unspeakable trauma, but she joined in the singing in whispers and smiles. Once the song was over, two girls put a cassette on and started to dance a spellbinding traditional dance through which we understood that it was not just part of cultural learning but also a way of re-appropriating their bodies, of asserting their own dignity. Tears were again brimming in our eyes.

./english/589.txt:86:The land was first occupied at the beginning of the 1970s when families who had been ejected from their original houses settled on university property next to a creek but without any other facility (no drinking water, no electricity, no road) Fifteen years later there were about 118 shacks in the slum since other ejected people came from neighbouring states. In 1987-1988, the slum leaders contacted RLHP in order to improve their position and legalise the occupation of the land. The poverty among Kuduremala inhabitants was terrible: 97 pc were illiterate, 95 pc of children worked with their parents in jobs such as house servants, coolies, or garbage collectors. They accompanied them on dumps to try and get hold of some saleable items. 95 pc of marriages occurred at the early age of 13 to 17. The infant mortality rate reached 35 pc.

./english/589.txt:88:With the help of RLHP the slums dwellers set up structures that would represent them legally with public authorities. Women started a womens organisation. The community, now represented by a legal structure, the Abhivruddhi Sangha (CBO = community based organization) joined the Mysore Slum Dwellers Federation which gathers some thirty thousands people in 54 Mysore slums. The community then asked public authorities for title deeds on the university estate they occupied. Faced with a threat of ejection from the university they organised a protest march of 5,000 participants with the help of the Federation, while the community itself consisted of no more than 500 people. They eventually had their occupation made legal.

./english/589.txt:96:We visited the Kuduremala housing estate on Sunday 25 January 2004. Flowers decorate the houses, trees give shadow, street vendors sell vegetables from their handcarts, old people stop to talk in the middle of the streets, children are playing about. When we asked how such a successful experiment could be extended to all the slums in India, Philomena answered, "Wed need 50 more years". Still, young Dalits of this neighbourhood are not content with their castes subaltern position. Thanks to their communitys support, they train for jobs that are traditionally not open to Dalits.

./english/589.txt:98:Two members in charge of the community participated in the WSF in Mumbai as part of a delegation sent by the Mysore Slum Dwellers Federation; they were quite enthusiastic about the event, saying, "If this kind of thing is organised in all countries, things are bound to change." 25th of January will stay in our memories because of the quality of the dialogue we could have with several people in charge of the housing estate community. We talked about neo-liberal globalisation and invasion of local markets by goods produced by transnational corporations. When we asked what fundamental changes were needed to improve the human condition one of the delegates to the WSF said, "We have to change laws on succession. When somebody dies his possessions must go back to public authorities that should distribute them with the good of the commonwealth in mind." To which we answered that "indeed if the dead persons possessions beyond a given level necessary for family life (including housing) were distributed to the community by public authorities the current system through which goods are accumulated by more and more limited number of people would be deeply shaken." The words of this Dalit who lives in his body the crushing weight of a system based on inequality at birth had a universal bearing and pointed to the issue of alternative tracks along which we could change the world. [7]

./english/589.txt:118:The reality has been quite the reverse. We stress that until now the region had no problems in terms of access to water supply. But to produce soft drinks for all of south India (Coke, Fanta, Kinley water, Thums Up, Limca, Maaza, etc.), the company dug six wells from which it extracts more than one million litres of water PER DAY, rapidly drying out the ground water table on which roughly twenty thousand people depend.

