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1 occurences of world social forum


Stocktake on first 2 pages of Widening Circle
Sorry I've been silent on this thread for some time, too much travel.
But Stephen's mail below prompted me to put in a quick word. I've said
this in 2-3 emails on earlier threads, and said it also in the GCM
meeting at theWorld social forum... amongst the most powerful agents
for global change are and will be indigenous peoples, small farmer
movements, fisher movements, etc. See for instance the following from a
press release by one of the Canadian indigenous peoples:ashish

6 occurences of "world social forum


Draft Strategy Document for Comment
Dear Friends
First I must apologise for being incommunicado for the past month with the exception of my brief report back on the Tunis trip to thetheWorld social forum..Unfortunately I have had a nasty flu the past 3 weeks that has laid me low. ashish

ThetheWorld social forum.event looking at creating a World Citizens Movement lasted 2 days and I got to meet a lot of wonderful people from around the world. Based on what I experienced there I find it hard to see how such a movement can come about through the actions of NGOs and civil society organisations. They are to institutionally constrained and too focused on their single issues to be the basis of such a movement. On the other hand there are many amazing individuals within these organisations who can contribute a great deal to the emergence of the movement we seek.

Another learning was the importance of a systematic process in moving towards the emergence or catalysis of such a movement. The Tunis meeting was the culmination of two previous meetings in 2013 and 2014 in Johannesburg. I felt the Tunis meeting didn't really build on the previous meetings and move things forward in any significant way. The funding for this project finishes in December and its unclear if future funding will emerge.(richard)
Dear Friends
Initial thoughts on a way forward for your feedback
Tragic news from Tunis yesterday where I shall be attending thetheWorld social forum..next week to discuss a proposal for a World Citizens Movement. In spite of the terrible crime committed there we shall be gathering there to grapple with the same sort of matters as we are here in this Node. Is anyone else in this Node aside from Ashish Kothari heading to Tunis? If so it would be good to connect.( richard)

https://greattransition.org/forum-search?childforums=1&query=world%20social%20forum&searchdate=all&start=105
1 occurences of world social forum ( 23 june 2015 ashish)


I know from experience that if I go to a member of a global indigenous/peasant/fisher movement saying I'm part of a process that would like to catalyze a global movement, they will consider me overbearing or patronising and presumptuous. I'm sorry if this insults any sensibilities on this list, but I have been a bit uncomfortable about this from the start (some people on this list may recall I made points 4 and 5 already at at GTI/Widening Circles meeting during the Rio+20 meeting). Thanks for the opportunity and continued inspiration.

(Richard, perhaps you can also indicate how some of these issues may come into discussions at the TunistheWorld social forum.., where I hope to join you all?) ashish.

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When I started with GTI in 2004 going to thetheWorld social forum..and other gatherings of the global democracy movements, I recall a distinct hostility from many activists to the very notion of "shared vision"—this slightly older generation of activists was steeped in the texts of Hardt and Negri, Foucalt, and other anarchist philosophers who eschew shared visions as frameworks for domination. While much of these perspectives are alive and well (and have still a lot of merit), what I see is a younger generation learning the limits of theory as it steps forcefully into action.Orion

Last but not least, I would not be too romantic about the new forms of globalisation of social movements. See the rise and fall of thetheWorld social forum...PierreC

The vague internationalism of NGO-dominated efforts like thetheWorld social forum.., as well-meaning as they may be, certainly won't get us very far.
(Umair)

How to reach another world?

How Do We Get There? The Problem of Action
In his article, Paul brings up the issue of the problem of action to reach a planetary civilization. I find this debate encouraging as it serves as an opportunity to reflect on personal activism and my work at Ibase, in the 1990s UN big conferences cycle, in the 20th century, and in thetheWorld social forum.., mainly from 2001 to 2012.candido 2017

Sorry to intervene again. What strikes me is that everybody, although in different ways, is saying very much the same thing. And that’s inevitable because the current system is clearly not able to cope with the global crisis we face, and diagnoses all tend in the dame direction.

