Policy

Introduction

Ideally, the stuff that's here now will eventually be relegated to the 'background', and these pages will have a much more solid set of policies. For now, it's a place for ideas to evolve, and different sides of arguments to be made.

More solid policy and decision-making tools should go through these three:

the wiki process
discussions and arguments on the list
discussions, arguments and final decisions at meetings

Democracy - what's that then?

Demos = people, kratos = power, demos-kratos = people power

The democratic ideal is held up as a core value by just about everyone these days. It has been used most recently by the 'coalition' - the words 'democracy', 'freedom' and 'justice' might as well be painted on every bomb that's been falling on Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen... the word's been used so much that it's almost worn to nothing.

But! All hope is not lost. One of the few places where a 'full and frank exchange of ideas' about the meaning of democracy is still taking place is in the Social Forum movement. And it's not a meaningless debate - the outcomes of the argument could mean that the Social Forum movement lives or dies.

page for collected info about democracy in the Social Forum movement

Decision-making arguments

There are many views about how decisions should be made in SSF. There's even some question over whether decisions can be made at all by the SSF as a whole.

We could at two positions, both very opposite to each other. The SSF may or may not end up being a hybrid somewhere between the two.

The first pole sees the SSF as having no corporate identity. A look at the original World Social Forum Charter of Principles helps to clarify what this would mean:

6. The meetings of the World Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as a body. No-one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its participants. The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body. It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the paarticipants in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the only option for interrelation and action by the organizations and movements that participate in it.

7. Nonetheless, organizations or groups of organizations that participate in the Forums meetings must be assured the right, during such meetings, to deliberate on declarations or actions they may decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other participants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions widely by the means at its disposal, without directing, hierarchizing, censuring or restricting them, but as deliberations of the organizations or groups of organizations that made the decisions.

The key points here are that the WSF was specifically designed to not be a corporate organisation, that binds its members to decisions, as is the case in (for example) unions. Everyone involved, according to this approach, should be free to make their own choice about what they contribute to.

There are two things to note:

How did the World Social Forum decide its Charter of Principles? In an organising committee. How democratic was this? Not very.
When it comes to local social forums, it becomes a little more tricky, since decisions do have to be made about things like when to have events. Thus, some thought has been going on about how to make such decisions, whilst still sticking to the ethos of the World Social Forums.

Possible methods of making decisions include:

Can members 'represent' the Sheffield Social Forum?

Hilary Wainwright:

There are many different ways of being a representative, of 'making present' the views of those who for reasons of a manageable size of meeting, resources, distance and equity between organisations, are absent. Some forms of representation are more direct and democratic than others. In the South, social movements - women's, urban, peasants' and trade union movements - have invented ways of ensuring that their collective power is transmitted beyond the level of direct democracy through forms of representation that are strengthened by systems of rotation and recall. In the North, partly in reaction to the way parliamentary and labour representative structures have become emptied of vitality and radicalism, there is a strong sense of 'only I can represent myself'; the experience of being represented has become so diminished that many people feel that only a pure form of direct democracy has any authenticity.

What is the SSF? Personal views from those who have been involved

Personal view are being pout on the what is SSF? page.

Draft guidelines for the relationship between local SFs and larger SF movement

Click here for the Draft guidelines