./english/589.txt:124:The salt content of the water has increased due to the lower level of the water table. The production of rice and coconuts has dropped dramatically (75% for coconuts) due to lack of water. This is particularly upsetting as coconut milk is rich in proteins and minerals: coconut milk is a complete drink while coca cola is just water with sugar and flavouring. This situation is affecting a population of 20,000 people almost entirely made up of Dalits or tribals. [8]

./english/589.txt:128:The situation quickly became unbearable and led to mass demonstrations. On 22 April 2002 a demonstration and a symbolic picket at the factory entrance brought together approx. 2,000 people, mainly of tribal origin. Since this date, a permanent picket stands before the company and many other actions are underway. Action has mainly been taken by women, more prepared to fight since they are more directly affected. They also collect food for the picketers. Some women give up 10 rupees out of their daily wage of 50 rupees to support the campaign. Radical demonstrations have been forcefully repressed by the police (bought by Coca Cola): 240 people were arrested at one demonstration, 140 are threatened with prosecution. These demonstrations have attracted the attention of the population beyond Plachimada: villages are joining in the battle, schoolchildren visit the picket line and organise boycotts of Coca Cola products. Unfortunately, the media is not helping the campaign: Coca cola controls the action of the media which need its financial support (advertising).

./english/589.txt:138:Addendum: People’s victory against Coca Cola

./english/589.txt:148:Message received from Penny Bright on 19 February: Peoples victory in India! Coke plant forced to close after community protests!

./english/589.txt:177:[6] Caste belonging is determined by birth. The Dalit caste consists of about two hundred million people. It is the most starkly oppressed. Its members are traditionally considered untouchable because impure. Although the Indian constitution abolished untouchability and guaranteed equality among Indian citizens, the caste system is still deeply rooted in every reality. The upper class, the local elite, the land owners, who generally belong to upper castes, see to it that it lives on as a source of cheap and expendable manpower since in practice Dalits cannot apply to qualified jobs.

./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:12:REFORM VS REVOLUTION: This was very clear, say, in the debate between people like Joseph Stiglitz and Dita Sari over their attitudes to the WTO, IMF and the capitalist system as a whole.

./english/594.txt:14:BETWEEN THE WSF WORLD WIDE AND THE THAI PEOPLES MOVEMENT: What was noticeable was the way people took it for granted in the WSF that the imperialist war in Iraq was linked to neoliberalism and that the anti-war struggle would hit the US government at its most vulnerable point and thus help spur the anti-neoliberal struggle. This is not something understood generally by the Thai movement which has suffered from an “apolitical” position, mainly as a result of the legacy of Maoism and the influence of conservative NGOs. Many Thai delegates to the WSF were unaware of the anti-war meetings and any of the decisions (eg 20th March) and do not seem to understand the importance of organising for the 20th March.

./english/594.txt:20:Finally, what filled me with hope was the unity meeting of 45 left-wing organisations, Maoists and Trotskyists, which decided that we all need to work together in a concrete manner to contribute to a new socialist and non-sectarian world within the WSF process. One very important issue which the left must come to terms with is the attitude towards NGOs, especially in Asia. We must get away from narrow sectarianism and find ways to work with NGO activists in opposing neo-liberalism and imperialism, while at the same time never shying away from political debates. The failure of narrow sectarianism was clearly shown in the case of the isolated Mumbai Resistance 2004 which attracted a few thousand people compared to the 100,000 who attended the WSF.

./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: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/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:15:There are many different ways of being a representative, of making present the views of those who for reasons of a manageable size of meeting, resources, distance and equity between organisations, are absent. Some forms of representation are more direct and democratic than others. In the South, social movements - womens, urban, peasants and trade union movements - have invented ways of ensuring that their collective power is transmitted beyond the level of direct democracy through forms of representation that are strengthened by systems of rotation and recall. In the North, partly in reaction to the way parliamentary and labour representative structures have become emptied of vitality and radicalism, there is a strong sense of only I can represent myself; the experience of being represented has become so diminished that many people feel that only a pure form of direct democracy has any authenticity.

./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:34:Everyone at Mumbai expressed the excitement of connecting their struggles with those of others. Homa Kadeep, for example, helps coordinate campaigns defending forest peoples rights to land and natural resources across India. She said: What is happening here is that we are connecting with people from Brazil, South Africa, Canada… We go home knowing we are not alone. We are also discovering how to be more effectively coordinated.