But this debate isn’t just starting now. We have had, since 1989, a flourishing of many different episodes, from Occupy Wall Street to thetheWorld social forum...roberto 2017

To give an example, from the 2000 French "allies," only three, according to our quota, would be part of the Assembly, while there were 50 Chinese and 50 Indians. From then, the four challenges of the transition identified by the Agenda have become the backbone of Fondation Charles Leopold Mayer pour le progrès de l'homme (fph) strategy. However, since the Assembly, it has become difficult to sustain the momentum. Many of the "militant" allies were more familiar with thetheWorld social forum..style, which would gather similar profiles from quite a limited number of countries. We tried to infuse theWSF with the reflections stemming from the Alliance, but there is a long way from an "anti" coalition of people who see globalized capitalism and finance as THE common and unique enemy to a "pro" alliance which is looking for a systemic transition. Therefore, fph decided not to keep supporting the whole process of the Alliance as we had not found financial allies to share the burden, one which was too heavy for a "small" foundation—small at least by American standards. We focused instead on supporting some follow-up, including the development of several stakeholders networks that assumed wider responsibility. pierreC 2017

Then what I read from the recent flurry of postings is that there is a distinct difference between GSC (global civil society) and GSM (global social movement) terrains. For me personally, the big NGOs are more part of the problem that part of the solution (betraying my '68 origins here!) insofar as they often work in support of neoliberalism, filling the gaps left in provision by a state in retreat. Nor are they democratic to be frank.

Among the ways forward in terms of constructing or at least enabling a new movement of movements (and I agree with the criticisms of the WSF though maybe from a different perspective) is the notion of 'translation' between different movements mentioned below and also the notion that a chain of equivalences can be built across movements seeking a common democratic denominator. This is not quite the same as looking for a 'common enemy' that leaves us on the defensive insofar as we need to imagine and do the foresight for a world beyond anti-social, anti-nature, anti-democratic, anti-equality world we live under.

That is a task that GTI (that I do not really know) might be able to drive assuming it does not have the reach or support to create a newtheWorld social forum... (ronaldo 2017)

Thank you, John Wood, for your sharp contribution. While I think that such a relational empowerment strategy is, theoretically, a correct approach, my long experience with Social Movement Organizations is that they go otherwise. They do not think in political terms, but in a niche world, making it difficult for them to coalesce around shared objectives.

They are born from different experiences. Sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos coined the concept of “translation” in the context of thetheWorld social forum... How can you translate the feminist movement into the indigenous movement? They have different priorities: the feminist movement’s goal is to end patriarchy; the indigenous movement’s focus is securing the respect of their space, identity.


At thetheWorld social forum..in Porto Alegre, two kinds of movements emerged. On one hand, there were those who found their legitimacy in fighting the system, as they did in Seattle during the WTO protests. The others where those coming on themes created in the UN space, like human rights, environment, development, etc., and they got their legitimacy from the UN, who recognized and legitimated their activism. The two sides took two years to coalesce, and tensions between the social movements and the NGOs never really ended.( roberto 2017)

The first is the Washington Consensus, and the neoliberal creed, which become “la pensée unique” from 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell, with the belief that history was at its end. This created an unprecedented counter-mobilization, with thetheWorld social forum..as a prime example. Nearly 100,000 people paid the costs of travels and hotels to be together, to share the same identity of resistant to the pensèe unique, and declare that another world was possible. In my view, those were nearly 20 years in which everybody was trained and conditioned to make greed the most important individual value. It took that time to find out that macroeconomic indicators did not catch the social and structural damages that neoliberal globalization was creating. In fact, I look at the 2006 conference of the Bretton Woods institutions, when the IMF, WB, and IDB, started to reclaim the role of the state, as the end of the credibility of Washington Consensus (in fact, it is much alive today: just go to Brussels and discuss with those at the EU).

