www.wsws.org 21 February 2003

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Europe

Autoworkers strike at UK Peugeot plants

On February 13, workers held strike action at the Peugeot’s main plant at Ryton, near Coventry in the UK. Staff at two smaller nearby plants also participated in the 24-hour strike. The industrial action was held by 3,500 workers, members of the Transport and General Workers Union, who struck in pursuit of an improved pay deal, halting production of 1,200 Peugeot 206 models. The stoppage followed a ballot by the workers last month in which 54 percent voted in favour of industrial action.

Peugeot said that it would not improve on its offer of a 7.3 percent pay rise over two years. A union spokesman said it wanted to avoid “a damaging dispute” and was “ready to talk at any time”.

Train guards in northern England vote to continue strike

Train guards employed by the Arriva Trains Northern in England have voted to hold further strikes in their long running dispute, after rejecting a revised pay offer from the company. In a ballot workers who have already held 20 days of strikes over the past year voted by two-to-one to reject Arriva Trains offer of a four percent rise plus a lump sum of £250. The industrial action, organised by the Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union will be held on February 26 and 28, and March 3, 5, 7, 10 and 12.

The RMT is to hold a lobby of Parliament on March 12 regarding the dispute. RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said, “After a year of strike action they have again decisively rejected an insulting offer which is worth less with every passing day”.

Firefighters’ union in UK calls off strike for duration of talks

Britain’s Fire Brigades Union (FBU) decided this week that it would hold no further strike action for the next few weeks in order to continue talks with local authority employers and the conciliation service ACAS. The talks began on February 18 and are expected to last for at least four weeks.

The firefighters are campaigning for a fully qualified firefighters’ basic wage to be increased by 40 percent from £21,500 to £30,000. During the course of the dispute, the FBU has indicated it would be prepared to settle for a much lower pay deal.

The negotiations follow a government announcement on February 13 that fresh negotiations would be held, and that the armed forces that had been used for emergency cover during the dispute would now stand down. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott said, “At the end of the negotiating period, military personnel will be put back on standby to provide emergency fire cover if necessary”.

The decision was made in preparation for the armed forces’ role in the impending war against Iraq. Up to 19,000 troops had been mobilised by the government to serve as emergency cover during the dispute.

FBU leader Andy Gilchrist said at the beginning of the talks that he welcomed Prescott’s “useful and helpful intervention”, which would enable “constructive and substantive” negotiations to begin. He added, “The union and the public at large will welcome the return of common sense to this dispute.”

Banque de France staff strike over branch closure and job losses

On February 13 the SNA, CGT, FO, CFDT, CFTC and SIC trade unions held a 24-hour strike involving 16,000 employees at the Banque de France. The unions reported that more than 75 percent of the employees took part in the action.

Outside the capital 150 branches did not open. In four regions—Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Bretagne, Aquitaine and Midi-Pyrénées—all branches were closed. In Bretagne and Nord-Pas-de-Calais 95 percent took part at the strike. Following a general assembly of 600 employees at the Paris headquarters, workers staged a short blockade of the capital’s central streets.

On February 7, management had presented two alternative restructuring plans. The first proposes cutting the existing 211 branches to just 60 branches in the course of 10 years. The alternative proposal, projected for the next five years, would reduce the number of branches by half.

The plans would cause job losses of between 2,500 to 3,200. Since 1995 the Banque de France has shed 2,500 jobs.

Lawyers at Toulouse, France strike to demand improved working conditions

On February 18, most of the 840 lawyers at the Chamber of Toulouse began a strike to protest against working conditions at the courthouse. A spokesman for the lawyers said that the action may continue until March 3, when state secretary Pierre Bédier is due to meet with their representatives.

The lawyers had taken strike action in spring 2000, after which the then Jospin government promised to enlarge the court buildings. Bédier reneged on this promise last month, provoking the latest action.

Air France workers strike in campaign to oppose privatisation

Nine unions representing Air France ground staff called for a 55-minute strike on February 12 to protest against privatisation. The action was held the same day as the Senate began discussions regarding the legislation of the Air France privatisation.

Three other unions organised a four-day strike, beginning February 17, mainly for higher wages. Starting during the school holidays. The action caused 15 percent of flights at the Roissy and Orly airports to be cancelled.

