Porto Alegre, Brazil - While the
world's business and political elite
hobnob at the World Economic
Forum in the Swiss resort of
Davos, an alternative forum half a
world away is separated by more
than just distance.
The fifth annual World Social
Forum -- the progressives' answer to Davos -- has drawn
100,000 activists from 4,000 nongovernmental organizations
and 112 countries to this modern port city.
"It's inspiring," said Maija Nilson, a 23-year-old Swede who
works for a nongovernmental organization in Chile that helps
poor children. "It gives you strength to keep working."
The World Social Forum began in Porto Alegre in 2001 at the
height of the anti-globalization movement, when opposing free
trade, unfettered capitalism and the power of multinational
corporations was at the top of the agenda.
This year's forum, held under the theme "Another World Is
Possible," is urging people around the world to press for
adherence to the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, which aim
to cut poverty in half by 2015. The gathering started
Wednesday and ends Monday.
"We think in this age of globalization we can no longer work
only in one country," said Dieter Eich of the Confederation of
German Trade Unions. "Brazilian unions dealing with a German
company are limited in how much pressure they can apply. But
if German unions also apply pressure, it can have a lot of
impact."
Participants have decried the plight of 27 million people
working in slavelike conditions across the world and are voicing
concern over child labor, citing International Labor Organization
figures showing that 352 million children under 16 are working
around the globe. Among them, 187 million are between the
ages of 5 and 14.
Forum activists are struggling to determine not only what they
are against but also what they are for. The plethora of cultures,
ideologies and agendas defies easy categorization.
A panel made up of representatives from tsunami-stricken
countries want richer nations to write off their debt. Vinod
Raina, a representative from India, said canceling debt would do
more good than issuing cash advances that must be paid back
with interest.
A delegation of German unions wants to bridge the historical
gap between workers in wealthy and poor countries, said Eich.
The Italian Green Party proposed buying the Amazon rain forest
in order to save it.
Attendees range from Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da
Silva, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Nobel laureates Jose
Saramago of Portugal and Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina to
more than 100 members of indigenous tribes from Latin
America, Asia and Africa. As at Davos, the Porto Alegre forum
is about networking -- exchanging experiences and business
cards.
The forum is also a time to reaffirm alliances, share strategies
and perform at cultural events. At last year's forum, held in
Bombay, an anti- armament street theater drew large crowds,
said Sauro Scarpelli, who heads Amnesty International's
campaign to control conventional weapons. "It's not the kind
of thing we would do in London," he said.
The opening-day parade Wednesday set the tone, when tens of
thousands of people wound through city streets before
converging in a central park. Indigenous leaders clad in feathers
and body paint chatted with university students wearing Che
Guevara T-shirts. Banners advertised agendas: "Against the war
and against capitalism," "Education is inclusion," and "Tourism
is predatory."
Many participants here noted the lack of a strong North
American presence. Canadian political scientist Elizabeth Smythe
attributes the paucity of Americans and Canadians to a culture
that "deliberately tries to depoliticize inequality."
But Glenn Switkes, director of Latin American Campaigns for
the Berkeley- based International Rivers Network, was hard at
work this week trying to convince Brazilian miners that
electrical energy projects and dam construction would threaten
their communities and the environment. The miners told him
that job creation was more important.
"Meetings like this are great," said Switkes, "but it's a speck in
terms of what we need to do to reach the grassroots."
Jurema Werneck, a 43-year-old physician from Rio who has
attended every World Social Forum since 1991, concedes that
social change is a slow process. But she firmly believes the
forum plays a crucial role in improving the world.
"Things would be worse if we didn't do this," she said. "We
have to keep fighting."
Copyright by Samuel Loewenberg and/or the publication in which it first appeared
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