./english/598.txt:36:This sense of opening possibilities was shared by young Zimbabwean activist Kelvin Hazangwi. Im organising against the privatisation of water, Hazangwi said. But I want to learn from a group thats working on freeing the people of Tibet. I want to know the struggles theyre facing. But I also tell them how we are fighting the struggle against water privatisation. And my cause in Zimbabwe can also be part of a cause against water privatisation in Mali. These linkages can now be made. What Im saying is that there should be coordinated linkages.

./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:50:2001: The first WSF meets at Porto Alegre, a city of 1.5 million people in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. Both the city and the state are governed by the Workers Party of Brazilian president Lula. There are 30,000 participants.

./english/598.txt:52:2002: The second WSF meets again at Porto Alegre. At least 60,000 people participate.

./english/598.txt:54:2003: Porto Alegre hosts the third WSF. More than 100,000 people attend.

./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/605.txt:6:WSF 2004 was a remarkable global event: 74,126 registered delegates (60,224 from India and 13,902 foreigners) from 117 countries – representing 1,653 organizations (838 indian and 797 from abroad). Besides, 40,000 daily passes were released to people who took part in the activities just for one day or ones who couldn´t afford the inscription fee. And there must be taken in consideration the presence of more 4,000 participants in the Youth Camp, volunteers that worked for the event and the people from Mumbai that went to the open activities.

./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: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:17:Mumbai is the biggest city in India: there are16.4 million inhabitants according to the last census and the city competes with São Paulo for the condition of the third most populous city in the Earth. The Mumbai inhabitants are crushed in a surface of less than 10% Great São Paulo´s (Mumbai city is just 440 square meter big, and São Paulo city, 1,509 square meter). One million people survive on the Mumbai´s streets. Some of its avenues are half invaded by the huts.

./english/605.txt:23:India is mostly hinduist (82%), but includes an Islamic minority (12%) and 19 million Christians, 18 million Sikhs, 7 million Buddhist, 4 million jainists and people expressing other beliefs. Communalist conflicts (specially resulting of the persecution against muslims) have raised, stimulated by the nationalist hinduist streams, which since 1998 control central government and keep a militarist and nuclear policy towards Pakistan and China. One of them, Shiv Sena (Shivaji Army), rules Mumbai since 1985 and shares the government of Maharashtra since 1995, with the reactionary Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP – which also controls the central government. It was BJP´s government in Gujarat state that allowed the killing of 2,000 muslims by fanatic hinduist in March 2002.

./english/605.txt:27:The IV WSF organizers have made possible to the participants in the event an exemplar contact with the unequal development and lead to paroxism, with fantastic post-modern towers raised in huge slums with cosmopolitan rootless elites who live with a rural miserable India, stuck on eighteenth century, with billionaires and affluent middle-classes who live without sorry in midst of countless dalits, people who fight every single day for survival. This experience has imposed, even for the Latin American, an existential redefinition of the sense of misery and exclusion caused by neoliberal globalization.

./english/605.txt:34:And in addition to these oppressions there is the adivasis situation, tribal communities that comprehend between 55 and 60 million people who have been expropriated from their ancestor and empoverished lands after a thousand-year contact with the hinduist and muslim populations.

./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: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: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/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/611.txt:14:Supposing that I was seeing even reasonably clearly, I would imagine the cause of the relative quiescence is religion, and in particular the caste system. On the one hand, I felt like this relative peacefulness probably made life at the bottom in India far less horrible than if everyone also constantly feared passers-by on every street, and if many suffered drug addicted or incarcerated or murdered relatives, as in many regions of the U.S. On the other hand, I felt like an age-old question - "why dont hungry people steal?" - was even more relevant here in India, with its hundreds of millions of desperately poor, than it is relevant, say, in the U.S., with thirty million below the poverty line.