A four-day pilots’ strike earlier this month for an increase in wages, based upon an agreement in 1998, has yet to achieve its demands. The 1998 agreement implied an exchange of wages for shares and to match pay to that of pilots on British Airway, Lufthansa and KLM. This adjustment has never been introduced. The unions are demanding an additional 8 percent increase for this year.

Air Lib workers protest against bankruptcy

On February 17, 40 employees of Air Lib blocked the access road to the building site of Aéroconstellation de Blagnac, near Toulouse, where the A380 Airbus is to be constructed. The workers stopped vehicles and distributed leaflets protesting against the bankruptcy of Air Lib, pronounced by the commercial court of Créteil (Val-de-Marne) earlier in the day.

On February 18 Air Lib employees began a demonstration at the Orly airport by crossing the airport building and chanting: “de Robien [minister of transport], murderer!” They demonstrated behind a banner with the slogan: “Bussereau—de Robien: liquidators! Let us live and work. Employees of Air Lib.”

The bankruptcy proceedings are generally regarded as a manoeuvre by the government in connection with the privatisation of Air France. The chief manager of Air Lib has said the government was pursuing the bankruptcy in order to make Air France more attractive for possible buyers.

The Raffarin government has promised to create jobs for the 3,200 persons made unemployed in other areas of the transport industry. However under the proceeding social plan of Air Lib in 2001 only 39 percent of the dismissed employees got new jobs and these were generally precarious.

Africa

Oil workers strike in Nigeria

Staff at the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) in Nigeria went on strike from Saturday February 15, in support of demands including higher pay and payment of allowances arrears, some dating back to 2000. The staff, members of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (Pengassan) who monitor the quantity and quality of crude oil leaving the terminals, are also demanding greater autonomy for the DPR. Talks between Pengassan and the government broke down last week.

Blue-collar staff at the DPR, who are members of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (Nupeng), joined the strike on February 17. The strike is now threatening to hit Nigeria’s oil output of more than two million barrels a day, making up more than 80 percent of government revenue and more than 90 percent of foreign exchange earnings. Nigeria is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and a major supplier to the United States. The strike has added to the fears stemming from the crises in Venezuela and the Middle East.

“The operation of the DPR is grounded,” said Joseph Akinlaja, secretary general of Nupeng.

“Nothing is happening at the terminals and offices. The strike is proving its point. It’s been very effective.”

Shell, which takes about half of Nigerian oil production, claimed that shipments were “undisrupted”—with senior managers taking over posts from striking workers.

A spokesperson for DPR management, Mrs Belema Osibodu, said that DPR had called for a truce and invited union representatives for talks. The management of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) will be meeting with the National Executive Committee of Pengassan at the corporation’s headquarters in Abuja.

Long queues of cars have been reported at petrol stations in Lagos, the country’s commercial capital, as well as the capital Abuja, due to panic buying of petrol.

Workers demonstrate to raise minimum wage in Ghana

At least 2,000 workers demonstrated in the streets of Tema in Ghana and the capital Accra on February 12, in protest at the delay in negotiations on the new minimum wage taking place between the government, the Trades Union Congress and the Ghana Employers Association. After demonstrating in Tema, the workers drove in convoy to Accra.

The demonstration was called after fuel prices were increased by 94 percent last month. Since this affects all other prices, workers are demanding an increase in their wages by the same amount.

Strike hits Algerian ports

Around 15,000 Algerian port workers held a one-day strike at 10 commercial ports on February 16 in protest at plans for privatisation. The strike brought the country’s main ports to a halt, although oil exports were not affected.

An official from the main trade union, UGTA, said “Oil and gas export ports were not included in the strike.” The union officials said they expected government proposals to lead to layoffs and less job security.

thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: The Latin American countries in NAM favour a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis but will agree to the use of force if Iraq does not comply with the UN resolution on the matter. 

The Peruvian Foreign Ministry's Multilateral Affairs secretary Jose Luis Perez said the common stand was adopted recently by members in the Group of Rio chaired by Peru.  

Of the 19 countries in the group, 11 are NAM members – Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Nicaragua, Peru and Venezuela.  

Perez said the countries believedIraq needed to fulfil the clauses spelt out in Resolution 1441, including disarmament and co-operation with weapons inspectors to avoid war. 

