By Andrew Gumbel
IndependentJanuary 24, 2002
THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
Numbers: 100,000 expected, runs for six days. 60,000 at the Catholic University, the main venue, the rest at "off-summit" events in a football stadium, a gymnasium, five marquees and dockside warehouses.
Accommodation: Thousands are camping near the site, others in hostels.
Security: Little disturbance is expected. The French activist José Bové says he has no plans to repeat his 2001 invasion of a Monsanto farm. The Forum opened with a peaceful anti-war march.
Entertainment: Beer and barbecues at campsites. A concert by the Brazilian popstar Jorge Ben Jor, Japanese theatre productions and a drag show.
Star delegates: Lula da Silva, Danny Glover, Noam Chomsky, Aleida Guevara, the daughter of "Che" Guevara, José Bové. Talking points: The war on Iraq, "sustainable development", "human rights", "the media", "world democracy and militarisation".
The stage is set for another showdown. While the lords of global capitalism meet in the cocoon of a luxury hotel, their critics – an eclectic gathering of unionists, environmentalists, politicians and academics representing the disenfranchised of the First and the Third Worlds – are rising up in vocal opposition to their growing hegemony over world affairs.
There will not be direct clashes along the lines of those in Seattle in 1999 or in Genoa in 2001, since the two sides are separated by an ocean, literal and figurative. But for the third year running, the World Economic Forum in Davos, arguably the most exclusive club of political and corporate leaders, faces a challenge from the anti-globalisation movement on the other side of the Atlantic, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
And this year the challenge will resound louder than ever. Organisers of the Brazilian event, which kicked off yesterday, expect at least 100,000 attendees, almost double last year's number. The venue at the Catholic University will be full to bursting, the overflow taken up by a gymnasium, four warehouses at Porto Alegre's docks and a giant youth camp.
For all the speculation about the decline of the movement after 11 September, there is no doubt that the World Social Forum is being taken in earnest. On both sides of the Atlantic, discussion will be dominated by the same themes: the looming war against Iraq, the crisis in corporate capitalism triggered by Enron's collapse and associated scandals, the burden of debt in the Third World and the growing gulf between the rich and the almost three billion people who live on less than $2 (£1.20) a day.
The whole tone of the Davos meeting has altered in the past couple of years, partly because of pressure from Porto Alegre. This year's theme, "Rebuilding Confidence", says it all. As Naomi Klein, the author of No Logo and a leading anti-globalisation campaigner, said recently: "Over the course of only three years, Davos has been transformed from a festival of shamelessness to an annual parade of public shaming, a dour capitalist S&M parlour."
The man who inspired and inaugurated the World Social Forum, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, has now become the President of Brazil. From Porto Alegre, where his Worker's Party has for the past few years run a highly successful experiment in participatory democracy – antithetical to the prescriptions of the IMF and World Bank – he will travel to Davos to address his fellow world leaders on Sunday.
For the first time, there will be direct dialogue between the two sides at the highest level. Lula's pleading for responsible populist reform based on the interests of all parties, not just the bankers and corporate chiefs, is unlikely to make much immediate impression on the Bush administration, which seems more interested in dominating the world through force than consensus.
But at least the battle lines will be drawn, more clearly perhaps than they have been since the end of the Cold War. Instead of capitalism versus communism, what we are seeing is capitalism in one corner, and, in the other, a coalition combining the dispossessed the Third World and the alienated of the First. Walden Bello, a professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines, wrote in a Pakistani newspaper: "The World Social Forum ... has become the prime organisational expression of a surging movement against corporate-driven globalisation ... a voice for human rights, against violence and against imperialism."
Much of the impetus for this year's meeting stems from growing worldwide opposition to war with Iraq – an issue with the rare power to unite the often disparate strands of the anti-globalisation movement. It is one thing that Argentinian anti-IMF protesters, protectionist US steel unions, save-the-whale campaigners and Noam Chomsky – a speaker at Porto Alegre – all agree on.
It is also becoming apparent that 11 September was more of a bump in the road for the anti-globalisation movement than a moment of rupture. Certainly, the atrocities were the worst imaginable expression of anti-capitalist revolt. And public opinion in the West rallied overwhelmingly to the defence of the established order in the aftermath of the attacks.
But Enron, Iraq and the growing isolationism of the Bush administration have all helped revive the notion that the world order needs revising. The election of Lula in Brazil and other populist leaders in Latin America has provided a political perch from which the message can be articulated. "Critical mass" has always been the dream of anti-globalisation supporters. In Porto Alegre over the next few days, they might just attain it.
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