But the sense of community of those two decades went exactly in our direction. Then the crisis of 2007 came, first in US and then in 2009 in Europe, and since them we have had one decade of fear as a common mobilizer. But in a different direction. Especially after the interventions in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, in which Europe sent bombs and they sent back refugees, the fear about the future has resurrected nationalism, populism, and xenophobia, which were only fringes before.

Now, these are two opposite directions of communality. And this, in my view, is the space for GTN.
This means, first, to go beyond the academy and link up especially with new actors. I agree that after nearly thirty years, the idea of social movements has lost its shine. The WSF is in a deep existential crisis. But why? Because the keepers of the Talmud (those who did not want to change a comma of the original chart of principles) made every effort to separate WSF from any political engagement for fear of contamination. So it became a kind of spiritual exercise, like you do in a church. You meet, you meditate, you make spiritual exercise, and you go back better and with deeper engagement, after having met many people like you…

In my view, Paul , the real challenge is not how, when, and where. It is why.

Why would people now make a network? In my view, today the keyword is identity( roberto 2017)


In a later post, I would like to reflect on feminist participation in thetheWorld social forum.., with which many of us have been engaged since the first Forum. The construction of solidarity politics within theWSFprocess is very interesting. But it is a process, and, as such, there continue to be debates among feminists and feminisms seeking to assert not only that a new world is possible but that *multiple* worlds, convergent, solidary, are possible.(Gina)
Feminism and Revolution: Looking Back, Looking Ahead


3. The analysis of the need for the construction of organizations or political platforms for action and political intervention on a global scale

Our fundamental strategic objective is thus defined, but it is not at all easy to achieve. And it is not, precisely, for all the reasons that Heikki Patomaki outlines in his essay. Especially because the awareness of global citizenship is still too weak. And the organizational expressions of such global citizenship are too erratic, too un-systemic, and too few.

The World Economic Forum in Davos has far outlasted thetheWorld social forum... The global social movements of the first decade of this century are practically extinct. The extraordinary and abundant work of many militants from many NGOs, from many organizations of the so-called civil society, especially around the processes of international organizations, is both laudable and too ineffective. From Copenhagen to Katowice, I have been able to follow the process of the Paris Agreement on climate change. The "Constituencies" of the "Major Groups" defined in Rio 92 have been transformed into "intermediate" bureaucracies that manage the limited passages for observers accesses at the negotiating meetings of States Parties. I could not identify any sentence from the approved texts that originated as a proposal from these organizations of civil society. Not because it is not possible (as was shown elsewhere in a not too distant past), but because there is currently a self-inhibition of these organizations in relation to this possibility. This means, in my opinion, that we are still unable to identify and mobilize the world citizens at the appropriate territorial level and / or on the correct political scale at which we should wor(josep)

A World Political Party: The Time Has Come


In recent years, we have seen renewed calls for more concerted political action, coordination, and platforms. In a 2006 essay, and more recently before his passing in August 2018, Samir Amin called for a Fifth International. In a number of articles since at least 2009, Christopher Chase-Dunn and his colleagues have examined prospects for the World Revolution of 20xx spearheaded by the New Global Left – groups critical of neoliberal capitalist globalization and which include popular forces, social movements, and progressive political parties and national regimes. Like Chase-Dunn and others, including the “Group of Nineteen” who penned the 2005 Porto Alegre Manifesto [1], I felt that thetheWorld social forum..constituted a site for such planning and coordination, if only it would revise its Charter of Principles and allow for the formulation of a political program and for cooperation with progressive political parties. But many within theWSFprefer that it remain a forum for dialogue.