“We favour a peaceful resolution but the use of force will be inevitable if Iraq fails to comply with Resolution 1441. 

“We are against unilateral action against Iraq. Upon verifying the possession of weapons of mass destruction, any follow-up actions should go through a multilateral approach under the UN,” he said in an interview. 

Asked if the Iraq crisis had stolen the limelight at the summit, Perez said a crisis of such magnitude demanded attention. 

“We foresee a split of opinions on the issue as the NAM membership is very diversified but it is NAM's main function to provide a platform for political consultation. 

“We should place more importance on social issues such as poverty and unemployment as these are deep concerns affecting many developing countries,” he said. 

Ecuador, another Group of Rio member, is chairing the political committee for the two-day NAM Senior Officials Meeting that began yesterday.  

frontpagemag.com By Michael Tremoglie FrontPageMagazine.com | February 19, 2003

They promised utopia if only we were smart enough to listen to them. (1)

From January 19-21, representatives of 16 Communist parties met in Argentina for the Second International Seminar of Communist Parties. Delegates from Spain, Portugal, Cuba, France, Italy, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Greece and six other countries voted to express their resolve to prevent a new "imperialist United States war against Iraq." An "imperialist United States war against Iraq" is a phrase that is familiar to anyone who has listened to any of the peace protests during the past several months.

The World Social Forum, which convened a few days later in Brazil, received a memo from the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), Prague, that instructed the delegates to "stop all wars and preparations for wars and promote international cooperation to promote economic development and social progress for all peoples and countries." (2)

The memo expressed its concern that," peace and security of our planet are threatened by the massive troop movements and preparations for a US-led war on Iraq and possibly other countries. It is a matter of deep concern that the principles of the UN Charter and the existence of the United Nations itself are now seriously threatened by the increasing unilateralism of the Bush Administration." The WFTU proclaimed among other things that there should be a," Reduction of military budgets and transfer of the savings to finance social development;

There were many more disparaging remarks in the WFTU memo about United States policy in Venezuela, the United States’ military-industrial complex, etc. However, if you listened to the rally February 15th, you heard the same things. Is it a coincidence that the principle leaders of the "peace movement" say the same things as international Communist organizations?

This excerpt from the January 11 edition of the People’s Weekly World Newspaper titled, "U.S. peace movement key to stopping Iraq war," may provide some reason for the similarities.

The author Susan Webb wrote:

"With the Bush administration working to steamroller United Nations compliance with its war drive, broad-based peace actions by the American people may well hold the key to preventing a U.S. attack on Iraq.

"Indicative of the expanding movement opposing Bush’s war policy, Cleveland AFL-CIO Executive Secretary John Ryan and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) will join Dr. Otis Moss, an associate of Martin Luther King, and other religious leaders in the city’s African-American community, in a Voices Against the War event, Jan. 12, initiated by the newly formed Intercommunity/ Interfaith Push for Peace coalition… A mass anti-war mobilization will take place in New York City on Feb. 15, initiated by United for Peace. The same day, millions are expected to march against war in Europe and Japan…

"More than 30 national, state and local labor organizations and leaders have, in one way or another, expressed concern over the Bush administration’s drive to war, and that number is expected to grow. Major religious, environmental and women’s groups have also voiced opposition to war.

"Thirteen religious leaders, led by National Council of Churches General Secretary Robert Edgar, returned Jan. 3 from a mission to Iraq, where they said they witnessed the 20-year legacy of suffering of Iraqi civilians especially children and were burdened with the knowledge that war would further deepen that suffering.

"A delegation from Pax Christi, a Catholic lay organization, also recently returned from Baghdad, where they met with Iraqi religious leaders, UN officials, relief organizations and ordinary Iraqis. Delegation members said a war on Iraq would be a grave mistake and lead to further destabilization of the region.

"The Bush administration is working to create an atmosphere that war is inevitable, with daily reports of troops, hospital ships, and battle command staff taking up positions near Iraq.

