• forum connect session1 transcription en

last modified May 15, 2021 by facilitfsm


  FC1

 

FORUM CONNECT WEBINAR 17 DECEMBER 2020 TRANSCRIPT (PROVISIONNAL VERSION)

@001 MEENA hello everyone, sorry we were just sorting out the translation but we will start now I am one of the four facilitators or part of the team called the Forum Connect, a small group of people I’ll tell you about for Forum Connect 

Presently, I am working president of the “working people's charter”,  which is the network of organizations working within informal labour in India. However, I am here in Forum Connect in my individual capacity, as my other three friends are. Also I will moderate, and my co-moderator is Mike Davies, who works and  lives in Zimbabwe, and he is with the international alliance of inhabitants, and he also is here in his personal capacity. The other two are Lau Kinchi and Pierre George, and they will also be. Kin Chi is one of the hosts, and she is a professor working in China in Beijing and she is also one of the founders of the Global University. Pierre is a volunteer with Caritas, and he has been active for many years with the Social Forum and he works with the International Council as well. 

So, Forum Connect is a self-organized working group, and we wish to, I mean, the reason why we came together, is to contribute to reaching out with information regarding the World Social Forum, especially in Africa and Asia. Our goal is also to develop a body of knowledge through our sessions, and document it, so that we can better help, to better understand and participate in the Social Forum.

So, for those who are very new here, and who don't know so much about the World Social Forum, I it is um I mean if you go online, you will find a lot of information about the Social Forum. The World Social Forum describes itself as 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 neoliberalism, and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism. We are committed to building a global society directed towards fruitful relationships amongst humans and between humans and the Earth. ( WSF charter http://openfsm.net/projects/ic-methodology/charter-fsm-wsf-en

So this is the way that the Social Forum describes itself. It was first held in 2001 in Porto Alegre, and over the years has attracted hundreds of thousands of participants, from Social movements, NGOs, sectoral networks, policy advocates, academics, media people, and thousands of cultural activists, filmmakers, and performancers who are part of the anti-globalization struggles from all over the world. And subsequently the Forums were held in India, Kenya, Senegal, Canada, Tunisia, to name some and right now, the next WSF is going to be a virtual WSF, about which you will be hearing more as we go on. (https://wsf2021.net/

So, to go now to the discussions, to tell you some of the technical information that you need to know. All the participants are muted except the panellists, but you can ask questions by putting your questions in the chat box, and we will relay that to the speakers. The speakers will have seven minutes to speak, seven minutes just to make their presentation, and afterwards, they will have time to take questions. So the speakers in order I will read out Chico Whittaker, and Rosa after her conversation after her presentation, will also speak for another five minutes, about the way that the Forum is going to be organized, and how you can participate in the Forum. So Rosa you have your seven minutes, an additional five minutes to talk about the Forum after your seven minute presentation, so before we start, about translation, I request my co-moderator Mike to say something about the translation, so that we can then go on to the speakers. 

@002 MIKE DAVIES If your language is not available and you have a second language, please flick through the interpretation channels, to see what's available. We do have some initial teething problems, and we will be playing around with the interpreters, to get them working properly. Please bear in mind the interpreters need you to speak clearly, slowly, and with headphones. it's very important, you may be able to hear the conversation very clearly without earphones, but headphones will assist the interpreters to focus just on your language. What else is there on the interpretation side? Any problems? Just put it in the chat, and I will try to address any chat challenges as we go. 

@003 MEENA if anybody has questions, please put your questions with regard to translation also in the chat box, and we can help you with that. Are there any questions? yeah so to start, so let's go with the first speaker.

Welcome to all our speakers and we start with Chico Whitaker. Chico is an architect and a Social activist. He was counsellor in Sao Paulo for the workers party, [I think there's some disturbance from the translation, one of the translators, Mike, could you see about that? ] and he's executive committee secretary of the Brazilian commission for justice and peace, and he is a co-founder of the World Social Forum. He is a member of the coalition for Brazil free of nuclear power plants, and he is also a winner of the 2006 alternative Nobel prize. Chico over to you. You have seven minutes.

@004 CHICO WHITAKER Thank you. good morning everybody. I am a member of this commission in Brazil, which was founded by the catholic church in Brazil. I work in different areas, but especially the nuclear issue in Brazil, you know we got some problems, we would like to be ( there are some technical problems, I cannot hear him very well). The president is really unprepared to deal with this issue, to find the solutions, put out a solution to the problem. Sometimes he has a solution that can even worsen the scenario, he would like to harm a population to solve different kinds of issues, and by using the physical actions and but there are other issues in which he tries to go a bit forward.

 I had the possibilities to participate in the organization of the Forums, and the Brazilian people to build a Forum that is the opposite of the Davos Forum, and we wanted to open all the people that wanted to go on dominating the world, so and we decided to build up our own award, our own Forum in order to overcome this domination and neoliberalism policies. So we want you to overcome this domination approach, and then after the first world Forum ,was a real now we would like to organize a Forum that could be as successful as the first Davos Forum, and we want to [Music] increase the number of the participants, so we are adapting quite rapidly all the organizations we this will be,

 so we asked which were the reasons of the Davos success, and we started to reflect upon all the, you know the preparation issues, and we are still in an orientation stage. The Forum so won't be a Forum based on the parties, about this Forum will be the occasion, will provide the opportunity to all civil society organizations and movements to be represented at an international level, to make our action even more effective, this basic idea this is a space for source civic society, and this idea has been characterized the orientation of the Forum, and since then 

Of course, we also have adopted the different orientations, but always starting from this basic idea, since you know we know that the civil society is highly fragmented, and there are so civil society should try to work as a whole, and this is the first time, so has to be more effective through the meeting, it was very important the meeting in Seattle, because civil society and that occasion worked very hard, and they were very organized, without any authorities behind them to take these initiatives, and making use of all the resources that gathered in the Seattle static on this idea. 