In his 2006 essay, Samir Amin asks: Who will challenge the new imperialist order, and how? After criticizing those who “wish to maintain the WSF in a state of maximal impotence”, he takes a look back at the First, Second, and Third Internationals (he mentions in passing the Fourth, or Trotskyist, International), and concludes that it is time to move towards a Fifth International. I agree.( valentine 2019)

Following the comment from Nelson , I do think that the idea of a world political party is an inadequate answer to a well-argued analysis.

I was part of the first steps of thetheWorld social forum..and tried to help structure it to be better able to push forward strong proposals. However, as I stated at the very beginning of this century, there is a wide gap between an anti-system coalition and a pro-alternative alliance. This is why I remain faithful and confident in the process we developed in the nineties via the Alliance for a Responsible and United World, which culminated with the World Citizens Assembly in 2001: a steady and pluralistic process of dialogue among the stakeholders at the world level, structured in order to confront the analysis and elaborate sound perspectives such as the ones which came out of the Assembly, with the Agenda for the 21st century. At that time, the Alliance and the Assembly could be but a prototype of what should be done to help foster a global community. Many think now that it was too much in advance. Over the following decades, more people have become conscious of the need for such a process. GTN is one of the expressions of this growing consciousness. The time has probably come to launch such an alliance with a stronger constituency. It would in any case benefit from our decades-long experience as in the 21st century, we also explored new ways of dialog between the European and the Chinese society with the China Europa Forum (www.china-europa-forum.net).( pierre2019)



In life, everything has a cycle. A beginning, a middle, and an end. And what a beginning it was for thetheWorld social forum..(WSF). The year was 2001,(Pablo)


LOOKING AHEAD
Is there, then, a future for thetheWorld social forum..? Logistically, the outlook is not good. Right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, an ally of authoritarian strongmen around the world, has announced that he will forbid any support for the Forum, putting its future at grave risk. Holding a forum of such size requires significant financial support, and a government at least willing to grant visas to participants from across the globe. The vibrant Brazilian civil society groups of 2001 are now struggling for survival.

Indeed, right-wing governments around the world attack global civil society as a competitor or an enemy. In Italy, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has been pushing to eliminate the tax status of nonprofits. Like Salvini in Italy, Trump in the US, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Narendra Modi in India, and Shinzo Abe in Japan, among others, are unwilling to hear the voice of civil society. Their escalating assault on civil society might spell the formal end of thetheWorld social forum.., although theWSF’s refusal to evolve with the times left the organization vulnerable to such assaults.

If thetheWorld social forum..does fade away as an actor on the global stage, we can take many valuable lessons from its history as we mount new initiatives for a “movement of movements.”(roberto)


The goal of the human rights cities movement is to support local work that builds a bottom-up movement for a world where human rights are truly universal and indivisible. This movement is locally grounded, but consciously trans-local and global in orientation. Activists seek ideas and support from folks in other cities, and our national network draws a great deal of knowledge and energy from work with our counterparts outside the United States. A key strategy that orients actions is to build local human rights constituencies throughout the country—people who know their rights and are organized to defend them. While national governments ratify treaties and participate in UN processes, it is ultimately local officials who make and enforce decisions that relate most directly to international human rights laws and standards. Yet, many local officials are uninformed about international law. The human rights movement has learned through long years of struggle that it is up to organized communities, then, to become “human rights enforcers.”

In the words oftheWorld social forum..(and other) activists, “another world is possible,” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for!”
(Jackie)


Unfortunately local to global movements, whether on climate or other issues, have mostly been fragmented. And so therefore also either much easier for the system to co-opt, or sideline or undermine, or simply ignore. Platforms like the World Social Forum have attempted to bring together myriad movements, but have often focused mostly on critiquing and resisting the system ... itself vitally important, but not adequate.

A meta-movement is needed that also brings together with resistance/protest, the building and visioning of radical alternatives across the whole range of human endeavour and with the rest of nature firmly at the core.

