BY IGGY KIM
SYDNEY — The Sydney Social Forum (SSF) will be held at the University of Technology, Sydney on October 24-26. It will feature three international keynote speakers: Ariel Guides from the Philippines Solidarity of Philippines Workers (BMP) union federation; David Barsamian from the US-based Alternative Radio program; and Nicola Bullard from the Bangkok-based Focus on the Global South.
Ariel Guides is a young militant from the island of Negros. Negros was once called the "sugar bowl" of the Philippines, supplying a large share of the domestic and international sugar markets. However, since the 1980s, impoverishment and malnutrition has become rife among sugar workers, primarily due to the impact of trade liberalisation and the growing use of artificial sweeteners in the US, which was once the biggest market for Negros' sugar.
Guides is also head of the Freedom from Hunger Coalition and the Task Force for World Food Day in Negros. Both are grassroots coalitions that organise tens of thousands of sugar workers and their families to press for agrarian reform and hunger alleviation.
Guides will speak on the Negros sugar workers' struggle at a SSF feature session on the afternoon of October 26. In addition, he will conduct a workshop that morning on the growing resistance in the Philippines to the presence of US military forces under the guise of the "war on terror".
David Barsamian is the founder of Alternative Radio, a radical radio program that airs on more than 120 public stations in the US and other countries. Alternative Radio (<http://www.alternativeradio.org>) has been broadcasting on community stations around Australia since 1997 and can also be heard on the short-wave Radio for Peace International station. Barsamian's program regularly features activists such as Angela Davis, John Pilger, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Barbara Ehrenreich and Ralph Nader.
Barsamian has been particularly outspoken about the US media's collaboration with Washington's war drive. In his words, the media "corpse" is made up of "lapdogs with laptops". Barsamian will be addressing a feature session on the media and the Iraq war on the morning of October 26.
Guides and Barsamian will also be speaking at the anti-Bush protests in Sydney (October 22) and Canberra (October 23).
All three international guests will be featured at the SSF opening public meeting, "Is the American empire unstoppable?", on October 24, at 7pm.
For full details of the Sydney Social Forum, visit <http://www.sydneysocialforum.org>.
From Green Left Weekly, October 22, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.