About the Social Forum Movement

Social Forums: World Social Forum | European Social Forum | Local Social Fora | About the Social Forum Movement

The first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 2000 as a counter to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. It also tapped into the emergence of local social forums in continental Europe - places where people could go to discuss their social situations and organise action to improve it. Thousands upon thousands of words have already been spilt on the social forum movement, this space is for collecting the best of them.

Phil McLeish

 * "A European public space capable of setting limits to capital is such a burning necessity that its emergence can only be a question of time. The ESF could play a critical role in this process, and become the seed crystal for a redemocratisation of European society."

This is a sophisticated but understandable argument about the need for a different structure to the international social forum events. The author highlights the importance of the networking aspects of the meeting and suggests that the conference format is pretty useless for this work. He also argues that more concrete action will stem from the ESF if the kinds of proposals made at the Assemblies on the final days are brought to the fore, and resources allocated for people to begin work on action plans immediately. There's loads more to it, so get the full text here: http://www.commoner.org.uk/01-12groundzero.htm

Noam Chomsky (video)

 * "What's happening now, for the first time ever, is the rise of a genuine international....
 * What's interesting about the World Social Forum more than the annual events, is that it has spawned lots of regional social forums - regional, local and small towns have their own social forums - and they adapt the general concerns into what their own life interests. It can be rather local.  And then it feeds back into the general system."

Noam Chomsky, globe trotting purveyor of genuinely well thought out and evidence backed critique of the hegemony of big business and the USA had a discussion with a number of the more 'horizontal' members of the social forum movement in Hungary. The video of the discussion can be downloaded from here: http://www.lehetmasavilag.hu/chomsky.html

World Social Forum Charter of Principles

 * "The World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neo-liberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism..."

Drawn up after the first WSF, the charter of principles was written by the Brazilian organisers in order to guide the developments flowing from that first initiative. Get the full text here: http://www.wsfindia.org/charter.php

People's Global Action Hallmarks

 * "A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalisation."

The PGA hallmarks, written to guide international networking for direct action at the agents of economic globalisation, might be seen as a forerunner of the World Social Forum principles as there are some important similarities, in other respects they may be seen as more ideologically committed. Get the full text here: http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/pga/hallm.htm