Some activists and researchers have just launched the Global Tapestry of Alternatives as one such humble attempt, meant to provide a platform for alternative initiatives across the world to know about and learn from each other, build collaborations across sectors and geographies, and slowly build towards becoming a critical mass that is not restricted to any one sphere of activity, but encompasses the political, the economic, the social, the cultural (including spiritual), and the ecological. Over
30 global/regional networks and movements, and as many prominent individuals from around the world, have endorsed this. More is available atwww.globaltapestryofalternatives.org. I hope this can be one contribution towards a meta-movement that enables the fundamental, systemic change we so desperately need. ( Ashish)

Kim point about considering globalisation as two distinct social processes pulling in opposite directions is useful too. Union struggles are situated somewhere between the militarised corporate hegemony and a transcultural grassroots social justice movement. Unions as modernist institutions mainly engage with the top-down version of globalization, although a few union activists such as our late dear friend Peter Waterman, worked hard on alter-global initiatives like thetheWorld social forum... For as Immanuel Ness notes, when big union federations like the ITUC challenge multinational capital to improve worker conditions, this has little effect on ruling-class domination. ( Ariel)

https://greattransition.org/forum-search?childforums=1&query=WSF&searchdate=all

14 results but 127 currencies


But ….Is it a party what we need?

Since the word and the concept (at least in Mexico) are linked to political manipulative control, I would personally prefer to talk about (and head towards) a global coordination between networks, and networks of networks. Around the world there are such differences between organization strategies, between political cultures, between histories, that it is difficult to imagine one structured global organization. Maybe it would be more feasible to increase international linkages between grassroots and citizen movements around the world, and increase capacities in transnational social movements to coordinate views and strategies. The world social fora (WSF) could be more than venues and become a permanent linkage mechanism. A mechanism for (relatively) rapid decision-making could be created without having a few political leaders concentrating a lot of power. This risk should be avoided! (Lessons learnt from experiences in Mexico…)
Gerardo Alatorre

In recent years, we have seen renewed calls for more concerted political action, coordination, and platforms. In a 2006 essay, and more recently before his passing in August 2018, Samir Amin called for a Fifth International. In a number of articles since at least 2009, Christopher Chase-Dunn and his colleagues have examined prospects for the World Revolution of 20xx spearheaded by the New Global Left – groups critical of neoliberal capitalist globalization and which include popular forces, social movements, and progressive political parties and national regimes. Like Chase-Dunn and others, including the “Group of Nineteen” who penned the 2005 Porto Alegre Manifesto [1], I felt that the World Social Forum constituted a site for such planning and coordination, if only it would revise its Charter of Principles and allow for the formulation of a political program and for cooperation with progressive political parties. But many within theWSFprefer that it remain a forum for dialogue.

In his 2006 essay, Samir Amin asks: Who will challenge the new imperialist order, and how? After criticizing those who “wish to maintain the WSF in a state of maximal impotence”, he takes a look back at the First, Second, and Third Internationals (he mentions in passing the Fourth, or Trotskyist, International), and concludes that it is time to move towards a Fifth International. I agree. (valentine)


I support Heikki call for a world political party. The great transition to a just, sustainable flourishing civilization requires the support of existing and new institutions. Patomäki observation that "shared problems require shared action" is more critical every day. The time has come for organized, strategic, and effective coordinated action. This is a theme that was explored in the GTN last year and still needs attention and design.

Heikki clearly points to the problems facing our world, and to the problems and weakness of efforts like theWSFHe also points to the problems of our faulty thinking and the lack of a compelling meta-narrative that could unite humans. He offers "Big History" as a potential meta-narrative, which I think is a good scientific story. ( @manuel)


And, there are several matters I would like to explore with him:

Given the many features of today’s landscape, including the testiness, if not outright verbal violence, now associated with political parties, what is the core of the case for creating a global political party? What grounds do you have for your apparent confidence that the likely outcome of such an initiative at this time will not be a further escalation of divisiveness, emotional violence, and the corrupt use of power?

