Why should you plan to head to Atlanta in the middle of the summer? Not for the cool breezes, that’s for sure. But if you go between June 27 and July 1, you’ll find a few thousand reasons all gathered – along with you, I hope – at the first ever U.S. Social Forum.
The World Social Forum’s primary achievements are gathering the multiplicity of movements fighting neoliberal capitalism and imperialism, and maintaining the open space to keep alive mutual education and networking. But aside from the kinds of adverse power relations critiqued by grassroots activists in Nairobi, the WSF’s main disappointment remains our inability to converge on strategy, generate agreed-on joint actions, and forge cross-sectoral ties.
The existence of the World Social Forum is already a historic achievement. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crisis of the alternative movements and theories that opposed the current system, the fact that there was again a place stating that there is an alternative was an important step.
As my first experience as a participant to the WSF Nairobi, my feeling was one of elation and exuberance as we joined the opening march as a delegation of peace women representatives from throughout the world. To be freely shouting slogans for peace and democracy and to demonstrate freely for what we stood for, as we joined thousands of like-minded groups and individuals, was a liberating experience.
The conversations I’ve had with friends and colleagues about the WSF seem eerily similar to the kinds of things we’d say about some of the large music festivals we’ve attended in our lives. In this age of mega-concerts, we hark back to a golden age when you could still actually see the stage without the aid of a television screen the size of a small country; there weren’t any cash machines or mobile phone top-up kiosks around; and you didn’t need to know some concert promoter’s cousin’s dentist to get a ticket that sells out in three nanoseconds on the net.
The World Social Forum’s greatest achievement in Nairobi was creating this space where over 70,000 people representing social movements from all over the world could gather and reflect on successes and strategize for the future. One key thing that came out was the formation of the Africa Water Network. It was just an idea at the beginning of the week in Nairobi. But over the week, leadership evolved, ideas evolved, and a network was born. That’s the WSF at its best. Many people from many different countries can come together to create synergy and in this case a concrete network fighting the privatization of this critical resource, water. The network includes not only activists but engineers and people linked to governments as well.
Tens of thousands of activists and advocates from around the globe gathered in Nairobi, Kenya for the seventh World Social Forum (WSF) in January. The rallying cry, “Another world is possible,” served as a catalyst for debate and mobilization: what might this new world look like, and how are we to achieve it? The agenda was expansive. It included discussions on many campaigns and challenges across the spectrum of social, political and economic justice issues. Notably, the 2007 WSF marked the first time that the gathering was hosted in Africa, shedding new light on the role of African civil society in the work towards global justice.
Deep inside the tropical forest of Gabon, 500 miles from the coast, China is going where no other investors dare. A Chinese consortium, led by the China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation, has won the contract to develop Gabon’s massive Belinga iron ore deposit. In return for purchasing the entire output, Chinese operators will build not only the extractive infrastructure at Belinga but a hydro-electric dam to power it, a railway to the coast, and a deepwater port north of the capital, Libreville, for exporting the ore.