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11h00 Democracy and communication - Alternatives to the power of large communication corporations

 

Norma Fernandes/ Argentina – Cordoba University.:

 She begins by talking about Aníbal Quijano and the specific forms of domination typical to Latin America.  In all of the media every single day we are told the same lies in a perverse way and we don’t even realize it. It is related to the coloniality of the power. More than everything  it has to do with the impulse to hate the other, the difference: xenophobia, racism, etc. It’s the egg of the serpent. The hatred disseminated by the media harms the subjects of the rights assured by the democratic systems.  She talks about a female indigenous woman who is leader and was able to form an alternative reality through cooperative work.  She has become somewhat a symbol. Also, the story of a young man who has disappeared in Patagonia (Santiago Maldonado). What’s more important: the appropriation of social communication by the communities. We’ve had only small victories, generated by small resistances. Such an evil device we talk about, requires that we disable it as soon as possible. We need to disarm such hatred, the same way it was done in Argentina in the campaign “Where is Santiago Maldonado”.

Renata Miele/ Brasil/ FNDC:

FNDC is an organization which gathers hundreds of organizations related to media democratization. A lot has happened in the last 20 years. I will make as intersection between the struggle for communication democratization and the construction of the World Social Forum. WSF is constructed on the utopia that a new world is possible, but we can’t do it without taking down the perverse structures, such as judiciary, media, etc. This has been FNDC’s fight. It has worked with a propositive agenda. We understood that the democratic popular governments by Lula and Dilma, despite being founded on coalition, represented a better opportunity to advance this agenda. It was harmed because the movement itself had a very narrow understanding of the topic. FNDC alerted that such a profound transformation as the one that was aimed by PT would not be possible without a transformation of the media structures. PT governments were far too innocent in that regard. There were though some important advances. The creation of the “Empresa Brasil de Comunicação”. The Brazilian state had up until then given up its role as productor of communication in a public perspective, in favor of the private initiative. And worse: it was naturalized by people, to the point that know even knows that GLOBO AND SBT are not the owners of their respective TV Channels. EBC’S creation, thus, was the beginning of a different paradigm in the understanding of public communication in Brazil. Also the affirmative actions for national content in cable tv, which didn’t even happen in Argentina where a “ley de medios” was actually passed. The Civil Law of the Internet, which protected the neutrality in the network. All those advances, though, are very precarious, threatened by the economic power.  Media In brazil disseminates a hatred speech in Brazil. But are they all that powerful if we elected Lula and DIlma twice each, in spite of that Monopoly.  Yes, they are. The thing is: people’s lives started to actually get better through policies. By allowing the media’s dissemination of hatred speech we laid ground for the occurrence of the coup of 2016. The fight to democratize media is a central topic for any social movement attempting to generate social change. We don’t want to democratize Globo. It is a private company after all. We want space in the public concessions explored by those companies. It is crucial to strengthen  the alternative media, which is dying for lack of money, resources and subscribers.

Bia Barbosa/ INTERVOZES: 

it is important to remember that the freedom of expression has never been fully assured  in brazil: churches using public media to criminalize other religions, invisibilization of our diversity, persecution to the community radios and tvs, etc. It has worsened: the violence against manifestants is not only in big cities now, but also in the countryside. Judiciary often deciding against free expression. The report  we made, available in FNDC’S website, shows that there’s a wider variety of violations to freedom of expression now. Some of the most important traits, is the persecution to the diversity of cultural expression.  Censorship and persecution to public employees. Also censorship is present in social network: both by the judiciary and the companies owners of the platforms.  It crucial to remember also that we’ve had deaths in the protests in Brazil. Also in the occupied schools, in which school principals and teachers acted as agents of censorship, reporting students involved in the occupations. The destruction of public communication is not only a blow for the constitution in the article 223, but also for the freedom of expression of the Brazilian people as a whole.

With the report, we expect not only bring visibility but generate initiatives to pressure the judiciary and also to send such reports for the international organisms involved with the protection of human rights and freedom of speech. There is no democratic society without democratic media.

OCTOBER 18TH (Morning)

 08h30 The fourth productive revolution and the precariousness of work

 

Audiences participation:

Leonardo Vieira – CUT/BRAZIL: Multinationals try to control public policies in international levels.  They’re above national-states. Do you believe it is time for the workers to get together, like Marx once said?

Shumpeter talked about creative destruction? Do you believe it is possible that we are on the verge of war?

-          Carolina Student/BRAZIL: Starts by  criticizing the roundtable for being formed mostly by men. Is it still possible to maintain the economic development discourse once its incompatible with the notions of reduction of labor hours and with the preservation of the environment. 

