Tom, Many thanks for you ongoing work. rkm http://cyberjournal.org ============================================================================ Delivered-To: •••@••.••• Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 12:58:20 -0800 To: •••@••.••• (cii-lo list) From: Tom Atlee <•••@••.•••> Subject: Reports from a global grassroots gathering Dear friends, Over the past weeks a number of people have sent or forwarded me reports about the remarkable grassroots World Social Forum in Porto Alegre Brazil in January. I've collected and excerpted some of them for you here, including a taste of the simultaneous confab of the powers that be in Davos, Switzerland. I start with some notes on how poorly reported the WSF was in US media. Coheartedly, Tom _ _ __ __ _ The World Social Forum here in southern Brazil is being reported around the planet as an oppositional counterpoint to the annual bash in Davos, where corporate leaders have been gathering for three decades at their World Economic Forum retreat. In contrast, the gathering in Porto Alegre is dedicated to another set of goals, under a banner profound in its simplicity: "A different world is possible." Five subversive words. The unofficial slogan of the Davos elites -- and of present-day corporate domination -- could be "A different world is impossible, and we intend to keep it that way."... It's literally impossible at this point for any one person to fully describe what has been happening in Porto Alegre, with so many plenary sessions and workshops going on (four plenaries at a time, for instance, and hundreds of workshops over the course of the week). But it's safe to say that something extraordinary has been taking place here, at once as unpredictable and predictable as what occurred in Seattle a little more than a year ago. Feel it in the air, wonder if you're getting carried away, ask colleagues and friends for their impressions -- and the responses keep coming back: agreement that the levels of discussion, organization, and possibilities for follow-up are exceedingly high. -- Norman Solomon, "Letter from Porto Alegre to ZNet" As part of the movement to challenge neo-liberalism, about 4,700 delegates and 10,000 other people from 122 countries participated in the first-ever World Social Forum to share information and develop strategies....But in the United States, even the most avid news consumers didn't learn much about this auspicious convergence. Don't blame the wire services. For a week, some of the world's biggest - including the Associated Press - produced a steady stream of informative news reports from Porto Alegre. But the day after the World Social Forum adjourned, when I did a search of the comprehensive Nexis database, it was clear that the event didn't make the U.S. media cut." -- Norman Solomon "From Global South's Side of the Media Looking Glass" _ _ _ _ __ excerpts from a report by Vicki Robin THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM From January 25-30 I attended the WORLD SOCIAL FORUM in Porto Alegre, Brazil. It was designed to mirror the Davos, Switzerland World Economic Forum, an annual confab of the leaders of governments and business notorious for embodying the interests of money and power. Intentionally held at the same time, but in the Southern Hemisphere, the WSF boldly asserted that it's the stupid economy (code: neo-liberalism, corporate globalization, all policies that value money more than life) that is creating untold and unnecessary suffering. "Another world is possible," the Forum declared - one run on principles of participatory democracy, social inclusion, justice, ecological responsibility and respect for the First Peoples. I SURVIVED THE WSF On the 6th and final day, freshly minted T-shirts appeared for sale that said, "I participated!" I got the T-shirt out of a slightly giddy sense that I'd been part of an historic event that had moved me deeply without my really understanding all that had happened. So here's one snapshot. Every day there were four concurrent morning sessions and 100 afternoon workshops. The crowds were steady at over 4,000 (1,500 non-Brazilians) and swelling for some events to 15,000. Almost 1,900 people from the press showed up, sporting cameras, notebooks and fishing vests loaded with film; they converged on every famous person or protest photo-op (I learned to be where "it" was happening by locating the densest bristle of lenses). Over 120 nations were represented, as well as hundreds of NGO's. I encountered a politically more sophisticated range of critiques than I'd ever tried to understand. Most events were in Portuguese. I could have just claimed, "I survived." WHAT IF SEATTLE HAD CELEBRATED THE 50,000 PROTESTERS? But for all the challenges of the week, I reveled in this first post-Seattle/WTO effort to collectively take the next step towards aligning the full spectrum of voices in this broad anti-corporate globalization movement. This time there was no contention with the local police and power structure. In fact, Porto Alegre and the whole state of Rio Grande do Sul welcomed the participants and even underwrote the event. This state has had a Leftist Worker's party in power for 12 years and prides itself on its participatory budget where citizens get to say how a portion of the revenues will be allocated. The governor opened the event to a cheering multitude waving Worker's Party flags. The police protected us from harm during our huge, carnival-like march. The whole city was decked with affirming banners with the logo - an earth in the shape of a heart - and the motto, "Another World Is Possible". It truly felt that way. THE THUMBNAIL WSF As the dust settles, the two main events in the news are these: INDOMINABLE BOVE Jose Bove (the French farmer now famous for having bulldozed a McDonald's), together with 1,300 farmers, destroyed five acres of genetically engineered soybeans at a