./english/611.txt:18:Roy herself, and a few others from India, and some folks from outside as well, quite courageously conveyed to the WSF attendees, as best they could in the time allotted, a picture of Hindu fundamentalism engorging its appetites with little restraint. They werent tossing around epithets like "fascist" and "fundamentalist" lightly, as many in the U.S. do when referring to Bush. They knew what the words imply, and they used them knowingly, describing the thugs seeking to rise to ultimate power as willing, able, and already quite practiced at ripping the innards out of people - mostly Muslims -- for street sport as well as political gain.

./english/611.txt:24:People I met were not thinking of leaving the country, or of security in any sense. And on the streets, people were not displaying the macho brown shirt style or the savvy fear that you might anticipate in a run-up toward fascism. Yet, even against my own senses, I believed Roy and others who described what they thought was coming. I suspect that the massive celebrations of diversity and hope within the Mumbai WSF events left very few people going home to the West wondering, as I was, if they would soon be opening their homes to people fleeing an India that had gone berserk.

./english/611.txt:28:The fact that it was teeming with attendees and speakers, becoming a kind of progressive self-contained universe, was nothing new. That many more people were marching and celebrating outside speakers venues than were attending the speaking events themselves was new, however. It apparently owed in part to poor translation facilities. If you came from parts of India that didnt leave you fluent in English or Hindi, you were at a loss to understand many talks being given. But I suspect people not attending talks had another reason as well. As with other WSFs most of the presentations were about how bad globalization, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and caste relations, not to mention Hindu fundamentalism, are. The people parading all day outside the talks knew all this without having to hear it. Does it really make any sense to get up on a stage and talk about the ills of poverty and of indignity in a city like this - where walking five minutes in any direction outside the gates of our event offers incontrovertible evidence of the claims -- evidence so powerful, so humbling, so sickening, and so overwhelming, that no speaker could possibly expand on its message?

./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:32:Two central tensions of the WSF still exist, however. First, the WSF has been a venue for information exchange. When you do that over and over, with the information remaining mostly familiar...you start to atrophy. Taking the event to a new continent means reaching new audiences so that old substance is rejuvenated by reaching new listeners. But many people want more than that. They feel that with a burgeoning momentum of connections and commitments spanning the world, there ought to be aprogram that the WSF adopts, furthers, and wins. What about the WSF programmatically addressing war, say - or corporate globalization, or the trends in India, for that matter, or even something narrower such as boycotting particular firms engaged in especially horrible practice.

./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:54:My own inclination, nonetheless, is to feel that having an international decision making council composed of people who are largely unaccountable and even unknown to anyone outside the convened room, and above which council there operate even smaller groups with still more power and still less transparency and accountability - however, understandable, is not a recipe for lasting and even accelerating success. But would reforming this international council apparatus by requiring that everyone involved be openly known, and be accountable to large constituencies, and operate with final say instead of being subordinate to still smaller and even less accountable groups - solve the problem?

./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:27:Alternatives based on the radical confrontation of the neoliberal model that sacrifices the lives of peoples and the future of the planet to benefit private property and god money in the name of free market, and that avoid to be co-opted by the system.

./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: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/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:12:The main debates addressed directly the theme of war and peace, of US violence in Afghanistan and in Iraq - but the approach was completely different, making us realise how isolated we are in our western points of view. The war made a far greater impact on eastern peoples, because it took place right next door.... It was rather like imagining how it would have been for us if the North American invasion had happened in Argentina.

./english/625.txt:14:Compared to the previous three editions, this WSF was much more about ordinary people, with intense participation of people’s movements, grassroots movements. There was also more diversity: of people, nationalities, colours, clothing, behaviour and forms of expression – in addition to the marches, there were cultural performances on the streets: dance groups, theatre, people painting, making speeches, speaking out with their bodies...

./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/626.txt:4:Dust. Drums. Slogans. Songs. Posters. Pamphlets. Chants. Colours. People. Masses of people. People of different nations, different clothing, different accents, different languages, different ideas. All covered in the same dust. All cloaked with the same hope. All there with the same vision - of a better world. Some day. Already?

