More than 100,000 people gathered on the edge of the Amazon rainforest for the 9th World Social Forum in Belém, Brazil in late January. Youth from local universities mixed with seasoned activists from around the globe. Sheltered from the beating sun and drenching rains by huge white tents, they talked in pairs and in the hundreds, to old friends and new allies. The conversations amounted to nothing less than a full-scale re-imagining of the world order — one rising out of the ashes of today’s economic, ecological, and cultural crises.

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