-          Lindalva – Student UFBA/Brazil: Brazil works 44 hours a week and before the coup we had 50 million formally employed workers. Suggests reduce the working hours in order to generate positions.

-          Leonardo/Spain: Is there a distinction between work and employment? The lack of distinction burdens disproportionally women in a patriarchal society. The centrality of employment is more and more in jeopardy, in favor of more centrality for the notion of “life

-          Student of Social Sciences/UFBA/ BRAZIL: Precarious work burdens youth more and more and threatens the possibility of political engagement and destroying the possibilities of fulfilling work.

Answers from the table.

It is important to comprehend that until 2020 we will have 7 million workers fired, with a deficit of 5 million. The “intelligent company” tends to generate a great number of working position. Income is also previewed to drop dramatically. Without employment it is important to analyze the role of the state: what will the state do when more than half of the work force is substituted by machinery? It is important that we focus not of the activities that machines can do for men and women, but on the activities in which flesh and bone men and women are irreplaceable. The perspective of psychosocial problem in the world are likely to worsen greatly in the future by the lack of jobs.

 

-          Priscila/CUT-BRAZIL:  To talk about the position of women in the movement of labor unions is a motive of pride to me. The conception of women’s participation is one that focuses on participation with quality rather than quantity. We continue the fight to equal pay. Even though women have come to positions of power, they continue to be left of positions related to “care”, resembling the familiar traditional role they have always been given. We don’t want anymore to be left in positions such as “secretary for social security”, “secretary for womens issues”, “secretary for children”. We want to be treasure secretary, we want to be in charge of strategic decisions. President Dilma’s government was very important for the position of women in the world of work: with “Bolsa Família”, with the possibility of women owning land in rural areas, with the creation of the secretary for women linked to the presidency of republic. It’s necessary to understand that there’s no such thing as a “women’s place”. Every place is anybody’s place. Weather they’re male or female. We  also have to generate interest of youth for

-          Dalba/CTB/BRAZIL: I would like to congratulate the teams already at work in the forum. For the ones starting now I recommend that you all get integrated in the teams. With regards to the position of women we have been alert to promote change even in a symbolic aspect. That why I’m standing while I talk in front of seated men.  We have evolved regarding gender issues, to comprehend gender as a social construction and to free ourselves beyond those binary standards. Inside capitalism there can’t be any profound change in the role of women.  So let’s wonder about what will be the role of women and rural women in the change we propose for the world. Women can’t be silent, nor be afraid of the microphone. We don’t need men to train us and tell us what to say. We have also discussed the coup: it had a huge symbolic impact – Dilma represented a social space from which women had been historically alienated. Also important to talk about sexual harassment in the work space and also to remember women in public service. Industrialization 4.0 is going to happen. We can’t stop that. It is up to us what kind of a transformation that will be and what will be the role of women in it. We can’t have once again a profound change without attention to the role of women.

-          Sidney from Caritas/Brazil: Important to reject the attempt to facilitate slave labor in Brazil.

-          Federal University of Reconcavo Baiano: All the discussion about industrialization 4.0 is deeply rooted in Milton Santos’ work. In that regard, our places in the world have to matter in the relationship with the new technologies. So what about the countryside? How to reach those places? It’s them I worry about.

-          Female Student: Why the working class has demobilized throughout history? And what will we do in a time of precarization of work?

Round Table Answers:

-          Ramudi from Morroco: Eu agradeço a todos na mesa e na audiencia.  Claro que isso nos ajudará a desenvolver uma visão conjunta de futuro para essas lutas. We don’t have to give up identities to articulate together the fight for the changes we want. This is a work that will be very demanding. We need to get together, like our ancestors, to implement the changes we want. It Is crucial, thus, that we place youth at the heart of forums agency.

-          Priscila/CUT Brazil: we need to comprehend which will be our role. We need better jobs, safer jobs and better remunerated.  It worries me this tendency of workers more and more apart from unions in order to keep their jobs. Thankfully workers have been gathering around unions, looking for protection for their rights.

-          Nivaldo Santana/Brazil: Besides industrial revolution, we have been living 10 years of economic stagnation and profound changes in geopolitical distribution of forces, with actual risks of wars. We cant talk about change dissociated from devepment. China’ development has greatly changed workers and peoples lives for the best. I have news of the biggest social ascending in the history of mankind happening in china since the 1980’s.

