sf.indymedia.org by repost • Thursday January 30, 2003 at 07:32 PM

For me this is mostly a chance to hear some general impresssions of the forum, stats, changes, etc. It seems strange in its organization as an essay - leaving the message until the last couple of paragraphs, not really trying to answer its own questions, and staying focused on the negatives. Stories like this need to spend 3/4 on suggestions for improvement or on educating about the success of differerent formats and offer info on how to achieve that. But this is important and good info, regardless.

Published on Thursday, January 30, 2003 by the Globe & Mail/Canada What Happened to the New Left? by Naomi Klein

The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended Tuesday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was "big." Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all! Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial President of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the movement.

"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Mr. Chavez declared, as he pledged to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lula's election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castro's tenacity in Cuba.

But wait a minute: How on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?

www.commondreams.org/views03/0130-03.htm

www.globeandmail.com By NAOMI KLEIN Thursday, January 30, 2003 – Page A17

The key word at this year's World Social Forum, which ended Tuesday in Porto Alegre, Brazil, was "big." Big attendance: more than 100,000 delegates in all! Big speeches: more than 15,000 crammed in to see Noam Chomsky! And most of all, big men. Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the newly elected President of Brazil, came to the forum and addressed 75,000 adoring fans. Hugo Chavez, the controversial President of Venezuela, paid a "surprise" visit to announce that his embattled regime was part of the movement.

"The left in Latin America is being reborn," Mr. Chavez declared, as he pledged to vanquish his opponents at any cost. As evidence of this rebirth, he pointed to Lula's election in Brazil, Lucio Gutierrez's victory in Ecuador and Fidel Castro's tenacity in Cuba.

But wait a minute: How on earth did a gathering that was supposed to be a showcase for new grassroots movements become a celebration of men with a penchant for three-hour speeches about smashing the oligarchy?

Of course, the forum, in all its dizzying global diversity, was not only speeches, with huge crowds all facing the same direction. There were plenty of circles, with small groups of people facing each other. There were thousands of impromptu gatherings of activists excitedly swapping facts, tactics and analysis in their common struggles. But the big certainly put its mark on the event.

Two years ago, at the first World Social Forum, the key word was not "big" but "new": new ideas, new methods, new faces. Because if there was one thing that most delegates agreed on (and there wasn't much), it was that the left's traditional methods had failed.

This came from hard-won experience, experience that remains true even if some left-wing parties have been doing well in the polls recently. Many of the delegates at that first forum had spent their lives building labour parties, only to watch helplessly as those parties betrayed their roots once in power, throwing up their hands and implementing the paint-by-numbers policies dictated by global markets. Other delegates came with scarred bodies and broken hearts after fighting their entire lives to free their countries from dictatorship or racial apartheid, only to see their liberated land hand its sovereignty to the International Monetary Fund for a loan.

Still others who attended that first forum were refugees from doctrinaire Communist parties who had finally faced the fact that the socialist "utopias" of Eastern Europe had turned into centralized, bureaucratic and authoritarian nightmares. And outnumbering all of these veteran activists was a new and energetic generation of young people who had never trusted politicians, and were finding their own political voice on the streets of Seattle, Prague and Sao Paulo.

When this global rabble came together under the slogan "Another world is possible," it was clear to all but the most rigidly nostalgic that getting to this other world wouldn't be a matter of resuscitating the flawed models of the past, but imagining new movements.

The World Social Forum didn't produce a political blueprint -- a good start -- but there was a clear pattern to the alternatives that emerged. Politics had to be less about trusting well-meaning leaders, and more about empowering people to make their own decisions; democracy had to be less representative and more participatory. The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative farming -- a vision of politicized communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organization. For a left that had tended to look to centralized state solutions to solve almost every problem, this emphasis on decentralization and direct participation was a breakthrough.