We thought that it was important to involve the political world, but especially civil society without any kind of political manipulation, or involved but, so we would like to be autonomous about by respecting our diversity, and we already know, it is a great advantage, because in order to overcome a capitalist domination, we cannot just change powers, but we should visit a deeper change of society itself, that has been overwhelmed and dominated by one thing, that is the  logic of a capitalism, that was always oriented towards profits, and a culture that is, that was already dominating Europe, and the world there is capitalism, and it is competition culture, that according to which each one has to obtain what he wants, by doing whatever he wants, without any solidarity perspective, that is each one for oneself achieving his own goal. It is the dominating global culture,

And so we said we should overcome this culture through cultural change, so civil society should intervene in institutional issues, but also in cultural issues, that is a change, so as to change people's mindset and shifting to a society that might be based on common well-being  and solidarity, and the need to be united in order to change the world.

So, it is from this perspective that we have started to build the first world Social Forum, and the success was due to this very perspective, and is we want to create a space being a competitive towards each other, but we want space so that civil society could identify in each other, so the these we should avoid any kind of competition between different movements, that were you know fighting to reach Germany on their territories

So we said the Forum will be a meeting space, a reflection space, a new research space, aiming the very wide overarching actions with all the necessary measures to change capitalist culture and society, this is from this perspective that we started to work, and my experience was this kind, and we have organized the second Forum for the Social Forum, and the success of the first Forum obliged the group of the Brazilian group to organize the second Forum, that was even more successful we had 50 000 people, and even the third Forum saw more participants.

So, we thought that we had to enlarge our experience beyond Brazil, and so that we could take all the advantages from this event, and so we thought that it was important that even all the other countries could go through these educational experiences, thanks also to our organizations, and after a lot of debate, we put forward the proposal of fund for that had been accepted by Brazilian people and also their countries, and then we organized the first Forum beyond Brazil in Mumbai in India which was as well a huge success, and then we started to organize another Forum in Brazil after the India one in 2005. 

So, it has been a very long process, and we realized that the reason of the success is that it was not managed by anyone, but it has to be an open space, where all the kinds of debate were possible, and people were free to make their own choice, and so we decided to open up to new , and new organizations, and we had to think of the first Forum after the multilateral agreement in a Latin American, which gave birth to Latin American network, and this agreement investment agreement also was a very important step forward thanks to the action that was originated within the Forum, and so all these movements were created to work together against this agreement, which was a kind of repetition of the multilateral investment agreement AMI that started in Europe and pretended to be a global agreement in the interest of multinational agency.

 I think that I can stop here, and of course I wanted to give you an idea of my personal experience.

@005 MEENA  so thank you, thank you Chico, thank you very much, you are pretty much within the time limit thank you. Are there any announcements with regard to the translation that you might want to say Mike before we go on to the next speaker? 

MIKE yes hi we are having some challenges on the interpretation. mostly it's going well. I apologize for the lack of some Spanish French to Spanish. Again I would ask you just to check through other channels to see if there's another language that you can follow where we have those gaps, we're not able to provide all the language pairs, we would like but we will do the best we can, thank you. 

MEENA thank you Mike. We go on to Gautam Mowdi. Hello Gautam. Gautam is general secretary of new trade union initiative. It's one of the organizations which were involved in hosting the WSF 2004 in Mumbai. Gautam represented the NTUI in the India organizing committee, and he was active in the Social Forums international process until 2010.

@006 GAUTAM  MOWDI  thank you, Meena. I’m delighted to be here at this meeting to meet all campaigners and friends of the World Social Forum, and make some new ones. What looking back now, a decade and a half or more, what was,(1) what did the World Social Forum mean to us, and I do want to begin by saying it meant a whole lot, it meant a whole lot because it formed the first site where we began to meet, and to build a resistance globally, as the world had moved from being a bipolar world to a unipolar world, it brought in a sense and opportunity for us to actualize how we might address the question of global solidarity, but also solidarity between us, but I’ll turn to that in a moment. 

If one actually wants to measure the success of the Forum, perhaps the gravest attack that we suffered in the unipolar world in a sense was the imperialist, the American imperialist attack on Iraq in 2003, and really, if one thinks about the demonstrations that took place even before the Iraq war, the ones notably on the 15th of February 2003, but possibly even till today, are the largest single largest demonstrations ever in the history of our planet. The discussions for these began at the third Forum in January 2003 at Porto Alegre, the decisions on the date were taken there, and it's really from there that the word went out the call for 15th of February, went out, that marked, I think, a very important moment. 

In a world that really was not brought together by the internet as it is today, coming together in Porto Alegre against what we were going to be faced with, really in a way defined us, it provided a meeting ground, a meeting ground for debate, a meeting ground for this discussion, and for those agreeable, a meeting ground for decision, but it was more than that, it was importantly a meeting ground in a sense learning from the 20th century, that we needed to build a movement that may or may not be led by political parties, 

We may have different views on how political parties affect change, especially Social change, but it recognized paramount the power of people, in terms of their representation in mass organizations, and people's movements, and this was a critical step forward if one thinks about it, the 20th century referred to some by, sorry, the 20th century in a sense was dominated, or even the world of progress was dominated, by political parties and the 21st we really as we moved away from that bipolar world, we, it was, this was a very, very important experiment. 