CTB: Regarding transnational, only workers can apply the kind of pressure that can stop multinationals pressure on government and policies. The workers movement is very strong internationally. Crisis opens opportunities: history has examples – more regulation, welfare state, etc. China has lifted 300 million people from poverty and it is the greatest example of development with social inclusion in the world. But there’s a ideological interest in affection china’s credibility. The critic to “developmentism” comes from capitalism. Development mean: to generate jobs,wealth, food, opportunities, equality.

11:00 am Lands, territories and social and environmental justice

 

Michel Severino/MTST Brazil

IVO/ Novos Paradigmas Brazil

Pedro Romildo/Sindae/Brazil

Antonio Zambrano/Forum Social Panamazonico:

Cleiton – Povo tradicional de matriz africana/ Brazil

 

 

Francine/World Justice: We know climate justice is social justice. What I would like to explain is that right now it is urgent to concentrate in social justice. We want more:  we want a system of social protection and social justice. It is urgent to protect people. One way is through police and the military. The other is through social rights. We want to strengthen such rights and for us this should be task one for all social movements in the world. We don’t need to fight against poverty, like BIRD suggests. We want to prevent poverty. All those changes happening, specially in environment will demand a new conception of social protection. Environmental justice needs to be aware of the demands of the poorer. If the government offers resources for electric cars, that doesn’t reach the poorer, because they can’t afford it. So we need better public transportation.  Extreme poverty has indeed reduced, but the thing is there’s this tiny tiny group very very wealth. And even the people above poverty line is still very poor, and vulnerable because it is their rights that are being destroyed.  The consequence of such dualizatios is expressed in the migrations in international level and the environmental damage. We know that the poor don’t have another alternative: they need to use bad products, bad health and polluting transportation. So changing social protection system is also caring for the environment. We have to reformulate social justice to incorporate environmental justice.

We think that social justice has a role in connecting a life of justice and opportunity with the sustainable use of nature. How to make social protection contribute to environment protection?  We need to change the economic system we have.

Our goals: to promote a different philosophy regarding social protection, to incorporate environmental justice and to fill the absurd gap between production and reproduction. Social protection needs to be a collective effort for fair life to all.

Out initiative e beyond UN’s initiative because they’re important. We want more than social protection, we want social justice. The goal is to abandon the neoliberal role social protection has had up until now.   

 

IVO/ Novos Paradigmas Brazil: we need to change the paradigm of development we have used up until now, founded in the economic development in a planet of limited resources. Increasing environmental problems are registered year after years. Water, fossil fuel, and transgenic food in an economic system founded in exploitation. Earth will survive. Mankind won’t.  The sequence of hurricanes is a symptom of natures exploitation. We need to think about another way of organizing society, outside development.  The left treats this as secondary, like it once treated gender issues. We cannot leave this to a latter time, because in a latter time there won’t be mankind. We need to change firstly our energy sources to renewable ones. Brazil could be the first one in the world in solar energy, and despite that there’s very little investment energy in Brazil. Agroecology also lacks massive public investment. Amazonia was almost delivered to foreign companies. Also Cerrado needs investment because it harbors all our rivers. In northeast the articulation to promote livelihood in semi-arid has changed people’s lives in semi-arid. There are solutions for new paradigms. Cities need to be planned for people and not for cars. We need better public transportations. Also the quality of products is also purposefully worsened in order to generate more consumption. Also we need to stop advertising medicines, alcohol and advertising in general because no one needs advertising to know what they need.

 

Antonio Zambrano – Forum Panamazonico/Peru: 9 years ago we started to build the movement. We decided to keep a distance from academy and from people who tried to tell us how we should do things. When we ask a rural leader about climate change he said: it Is a little frog which allowed us to know when it would rain, when to plant, but this little frog doesn’t exist anymore. This is climate change for us. Scientists say those are bioindicators. But people don’t need fancy words. They already know what those changes mean. So what we want is to affirm the meaning of territory for us. We have 65% of tropical glacials in the world and we lost a lot of the water that used to be stored in those glacials. A quantity enough to feed a city like sao Paulo everyday for ten years. This is a need to reconceptualize the fight we support. If we don’t do anything about it until 2030 latin American countries will need to spend up until 5% of ther GDP in climate change. Another concept important to us is agrobioecology . OMS this year reported that 7 million people die simply for breathing.  Environmental issues calls us to fight and the key is: organization. Those problems are not caused by us, latin American countries, but Peru, for instance, is one the most impacted countries by climate change. We need to defend the  amazonic bay.

