by Lewis Williamson
GuardianNovember 8, 2002
The Tuscan city of Florence is the location for this week's first European Social Forum, whose stated aim is to discuss issues of peace, democracy, freedom and social justice.
But the Italian authorities, mindful of the events of July last year, when anti-globalisation protests at the G8 summit in Genoa degenerated into rioting, extensive damage to property, numerous injuries and the death of one protester, are not expecting peace to prevail this week. The interior minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, last week warned parliament of the possible dangers to the city's priceless art treasures. He said the secret services anticipated a series of potentially dangerous initiatives by the demonstrators, from the occupation of the American military base at Camp Darby to sit-ins in banks, schools and detention centres for illegal immigrants.
The Italian government also decided to suspend the terms of the Schengen Treaty and reinstate border controls in a bid to repel foreign troublemakers at the frontier. In other words, the forum is being treated in the same way as most protests have been treated ever since the anti-World Trade Organisation protests in Seattle three years ago erupted into violence - as a potential threat to law and order. But it can be argued that the forum is not the same. Unlike most previous protests, its aim is not simply to draw attention to, disrupt or protest against a specific meeting of businesspeople, governments or a multilateral organisation.
Instead, the forum is hoping to discuss and debate a wide range of issues, seeking solutions to some of the problems that are believed to be the result of globalisation. According to the forum's website, ESF is "an open meeting space designed for in-depth reflection, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and planning of effective action among entities and movements of civil society that are engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human being".
Such a declaration can be interpreted as a sign that the globalisation debate has moved on. Until relatively recently it would have been rare to see such a positive statement from an "anti-globalisation" organisation. Indeed, politicians' stock response to protests has normally been to say their opponents were simply against everything, rather than being for anything.
It was partly as a response to such accusations that the World Social Forum, the ESF's bigger and slightly older brother, was born. The WSF, which will hold its third annual meeting in Brazil next January, grew out of a desire to move beyond the protests and "to offer specific proposals, to seek concrete responses to the challenges of building 'another world', one where the economy would serve people, and not the other way round".
The original idea was to arrange a meeting on a world scale to rival that of the world economic forum, which, according to the WSF, is the organisation through which "the theory of world domination by capital, within the parameters of neo-liberalism, is constructed and steadily put into practice". For added symbolism, the WSF meetings in Brazil take place on the same days as those of the world economic forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Now, rather than simply responding to the actions of the established intergovernmental and multilateral organisations, the anti-globalisation movement is trying to set its own agenda. As Naomi Klein, author of the influential No Logo, points out in her new book, Fences and Windows, there is "a sense of possibility, a blast of fresh air, oxygen rushing to the brain".
Unfortunately, this does not signify that clashes between police and protesters are a thing of the past. Participants this week could just as easily find themselves being confronted with blasts of tear gas as blasts of fresh air. Organisers of the ESF insist there is no reason for the marches to degenerate into a rerun of Genoa. There will be no world leaders present and no red zone to assault, so no real cause for clashes with the police.
But no one can be completely sure. Despite the evolution of the anti-globalisation movement, with its more positive outlook and more coherent agenda, it remains a somewhat disparate and divided movement; its members have varied goals and different views on the best way to achieve them.
Although in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks there appears to be less of an appetite for direct confrontation among the anti-globalisation groups, it will remain the case that whenever large numbers of protesters come into contact with large numbers of police, the potential for violence will be considerable.
But the vast majority of the movement will be hoping trouble can be avoided because, as an international group of intellectuals has recently warned in an appeal against violence, such scenes only distract attention from the issues under discussion and play into the hands of the economic lobbies that oppose the movement.
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