nearby Monsanto farm. He'd aligned himself with the Landless Peasant's Movement (MST) - a widespread, powerful peasant group that is closing the rich-poor gap by squatting on, and eventually claiming, unused land. Transcending the WTO arguments between developed and developing world farmers, they declared brotherhood against agri-business and for redistribution of land, social justice and environmental protection. Bove encouraged the MST to reoccupy the Monsanto farm and turn it into an environmentally friendly operation. For this calculated prank (Bove is a seasoned activist and his actions only appear to be spontaneous and individually conceived), he was ordered out of the country on 24 hours notice. With 1900 members of the press watching, a federal judge wisely over-rode the order. Instantly, someone produced stickers that said "Somos todos Jose Bove" (We are all Jose Bove), and they were soon seen on thousands of participant's chests. PORTO ALEGRE AND DAVOS The miracle was that Davos and Porto Alegre were both addressing the nasty by-product of Neo-liberalism - the fact that the number of global losers is at epidemic proportion. This was highlighted by the one-million dollar trans-Atlantic satellite debate took place between Davos participants (George Soros, Bjorn Edlund from the multi-national corporation ABB, John Ruggie from Kofi Annan's office in the UN and Mark Malloch Brown, administrator of the UNDP) and a handful Porto Alegre spokespeople, women and men of every race from global citizen's movements. While Davos and Porto Alegre both were apparently devoted to the integration of the poor and marginalized into society, the worldviews of these two gathering were so far apart that the debate was more like two trains whizzing by one another on different tracks. For Porto Alegre, globalization was a deadly business, leaving poverty, death, cultural disintegration and ecological devastation in its wake. The panel was in no mood for empty promises and expressions of concern. VERBAL SALVOS IN A WAR OF WORLDVIEWS In fact, the eminent intellectual Walden Bello opened with, "We live on two different planets: Davos, the planet of the superrich, Porto Alegre, the planet of the poor, the marginalized, the concerned... The best gift that the 2000 corporate executives at Davos can give to the world is for them to board a spaceship and blast off for outer space. The rest of us will definitely be much better off without them." And that was a very contained expression of anger and frustration compared with some others. Bjorn Edlun tried to move towards agreement on solutions, but recognized that the eloquent emissaries of the systematically excluded were in no mood for negotiating. They needed to be heard. They need Davos - the mentality, not the meeting - to stunningly see the full implications of their actions. Malloch concluded: "We have to find way to overcome this. This is not healthy, what we've heard tonight." Soros commented: "It showed it is not easy to dialogue...I don't particularly like to be abused. My masochism has its limits." Yet the very fact that these Davos participants chose to meet via satellite with Porto Alegre was a victory all its own. The unrelenting protests of the last year have shown that the billions who are being left behind as "progress" accelerates will not shut up or go away. Eventually, they will be heard. I hope, through real dialogue.... [ Note: A complete transcript and video of the dialogue can be found at <http://www.madmundo.tv/francais/globaldiv/index.html> -- Carol Brouillet ] MST/THE LANDLESS PEASANT'S MOVEMENT I visited one of the many rural communes of the MST. As I understand it (and remember I missed a lot since most of my sources spoke Portuguese or gave hurried translations into Spanish or English) the MST is one of the largest and most successful peasant's networks in the world. It works for national land reform movement fights for land equability and other basic social rights such as education. Through skillfully working every aspect of the system, they have been able to do numerous farmers' encampments on underutilized (and already cleared) land and, with funding from the Brazilian government, eventually come to buy the property from the extremely wealthy owners. After years of such successes - which include free housing, cooperative living, humane animal husbandry, organic crop production and effective distribution networks - they recently started taking on big political issues like canceling Brazil's crushing external debt. Needless to say, this has made them less the darlings of the government and there is currently some backlash against them. The rural commune I visited with a busload of savvy political and agrarian reform activists from around the world was a model of order and intelligence - at least the parts we saw. I loved being part of the two-hour discussion which included a barrage of such hard questions as what's the role of women, who makes the decisions, what do you do with conflict, how do you keep the younger generation engaged and what political ideology undergirds their operation? Interestingly, they reported that the Brazilian government is now encouraging individual ownership of small plots of land, rather than the collective ownership and governance. The MST is resisting, recognizing that once individuals own their parcels, they will be tempted to sell them off for cash and the process of concentration of land and wealth in the hands of the few will begin again. Not only that, they would lose their growing power to press for change. This reminded me of one of the ways the West was won here in the US - by insisting on individual ownership and hierarchical governance among the Native tribes, ostensibly to facilitate treaty making. This cracking open of the tribal identity and bonds was one of the most powerful forces for reshaping this continent. Individualism