"Nevertheless, dozens and dozens of peace actions are happening throughout the U.S., Peace Action communications director Scott Lynch, told the World.. Observers note that the White House, intent on ensuring the re-election of George W. Bush and his ultra-right team in 2004, is sensitive to shifts in public opinion. 'The Bush administration can be influenced,' Lynch said, adding, 'If the chickenhawks had had their way we would have rolled into Baghdad a long time ago.' Lynch cited recent polls showing a 10 percent drop in support for Bush’s war policy, and said the push to war is widely seen as dictated by geopolitical designs including control of the oil-rich Middle East rather than any threat from Iraq. " (3)

These Communist organizations are mobilizing to avoid war with Iraq. However, instead of making arguments opposed to Saddam Hussein’s policies, they manipulate the sincere desire for peace of a great many citizens. Instead of protesting Saddam Hussein’s defiance to the UN resolutions, they indoctrinate these citizens with anti-American arguments-attempting to discredit our government.

The arguments and theories the Communists use are not unfamiliar. They are the same canards heard at all of ANSWER’s events. They speak of oil and imperialism and other such things ad nauseum. The same arguments they made during the 80’s that were proven false; the same arguments that were made during the Gulf War that were proven false; the same arguments made during the Taliban war that were proven false.

These faux pacifists are the same hypocrites, charlatans, and Jacobins discredited. Only the mainstream media believes them and even they are becoming doubters. Even the mainstream media now recognizes the Communist origins of the "peace" leadership. However, if someone indicates the relationship between Communist revolutionaries and the peace groups certain media types or "peaceniks" label them a red-baiter, for doing nothing more than calling a Communist a Communist.

Why liberals are apprehensive about the legitimate identification of Communist leadership among the peaceniks needs explanation. Are they saying this to eliminate the possibility of debate? This red-baiting label is very much like when liberals call someone a racist or claim a remark is "hate speech." It is meant merely to preclude the possibility of debate.

Why are the "peaceniks" reluctant to debate? Why are the Communists reluctant to identify themselves and their roles in the " peace" movement? If the Communists truly want a peaceful world they would be enthusiastic about identifying themselves as the leaders of the peaceniks.

Could it be that the Communists realize that most Americans, with their innate common sense, know that a Pax Communism is an oxymoron?

Michael P. Tremoglie is the author of the soon-to-be-released novel A Sense of Duty, and an ex-Philadelphia cop. E-mail him at elfegobaca2@earthlink.net.

www.prospect.org By Benjamin Lessing Web Exclusive: 2.4.03

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL -- The third meeting of the World Social Forum -- a gathering of the tribes of international civil society that is meant to steal the thunder from the World Economic Forum, which met last week in Davos, Switzerland -- ended as it began, with an exuberant, if not exactly focused, march through the streets of Porto Alegre. Banners and flags proclaimed everything from "War in Iraq Not!" and "Stop the Monster Sharon" to "Give Bolivia Back Its Gas" and "Lesbians Against Free Trade," while three sound trucks more or less bracketing the procession offered the marchers a kind of Battle of the Latin American Protest Songs. As with the march that opened the forum, the official raison d'être was to voice opposition to an invasion of Iraq and to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. But as with everything at the forum, it ended up becoming an omnibus measure: In Porto Alegre, everybody got a chance to shout.

Life at the forum was frantic. There were conferences, panels, roundtables, testimonials, workshops, rallies and teach-ins -- and they all happened at the same time. The sheer volume of events forced the casual observer to make some difficult, even surreal choices: Would it be a testimonial by Anita Guevara, Che's daughter, or Hollywood sidekick-cum-social activist Danny Glover? Biodance for a New Humanity or Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art) as Social Protest? A visit to a Landless Workers' Movement collective farm or an hour-long guided meditation at the Galactic Peace Tent? The offerings never failed to surprise: A Basque delegation, openly opposed to the Basque National Liberation Movement's armed campaign, headed up a conference on drug legalization ("War on Drugs Not!"), while an indigenous peoples' rights group instigated an impromptu streaking session when the police prohibited them from bathing au natural. Meanwhile, even the big-name speakers occasionally had their talks interrupted by the odd drum-wielding procession passing by the doors of their conference rooms. At times, the chorus of divergent messages -- there were more than 100,000 participants -- got confusing, dissonant or even schizophrenic, but it never came to blows, and the non-self-consciously diverse tableau that the forum presented was, even to this jaded reporter, moving.

