My comment-input on input#11/ Would the WSF be a movement or a space? by chico

@1 At the end of last year, during the electoral campaign in Brazil that led to the sad situation in which we are now living here, I wrote a long text about the WSF’s future, to be published in an upcoming collection by Routledge. 

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@2 In this text, I tried to identify the divergences of opinion among the WSF’s Organizing Committee in 2001 and why this Committee decided to give the WSF the character of a space and not a movement, this decision leading to a growing interest of people in the WSF all over the world. This first forum had 20,000 participants and not only the 2,000 we expected; the ones of Porto Alegre in 2005 and Belem in 2009 each had 150,000 participants. 

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@3 I tried to show in the text that this Organizing Committee decision was not a previous theoretical one but a result of a process of discussion on the special exigencies of creating a new tool for planetary civil society as a political actor facing capitalism as an economic and cultural regime. 

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@4 The text finishes with propositions on the WSF’s future considering the still absolute necessity of continuing to have as many open critical spaces as possible—at the world, regional, and local levels as well as on specific themes—where to reflect on the action in course as well as to inspire and create conditions to launch as many and diverse as possible civil society and parties new actions and movements, to struggle against the capitalism monster that is menacing more and more the continuity of life in our planet.   

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