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A Festival of the Oppressed

Returning to London from Bombay was like moving from technicolor to black and white. Bombay's ferocious but friendly vitality is mind-blowing at the best of times, but when this is combined with the diversity and energy of the Indian movements represented at the fourth World Social Forum (and the noise and colour of their demonstrations), the effect is to produce a surge of adrenalin that will keep me (and, I'm sure, lots of others) going for a long time to come. Truly this was a festival of the oppressed. Everyone agrees that the WSF has been the most enormous success. How right it was to move from Porto Alegre! Staying there for a fourth year might have led to a routinized and bureaucratic Forum. And by going to India the WSF has ceased to be a Latin American-European affair. It wasn't just the wealth of Indian movements that made the Bombay WSF such a success - it was the very strong presence from the rest of Asia. Tibetan monks, South Korean socialists, Nepalese Dalits jostled in the dusty cheerful lanes of the WSF site. But there are other signs of success. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel prize-winner, chairman of Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and ex-chief economist of the World Bank, came to Bombay to outline the case for a more humane and regulated capitalism on the same platform as the Indian Marxist economist Prathap Patnaik, who lucidslu argued that capitalism can't be reformed, the great critic of imperialism Samir Amin, and two socialist activists, Dita Sari from Indonesia and Trevor Ngwane of South Africa. That a former senior US official came to debate with us is a real tribute to the movement's power.

http://newstandardnews.net/wsfblog/?action=show_entry&itemid=137

(Added: Tue Jan 27 2004   Modified: Fri Dec 16 2005   Hits: 321)

A Global Peace Movement Revival

A Global Peace Movement Revival By Tom Hayden, AlterNet January 19, 2004 MUMBAI, INDIA - Natalia Ablova faces a tough challenge in her campaign against the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Ablova, who looks like any friendly middle-American in her plain dress, shoulder-length hair and reading glasses, is opposing the Iraq occupation on the streets of Kyrgistan, the only Central Asian country where such protest is permitted. "There is no chance for participatory democracy in our region," she laments. But last year, she led 30 human rights groups to the U.S. Embassy to denounce the invasion. Far from being alone, Natalia Ablova is complicating the Bush administration's war planning and its status as the sole superpower. On this March 20, the first anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the White House expected throngs of cheering Iraqis in the streets, there will be masses of jeering protestors like Natalia Ablova around the world instead. Last year, four to five million people protested in over 600 cities globally. This year the numbers are unpredictable, but opposition to the war has increased among the general public, affecting the American presidential campaign and keeping the United Nations at a distance. This week Natalia Ablova is attending a "General Assembly of the Global Anti-War Movement," one of the many planning sessions provided space for the tens of thousands attending the World Social Forum. Instead of weakening or fragmenting the global justice movement, the war in Iraq has prompted a peace movement heavily influenced by the anti-globalization analysis of the forum.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17595

(Added: Tue Jan 27 2004   Modified: Mon Jul 10 2006   Hits: 395)

Activists Focus on How to Change the World

IPS News Team, Mumbai, Jan 17 - After an opening night filled with music and pulsating rhythms, grassroots activists speaking up for the world's oppressed turned up in the thousands Saturday to focus their attention on serious business -- how to change the world. The organisers of the fourth World Social Forum (WSF) here had a feast of intellectual and political treats for the participants. Over 200 seminars, debates and discussions were on the day's agenda for the close to 100,000 participants from 132 countries to choose from.

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=21979

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Another world

January, 2004. Kalpana Sharma notes the presence - and absence - of women at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

http://www.indiatogether.org/2004/jan/ksh-another.htm

(Added: Tue Feb 03 2004   Modified: Wed Feb 04 2004   Hits: 142)

Anti-Globalization Movement Mulls How to Confront Bush

Saturday, January 17, 2004 by the Agence France Presse The anti-globalization movement was weighing its tone as its annual strategy meeting got underway with calls for action against US companies and appeals to find a new and more militant means of protest. An estimated 100,000 activists crammed into an exhibition grounds off a Bombay highway, with dozens of colorful demonstrations pushing their way over a pavement littered with fliers for causes from all continents. The most common cause at the World Social Forum, however, was opposition to US President George W. Bush, whose portrait was depicted across the wooded venue in assorted states of defacement.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0117-06.htm

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 117)

Anti-Semitism at the World Social Forum?