Jaded, in part, because of forums past. Last year, for example, as a result of a clerical error/grave misunderstanding, I got signed up for a mettle-testing, 24-hour Rio-to-Porto Alegre bus ride with the Brazilian Communist Youth League. I thought I was catching a ride with the Rio State University bus; the communists thought I was Brazilian. By the time we realized our mistake, it was too late. "If anybody asks," my sole friend on the bus warned me, "just say you are Canadian or something. These guys hate Americans." She wasn't kidding: They'd brought a whole portfolio of graphic picket signs depicting a devil-horned George W. Bush in various poses -- sinking a knife into a bleeding Palestine, puffing clouds of black smoke from a cigar that was actually a rolled-up Kyoto Protocol and violating a prostrate and buxom South America tied up in ropes that read "ALCA" (the Latin American abbreviation for the Free Trade Area of the Americas). When at one point I overheard the organizers telling the rank and file that they had to be on the lookout for spies and quislings, I realized that my infiltration of the bus was a paranoid leftist's dream come true. The truth would never convince them: I was no spy, no agent of imperialism; I was just a poor schmuck too cheap to buy my own bus ticket. Things got a little tense around the three-hour mark, as word got around of my nationality, but then some forward-thinking soul at the back of the bus lit up a joint. Guitars and bongos were taken up, and differences were set aside.

This was as good a prelude as any to what lay in store at the first two World Social Forums and, to a lesser extent, this year's. Though meant to be an incubator of new ideas, and occasionally successful as such, the forum is also, inevitably, a kind of museum of the left. All the exotic species are here: Maoists, Trotskyites, crypto-Stalinists and, if one's T-shirt is any indication of political alignment, a vast army of Che Guevarists. Indeed, all things Cuban are permanently fashionable among this crowd, as were -- this year anyway -- the Venezuelan flag and Hugo Chávez memorabilia. (Chávez actually showed up on Sunday for a few hours to soak up the sympathy.) Vladimir Lenin and Antonio Gramschi are always popular bets, too, though the Joseph Stalin shirts that were on sale last year have happily been taken off the market.

Indeed, though there are still enough radicals around to make a Prospect-style progressive feel like a member of The Heritage Foundation, the overall tone of the forum has shifted -- fewer scripted cries of protest and more constructive criticism, less defense and more offense. Along with the Stalin T-shirts went the enormous anti-United States billboard that graced the entrance to the forum in 2002, as well as some of the less comforting displays of Yankiphobia -- compulsive U.S. flag burning, for example -- that plagued the first two forums. Perhaps that had to do with a much larger Yankee presence this time around. In the forum's first year, there were very few Americans -- 50 or 60 at most -- representing only a handful of organizations. This year there were probably more than 500; the nonprofit group Jobs for Justice alone brought 130 delegates, including representatives of the AFL-CIO and other labor groups.

I'm not just cheering for the home team here. At a time when most foreign media portray us all as willing and eager proponents of an abusive, imperious and exploitative invasion of Iraq, the presence of real, live Americans who are active critics of our domestic and international politics was of inestimable importance. Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange, during a conference called "Voices from the U.S. Against the War," made a stirring speech, concluding, "Many of us stood up against our own government, risking our jobs, our welfare, even our physical safety, to stand in solidarity with many of you, when your countries were under the control of dictators who had U.S. government support. Now we need you to stand in solidarity with us, as we stand up to a dictatorial government bent on war." He received an overwhelming ovation, and days later I was still hearing Brazilians say that they never thought this kind of opposition exists in the States. Of course, watching the Democrats in Congress, why would you? Still, those Americans who attended the forum made it just a little harder to demonize us. And, who knows, they may have actually laid the groundwork for a real international anti-war coalition.