So it wasn't just a question of meeting outside of political parties, the point was it was about democratization of our own organizations, democratization of our movements, and democratization of our solidarity. It's in that sense that the Forum also played a very crucial role when it travelled to India. 

India has a long history of progressive movements, dating back to our own self-determination, or an independence movement which threw up the ultimate sort of rainbow coalition, as it were, of forces of progress, ranging from organic, of course, the organic Gandhian movement, a very organic socialist movement, or Social democratic movement, in a global sense, and then, of course, a rich diverse communist movement, that represented every hue within the communist divide, also through it, through our society, that throws up incredible challenges in terms of stratification, within the working class, in terms of caste, community, religion and, of course, gender and patriarchy. 

The World Social Forum was a site which posts the unipolar world which, in the Indian context, was, especially in the context of the Indian left, quite quite strongly dominated by the presence of the soviet union, and what the soviet union represented, provided an opportunity, an extraordinary historical opportunity, for us to come together, not just as organizations, but on issues as well. It opened our eyes to things that we had never talked about in the trade union, and correspondingly in the women's movement, had opened up questions of working classes, that had perhaps not been talked about and so on, and so on. 

I think what it brought into every section of the movement was also, very importantly, a recognition of the most marginalized of our societies, be it religious minorities, be it historically discriminated castes, and, of course, at the base of it, was to build a unity and a solidarity to defeat imperialism, and to defeat the emergent right in our own country . 

It's ironic, of course, that 15 years down the road, we're faced with a right wing that's sharper, harsher and fiercer than it was when we hosted the Forum in Mumbai in 2004. I can say this from the experience in India, we have been through a richness in both the coming together across organizations across constituencies, but I can speak for my own organization, which had huge divisions in 2003: whether to join the Forum or not, and enormous criticism within the organization, when we decided not just to join it, but also to participate in organizing and hosting the Forum very actively.

 It was an enrichment learning process, which threw up challenges, potentially dividing our organization but it also marked a coming together of ties within the organization that went beyond formal notions of how an organization, such as a left trade union, ought to be constructed. It opened us to new rules of democracy. The other day, I was talking with Meena and I said to her that : you know I’m the general secretary. I've been the general secretary of the NTI from 2013, and the comrade who was  president actually was opposed to the Forum, he sat outside the Forum, and of course, there was a whole section of the organization that not just sat outside the Forum, but it sat across the Forum, building its own resistance, which they called “Mumbai resistance”, as many of you who were around at that time were before, and looking back at that, I mean I think that's part of the richness of the process.

 I remember we were very unusually when it was announced we tried our best to get them, get those comrades in, they were our old comrades, I mean, there's a very important electrical workers union within our organization that handled the electrification ( in the two forums) on both sides of the road. So you know I think what it threw up was our ability to learn to live with each other, and I think this is a very important transit journey in the politics from the 20th century to the 21st century, going forward I mean.

 I believe the World Social Forum was important in the context of the early 21st century, beginning with the resistance against treaties of global trade, the WTO in Seattle in 1999, on the one issue of global trade, the WSF sort of provided an opportunity of a more fuller discussion amongst organizations and movements, on addressing larger quest on all of the questions that concern us. 

That said, I think the assaults that we faced in terms of the global crisis of 2008, and the rise of the right wing in most parts of our world, whether in Brazil or in India, or in Turkey for that matter, in the United States, alongside the emergence of big tent progressive parties, Social movement parties like PODEMOS and SYRIZA, learning from the very rich emergent democratic socialist experience from Latin America. I think we, the World Social Forum needs to go beyond what was our learning of as mass organizations of mass movements, sans political parties, and I think this requires a lot more debate of how we're going to integrate, and I dare say it also requires a lot more integration between north and south. 

Some of those divisions remain, some of those divisions persist in some places. We've crossed thresholds, but these are divisions, which I believe we need to address, but I think significantly we, and I will close with this, we must address ourselves to how we're going to deal with the new right or the far right, and in that context, what is it that we need to build on, to be able to assert this right globally, as we fight these fights against the far right within our national boundaries. 

 

@007 MEENA MENON thank you, thank you. if we don't have any intervention from Mike, we can go forward. I think it's going all right, but please bear with us. I do know there is no French Spanish, and we're having problems with English Spanish, but I will try and sort them out, can somebody do a translation if somebody, any of the participants are able to translate in the chat box for French Spanish,  is that what you said was missing, we had a problem with French Spanish and then with English Spanish Don't worry if we can set up relay interpretation okay, please be patient thank you. 

Now we heard Chico witaker from Brazil about the experience of the organizing and the context of the Social Forum in Brazil, and Gautam, who spoke about India, and now we have Hamouda Soubhi, who will speak abou, who is from Morocco. He works for the Morocco council for human rights. He is chairman of Forum of south alternative morocco. He is also at the same time, one of the co-founders of alternatives and alternatives Morocco, and other Moroccan and African organizations, working for human rights. He is currently responsible for the secretariat of the international council of the World Social Forum. He will speak about, hopefully the Maghreb, as well as the African experience. Hamouda.

