Whatsitmean

If you are a member of a political party, a union, a sports club etc., the role of the member is pretty clear, and not exactly controversial. There are designated roles, and ways of choosing who does those roles. It is easy enough to write down a definition of them.

With Social Forums, its trickier. As Hilary Wainwright has noted, there's a strong current of 'I can only represent myself' in the Social Forum movement. Nobody can be sent as delegates to speak on behalf of the group as a whole. Nobody can make decisions for the group as a whole.

So that's what the Social Forum isn't. But what is it?

Well, here's one idea stolen from Starhawk:

"We cannot change the world alone... To create the situations in which freedom can flourish, we must work together in groups.

"The problem is that we ourselves have internalised power-over, and too often we reproduce it in the groups we form. We may join a group that promises political or spiritual liberation, only to find that it has simply changed the trappings of oppression.

"How do we live a different reality when the ways we perceive, feel, and react have been shaped by this one?

"For a group to become a place of liberation, its structure and process must foster freedom. The ways in which we structure groups and perceive power determine what can happen in a group."

[Starhawk, Truth or Dare, p.256]

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.

Cuthbert:

The sheffield social forum is not a marxist, anarchist, enviromentalist or any other type of organisation, it is a group of individuals and everyone is their own person. There is no block voting, everyone is responsible for their own actions, it is not a front (although some people have tried to make it one in the past). The sheffield social forum is not sponsored by an individual or group, it refuses to be corrupted and simply follow the money trail. Everyone in the sheffield social forum disagrees with everyone else about something - but that is not the issue, the issue is that every so often we put our difference aside and work for the benefit of our city.

In all other organisations you put your name down and pay your membership fee, the shffield social forum is not about that. The sheffield social forum consists of personal relationships between its participants, these are relationships built on trust and struggle. When these relationships break down (as has happened before) the sheffield social forums ceases to exsist, this is untill we inevitably build up the courage to trust each other again.

As tom stafford says: The Sheffield Social Forum will not be sponsored by any government or corporation. It will not be run by any political party, dominated by any ideology, distracted by any compromise with injustice or discrimination. It will not solve your problems for you, take any actions on your behalf or tell you what to think or do.

The Sheffield Social Forum will not be televised.

The Sheffield Social Forum will put you in the driver's seat