But a more fundamental reason for the new optimism surrounding the forum is entirely native: This past year's total inversion of Brazil's political landscape. At the first and second forums, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aka Lula was present as the perennial, losing candidate of the radical opposition. It was here in 2001 that I first saw Lula speak -- and was first impressed by his ability to talk nuanced, practical policy positions to small groups of professionals and emotional, popular politics to large crowds. Now president, he has lost none of his ability to stir emotions: On Friday night he addressed 70,000 people at a lakeside amphitheater, striding up and down the stage with mike in hand -- something hard to imagine Bush pulling off -- and left them roaring in applause. Explaining why he had decided to venture into the wolves' den of Davos, where he would rub shoulders with the likes of Bill Gates and George Soros, Lula promised to bring to the captains of international capitalism what he called the "Porto Alegre message." "Instead of spending billions of dollars on war, we should seek peace, and use our energy and money to end inequality, misery and hunger!" he proclaimed. Lula thus distilled in a single sentence what is perhaps the essence of the international left, and for a moment the crowd, for all its multiple ethnicities, nationalities, party lines and affiliations, was brought together by the astonishing reality before them: One of their own was president of Brazil, and he had not -- so far, at least -- sold out.

This turning of the tide was evident as well in this year's appearance by forum top-draw Noam Chomsky. His message was uncharacteristically optimistic: Davos is shrouded in gloom over corporate scandals and lack of trust in leaders while Porto Alegre is basking in Lula's victory and the downfall of neoliberalism in Argentina. The near-universal opposition to a war in Iraq has won over a few brave leaders such as Germany's Gerhard Schröder and France's Jacques Chirac, and it continues to raise the political cost of warmongering for Bush and Britain's Tony Blair. But while Chomsky got in a few deft jabs at the establishment and neoliberal economics, he never really went for Bush's jugular. Perhaps he didn't need to. As Indian author Arundathi Roy put it in her mellifluous address, which followed Chomsky's and benefited substantially by comparison with the professor's arid monotone, though "the empire" (American power, that is) has not been stopped, it has been forced to show its true colors. Once a nation has declared it official doctrine to maintain "overwhelming superiority of force" by preemptively attacking anyone who might one day conceivably pose a threat, clever, crafty analysis of establishment rhetoric becomes unnecessary. Bush's imperialism speaks for itself.

Despite Chomsky's tepid remarks and his rhetorical efforts to undermine his own popularity -- he couches his best lines in an irony too deadpan to clear the language barrier -- he saw his unlikely elevation to rock-star status completed at this year's forum. In 2002 things got ugly when the hall he was to speak in became dangerously overcrowded and event organizers secreted him away to an empty room nearby. Just before Chomsky's talk was to begin, officials announced to the expectant crowd that, for technical reasons, the speech would be presented via closed-circuit TV -- a would-be fait accompli but for the consent of the crowd, which organizers forgot to manufacture. Furious spectators trashed one of the projection screens and shouted down the public-address system with cries of "Hypocrites!" and "Injustícia!". Lesson learned, this year Chomsky was booked at a small soccer stadium, where he was greeted by nearly 20,000 eager fans wearing simultaneous translation headsets and doing the wave. This mass appeal is, I think, indicative of Chomsky's role to many on the left as a grand intellectual father figure, a philosophical Poo-bah. He provides leftist critics with arguments that, though they may not be constructive or even sincere, are immensely gratifying. There is a kind of "nyah-nyah" schoolyard smugness to them: One feels he has tripped up foes in a web of logical contradictions, even if those contradictions are the result of a deliberate, selective literal-mindedness.

But where would the left be without big ideas? I myself, after a few days of wading through the forum's offerings, realized that I had been unconsciously in search of an answer to what I see as the central question of modern liberalism: What grand theory will replace the radical "free market" anti-Keynesianism that has ruled the economic roost for the past 20 years? I attended several symposia on a post-neoliberal world theme, listening to the likes of Tariq Ali, Alexander Buzgalin and a host of others deliver perfectly adequate critiques of the neoliberal model. However, when it came to naming a replacement, they had little to offer besides good, old European social democracy. Now don't get me wrong, European social democracy is just fine with me. I also happen to like quaint European cafés -- but the former is as much a solution to the problems of neoliberalism as the latter is a solution to the problem of Starbucks. Maybe I am asking too much of dedicated, sincere and successful social activists, but the fact remains: I have yet to find my Poo-bah.

But if the forum did not exactly produce any breakthroughs in theoretical economics, it did provide some truly first-rate mingling. Thirty thousand of the participants were delegates from one or another civil-society organization, and during the 200 or so workshops that filled up their afternoons, countless contacts were made, future protests planned and proposals, manifestos, letters and statements drafted. Moreover, a host of regional meetings and professional congresses, such as the African Social Forum, Urban Planners in Solidarity and the International Harm Reduction Movement, were important in their own right. If the worldwide march against the war in Iraq on Feb.15 or the protest against the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference in Cancún, Mexico, this September are successful, it will have been in large part because of the organizing done in Porto Alegre.