@008 HAMOUDA SOUBHI okay yes just a moment, most thank you for learning and sharing experiences. We begin from Morocco in the Forum from the beginning, right from the discussion well held in France and Switzerland and in Brazil, we follow up a lot of things on that issues, we create the the first Forum, Moroccan Social Forum in 2002, and we begin from the beginning, and the more we import the things really important on that

It's that Chico remember it well, it's on 2001 it was in Senegal, it was the first real international council meeting, and it was very marvellous, because it was a lot of debate, how to care, how to do the charter and the discussion on the charter, and a lot of things, and after that we should go to Porto Alegre to decide about the about the charter of the WSF, and this was really nice to see after 20 years, that we still alive, and still dynamic, because in Africa, we hold four Social Forums, and one how they call it the Forum, how they call it in French, it's there was a in Mali, was Mali Karachi and Caracas, and it was nice and 2006. 

And in that moment, all the Forums that we organized there, it was with a lot of difficulties. Because how in ,you know, Africa it's not Brazil, it's not Europe, it's not United States or Canada. Because a lot of difficulties to travel, a lot of difficulties. The people comes from country to country, and it was really hard to mobilize people, but it was a good mobilization, because the people took the roads ,and the caravans, and it was an international African mobilization, it was really interesting, the fourth Forum passing in Africa, if I want to go exactly on the on the discussion, like Chico said, and it was really difficult, because you know, there is a lot of competition between the organizations, a lot of competition between the networks, a lot of competition between the big organizations, the smallest one

And this is why the apprenticeship of the Forum to have self-organized activities, and things help a lot the smallest organizations to organize themselves, and to discuss, and to share with the internationals, like Latin America, or Asia, or Europe, or in Canada, or north America.  It was a lot of experiences that we take from those Forums, and a lot of initiative. I can remember, you know, the land grabbing. It was one of the first networks in Africa is was in land grabbing food sovereignty, question of climate 

And this here it was networks that 20 years that people are still working, and still having this opportunity to work together, that a lot of experiences goes from this World Social Forums in Africa and built a lot of synergy and alliances in whole Africa.  After, like I said, after 2011, when the Forum was in Dakar, it came with a lot of uprising  in Africa, specifically in north Africa, in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia Libya, Egypt. It was an uprising, a marvellous uprising, and it came in the same time with the Forum in Dakar, and gives Dakar another former of the Forum, because there was a lot of participation of those big countries, those countries who in the before that there was a lot of repression on those countries, a lot of people on jails, and a lot of problems in the north Africa of African civil society a lot of how they call it violence, and things like that,

And after that, it was an a festive, it was like a never a Forum can be held, with this marvellous mobilization around Africans around the world, because it was a new things coming from the mobilization, and from the civil society in Africa, and that make us more conscious about what we can do after that, because the Forum in Dakar give us a big opportunities to help and to build more connection with the world, and more connection with the movement on the world.

 I remember after Dakar it was how they call it a lot of discussion in the Maghreb ,in the north Africa movement, about how we can hold this enthusiasm, how can call it, how we can support this enthusiasm, and bring something to the region, and this is about the decision in Paris to have one Social Forum in Tunis, it was like a gift  to the revolutionary or the uprising in the region, and to mobilize people who arrive in Tunis in 2011 12 and 13, see all these young people and they have those young people who  was not affiliate in a civil society movement or movement, they created their own organizations, open organizations, and gives like a fresh air to the movement of like 15 years or 13 years that the Forum exists, or 12 years that the Forum exists, gives a new opportunity to the World Social Forum,

Because after Dakarr it was like a little bit down, and a lot of problems coming from the international council, a lot of discussions, and this uprising gives this hope, and this dynamic to continue the World Social Forum, and in Tunis what would happen, it's the revolution happening in north Africa, creates a lot of things Occupy in new York how they call it the name  was “carré rouge”  in Quebec, the 15M  in Spain. A lot of movements were created in the same time and giving at the Forum in Tunis a big movement that 50 or 60 of the participation was , and there was an open Forum in the Forum, made by the youth and a lot of it was a very enthusiastic and dynamic situation.

This is my first point in the history, and how the Forum gives a lot of things in our experiences in Africa ( Maghreb social forum) , like I said, we create a lot of dynamics like 10 “dynamics” was made, with is the European dynamic, women's dynamic, peace and war dynamic, climate dynamic, youth dynamic, economic and civil rights a lot of dynamics still, and now working without the Forum, that's this is why the people said there is no action in the Forum, but it's not true, because each dynamic took his action and take his and continue the world all over Africa meets north and south Africa

Because like you know in Africa, there is a, like he said our friend from India, we in Africa we've suffered from  having  two languages :  French or English, and the people in Francophone  Africa, they work on together, and the English Africa work together, and this give this opportunity that north and south can met ,and can discuss, and create audiences, still now working on it ,and easy now to mobilize Africans about anything [Music] Anything coming or defending or mobilizing on women's issues, climate issues, land grabbing issues, workers issues, and this is what we learn, and what we gained from this experience of 20 years of the Social Forum.

 it's not easy because there is a lot of difficulties. The difficulties came first from this competition, like I said before, this competition between the big NGOs and big networks ,that have a lot of money, and the smallest that they have no voice. How we can reach this without saying that the Forum it was, like I said, difficulties to connect people between them, connect movement between them, it was this challenges, to meet and to continue, and not forgetting .