 

Pedro Romildo – Forum Alternativo das Aguas

Next year in Brasilia, will happen the big Market of water, and we need to elaborate our opposition to it as social movements. Brazil was chosen to host the Water Market because we are one of the biggest  water sources in the world.  Besides rivers we have “Guarani aquifer” and the new one discovered: “saga aquifer”. That is why we are hosting the Alternative Forum for Water. It will be in Brasilia in March. In the 1970’s with the rise of neoliberalism the management of water was left to private companies. This also happened in Latin- America . 30 years later, both in England and in France were extremely negative, according to recent studies. In France the price of water was so high above inflation and the service was so bad, that France gave back to the state the management of water. The price reduced enormously. In the United States, more than 70% of the services of water are public. There Is interest to take advantage of Temer’s government to stablish a holding to allow private company to exploit sewage and water management in brazil. We want to ensure the access of every single person to water.

 

Severino MTST/ Brazil: For MTST the existe107 projectsnce of WSF is very important. We need to single out the livelihood issues in relation to capitalism. The city of rights is opposed to city of companies. Nowadays cities are at capital’s disposal. In order to talk about cities we need to understand who owns urban land. It is the capital. The fight for space and rights in the city is unequal. The companies have more power and more resources. We need to stop them expelling the people to the outskirts of the cities. The suburbs are the only spaces we have. The goal is to make the cities the sole residency of the bourgeois class. Private property has been expanding inside the cities. Gentrification impacts the communities resisting in those spaces. We need to fight against private property with popular housing (moradia popular). We have over six million families without lands and 7 million real state without occupants.  Why isn’t government demanding the social function of the property. The occupation “Povo sem medo” em São Bernardo do Campo happened in a huge useless property. And is being sold by media as an invasion.

 

Cleiton Araujo/ Brazil: We are not going to talk about religion: we are going to talk about culture and tradition. When populations were robbed of their land by occasion of the holocaust of slavery, people were stripped from the sacred. The territory is sacred for us. Food Security is jeopardized for us everytime our food is not produced in our sacred territory. So if we don’t have land we remain in continual assassination. Besides lack of territory there’s also the problem of pollution. Terrorism by white Christian religions destroys the possibility of connection with the sacred that is already precarious in the suburbs. IT is important to create an space for all the traditional people, because there’s a diversity of people’s in Brazil (“quilombolas”, “faxinalenses”, “quebradeiras de coco”, indigenous people etc). We need to further discuss this because slavery hasn’t ended.

 

Antonio Zambrano: in order to face climate change every year mandkind would need 100 billion, which represents only 1/7 of what mankind spends in publicity. Not even the contamination we generate in Peru through mineral exploitation and deforestation belongs to us, because everything is exported.

 

Francine: all topics discussed here water, energy, transportation are socially relevant topics. We don ‘t have to necessarily divide those topics, they need to be analyzed  in a transversal way.

 

Ivo: There are many groups meeting to discuss this new paradigm to substitute development. We believe there’s a greater conscience amongs mankind of the ecological catastrophe that is coming. But we don’t know how to make the transition. Normally it translates into government with the creation of an environmental secretary.  But it is the in the economic areas of governments that the greater environmental crimes are generated. It is crucial that environmental issues are no longer treated as secondary  and that they get to be discussed articulated with each one of the specific topics.

15h00 Panel: The role of the WSF in building the convergences of social movements in the world

Participants:

Mauri-RS: 

In the International Council we debated what we want with the forum. The summary:

The first discussion group focused on establishing the objectives for this year’s Forum.

The second group discussed convergence. It established that convergence cannot be seeked authoritally nor it can dismiss the diversity inherent to the Forum. Proposal: World Movements Assembly, before and after the event, in order to strengthen the movements worldwide. Maybe convergence is not the right word. Maybe alliance, cohalision, etc. 

The third group worked with the axes, themes and mottos for the organization of the Forum.

Organization dynamics for the 2018 WSF: Eixo>Mudanças Climáticas; Lema> Mudar o sistema e não mudar o clima.

Other initiatives:

Women’s summit (the women present at this seminar): Take care of the connections between 8M and the World Social Forum.