./english/626.txt:12:WSF 04 was not an isolated event. It was challenged. By Mumbai Resistance - a separate event held by those who felt the WSF was exclusionary and compromised. Across the highway, several organizations and people often referred to as the "extreme left" rallied to discuss many of the same issues but under a different banner. Other parallel but not challenging events were the Land First Mela - an event devoted to the creation of a stronger land rights movement, and the conference of Via Campesina - an international network of peasant organizations, agricultural workers, and indigenous communities. Events attended by many who also participated in the WSF. Events that chose separate spaces for logistic and other conveniences. Events that were all spokes in the wheel of the alternative vehicle were engaged in building.

./english/626.txt:18:If democracy lives in India, you can feel it in the vibrant culture of resistance. It was the pulse of the WSF. Some march or the other was constantly going on. These were not just protests for the sake of protesting. These were rallies of people with ideas, with histories, with stories, with sufferings, with victories, and with visions. Victims, winners, survivors, fighters. All dreamers. All praxis-builders.

./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/626.txt:26:"There were no concrete outcomes," complain many critics. Yes, there were no formal declarations passed; who needs more of those? But there were hundreds of outcomes. The forging of people-to-people bonds. The uniting of struggles. The building of bridges. The strengthening of solidarity. The shaping of new alliances, new coalitions, new relationships. The articulation of alternatives. These are all outcomes. Intangible perhaps, but valuable outcomes nonetheless.

./english/626.txt:30:I can still hear the reverberating chants. I can still taste the dust. I can feel the passion and power of the 100,000 people who, like me, came to breathe in another space. I can picture new dreams being created. I can visualise the outline of the other world emerging on tomorrows sunlit morning sky.

./english/629.txt:34:A movement congregates people - its militants, as the militants of a party - who decide to organize themselves to accomplish, collectively, certain objectives. Its formation and existence entails the definition of strategies to reach these objectives, the formulation of action programs and the distribution of responsibilities among its members – including those concerning the direction of the movement. The one who assumes this function will lead the militants of the movement, getting them – through authoritarianism or democratic methods, according to the choice made by the founders of the movement - to be liable for their commitment in the collective action. Its organizational structure is necessarily pyramidal, however democratic the internal process of decision and the way used to choose those who will occupy the different levels of management might be. On the other hand, its efficacy will depend on the explicitness and precision of its specific objectives, and therefore, of its own delimitation, in time and space.

./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: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: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:116:The situation gets even worse when the organizers of the event manage to bring renowned persons to the part of the event that they organize, and when these conferences with celebrated people overlap with the workshops and seminars, as occurred in Porto Alegre 2003: the big conferences attracting most of the participants, leaving the self-organized activities to those who really insist on participating in them. In this perspective, besides, the function of the big conferences and panels in an event would have to be reexamined.

./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: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/634.txt:6:In numbers, it clearly was a triumph, doubling the number of those participating the previous year to as many as 120,000 people, many of them from nearly 5,800 social movements of 156 nations. According to Eduardo Tagliaferro of the Buenos Aires daily Página 12, WSF organizers like to say that the growth in numbers “is a worldwide wave that is forming a new citizenship” (my translation, cited in Correo de Prensa de la IV Internacional Boletín Electrónico No 562 - América Latina y el Caribe - 30/1/03 – < germain@chasque.net >). As one of those organizers, Jeferson Miola of Brazil, concluded: “The formidable political, cultural, theoretical, and moral authority conquered after three successive FSM world meetings allows us to enter this new phase with a greater ability to affirm values and references for the conquest of a post-neoliberal world founded on peace and justice, with multilateralism, respect for diversity, and the self-determination of peoples” (my translation, Miola, “Fórum

./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:21:Many reporters at Davos noted that the appearance of Brazil’s newly elected president Lula practically saved the WEF from obscurity. The number of journalists instantly increased with his appearance. Lula had been criticized by many when he told the WSF a few days earlier that he would be going to Davos. Nonetheless, at Porto Alegre III, crowds of people rushed to a giant TV screen to watch and cheer his speech at Davos, where he did, as he had promised, say the same words he had spoken at WSF, while also reaching out to dialogue with the rich and powerful.