Now that this pandemia that happened, it's not easy to us to continue this work, because of the situation economic situation, this this competition, and this cannot give us a clear view for the future, because the difficult to build and from the past, and it's really important to build from the past,we cannot go further if we don't know what happened to us, and this is one of the challenges that we have now, is how we can rebuild these networks, and how we can reach more movement a new movement,

Also because a lot of movement did not link to the Social Forum or there's a lot of youth, a lot of young generation that we need to memorize, give them the memory of what happened in the 20 years of the Forum, and one of the questions that we can ask : “why those Forums, why these Forums don't give actions, and why these Forums are existing, but eco in one of a lot of his writing speak about that

Because the genius of the Forum it's this continuation of the Forum, even that there is a lot of movements are going out, like MST in Brazil, like a work march of women, there are big organizations you don't need a Forum, you don't need it, you don't need a Forum, they are already in connection between them, and but the Forum is a space, it's a space for all the new experiences, and sharing these experiences. 

And one of the things that is really important also is that, when we decide to go to Canada, the Canadians where they are youth, a lot of them are youth, they have no they are not belong to organizations, it was young from the movement, they are in the movement and they create the Forum It was a lot of people that didn't want, because the experiences show us that all the Forum until Montréal, it was the Forums made or organized by organizations, unions, because they in the chart or not in the chat but in the principle of how to organize a Forum, there is a there was a like a something red, we read it, and we send it to all the Forums, that we must have organization unions, women's etc 

That we have this must be the facilitation group to organize the Forum Canada was a different.There was a young people youth, they do another thing, it was good even, there was a lot of problem of visas and things, and that and the things that did the organization was different, and this is why I think we can learn from the past, and let a lot of things happen, and let the people move 

Another last point that I want to really put on light, it's that the World Social Forum or the council, they had a commission called expansion commission. This expansion commission work a lot, we decided in the international council to open to the Arab world, the Africans again, the Iraqis ,the Syrians, the Palestinians, or Jordanians, all the Arab region, also for Asia Bangladesh, 

We were in Bangladesh to discuss ,we were in Taiwan also, shinjin remember that a lot of discussion was in Taiwan, how we can make a Social Forum in Taiwan, and it was an experience in Taiwan in konjin I think it's south Taiwan. The first Forum in Taiwan, and it was really important.  In Kurdistan, we were in Kurdistan discussing, and would have a Forum in Kurdistan, Syrian, Turkish, Kurdistan, and it was really important to discuss with this movement, and bring him back in the Forum, in the area of the Forum, in Diyarbakir 

In Dhaka in  Bangladesh, it was really interesting to see how a lot of babies were created and last point, it's the other babies, it's the thematic Forums. Like I said maybe 14 to 15 thematic Forum are existing now in the world,  and this now, they all they are autonomous, they don't need of one Social Forum, but they are still each two years, we have a Forum thematic Forum, and all these experiences we can discuss it later, but it's really important to have this, and thank you very much kimchi and everybody for this and Meena for this opportunity thank you very much 

@009 MEENA MENON thank you very much Hamudha that was very instructive : lot of information a lot of things we didn't know, and just to tell everybody that we have about 6500 Chinese participants on the live streaming, so it's reaching a large part of Asia, which is what we intended from Forum Connect Thank you all of you from china who are on the live chat, on the live viewing, the live streaming a part of the live streaming, and now we have Carminda McLorin from Canada. She is a sociology PhD student, and she has been coordinator of the facilitating collective for organizing the WSF Montréal 2016. Carminda are you there?

@010 CARMINDA MCLORIN  I am here Meena how are you?, Thank you for inviting me, so it's a real pleasure to be here, with the news especially [Music] with a public that is across the world. I am indeed in Canada. I was as you said one of the coordinators of the World Social Forum in Montréal. I just finished my PhD, working on spaces of mobilization like the World Social forum, and also like Occupy and other mobilizations like this, that try to open spaces  for the Social society to gather. I am also the director of an organization called Katalyzo  that is also supporting the organization of this virtual Social Forum that is arriving in December,  in January I’m sorry.

So the World Social Forum indeed occurred in Montréal in 2016, and it was one of the small Forums let's say  it like that. We gathered around 35 000 people here in Montréal, and as Hamouda pointed out, we were a little bit different, because we were indeed an organizing collective mainly led by youth, but also evidently by many other people, that were not necessarily young in the body, but young in the mind. That is as important I think of course ,and this was in the movement that was created, as Hamouda said also, by the north African region and the spring that was motivating the whole world actually to mobilize in 2000 after 2011.

 I have been participating to the World Social Forum since Tunisia actually, even if I was in the World Social Forum before. The World Social Forum 2016 collective was definitely charmed by this, by the by the charter of principles and this willingness, the willingness to, as Chico pointed out, earlier to “create spaces”, where diversity could coexist, because definitely that is a challenge in the global civil society, that we have a difficulty to work together, as we are not necessarily using the same words, not only because we speak different languages, but also because we come from different political cultures.

And so that was totally charming for us to open a space where we could address power relations, where we could address hierarchies, that normally exist within civil society, and try to establish points of dialogue, and of common action eventually, and encourage future action.( I’m sorry my phone is sounding okay) so the competition, 

And addressing the possibility of building strength in plurality was definitely something that we took very seriously, and actually the methodology of the Forum, of the World Social Forum, that is still being used, in that it proposed to the people who participate to bring the content of the Forum was definitely something that we liked a lot and of course still like. So the possibility for people to propose activities as you are now able to propose activities within the frame of the World Social Forum, that is arriving now in January. 

So this is a way of addressing concretely the fact that we are plural, that we are diverse, and that we need in a sense to build us a sentiment of unity, and to be stronger together in the world, because of course, we know that, even if I mean that there are so many challenges ,and this is even I mean it was already of course pretty true in the time the last years, and right now with the pandemic of course, it's even worse, if that could be worse. 