 

Gus/France: the four days of these event have been very rich and made hopeful. I wanto to reflect about resist is to transform as a motto. The first issue is: why we feel the need to resist now. Since 2008 it is clear that there’s a crisis in globalization. In the reaction to this crisis we see for more authoritarian and more repressive policies, generating war and conflict. We live in a time of insurrection. We have insurrections and protest in more than 40 countries. We developed in 2013 the WSF in Tunis, which was one of the earlier examples of recent movements. We want to resist to this revolution do world’s power. If resisting is creating, then resistance opens the field of possibilities: it means we don’t accept what is imposed and that we want otherwise. We can see the radicalization of the movements. I have witnessed the radicalization of the movements. The relation between resisting and creating offers us new practical and political. Marx said capitalism is capable of modernizing itself. We have to propose change that is inclusive. We have to resist and invent forms of resistance that generate a modernization that is progressive. We need to reflect about the revolution of the classes, the peoples and the movements.  We have to remember that during the revolution which generated capitalism none of the classes involved were benefited. We have to pay attention to what’s new. Nowadays the proletariat isn’t in the factories anymore. It is more related with an idea of precariousness. We are living 5 great revolutions: women’s rights;  traditional people’s rights; digital revolution; ecologic revolution and migration. Populating the planet. Trump in America: the average white American elector in Arizona, see indigenous people and women and becomes furious. We need to face this fury.

Salete from CLACSO: The first thing is – we want a WSF that has meaning. Meaning for who is preparing, for whom has always been here in the forum, and for everybody who is yet to join the Forum. We also need to ensure diversity. But not just attending. It needs to be participation with meaning and with action. No one is forced to make convergence, but the methodology is created in order for people who want can participate and generate convergence and incidence in the world that we want to change. We also want the respect to plurality and diversity, and it is not easy for everybody. Three main areas related to the abovementioned issues: 1) Culture:  need for the dialogue with the methodology.  Interreligious space, especially being in Bahia. 2) Communication: we need to ensure democratic communication which intends to strengthen the fight.  We can’t put all the expectations with convergence in the beginning.

Eduardo Thadeu/ Forum de Autoridades Locais de Periferia (Forum of Local Authorities from the Suburbs)/ Brazil: This is a very different time than when we created the Forum, back in 2003. Remembers that in Belem’s WSF we were in the peak of the occupation of latin American governments by the left present in the WSF. The logic of the Forum of Suburbs Local Authorities is to generate inclusive metropoles. We are here because we think it is very important to maintain the connection between to two for a, since the WSF is matrix of the other.  In order to resist, event with local authorities, it is necessary to create. We have two fundamental tasks: we need to train our activists. I’m very worried because in the other previous neoliberal moments we’ve had at least better organized movements. Like Boaventura said: the state can be some sort of beginner in social movements.

Anne Senna CUT/Brazil: For the conception of WSF dynamic, with capillarity and flexibility and rethinking of struggles and resistances must be congratulated. It is important to give space for the solidary economics, and in a time and place of increasing precarization of work, it is important to address such topics. To talk about solidary economics is to talk about ethnicity, culture and identity as well. So the forum can be used as a space to strengthen the transversality of the struggles. It is in practice, in the way we conduct the spaces. In that sense, the Forum has already started well, as this huge exercise of listening. Also, we miss the presence of youth, renewing our discussion.  Communication also has to be central. I thank the academic community and the presence of students. I invite you not just to attend, but to also to participate and build this is space, because it is also yours.

Audiences participation:

Sinistro/Brazil: Forum needs to be more inclusive and do more than just speaking about inclusiveness.  

Pierre/ França: About the methodologies for the Forum. There are “activities”, related to the dialogue in the Forum, and the “Initiatives”, related to actions outside the forum, in society.  The ideia is, in the end of the forum, promote  the “Ágora of Initiatives”some sort of fair of initiatives, when people circulate promoting their initiatives as well as taking interests in other people’s and organizations initiatives.

  Sidney/ Cáritas/ Brazil: Importance of focusing on the effectiveness of our actions and to bring the remaining political leaders to the left.

Debora Nunes/ Brazil: importance of bringing movements that are already living de post-capitalism, with experiences of organic trades and shared governance, like ecovilas movements. They are not participating of the forum because the forum has been the space of the “no” and they are “affirmative” movements. Let them show us how they live. ALSO, capitalism main instrument is the “speech”, the “mind”. So for the WSF taking place in Bahia, we need to bring our bodies and our souls upfront. They master that, but we master this. Let us show them our music, our dance, our spirituality.

Unidentified: It important to use different conceptions of the sacred in different parts of the world  as a convergence topic in the forum. For example, the possibility of plenary with religious people, in order to generate respect. Also the solidary currencies in the WSF should be discussed.

Unidentified: An important message: the privatization of education. Rich people don’t study in brazil. So it is a lie.

Mauri/RS: It important to understand the the facilitation team is not responsible to execute proposals. Each person and organization is free to execute their activities. The Forum is auto-managed.

Rita/Brazil: Women interest in participating on the Women’s work group should write to the following email

info@fsm2018.org