In forums past, I felt that indulging the drive to be overly inclusive compromised the effectiveness of these workshops. Inconsistent and sometimes contradictory proposals were grouped together to avoid telling anyone that they were wrong. In 2001, I was part of a workshop on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are currently banned in Brazil (though Monsanto, a biotechnology multinational, is fighting hard to change that). At one point, our group statement, which sought to reflect the ideas of all those present, advocated both research on GMOs to determine negative side effects -- Monsanto's own results not to be trusted -- and the destruction of all GMO plants in Brazil. A friend in the food security workshop had a similar experience, saying: "First they say they want to stop all food imports, then they want to finance substitutes through exports. It's just not economically feasible." But the fact was that these people didn't want to hear why their ideas, their demands, were economically infeasible. They had heard it all before. This was their chance to not be contradicted by know-it-all economists, to have their cries heard and appreciated without critique. And in that lay the secret purpose of the first forum: to create a world where righteous action still had some place, and to find some way out of the predetermined prisoner's dilemma of neoliberal economics. The problem is that in order to do this, you have to banish all economic and logical rigor, not to mention reality.

Indeed, the first forum was referred to in the media and even by then-Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso as "the Anti-Davos," and this negative self-definition was reflected in its oppositional and aggressive tone. (When George Soros agreed to participate in a Davos-Porto Alegre summit via satellite, he ended up getting called a "blood-stained monster" by Madres de Plaza de Mayo leader Hebe de Bonafini.) Whether it was Lula's victory, the larger pool of participants or simply the maturity of a gathering that seems to be coming into its own, this year's atmosphere was more cooperative, more creative and, by my lights, more realistic. No longer anti-Davos -- how can you be "anti" when Lula, your bearded hero, is there making the case for a worldwide fund against hunger? -- the forum was simply Porto Alegre. The city itself, an industrious, handsome inland capital, greeted the first and second forums with a fair amount of skepticism. But it opened its arms this year, with "Peace" and "Justice" signs hung even in the windows of mall boutiques; "Goodbye, Forum, We'll Miss You," read one billboard. The event moves to India next year. So you have to wonder: At World Social Forum IV, will everybody be wearing Mohandas Gandhi T-shirts?

Benjamin Lessing is a writer living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

sf.indymedia.org by Pablo Ortellado Thursday February 06, 2003 at 02:52 AM pablo@riseup.net

I guess it was on year 2000, while organizing for the S26 protests when I first heard about the World Social Forum (WSF). The idea was to have a permanent counter forum to the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the meeting of corporations' CEOs, governments' officials and academic leaders to discuss global policies for the world. This counter forum, designed to oppose the economic forum, was structured however on the very same basis: a meeting of global leaders to discuss global agendas - but instead of banks, corporations and governments, representatives from unions, NGOs and social movements.

Since the very beginning, this bureaucratic and elitist structure clashed with the new forms of organization brought by the new movement against capitalist globalization. The World Social Forum never aimed at being just a summit meeting of the bureaucratic left, but being a large convergence space for debate, including both the "new" and the "old" left and actually using the momentum and energy brought by the new part of the movement to make something large and with big political impact. So, despite the WSF having core activities that literally duplicated the WEF structure, more open and free spaces for debates and workshops were set.

Since the very first WSF, the tension between the more open spaces and the core activities was permanent. For the organizing committee - made of the Brazilian PT (Worker's Party), French Organization ATTAC, Brazilian leftist union CUT, the MST (Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement) and the Catholic Church (among a few others) - most of the political significance of the Forum rested in its "core" activities: a set of debates, panels and meetings, which they decided were the important ones and over which they fought among themselves to have control. Those core activities were the ones really publicized by the WSF press office and the only ones to get any coverage from the media (even from most of the alternative media). So, for the outsider, the WSF, since the beginning, was this series of activities that the organizing groups decided were relevant and over which they made an open effort to direct all the spotlights.