So the role of facilitation of organization of this World Social Forum for us and I believe it's still important, is that the people who were organized [Music] are trying to make it as comfortable as possible for people who will them you who goes in the different territories, and that are bringing concrete solutions, so that was definitely important for us why World Social Forum this was actually of course pretty firms happened before in the global south

So the position we brought or we put it forward when we organized the World Social Forum  in Montréal was that, of course, the world is round and there is north in the south, and south in the north, because here in Canada, let's say we have first nations people, that were here in this territory before the colonies arrived, and these people were of course full of knowledge, and actually I am now speaking in an unseated territory here in Montréal, that is a territory first nation territory, and even if we don't acknowledge it very often, and so there are many inequalities of course  here, that are very different of course of the rest of the world, but we are also in in the centre of the capitalism actually.

And lots of problems have come from here, so we thought we might as well address them also here and here. Canada let's say is also problematic in an extractivist way, as most of the mining companies that are doing terrible things in the world, catastrophic things in the world, come from Canada are installed here in Canada, and so we definitely thought that it was important to address these things and say we are aware, and we need the south also to learn from your experiences, and grow together in a world that it's not going well, and we definitely need a global response.

 So in our case the challenge of the visas was actually a real challenge of course and not a challenge just of the World Social Forum, but a challenge of the world migration, is definitely a big problem in in the world, and there are so many people now that are suffering from economic issues, and very environmental issues, and that are moving they were forced to move, and that are not having good conditions, and respect for ,and dignity through that process, and so this doing a World Social Forum in Canada, was also a way to say of course we're far from a perfect world, and we need to address it, we need to talk about this difficulty, and so that was our willingness also our aim

There where it was a wonderful experience to organize a World Social Forum, and to learn to collectively organize ,and this was a big challenge of course, as it was in oh oh ( okay sorry I’m speaking a little bit fast I’m going to try to go a little bit slower for the interpreters thank you to the interpreters) 

So it was a very interesting moment of collective learning there were around 150 organizations involved in the organization of the World Social Forum in Montréal, in the process of organization, even if it looked like we were only young people in the collective, actually we were in collaboration with around 150 organizations, through the whole process of organization, and there were around 1 000 organizations that took part in the World Social Forum. 

But of course there are so many challenges when we organize a World Social Forum, and I believe one of them, as many of the speakers pointed out already, is to combine in a sense diversity and the unity we need to make changes. So this of course raises a lot of conflicts, and even if the World Social Forum aims for or horizontal structures to avoid hierarchies, (yes I will wrap up things) you mean even if the World Social firm is aiming all this good things, there are conflicts, there are contradictions, there are paradoxes, and I really believe that the best way to tackle those contradictions is to acknowledge them, address them, and speak about them, and be aware that they exist, to be able also to move beyond them, and be able to work in a, 

And I really believe that the main strength of the World Social Forum is our own capacity to continue building radical hope for a positive change of partying in the world, and of course this is a very interesting challenge in the context of virtual activities. I really invite all the people who are watching us right now to inscribe activities, and to move forward with us, and bring a global response to our common issues, thank you so much for the invitation and all the best

@011 MEENA  thank you so much Carminda, and we it's good to hear from somebody young about their experience and their vision. Thank you, as you know, as you can see, we have not been able to include all the various fora, we hope to in future, we cannot have all the fora in one session, but we do hope to include others like Karachi and all the others, by and by and even more people from the same fora, if  there is an experience, that is important, and they would like to, and if people would like to speak about their experience, please feel free to write to us

Now we thought that we would ask the reason why we thought we would ask Rosa Zuniga. She is from Mexico, she is a popular educator and sociologist.  She is currently secretary general of CEAAL, and she is a representative of this organization on the international council of the World Social Forum.

Mexico is to be the next physical Forum, and we would like to hear from her experiences of organizing that, because that's a live Forum and Rosa if you could speak about that, and then after your presentation, if you could speak about the way that people participate in the virtual Forum as well, but please do speak about your experience of organizing the Mexican Forum, after which you can speak on that ok thank you very much can you hear me?

@012 ROSA ZUNIGA  yes yes first and I would like to thank you very much. I’m going to speak in Spanish because I feel comfortable with it. I am in Mexico, because virtually but I am with you in Asia, in this region that I actually do not know, but fortunately neutrality is boundless boundary lessons. I have a PowerPoint presentation. I don't know if you can see, maybe you can see it here. Yes you can see it. I would like to get it a bit broader, I hope I managed . This is as a part of the organization or well in back 2018, or briefly before in Salvador, we have the father here and we kept on having this necessity to trigger the real world, 

And so it was not as easy a process, because we need to dedicate it time, and then will and also time at the same time, we have that the world Forum Social Forum can [Music] we have a Forum which can depict what have been occurring and back in the 20 years and we're meant to be to have it in Mexico, and so we would like to do like to admit, that there are these conflicts, and we cannot deny it, but of course with the pandemic situation, got worse because the chance to get together was more difficult, and then we summon us on a virtual meeting, with all the voluntary interpreters, that are volunteers that are helping us, and we would like I would like to follow the second slide and this is the our symbol this icon

MEENA Rosa Rosa could you just stop for a minute please we're just organizing the translation was gone sorry really really a lot of uran's flow I know just give us a couple of minutes yeah just a minute Mike Francesca Bruno to Spanish yes thank you thank you thanks carry on Rosa thank you sorry about it.