./english/634.txt:31:First, a growing trend in the discussion of alternatives has been whether all of capitalism should be jettisoned and a new type of economy and society introduced—participatory, transparent, pluralist, socialist in the anti-Stalinist humanist sense—or whether capitalism should be radically reformed (a kind of resurrection of the social democrats in Europe and “liberals” in North America, who have until now been lining up with neoliberalism). In Porto Alegre III the participatory socialist position seemed stronger, much stronger, according to my informants, than at Porto Alegre II. People simply can’t find examples of capitalism reforming itself in any lasting way. In other words, reforms come and go, but capitalism storms ahead. In most parts of the world reforms are crushed by capitalism or its military forces, as Latin Americans have noticed for decades. Argentina’s historic Mothers of the May Plaza have concluded: “Another world is possible, only with revolution and socialism.”

./english/634.txt:33:On the other hand, the number of “reformists” was larger than ever at Porto Alegre III—it’s just that their position could not hold people’s attention without moving to the left, something many of them are reluctant to do beyond the rhetorical level. Meanwhile, a few groups of the world’s miniscule far left boycotted Porto Alegre III because they thought it was too “reformist.” India’s prize-winning novelist and political activist Arundathi Roy, who was on the panel featuring Noam Chomsky, received far greater applause than Chomsky did when she ended her moving speech with these words: “The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing” (the entire speech is available on ZNet, January 28, 2003, www.zmag.org/).

./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:10:This, too, is related to the war. While Secretary of State Colin Powell works the crowd in Davos in an attempt to bully and bribe other governments into going along (e.g. a giant $16 billion IMF loan and $4 billion grant to the government of Turkey, where 90 percent of the people oppose the war) the sizeable American anti-war movement has also reached out to their counterparts around the world.

./english/636.txt:12:It is a sad testimony to the state of American democracy that we need the help of other countries to stop our President from getting our own people killed -- along with thousands or tens of thousands of innocent civilians -- in a war that most Americans dont want.

./english/636.txt:14:But the war is not the only issue here that brings people throughout the world together against American-led policies that cause so much harm throughout the world. The largest number of delegates are from Latin America, where the profound failure of the policies known here as "neo-liberalism" has become painfully obvious. The last 20 years have seen the regions worst performance in more than a century, with income per person hardly growing at all. The US recipe of substituting the indiscriminate opening of trade and financial flows for what used to be development policy, along with punishingly high interest rates and budget austerity, has failed miserably even on its own terms.

./english/636.txt:23:The people here seem to agree. A banner at one of the big marches here said "Give it up, Davos: Lula is one of us."

./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: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/643.txt:18:The third element, defining proposals and strategies hasnt been resolved yet and doesnt seem to worry most people. There were 1,714 panels and seminars in this years WSF. Is this proof of strength? If nobody can keep track of what went on in so many debates, I have my doubts. This atomisation of dialogue means that many valuable proposals were lost.

./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/644.txt:14:There were almost twice as many people this year, representing 717 organizations from 156 countries. There was also a notable increase in U.S. participation (1,100 people) including the Grassroots Global Justice Delegation - a working class group of more than 100 community and labor activists from around the country, including Jobs with Justice, SWOP, the UE, Agenda, Just Act and many other organizations who provided vibrant accounts of the challenges faced by poor and working people in the U.S. as well as some of our successes (our delegation was predominantly women and people of color and more than a third were young people). It was also important that in panels, news conferences and media interviews, members of our delegation helped to make clear that many U.S. trade unionists are actively engaged in struggling against war with Iraq.