Outside that, participation was pretty open. I can't recall any serious incident of a group not being allowed to participate, except perhaps for Colombian guerrilla FARC who had space for a press conference denied over the argument that they were an armed group (someone replied: what about the representatives from the French government, a much more dangerous armed group?). So, despite minor incidents, a number of relatively open activities developed around the core activities - activities which were meaningful and participatory and which were considered by most people attending the WSF as the most interesting and important.

It was on the workshops' space, which could be proposed by any group, or at the activities set up at the Youth Camp (a park where most of the youth camped, under awful conditions) or at parallel activities taking placing autonomously somewhere in Porto Alegre that people got to know each other, where they could share experiences and where they could actually talk and be listened. At those places and only there you could see the practices and the spirit of the new movement the WSF supposedly embodied.

This dual and conflictive structure was very rarely perceived by the radical groups who very often described the WSF (in a sense, appropriately) as bureaucratic and reformist. This interpretation, however, reinforced the official interpretation of the forum and of mainstream press who saw the big activities with the big names as the central part of the WSF. But whatever it had of significance and importance was elsewhere and this elsewhere was what attracted the tens of thousands who traveled to Porto Alegre. Those were not dumb or naïf people mislead by a bureaucratic elite. Those were people who came because the WSF was a place to meet people from around the world, to listen and to talk about different experiences and struggles and - even - to listen to what the big names had to say. That's what the WSF was about despite what its bureaucracy and the press wanted people to believe.

There's been a lot of discussion in radical circles over whether or not we should participate (and if so, how) in the WSF or in the regional forums (European Social Forum, Asian Social Forum, etc.). Linden Farrer has made this controversy explicit in a discerning article called "Abandon or Contaminate". Many people involved in the People's Global Action network, for instance, have defended setting up autonomous spaces close to the forums to "contaminate" them with our practices. Opposing "contamination" projects such as the Intergalactika Laboratory at the WSF or the "Hub" Camp at the European Social Forum - where alternative autonomous spaces were set somehow parallel, somehow within - critics point to the serious risk of participating in the very process of cooptation of our movement.

Several pages could be written about the way the WSF was openly manipulated by Brazilian institutional left and by international NGOs to co-opt us and to present their part of the movement as the whole of it and so, in a way, to channel all our novelty and energy into hierarchical and bureaucratized forms of politics. One could mention the way Brazilian PT has used the WSF as propaganda for its policies, presenting Porto Alegre as the socialist paradise it certainly isn't or the repression led by PT's police against autonomous groups during WSF II or yet the outrageous organizational boycott during WSF III to every single autonomous activity within it, from Radio Muda (probably the most important free radio in Brazil) to Indymedia, from the forum Life After Capitalism (organized by American magazine Z) to the Intergalactika Laboratory of Global Resistence.

None of that, however, could match the political use Brazil's new elected government made of our movement. Lula, Brazil's new president, gave an opening speech at the WSF and then, immediately after, took a flight to São Paulo and then straight to Davos to speak to the bad guys, "building a bridge" - in his own words - between the two forums and - also in his words - "taking the message of Porto Alegre into Davos". But who put him in a position to speak in behalf of the movement? And how could his amazingly right-wing speech stand as "Porto Alegre's message"?

In Davos, Lula's speech was basically a criticism of the protectionism of the rich countries. Quoting his speech: "We want free trade, but free trade with reciprocity. It's useless to make an effort to develop exportation when rich countries preach free trade and practice protectionism." "We want free trade": is that the message Porto Alegre should send to Davos? Is this the outcome of all the years of struggle against neoliberalism and institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization? Not only Lula went to Davos speaking on our behalf. He went there and on our behalf spoke for free trade, criticizing people in Davos for not being neoliberal enough.

Is this reason enough for us to boycott the Social Forums once and for all? I really don't know. What I do know though is that the Social Forums are attracting a wide range of people, many of whom we really want to bring to our part of the movement. It's not enough to sit and criticize the Forum and erroneously suppose people are being manipulated by it. We should somehow set our own events and attract those people - be it by setting parallel events in the "contamination" strategy, be it by setting our own autonomous meetings - not meetings of activists, but open meetings where we can present our views to a wider public. It's time to stop merely criticizing and start more effectively opposing the outrageous assimilation of our movement by the worst practices of the old institutional left.