ROSA okay I continue (yes please yes please),so I’ll go back to my presentation. Therefore is we are going back to our march, our great march that covers also political and cultural aspects, for the Social democracy, Social justice, and what I would like to say is that to our meeting, the meeting of the facilitators, is meant to be on next Wednesday

We are planning to have a huge opening panels, which can open up the dialogue, which will focus on what is hap occurring today in the world, and you know people, should ask yeah and tell us, suggest us all the strategies that they like to raise in this week, and we have so these timing, and you can see the 14h to 16h time, and this is just our panel, we are just concentrating on it, and you know this time and if you can please as watch all this previous activities, all the cultural events, 

So we are meant to fill all this gap that I want to prepare us, so then on Saturday, we are about to have the thematic space, we have  six thematic topic spaces. The first focus on place and war peace and war and planning to have a facilitators group, and this is the group of the facilitators, so please register here and I will address at the end of the presentation, because it's connected to this other group, then in the second one, we will talk about the economic justice, and on the Wednesday we will focus on education communication and cultures, and on Wednesday we are focused on the feminist feminine society and diversity, and then later on native and ancestral people,  then the Social justice and democracy, and that when we are preparing this channel, and then finally on Friday we will focus on the climate ecology environment. 

So in the next winter we will focus on also these topics, and on Saturday we will prepare the assemblies that is self-managed by our movements so that we can have a global action agenda, and we might have some activities that can focus on these activities, and then we will have other topics on other futures agora, and this is the group that is working throughout the whole week,and these are those strategies that are going to be take over in the next months in the next winter.

 Then there is the closing launching call for the world's sf all these panels that you can see will have a cutting cross-cutting teams agenda, combining a racist pandemic, and the future of the Forum ,and these are all the topics, the issues that all the thematic spaces, that we will cover during the week. Well we would like to signal through this drawing, is that we would like to have to raise all the topics are very urgent, 

So for the world, this is the address of our link a Forum virtual at World Social Forum 2021 dot net, and then these are the thematic issues, so and then you can suggest through our chat and, of course we're also monitoring of the of the different papers that we are sending it, and this is our website web page digital web page, and then through this page, you can hear the translations interpretation of different languages, and then a series of newsletters that can you can, for which you can keep updated on what we are doing

Soon on the 23rd of the December we have the form to register activities, to cover convergences assemblies, political cultural events, that we will release. So this is actually all the different slots and then, if you have any questions,please go ahead. Otherwise I would like to back go back to the view screened so Meena, so we are on my process on global mobilization, so you are really warmly invited to be part of it to our new Social world Forum 

@013 MEENA MENON thank you so much Rosa. I’m sure there are questions, but I haven't heard from people. But I wanted to ask you one thing, on behalf of all of us, could you send us this presentation so that we can share it with all the people who are participating in this, and to the others also,your presentation your especially the table

Is that possible you can tell us a little bit more about how you can help us with also the other information, that you said could you send us, a presentation which we can share, we can translate that in Chinese and other languages, and share with others here okay?  so great, so we will share this with all the participants who are here 

Now I’d like to ask if there are any - I don't see any hands. I don't know whether anybody would like to ask any questions. However and if there are no questions, I will ask the participants whether they would like to respond with the panellists, whether they would like to respond to each other, because a lot of things that came up in the conversations perhaps also set off some other ideas and responses, which the panellists might want to address. 

So if there are no questions I will go ahead to that. Mike, are there any questions excuse me? I think the interpretation is working fine now, we seem to have all the channels, so that's good.  Are there any questions, even other questions which for instance from the Chinese participants or from anywhere that you would like us to address, because that's not in the chat, so if it is on another channel, is there anything that you would like to that, kimchi would all the other technical people, is there anything you would like us to address, would you like the panellist to address ,anything else we will ask the panellists to respond to the points that have been placed by the other panellists, for just three to four minutes, because we don't have that much time either. we just have enough

There is one question from the Chinese chat - Why are we against neoliberalism? Do we want to get into that - I don't know it's up to the panellists really so anyone from the panellists who would like to take that question before and respond to other questions that have come here? Anyone? nobody seems to be wanting neoliberalism [Music] 

@014 HAMOUDA  yes it's, this is a consideration, as a fundamental, the fight against the liberalism, again the patriarchal, against fascism, the Social injustice is all those causes that led to this system. So this is our focus of our World Social Forum,  because we do believe that the pandemic has highlighted on only the health Social crisis of a human political crisis, that reveals through this pandemic, and millions of people are back home, so we have to keep on fighting, because this is our flag, and we have to support those in difficulties.

We are against neoliberalism, because there was a lot of problems made by this neoliberalism from decades, and the first World Social Forum meeting before the Social Forum was against Davos, because all the big institutions companies and states like America united states, or Russia all the people who are in the in this Davos discussion, against all the display, the sense of life like Rosa said now, is the pandemia, but all the international institution IMF or the World Bank are cutting on the services, are cutting our education, cutting on their health, and all 20 years that we are fighting against neoliberalism give us this opportunity to continue, because a lot of problems made by these big multinationals, and the debt of all the countries from the south, are they have a lot of debts, how they can pay, how they can pay this world bank and all these financial institutions, 

And this is why we are against neoliberalism, because they take our blood, in that sense that there is a no space for alternative, for economic, for the cooperatives, for a lot of issues that we cannot do because of this domination of the financial institutions 

@015 MEENA thank you, Hamouda, I’m going to put it in one line - neoliberalism causes inequality and inequality causes injustice and there can be no progress on this planet unless there is equality and Social justice and hence, we're opposed to neoliberalism. 