*You note that thetheWSFis not well-conceived, nor well-structured. I accept that. Given my first question, why do you not consider the possibility of making a commitment to secure adequate funding for thetheWSF, enough to re-create its institutional infrastructure as a sound functioning body and not merely an open space forum? At first glance, this option appears to me to be both more desirable and more achievable.(@ruben)


There was no singular "anti-globalization movement"; rather, this wave of contentious action was made up of a host of diverse vectors of struggle that came together around common points and then diverged significantly at other moments. More problematically, at these moments of divergence, liberals, NGOs, the aristocracy of labour, and a host of political party representatives often sought to capitalize on more radical elements of the struggle by translating movement successes into political capital that could be used to buy institutional access, seats at the table of the powerful. Indeed, thetheWSFwhich Heikki holds up as another manifestation of this desire for "global political agency" is another complicated and deeply compromised outcome of the alter-globalization movement. ThetheWSFhas been criticized for many things, some of which Heiki discusses, but two important issues he does not name are the hierarchical and unaccountable nature of its organizing committee and its repudiation of solidarity with any struggle that is armed. It's also worth noting that the WSF has also accepted corporate sponsorship.

Hardly an inspiring example of an alternative political formation. (@alex)

In a later post, I would like to reflect on feminist participation in the World Social Forum, with which many of us have been engaged since the first Forum. The construction of solidarity politics within thetheWSFprocess is very interesting. But it is a process, and, as such, there continue to be debates among feminists and feminisms seeking to assert not only that a new world is possible but that *multiple* worlds, convergent, solidary, are possible.
@Gina


We tried to infuse thetheWSFwith the reflections stemming from the Alliance, but there is a long way from an "anti" coalition of people who see globalized capitalism and finance as THE common and unique enemy to a "pro" alliance which is looking for a systemic transition. Therefore, fph decided not to keep supporting the whole process of the Alliance as we had not found financial allies to share the burden, one which was too heavy for a "small" foundation—small at least by American standards. We focused instead on supporting some follow-up, including the development of several stakeholders networks that assumed wider responsibility.(@pierre calame)

Among the ways forward in terms of constructing or at least enabling a new movement of movements (and I agree with the criticisms of theWSF though maybe from a different perspective) is the notion of 'translation' between different movements mentioned below and also the notion that a chain of equivalences can be built across movements seeking a common democratic denominator. This is not quite the same as looking for a 'common enemy' that leaves us on the defensive insofar as we need to imagine and do the foresight for a world beyond anti-social, anti-nature, anti-democratic, anti-equality world we live under.

That is a task that GTI (that I do not really know) might be able to drive assuming it does not have the reach or support to create a new World Social Forum.(@ronaldo)


This means, first, to go beyond the academy and link up especially with new actors. I agree that after nearly thirty years, the idea of social movements has lost its shine. TheWSFis in a deep existential crisis. But why? Because the keepers of the Talmud (those who did not want to change a comma of the original chart of principles) made every effort to separatetheWSF from any political engagement for fear of contamination. So it became a kind of spiritual exercise, like you do in a church. You meet, you meditate, you make spiritual exercise, and you go back better and with deeper engagement, after having met many people like you…

In my view, Paul , the real challenge is not how, when, and where. It is why. (@ roberto)

A couple of more quick comments:
(1) while i agree with you that the internet can be an enabler of global democracy, there needs to be a movement to save the internet itself from the global state and corporate powers that today control it ... at the Tunis World Social Forum there was a move for an Internet Social Forum, I am not sure what the contours and current status are (there is a parallel discussion going on this in onetheWSFlist) but it will mean an independent infrastructure and system that is under democratic control;

(2) while I also agree on trying to get some momentum from the Pope's statement, lets make sure we are sensitive to the complexities of promoting one religious leader (I'm sure you are, esp. in your idea of rallying other religious leaders around it, but I'm just stating it explicitly!).