By Judy Rebick
OneWorldJune 30, 2003
"Many movements, one space" is the idea behind the World Social Forum (WSF). Bringing together a wide diversity of movements for social change in one place creates an enormous sense of the power of people to change the face of the world we live in.
In a global society where most sources of information are dominated by corporations and right-wing governments, the WSF is a chance to meet and talk with activists from around the world. The amazing thing for me has been finding out how much we all have in common.
A key feature of the Social Forum movement is that the focus is on alternatives to neo-liberalism. Instead of the endless discussion of what "they" are doing, we have time and space to discuss what we are doing and how we can do it better.
At this year's WSF, in Porto Alegre, Brazil - the third one - it became clear to me that the WSF is really a process more than a product. It has given us a new way of talking to each other, a new way of sharing our experiences, and the impact is extraordinary.
On so many levels, the space and the spirit of the WSF have created multiple dialogues that have the potential to promote the transformation of power relations and wealth in society that so many of us have been working for, in more separate ways, for so long.
The Social Forum movement is growing at an exponential rate. The first World Social Forum was held in 2000 as a counter-event to the World Economic Forum in Davros, Switzerland. Ten thousand people from all over the world participated. The next Forum had 60,000 people, and in January 2003 120,000 people participated. Next year (January 2004) the Forum will be in Mumbai (Bombay), India – the first time the event will take place in Asia.
The WSF has now gone well beyond the anti-Davros idea. It has become a "movement of movements" where all those working for global justice meet together to strategize, debate and develop ideas for alternatives.
Last year the call went out for local and regional social forums, and since then a great many country, regional and thematic forums have taken place around the world, covering anything from Palestine to "Democracy, Human Rights, Wars and Drug Trafficking". Last November the European Social Forum with 60,000 participants catalysed the largest anti-war demonstration ever - with more than a million people marching in Florence - and then put out the call for the massive global protest against the war in Iraq that followed.
An organizer of the Asia Social Forum whom I met on my first night in Porto Alegre this January told me how magical that meeting of 20,000 activists had been. "The Indian left is really very sour and negative," he said, "but here we had fun over those few days as well as engaging in serious political discussions. People thought it was wonderful." It was the same word I heard from many participants at the Toronto Social Forum, "wonderful."
The magic of the Social Forum seems to be in the principles of organizing. In addition to a few large common events, each forum opens a space for organizations and movements to put on their own events. It's the self-organizing in the context of common values that seems to unleash so much human creativity. Instead of people having to fit into a conference agenda, they set their own agenda based on a set of common principles.
At the WSF, everyone - from Marxists to civil rights activists, from feminists to liberation theologists, from anarchists to trade union leaders - concentrates on the very considerable areas of agreement among them. As one activist from India put it: "The situation in the world is so urgent, we have to put aside differences of ideology and ego and focus on the our common project to build a better world."
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