by Cecilie Surasky Published on Thursday, February 19, 2004 by CommonDreams.org "It is my first morning at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India and I am at a workshop on Palestinian women and the occupation [...] I have come because my New Voices human rights fellowship has decided to send the fellows to the WSF. But I have an additional reason for being here. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) has cited the WSF as one of the centers of what it and others refer to as the "new anti-Semitism", and these charges have been picked up by various journalists as evidence of a dangerous new trend on the left."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0219-08.htm

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Anti-World Social Forum Movement Gains Momentum

By Rahul Verma, OneWorld South Asia, 16 Jan 2004 NEW DELHI, Jan 16 (OneWorld) - A parallel meet of Indian groups accusing the organizers of the Jan 16-21 World Social Forum (WSF) of indulging in "doublespeak" while trying to spearhead a campaign against globalization, begins in India's financial capital, Mumbai, Saturday. The groups, under an umbrella body called Mumbai Resistance (MR) 2004, are holding their own meeting in the western Indian city to coincide with the WSF. "We want to sharpen the struggle against imperialist globalization and war," says Rona Wilson, one of the organizers of MR.

http://www.oneworld.ca/article/view/76902/1/

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 128)

Brisbane Social Forum 2004

The third annual Brisbane Social Forum will be held at the new University of Queensland Student Union Complex, St Lucia Campus, between the 7th and 9th of May,2004. The Brisbane Social Forum is an open space of ideas, issues and alternative visions, created for and by the participants. The forum is an opportunity to engage in issues about peace, social justice, environmental justice and globalisation. It consists of workshops, exhibitions, and performances. This year we are building on the tradition of 2002 and 2003 to increase the diversity of groups engaged in BSF and the fourm will focus on issues of democracy.

http://www.brisbanesocialforum.org/

(Added: Wed Jan 22 2003   Modified: Thu Feb 09 2006   Hits: 218)

Choike Special Report: News and reports from Mumbai

Reports and news on the fourth edition of the World Social Forum, which has its venue for the first time in Asia. It is focused on debating the following issues: imperialist globalization, religious sectarianism, identity politics and fundamentalism, castes, racism and social exclusion, patriarchy and militarization.(from www.choike.org)

http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/eventos/1.html

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 118)

Global Week of Action: 10-16 April 2005

In November 2003, over 100 trade activists from 50 countries took part in a historic gathering - the International Trade Campaign Conference, in Delhi, India - from which they issued the global call to a Week of Action. Following this there was discussion with international networks before the idea was presented to a seminar of 500 people at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, India, in January 2004. Thousands of key campaigners are already inspired by what the Week could achieve; and hundreds of groups, campaigns and networks all over the world have begun organising. We are mobilising well ahead of the major 'official' events of 2005, the G8 Summit in Scotland in July, the MDG Summit in New York in September, the Summit of the Americas in Argentina in November and the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong in December. Millions of people are getting ready to take action to say that 'free trade is not working' and to call on governments and the international financial institutions to 'stop forcing economic liberalisation on the world's poor'.

http://www.april2005.org/

(Added: Fri Mar 18 2005   Modified: Tue Aug 15 2006   Hits: 228)

IMC India: WSF 2004 Coverage

Hosts a large range on articles and photos from the WSF 2004 in Mumbai.

http://india.indymedia.org/en/2004/01/208844.shtml

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Live Coverage of the 2004 World Social Forum

The NewStandard asked a number of activists, journalists and commentators to report for The NewStandard from the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai, India. We expect there to be so much going on at the WSF, the only way we could think to do the events justice was to set up a multi-author "weblog" and enable 15 participants to post stories and photos to their individual hearts' content. (from www.newstandardnews.net)

http://newstandardnews.net/wsfblog/

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 117)

Talking Back To the Global Establishment

By Tom Hayden, AlterNet January 18, 2004 MUMBAI - As the Bush administration struggles with setbacks in its global trade and Iraq agendas, the opposition World Social Forum opened festively this week with 150,000 global justice activists primarily from India and South Asia, marking a successful transition for the grassroots experiment from its original site in Brazil. The growing legitimacy of the WSF, formed as a counter to the annual corporate-based World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland was reflected by the presence on opening night of Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi of Iran, who expressed hope that "there will be a world where globalization will not be synonymous with inequality." She was joined by former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, who called for controls of global arms trafficking that contributes to the deaths of a half-million people annually.