At the first World Social Forum, Lula was cheered, too: not as a heroic figure who vowed to take on the forces of the market and eradicate hunger, but as an innovator whose party was at the forefront of developing tools for impoverished people to meet their own needs. Sadly, those themes of deep participation and democratic empowerment were largely absent from Mr. da Silva's campaign for president. Instead, he told and retold a personal story about how voters could trust him because he came from poverty, and knew their pain. But standing up to the demands of the international financial community isn't about whether an individual politician is trustworthy, it's about the fact that, as Mr. da Silva is already proving, no person or party is strong enough on its own.

Right now, it looks as if Lula has only two choices: abandoning his election promises of wealth redistribution or trying to force them through and ending up in a Chavez-style civil war. But there is another option, one his own Workers Party has tried before, one that made Porto Alegre itself a beacon of a new kind of politics: more democracy. He could simply hand power back to the citizens who elected him, on key issues from payment of the foreign debt, to land reform, to membership in the Free Trade Area of the Americas. There is a host of mechanisms that he could use: referendums, constituents' assemblies, networks of empowered local councils and assemblies. Choosing an alternative economic path would still spark fierce resistance, but his opponents would not have the luxury of being against Lula, as they are against Mr. Chavez, and would, instead, be forced to oppose the repeated and stated will of the majority -- to be against democracy itself.

Perhaps the reason why participatory democracy is being usurped at the World Social Forum by the big men is that there isn't much glory in it. A victory at the ballot box isn't a blank cheque for five years, but the beginning of an unending process of returning power to that electorate time and time again.

For some, the hijacking of the forum is proof that the movements against corporate globalization are finally maturing and "getting serious." But is it really so mature, amidst the graveyard of failed, left political projects, to believe that change will come by casting your ballot for the latest charismatic leader, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best? Get serious. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and Fences and Windows, resumes her monthly column in The Globe and Mail.

news.bbc.co.uk Tuesday, 28 January, 2003, 18:29 GMT

By Mike Verdin BBC News Online business reporter in Davos

Willi has been "ice master" at Davos skating rink for 11 years.

And in between rubbing flaws from the rink's surface, he clears ice and compacted snow from the town's stone steps, making them safe to negotiate.

But not even Willi the human snow plough could have tackled the Arctic perils which dogged the Davos conference hall this week, as US and European leaders examined chilled transatlantic relationships.

And, at the World Economic Forum's annual summit, put them back in the refrigerator.

There is lots of schmoozing, but the value of the schmooze should not be underestimated

Richard Jefferson Molecular biologist

Ohio congressman Rob Portman slipped into the relationship crevasse when he asked "what the world would be like without American power", and not all Europeans seemed to take the question rhetorically.

No big bother bullying, no wagging Yankee fingers over closed markets.

No wrangling over how to bring Iraqi Saddam Hussein to book.

A grain? There was a bushel of truth in a cartoon near the congress hall entrance in which US President George Bush tells an aide that 90% of Americans wanted a change of leader in Iraq.

The aide replies: "And 90% of Europeans want a change of leader in the US."

And while a speech by US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday stirred emotions, it failed to settle the concerns of European leaders.

Fridge magnet wisdom

Of those Europeans who were at the summit, that is.

Klaus Schwab was disappointed by Europe's lack of presence

"Europe seems too preoccupied with itself," forum president Klaus Schwab said, bemoaning the continent's, and in particular Germany's, lack of political representation at the summit.

"It was a disappointment for many of the US participants who were here."

The Americans had been at Davos to listen, according to US Attorney General John Ashcroft, before quoting a line from, perhaps appropriately, a fridge magnet: "You never learn anything when your mouth is open."

Yet there were few EU politicos to talk - a shortfall, for once, not considered a blessing.

Spectre of war

What they missed was an encounter with the spectre of an anti-Saddam war, a phantom which haunted every debate, every whitewashed corridor.

In whatever session, on trade, aid or Gatorade, it uttered those three little words "what about Iraq?".