./english/644.txt:23:As expressed by UE District President Marianne Hart, who works in a plastics plant in California: "The fact that in Brazil a worker was just elected president is like a star which gives us hope. It is important to know that not only is another world possible, but that it is being built. Knowing that gives me energy to work even harder when I return home!" And that is the real lesson of international solidarity: that it goes both ways, and that the people of Brazil have just won a major victory for all of us.

./english/645.txt:15:A global opinion poll released at the start of the conference, which showed that most people want a global agenda based on social values and not economic growth, confirmed what Brazilians had said with their vote. Far from being a club of the outdated, the WSF has begun to look more and more convincing as a blueprint for the future.

./english/645.txt:17:Thousands of people from around the world, determined to address all sorts of wrongs in all sorts of ways, met here in hundreds of meetings. The discussions at Porto Alegre, fast becoming the Mecca of all those in search of a better world, were underlined by a massive rally before the conference started - a spectacular way of making the point that the people on the street and those in the seminar rooms were headed in the same direction.

./english/645.txt:21:The start of the conference demonstrated the Porto Alegre way, with Iraqi delegates handing their flag to U.S. delegates, and Israelis and Palestinians holding hands. The rights of Palestinians and the wrongs of an attack on Iraq dominated the conference. The attack on Iraq has clearly become a test case for a peoples movement fighting the U.S. government and the oil giants on its side.

./english/646.txt:8:At the very end of the century, the public perception of the issues at stake seemed to be changing. In recent years we have seen substantial crowds of people marching on the streets against the undemocratic nature of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Global capitalism may be entering a serious legitimacy crisis.

./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:72:Some people however, consider increasing cyberspace use can only play into the hands (and pockets) of Bill Gates and the like. Others feel that increased reliance on the internet could marginalise groups that have limited or no access. On the other hand, the costs for a poor organisation in the global south to fly someone into a meeting in another continent will almost certainly be higher than taking part in a cyber-meeting through the internet.

./english/646.txt:76:Others are already thinking that the number of participants and parallel events is too high for any strategically relevant debate on key issues. For Roberto Savio, long-time director of the Inter Press Service, holding 1714 panels and seminars in the WSF 2003 led to an atomisation of dialogue. Savio has proposed that in future there should be severe restrictions to the number of people allowed to participate in the event, although he has left it open who would decide.

./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:108:Until now, social movement declarations produced during the WSF events have not been circulated very widely and their impact has been relatively modest. The clearest exception is the call for anti-war demonstrations of 15 February 2003 that many movements gathered in the WSF 2003 in Porto Alegre made public. Nevertheless, they have created controversy among the organisers, with people like Chico Whitaker fearing that the media may consider them semi-official. One way to avoid political silence without violating the Charter of Principles may be for the organisers to facilitate their production and endorsement.

./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:124:What is clear about the future of the WSF is that what is most precious is the myriad encounters between different groups and activists which take place within its confines. Geographically, most participants have come from the southern cone of Latin America (especially Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina) and southern Europe (especially Italy, France and Spain), but there has been a conscious effort to facilitate the participation of people from Asia, Africa and other parts of Latin America. Even though in numbers the Asian participation has been modest, the process has attracted increasing attention especially in India, where the WSF 2004 will take place. And participation by groups from the United States has been growing every year.

./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/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/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: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/658.txt:19:But it is not just a question of numbers and prices (although they do, after all, reflect a certain reality). It is true that this year, the participation of North Americans was significant (more than 400 delegates), but the participation of civil-society actors, grassroots movements, and people from other regions and of different cultures was still very limited.

./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:27:Beyond the written results, and without the possibility of a precise view of how the conferences worked out (although I attended several), I believe that overall, the conferences were not really participatory. Of course, it is not easy for 3,000 people to participate actively in a meeting lasting less than four hours, but I believe that a lot of conferences were limited to a quick sequence of presentations, all very interesting of course, but that were only responded to by the applause of the participants. How can we move on to a form of organization of the meetings that will overcome the speech-applause format? This will also be a challenge for the next events.

./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: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/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: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: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.