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17593

(Added: Tue Jan 27 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 104)

The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum: Lessons for the Struggle against 'Globalisation'

A lengthy and important essay covering these topics: (1) 'Globalisation', (2) The World Social Forum and the Struggle against 'Globalisation', (2.1) How and Why the World Social Forum Emerged, (2.2) WSF Mumbai 2004 and the NGO Phenomenon in India, (3) Ford Foundation -- A Case Study of the Aims of Foreign Funding, and (4) Funds for the World Social Forum

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/RUP401A.html

(Added: Tue Feb 03 2004   Modified: Wed Jun 21 2006   Hits: 179)

The Ford Foundation and the World Social Forum

The Ford Foundation, a large United States philanthropy, supported the World Social Forum's first three meetings in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and will participate in the latest gathering in Mumbai, India. Lisa Jordan of Ford talks to Caspar Henderson about the foundation's engagement with global civil society. (from www.opendemocracy.net)

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization-world/article_1678.jsp

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The New American Century

By Arundhati Roy,January 22, 2004, The Nation This article was adapted from Arundhati Roy's January 16 speech to the opening plenary of the World Social Forum in Mumbai. In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto Alegre in Brazil and declared - reiterated - that "Another World Is Possible." A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George W. Bush and his aides were thinking the same thing. Our project was the World Social Forum; theirs, to further what many call the Project for the New American Century. In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking about the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice. Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really miss it?

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17644

(Added: Fri Jan 23 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 266)

WEF vs. WSF: The 2005 Round

SustainAbility. John Elkington and Jodie Thorpe review their participation in this year's rival World Economic Forum and World Social Forum events.

http://www.sustainability.com/news/articles/core-team-and-network/WEF-vs-WSF-2005.asp

(Added: Mon Mar 07 2005   Modified: Wed Jun 21 2006   Hits: 74)

World Social Forum Begins in Hectic Mayhem

January 15, 2004, by Darren Shore Here in Mumbai, amidst a city of tumultuous yet functional disorganization, with no street lines and more smog than oxygen, the fourth World Social Forum is set to begin - an event well-suited to the atmosphere of the location.

http://www.alternatives.ca/article1065.html

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 107)

World Social Forum India

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where groups and movements of civil society opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism, but engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human person, come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action. The 2004 WSF was held in India in January.

http://www.wsfindia.org/

(Added: Tue Oct 15 2002   Modified: Thu Jul 13 2006   Hits: 401)

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Latin America's Poorest Activists Stay Home

Diana Cariboni, Friday, 01/16/2004 MONTEVIDEO, Jan 15 (IPS) - Tens of thousands of kilometres separate the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre and the Indian metropolis of Mumbai, a road too long and too expensive for thousands of Latin American activists, who will not participate in this year's fourth World Social Forum. A relatively small delegation of several hundred Latin Americans -- including 250 Brazilians -- are making the trip that globalisation has not been able to make any shorter, from the region that hosted the first three WSF to the venue for the one that begins in India on Friday.

http://www.cmaq.net/en/node.php?id=15157

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World Social Meet To Cost Rs 8.5 Cr (US$1.8 Million)

The Times of India | By S. Balakrishnan | January 16, 2004 MUMBAI: Nearly 60 per cent of the funding for the World Social Forum (WSF) beginning here on January 16 is coming from abroad. The sixday event is estimated to cost a whopping Rs 8.5 crore and does not include the expenses being incurred by the organisers on travel and telecom. According to Gautam Modi, who is co-ordinating the media cell of the WSF, two Nederlands-based organisations, Hivos and Novib, and the U.K.-based, Oxfam, would be providing 60 per cent of the Rs 8.5 crore.

http://www.tradeobservatory.org/News/index.cfm?ID=4814

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 108)

WSF: How open? The challenge of dogma

By Jai Sen During the third world meeting of the WSF in Porto Alegre in January 2003, a new initiative named 'WSFItself' organised a workshop on power relations within the World Social Forum. An exercise during the workshop required participants to imagine the kinds of policies that could be adopted that would kill -or certainly, cripple- the Forum. In its words, the 'toxics. The idea was to reveal, through this exercise in intense negativism, what needed to not be done. But as a participant, I gradually became aware that the exercise gave me an insight into some of what is, in fact, already taking place but is not being 'read' given the positivist lenses through which we normally tend to see the world around us, including the Forum. (from www.choike.org)

http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1192.html

(Added: Wed Jan 21 2004   Modified: Tue Dec 06 2005   Hits: 89)