Businessmen...were not born chief executives...they were often people first

Richard Jefferson Molecular biologist

Unless, that is, they were sessions on Iraq.

A debate by the head of Opec and Saudi Arabian energy minister, two of oil's most powerful masters, lapsed into a discussion of Russian pipelines.

And on Tuesday, when Iraqi opposition leaders debated prospects for their country post-Saddam, well, the conference hall was half empty.

The close of Mr Powell's speech had prompted the end of many delegates' participation, and the roll of fleets of silver suitcases from hotel foyers.

Indeed, with the secretary of state went the brainstorm electric buzz generated by the wilful networking of 2,000 members of the world's mile high club.

Power of ideas

And what will the delegates have taken home?

For some, contracts. They will have felt an extra million dollars as they left for the last time past the security cordon.

Julia Ormond left feeling hopeful for the future

For others contacts, and a fistful of business cards.

If any UK delegates had snaffled some of the hall's CWS CleanSeat machines, which automatically clean toilet seats after every flush, well, they could do wonders for British public hygiene.

But more important are the ideas.

The ideas, for instance, of the likes of Brazilian president Lula de Silva of ways to ensure capitalism benefits not just top-ranking capitalists.

The warning that if Europe was no longer willing to be America's best friend, China might do instead. Indeed, filter out the Iraq issue, and a key underlying message from delegates such as George Soros was China's growing status on the world stage.

And the thought from Argentine president Eduardo Duhalde that the globalisation process will have succeeded when delegates can meet without the security which encircled the conference centre with steel mesh, the Belvedere Hotel with coiled barbed wire, and left streets echoing to the bark of police dogs.

Love and money

With such wealth on display (just how does a stretch Mercedes perform in the snow?), it is little surprise, if a shame, that such protective measures were needed.

Still, ethics were highlighted, with speakers such as Ravi Shankar, founder of the India-based Art of Living Foundation, cautioning delegates that business and love had "opposite mathematics".

"In business you take more and give less. In love you give more and take less."

'Buoyed up with hope'

And what did the summit give?

Did it help the forum achieve its aim of "improving the state of mankind"?

Well, there was certainly some of that.

An Indian businessman told me he has been asked to help broker peace between India and Pakistan.

Actress Julia Ormond told the summit's final session that she was leaving "buoyed up with hope" because of the welcome her charity work has received from business delegates.

And I met Richard Jefferson, a molecular biologist who could have been a big earner, but chose to research crops which yield rewards for African farmers rather than seed conglomerates.

Schmooze value

Through contact at the summit, Mr Jefferson's work has gained the interest of former US president Bill Clinton and some corporate bosses, and the potential for huge financial support.

"A lot of good does come out of Davos," Mr Jefferson said.

"There is lots of schmoozing, but the value of the schmooze should not be underestimated.

"Businessmen are interested. They were not born chief executives. They were often people first."

