BY FEDERICO FUENTES
PORTO ALEGRE This year's World Social Forum (WSF), a countersummit to the corporate elite's World Economic Forum, held in this southern Brazilian city, January 23-28, attracted 100,000 participants, including 20,763 delegates, representing 5717 organisations from 156 countries.
The third WSF had two central themes the growing resistance to the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and opposition to the impending US-led war on Iraq. These two themes predominated on the banners and placards carried by participants at the WSF's opening march through the streets of Porto Alegre and on the march which concluded the official agenda of the WSF. They were also the main themes reflected in the panels and 1700 workshops held during the forum.
In the opening panel, entitled "Against Militarisation and War" renowned Marxist scholar Istvan Meszaros, noted that in the context of this current US war drive, Rosa Luxemburg's famous saying had to be modified to read "socialism or barbarism ... if we are lucky". The panelists each stressed the point that war was an integral part of the neoliberal drive for "free markets" and global "free trade" and therefore had to be seen as an integral part of the anti-neoliberal movement around the world.
Egyptian-born political economist Samir Amin added that without stopping the current US drive for permanent war, "no progressive change would be possible". New Left Review editor Tariq Ali pointed out the key role that the anti-war movements in the US and Britain had to play in order to stop the war against Iraq. Ali noted that opinion polls in the US showed support for a war against Iraq dropped from 60-70% to 30-35% if the war was to be carried out unilaterally, which meant that pressure on other governments to withdraw their support for such a war could politically isolate the US government.
Noam Chomsky, who spoke on the final panel, "How do we confront empire", noted that "if we do not make them [the US rulers] pay a high cost for going to war, then they will already be planning their next". He stressed that there was hope, pointing to the hundreds of thousands who turned out in the US on January 18 to protest the war. The US movement against war was "unprecedented".
Chomsky reminded the audience that it was just over 40 years since the then US president John Kennedy announced the first deployment of US combat troops to Vietnam, but that it took years before there was any significant opposition to that war. Today, however, even before US combat troops have invaded Iraq there is a mass movement in the US opposing the war.
Another theme running through this year's WSF was discussion of the growing social movements in Latin America. A number of workshops looked at the political situation in Argentina one year after the popular uprising against neoliberalism, the developing process of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and the situation in Brazil under the newly elected government of Workers Party (PT) leader Luis ("Lula") Inacio de Silva.
A common thread among these presentations was that the social struggles taking place in these countries were not just limited to local demands but had incorporated opposition to the FTAA, defence of human dignity and national sovereignty.
The planned protests against the World Trade Organisation meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September were highlighted as a common focus for the social movements in Latin America and the rest of the world, as was the February 15-16 international day of action against the war on Iraq.
Two of the figures around which much of the discussion focused, not only in the context of Latin American resistance, but more broadly at the WSF, were present in Porto Alegre but not officially part of the WSF. Both Lula and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez were excluded from the official agenda of the WSF due to its secretariat's ban on official participation of government representatives and political parties.
Despite the ban, more than 100,000 people turned out on January 24 to hear Lula speak, many wanting to know what he would say about the fact that the following day he would be flying to Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the World Economic Forum. In his speech, Lula pledged to take the issues of the WSF to the WEF. He said he wanted to make clear at the WEF that "an economic order in which a few eat five meals a day while many go five days without eating is unacceptable" and that "we need peace, not war".
While most of those present seemed to accept Lula's explanation for attending the WEF, a considerable minority at the WSF continued to oppose his decision, fearing it would give unwarranted credibility to the WEF, fostering the false idea that the corporate elite represented at the WEF could be persuaded to reform their profit-before-people's needs outlook and agenda.
Chavez, whose presence in Porto Alegre was only confirmed a few days before he arrived on January 26, spoke for two hours to a packed room in the local Legislative Assembly building. Thousands showed up to hear him but could not fit into the room, and the local police used batons and pepper spray to move the crowd away from the doors.
During his visit to Porto Alegre, Chavez announced that his government would be introducing currency and price controls to block the rich exporting their capital from Venezuela and to protect the poor from price rises.
As at the two previous WSFs, participants at this year's meeting discussed a wide range of issues from Third World debt to the plight of women in war, to HIV/AIDS and pharmaceutical companies. In conjunction with the WSF, a World Children's Forum, the World Parliamentary Forum and an Assembly of the World Social Movements were held, as were a diverse range of cultural and musical events.
The third Intercontinental Youth Camp also took place with its own agenda of political debates, discussion, cultural events and video presentations. Some 25,000 young people attended.
Many of the members of the WSF organising committee and many delegates noted the lack of representation of the diverse social movements from, for example, Africa and Asia. Developments in Africa received only 2% of the official agenda time.
In order to help the process of further internationalising the "Porto Alegre process", the WSF international council (IC) decided to hold the next WSF in India in 2004. The IC also resolved that due to the feeling that the WSF had overtaken the WEF in political importance, the dates of its meeting would not necessarily have to coincide with those of the WEF. The IC decided to call for an annual international day of action under the banner of "Against neoliberalism and war, another world is possible", which would be organised on one of the days of the WEF.
From Green Left Weekly, February 5, 2003.
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