Chico, would you like to with anyone please feel free to comment on other things that have come up in the course of the discussion not only on the question that has peace so would you like to say anything else about the rest of the discussion or we want the next speaker.

@016 CHICO to fight against injustice. Since the birth of our Forum we have fought against this system. There isn't any single country, there is a logic of the managerial organization that is oriented only towards the profits, that is accumulation of capitals.

I don't think there are problems of Social justice and the inequalities of what the systems want it is to gain money, and there's a kind of an engine, a driver towards competition between people, to gain more money to have, you know, better profit and through the development of these logic, financial institutions handed out by dominator, and they make money starting from money, they do not make money through production and products, and the source to have profit start with us, but they make money from, you know, money accounting through investments for instance. 

We can think of Davos they just published attacked on their vision of the future, and they state quite clearly that is the future will be established determined by investments, that is, we don't know where money will be in the future, and I think that money has nothing to do with the Social justice, that is I think that everybody should have access to the goods of everybody to live well. I think that the goal is so there is a logic and logic mobilizing the world that also hunted the socialists the countries, the logic that is based on making money, making business, and related to this the destruction of the planet : environmental problems under this consumption, excessive consumption.

So this system does need consumption and all this, so we should [Music] we want new money it has been sold otherwise this is the whole the logic and the dominating culture that is based on money, on profits and consumption I don't and this is not based on solidarity.  This is my answer, this is why we are against the neo-liberalism, is if we do not overcome this logic and this culture, we can go towards the end of the world, and this is also you know, the destruction of the planet, and many scholars are demonstrated this logic , could lead to the construction of production machines giant production equipment, that are risk, that are requiring more and more natural resources. So this is why this could destroy the world to have products

So that it's a giant machine could go on producing itself and so we have been talking about the possibility of rare materials for these machines it does it is a complex logic but this is another possible word will be a world that is free from domination, free from money and another possible world is a world where people are all equal and based on the runes solidarity from the smallest to the biggest. So this is why I think we are against neoliberalism, so this is I hope that this reflection could help you find the right answer. 

@017 MEENA thank you, Chico, so before we conclude, just a few words that to many of the participants, many of the ideas, and then much of the information would be new, and but then that's how we will have to start, by approaching a lot of younger people, who might not quite comprehend a lot of what is being said, or the responses that we see from activists and from the organizations ,which are part of the anti-globalization and anti-neoliberal, which are part of the Forum.

So I think that perhaps it's this is one of the things that are different from the time when the Social Forum was everywhere, generating or attracting large numbers of people, and today, we have in Asia where there is a lot, there are, there is an upswing of right-wing thinking, and a questioning of many of the things which movements have been talking about before.

So if neoliberalism, neoliberalism prioritizes the market, as Chico was saying, it prioritizes profit, and an extreme form would be for instance, if the vaccine for the COVID were available only to those who can buy it.  So if taking public transport would only be available to those who have money, well those who have only those who have money, if they could go to a hospital in order to cure themselves of really serious illnesses, so when we say neoliberalism, we are actually questioning the privileging of markets, and the privileging of profits over the needs and aspirations of people.

And as Gautam was saying that this creates inequality, because when you have a market which decides, you have inequality, and if there is inequality there is injustice, so I hope that you will be able to read more about why we here, as part of the Social Forum, are opposed to neoliberal policies, which are followed by most of the governments in  Asia

So before I conclude just to thank the Chinese, the technical folks who have helped us to set this up, the translators, all of whom are volunteers, and abiding as much translation as we should have, but this is our first event, and we hope that we will be able to do more events, in order to give more information, and to make the ideas that that are the basis of the Social Forum are more current, and bring it to more people. Thank you very much everybody, and thanks most of all to the panellists who took time to be here, and we hope that we will have you again on panels maybe in future. Mike is there anything you would like to add? 

@018 MIKE DAVIES thank you for your patience, and bearing with us while we sorted out the interpretation. As Meena said, they are volunteers, I would like to thank them for the help, without them, we wouldn't be able to do this. This for me is, one of the greatest things about COVID 19 is that it forced us to build our skills to communicate, so greater participation from China, I think this is hugely important for the development of not only Forum Connect, but the World Social Forum itself, and may this meeting plant the seeds for far greater mobilization around the World Social Forum

This is very important for us, and personally, I want to see I said Davos disrupting and challenging the neoliberals on their own turf, one of these days, this will happen, hopefully, as the movement develops. Thank you again for all your patience, all the best, thank you bye-bye, thank you the interpreters, let's see our faces, it's the one thing I miss from meeting physically :  we don't get to see each other. And thank you to all the participants who have borne with the difficulty of only listening and not being able to speak, but that's the way zoom goes most of the time 

@019 MEENA so and please don't forget to go and (1)register in the website that Rosa indicated,  https://join.wsf2021.net/ and keep connected with the Forum process. That's the best thing you can do in the in the next days up to January, so don't forget about it, 

(2) And our Forum Connect questionnaire will help us to gather your opinions and suggestions for future webinars and meetings that will help synthesize the knowledge base for the World Social Forums.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd9LaPhgt5bySYJCHkdZcEZEtzwQ8zqlKWEqYVmaHuQwMzOUg/viewform 

 Please fill in the webinar the questionnaire which is on the page on which you registered for this. Thank you very much bye interpreters, like to thank Rosa elva, thank you great speaker, thank you very much.