www.dailytimes.com.pk

By George Monbiot Mr Bush and Mr Blair might have a tougher fight than they anticipated. Not from Saddam Hussein perhaps - although it is still not obvious that they can capture and hold Iraq’s cities without major losses - but from an anti-war movement that is beginning to look like nothing the world has seen before. It’s not just that people have begun to gather in great numbers even before a shot has been fired. It’s not just that they are doing so without the inducement of conscription or any other direct threat to their welfare. It’s not just that there have already been meetings or demonstrations in almost every nation on Earth. It’s also that the campaign is being coordinated globally with an unprecedented precision. And the people partly responsible for this are the members of a movement which, even within the past few weeks, the mainstream media has pronounced extinct. Last year, 40,000 members of the global justice movement gathered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This year, more than 100,000, from 150 nations, have come - for a meeting! The world has seldom seen such political assemblies since Daniel O’Connell’s “monster meetings” in the 1840s. Far from dying away, our movement has grown bigger than most of us could have guessed. September 11 muffled the protests for a while, but since then they have returned with greater vehemence, everywhere except the US. The last major global demonstration it convened was the rally at the European summit in Barcelona. Some 350,000 activists rose from the dead. They came despite the terrifying response to the marches in June 2001 in Genoa, where the police burst into protesters’ dormitories and beat them with truncheons as they lay in their sleeping bags, tortured others in the cells and shot one man dead. But neither the violent response, nor September 11, nor the indifference of the media have quelled this rising. Ever ready to believe their own story, the newsrooms have interpreted the absence of coverage (by the newsrooms) as an absence of activity. One of our recent discoveries is that we no longer need them. We have our own channels of communication, our own websites and pamphlets and magazines, and those who wish to find us can do so without their help. They can pronounce us dead as often as they like, and we shall, as many times, be resurrected. The media can be forgiven for expecting us to disappear. In the past, it was hard to sustain global movements of this kind. The socialist international, for example, was famously interrupted by nationalism. When the nations to which the comrades belonged went to war, they forgot their common struggle and took to arms against each other. But now, thanks to the globalisation some members of the movement contest, nationalism is a far weaker force. American citizens are meeting and de bating with Iraqis, even as their countries prepare to go to war. We can no longer be called to heel. Our loyalty is to the principles we defend and to those who share them, irrespective of where they come from. One of the reasons why the movement appears destined only to grow is that it provides the only major channel through which we can engage with the most critical issues. Climate change, international debt, poverty, the hegemony of the G8 nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the depletion of natural resources, nuclear proliferation and low-level conflict are major themes in the lives of most of the world’s people, but minor themes in almost all mainstream political discourse. We are told that the mind-rotting drivel which now fills the pages of the newspapers is a necessary commercial response to the demands of younger readers. This may, to some extent, be true. But here are tens of thousands of young people who have less interest in celebrity culture than George Bush has in Wittgenstein. They have evolved their own scale of values, and re-enfranchised themselves by pursuing what they know to be important. For the great majority of activists - those who live in the poor world - the movement offers the only effective means of reaching people in the richer nations. We have often been told that the reason we’re dead is that we have been overtaken by and subsumed within the anti-war campaign. It would be more accurate to say that the anti-war campaign has, in large part, grown out of the global justice movement. This movement has never recognised a distinction between the power of the rich world’s governments and their appointed institutions (the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation) to wage economic warfare and the power of the same governments, working through different institutions (the UN security council, Nato) to send in the bombers. Far from competing with our concerns, the impending war has reinforced our determination to tackle the grotesque maldistribution of power which permits a few national governments to assert a global mandate. When the activists leave Porto Alegre tomorrow, they will take home to their 150 nations a new resolve to turn the struggle against the war with Iraq into a contest over the future of the world. While younger activists are eager to absorb the experience of people like Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Lula, Victor Chavez, Michael Albert and Arundhati Roy, all of whom are speaking in Porto Alegre, our movement is, as yet, more eager than wise, fired by passions we have yet to master. We have yet to understand, despite the police response in Genoa, the mechanical determination of our opponents. We are still rather too prepared to believe that spectacular marches can change the world. While the splits between the movement’s marxists, anarchists and liberals are well-rehearsed, our real division - between the diversalists and the universalists - has, so far, scarcely been explored. Most of the movement believes that the best means of regaining control over political life is through local community action. A smaller faction (to which I belong) believes that this response is insufficient, and that we must seek to create democratically accountable global institutions. The debates have, so far, been muted. But when they emerge, they will be fierce. For all that, I think most of us have noticed that something has changed, that we are beginning to move on from the playing of games and the staging of parties, that we are coming to develop a more mature analysis, a better grasp of tactics, an understanding of the need for policy. We are, in other words, beginning for the first time to look like a revolutionary movement. We are finding, too, among some of the indebted states of the poor world, a new preparedness to engage with us. In doing so, they speed our maturation: the more we are taken seriously, the more seriously we take ourselves. Whether we are noticed or not is no longer relevant. We know that, with or without the media’s help, we are a gathering force which might one day prove unstoppable. —www.monbiot.com

www.ipsnews.net Adalberto Marcondes

The World Social Forum (WSF) that ended Tuesday in this southern Brazilian city sent out a strong message against war, injustice, and social inequality.

