We Be the Many - World Social Forum, Porto Alegre —panels spoke to huge crowds.
www.rabble.ca by Judy Rebick February 3, 2003
“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way,” Indian writer Arundhati Roy told a massive crowd of 30,000 at the concluding event of the World Social Forum last week in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
I, too, heard her breathing this week, not in quiet, but in the boisterous noise of 100,000 activists talking, chanting, clapping, dancing, discussing and listening to each other’s stories.
At this year’s World Social Forum (WSF), it became clear to me that the Forum is really a process more than a product. The WSF 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 has created multiple dialogues that may very well promote transformation. The WSF is realizing a century old dream of an “International,” a gathering of the workers of the world that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels called for in the Communist Manifesto. But instead of the Euro-centric elites of the previous Internationals, the World Social Forum is a meeting of peoples of the world, inclusive, non-sectarian and open.
An organizer of the Asian Social Forum whom I met on my first night in Porto Alegre told me how magical that meeting of 20,000 activists was, “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 in the first event of the Toronto Social Forum, “wonderful.” Here are some dialogues that the WSF has facilitated:
Israel and Palestine
As Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon consolidated his greatest electoral victory yet, Israelis and Palestinian peace activists met in Porto Alegre to develop a joint declaration for peace. It was read in English by both a Palestinian Member of Parliament and a Jewish doctor to the same throng addressed later by Roy and Noam Chomsky. It read in part, “We Israeli and Palestinian peace activists are determined to pursue peace…an end to the Occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem as an open city and a just and fair solution of the Palestinian refugee problem.”
As the Mayor of Porto Alegre read the statement in Portuguese, John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was heard first softly and then at full volume over the giant stadium’s loud speakers. Spontaneously 20,000 people stood, held hands high and swayed and sang along. On the stage, the Israelis and Palestinians too held hands and then hugged and kissed each other. “You may say that I’m a dreamer,” says the song, “but I’m not the only one.”
Political Parties and Social Movements
The day before, José Genoino, president of the Workers’ Party (PT) of Brazil and Willy Madisha, president of COSATU (the union federation in South Africa) explained two sides of taking state power in an extraordinary dialogue on political parties and social movements. Genoino told the crowd, “The challenge of the left is to be an affirmative alternative to authoritarian exclusion, commodification of life and objectification of people.” He continued that the priorities of the PT were democracy as a fundamental value and the struggle for rights. “We walk on two feet, “ he explained. “One foot is the democratization of the state and the other the building of strong autonomous social movements.”
Madisha drew the lessons of the quick and heartbreaking slide to the right of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. “When the ANC was elected, we thought the road ahead would be easy.” The ANC went from being a liberation movement to a traditional party that is only interested in winning elections in such a short time. “It is simplistic to blame the ANC leaders since a similar fate has met almost every left-wing government that has won power.” Here are the lessons he drew:
- All of our militants went into government because we believed that we could make all the changes we needed through the state. We dealt a mortal blow to our social movements and this has had grave consequences.
- South Africa is second only to Brazil in the gap between rich and poor. The ANC thought they could use the state to redistribute wealth, but they quickly succumbed to the pressures of capital. The first step of any left-wing government must be to restructure the state to include participation of ordinary people at all levels of government.
- We in COSATU relied on our informal relations with our comrades in the ANC. We should have structured a formal relationship of accountability.
He warned the PT that the real fight begins once the new government takes over. I was struck by how closely these lessons resembled those many of us drew from the Bob Rae/NDP government experience in Ontario.
Trade Unions and Social Movements
One of the more amazing personal experiences I had was to facilitate two discussions among the world’s trade union activists and leaders. Last year, some women unionists from Canada were disappointed that male leaders making long speeches denouncing neo-liberalism dominated the union sessions. So they joined with the Brazilian, Argentinian and Italian labour federations to organize two round tables with me as moderator keeping every one to no more than three minutes each.
There were amazing stories like the one from Jonathan Neal from Globalize Resistance in England. Globalize Resistance invited the two top left-wing journalists in Britain as speakers, and then leafleted the newspapers and the TV stations for a meeting. Seventy journalists showed up and were challenged to take the fight against the war into their newsrooms and into their editorial boards. One result was that the Daily Mirror, a tabloid, has taken an anti-war stance and will publish a five-page supplement for the massive anti-war marches planned throughout Europe on February 15 including maps on how to get to the march. On a recent cover, the paper cleverly highlighted the connection between war and oil.
But most important was the sophistication of the discussion based not on bombastic interventions or debating resolutions but rather on sharing experiences and discussing strategies. Everyone loved it and wanted to find ways to continue the dialogue.
Canada and Quebec
The spirit of the WSF even touched one of our most difficult questions, the relationship between the left in Canada and in Quebec. We held two meetings to discuss launching a Canada/Quebec Social Forum. As someone who has worked on building these links for more than twenty years, I can say that these were the meetings with the least tensions across our divide that I have ever seen. There was a consensus to move forward on a Quebec-Canada and, hopefully, First Nations Social Forum with a start-up committee being formed to issue an appeal to the groups who were not at the WSF.
Activists from Quebec, Canada, the United States and Mexico also persuaded the Vancouver group that has been pushing for a North American Social Forum in August of 2003 that it was not realistic in the short time frame they had planned.
Lula and the PT
At the centre of the magic was the new world that Lula and the PT are trying to build in Brazil. We saw more than a glimpse of it. On the last day, in the giant stadium, a man freaked out and started smashing sound equipment. The big security guards, instead of subduing him with violence, comforted him. They held him and patted his head and his back, speaking kindly to him. They physically stopped his destruction but with kindness instead of violence. He began to cry and left voluntarily with them.
As the Forum wrapped up, we were all seized with how much there is to do to “Confront the Empire,” as the final event put it. Promoting the process, ideas and practices of the World Social Forum and the New Brazil is central on the agenda. Canadians discussed the idea of building meetings with leaders of the PT government to spread their ideas and practices to a broader audience. There was a lot of focus on organizing against the FTAA and the war on Iraq, which were certainly the two most prominent issues. Supporting the efforts of activists in India to organize the next World Social Forum, in addition to spreading the forum throughout Canada and Quebec, were other priorities.
Laying Seige to the Empire
I end as I began with the words of Arundathi Roy. After outlining a series of victories, including of course Lula’s election, she said:
“…We may not have stopped it (Empire) in its tracks, but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world’s stage in all its brutish, iniquitous nakedness. Empire may well go to war, but it’s out in the open now — too ugly to behold its own reflection. To ugly even to rally its own people.
“We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government’s excesses. We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair and their allies for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners and pusillanimous, long-distance bombers that they are.
“We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways…becoming a collective pain in the ass.
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness…The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons and their notion of inevitability.”
“Remember this. We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.”