Over the past six days, more than 100,000 people from around the globe, mostly young, debated, shared their problems, pointed out solutions, and managed to subvert the global debate agenda.

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan 28 (IPS) - The World Social Forum (WSF) that ended Tuesday in this southern Brazilian city sent out a strong message against war, injustice, and social inequality.

Over the past six days, more than 100,000 people from around the globe, mostly young, debated, shared their problems, pointed out solutions, and managed to subvert the global debate agenda.

''Our greatest victory this year is that the world has heard us out,'' said Brazilian activist Cándido Grzybowski, a member of the WSF organising committee.

''The Forum is an arena for proposals from the whole of civil society, and a lot of what has been discussed in 2002 is part of'' the government plan of Brazil's new President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he added.

The third edition of the WSF, which opened on Jan 23, clearly made the World Economic Forum (WEF) -- which for over three decades has met annually in Davos, Switzerland to chart international economic strategy -- look southwards.

That change of attitude in the industrialised North was influenced by the bridge built between this great ''Tower of Babel'' and the formal meeting halls of Davos by Lula, one of the original promoters of the WSF as the head of Brazil's leftist Workers' Party (PT).

''We must tear down the walls that separate those who have everything from those who have nothing,'' Lula said Sunday in Davos, addressing the powerful business and government leaders meeting in the Swiss resort town.

In a huge rally held just hours before he headed from Porto Alegre to Davos, Lula addressed the criticism drawn by his decision to attend the WEF, explaining that his participation would give a voice to the proposals of the WSF, which emerged as a counterpoint to the annual meeting of the world's rich and powerful in Switzerland. Besides the protests against inequality and justice, Porto Alegre raised its voice loudly in favour of peace. Former Portuguese president Mario Soares, for instance, urged all countries to strengthen the United Nations, as the only way to preserve peace. Soares was one of the leaders who presented, in Porto Alegre, the ''Manifesto for Peace and Against War'', signed by a long list of personalities and political leaders from across the ideological spectrum in Portugal.

''It is unacceptable that the United States has abandoned the multilateralism that was built during the last decades in favour of retrograde, imperialist actions. But one must not mistake the American people for the government that rules the country,'' he said.

Ignacio Ramonet, another WSF organiser, said the forum's main message to the world this year was ''No to War!'' -- a reference to the U.S. and British preparations for a military strike against Iraq. This year's edition of the WSF has also shown that the South is thinking about itself, about its own models. Throughout the demonstrations, the message became increasingly clear that corruption, inequality and social injustice would not be tolerated by civil society.

The social and political activists said good-bye to Porto Alegre Tuesday as they headed home with precise objectives to be met before the fourth annual global gathering of social movements, to take place next year in India.

Ramonet said the results of this year's forum will materialise during the coming months, when everything that has been discussed will be compiled and organised in documents and proposals that will be sent to governments, non-governmental organisations, political parties and trade unions.

The documents and proposals will contain the message of hope generated in the past six days by around 100,000 people in debates, seminars and panels, who concluded that ''another world is indeed possible,'' the WSF slogan.

Hundreds of classrooms at the Catholic University, the Gigantinho stadium, port warehouses, and many other spaces in the city of Porto Alegre were set aside this year for talk against hunger, war, gender discrimination, and in favour of minorities and justice, as well as for protests and demonstrations of all kinds.

The presence of almost 4,000 journalists from across the globe sent the forum's messages around the world, and even attracted Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, keen on explaining the confusion and chaos that have hit his highly polarised country, even though he was not officially invited to the WSF. (END)