again. It creates powerful incentives for innovation - but at what cost?.... AN IMPRESSIVE NETORK OF NETWORKS ....Over the course of days I met a variety of quite distinct individuals who, it turned out, were all affiliated with the Alliance for a Responsible, Plural and United World. There was a forest activist, a internationally recognized feminist, a bunch of high-spirited youth leaders, a advocate for Palestinian rights, many French humanists - all merrily banded together in this serious effort to coordinate towards another kind of "globalization." This network of networks describes itself this way: "A worldwide collective process inspired by a humanist ideal. It has taken up the challenge of building a future where people live in a world of unity and diversity. The Alliance dynamics are driven by a colossal ambition: to invent new forms of collective action at the local and global levels, and bring them to bear upon the future of an increasingly complex and interdependent world. Everyone can make changes to their individual lives, but for collective change, thinking and action must be undertaken collectively." Check out their web site at www.echo.org. WHAT PORTO ALEGRE MEANT TO ME A thriving, sustainable and equitable way of life for all will not happen by accident. I suspect it won't even happen through isolated well meaning efforts of many visionary individuals and small groups. It needs intention, shared vision and collective action. I believe Porto Alegre was a vital step in consciously, though sometimes contentiously banding together to do the difficult, thrilling, exacting work of identifying and upholding the world we the people collectively want. TOLERATING THE CHAOS OF PROTEST Most people were attentive and respectful. Some were disgruntled with aspects of the process; even this meeting protesting the marginalization of billions managed to exclude some groups from the planning and the plenaries. Some subgroups used protest techniques of banner dropping and drowning proceedings in angry chants to express themselves. They were mostly tolerated, sometimes hushed by the majority and always photographed. It's this splintering in the opposition that "the powers that be" tend to count on to undermine protest - "Perhaps we don't have to deal with them, perhaps they will just chew each other up." VISIONARY ACTIVISM Yet these ideological skirmishes were few in Porto Alegre. It seemed to me that the anti-corporate-globalization movement is coherent enough and has experienced enough victories to be entering a new phase of activism. For want of a better term, I'm calling it visionary activism - putting our cooperative muscle into coherently presenting the philosophies, policies and projects we've been fostering and creating through dialogue a plausible yet radical vision for a future we are willing to work on together. People like me who have been apolitical will need to enter the messy fray. Ideologues who've championed single issues or single historical interpretations will, I believe, need to loosen up their "hardening of the categories" enough to respond freshly to the world as it is today. WE'RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE TOTO - AND WE KNOW IT There is a real battle going on in the world today. The community of life is being diminished and is being increasingly privatized, placed in the hands of the few. The momentum in the system is so great that even with slowing down we are still hurtling towards extinctions and overshoot. I, at least, feel a painful urgency when I face these facts. The people on the front lines defending the boundaries of the wild and the free are serving us all. So are the intellectuals fighting with their sharp minds and lucid analysis - as are the teachers and lawyers and politicians who are educating in classrooms and courtrooms. And so are the lovers and poets and artists and shamans who are connected with the heart of life and keeping that channel open for all of us. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, we have unleashed a multiplying misery by playing with very large forces, and none of us can afford to be asleep at this time. _ _ _ _ _ _ __ Excerpt from Carol Brouillet's "Report on the World Social Forum" On the first day, the number of delegates (4702) far exceeded the 2500 person limit of the auditorium. Earphones were available for translation in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. There were short speeches, and welcomes to delegates from each country- Brazil, Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay and Mexico were most warmly greeted. When the United States was named, I was surprised to find myself standing, almost alone, and heard "boo." I tried not to take it personally. There were 1509 international delegates, including 349 Europeans and 39 North Americans. There were also 1870 press and over one thousand working staff. We were amazed by the level of support given by the government, including sixty computers available for journalists. An indigenous woman, costumed and painted, bare breasted, made the most eloquent statement, in dance, movement, gesture and word. There was also drumming, music, a parade of people, including children, marching across the stage, slowly changing from downtrodden to active and participatory while images of the homeless, forgotten, suffering were flashed on two large screens on both sides of the room. In the spirit of Seattle, Prague, Melbourne, Seoul, we were all encouraged to join in a march for life, a march of solidarity. I just followed some children and a three-headed hydra, representing the IMF, World Bank and the WTO. Probably 15,000 marched the whole way to an open air concert and a beautiful sunset at a large park by the river. _ _ _ _ _ __ _ MAUDE BARLOW'S REPORT ON HER TRIP TO THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL, JANUARY 24-31 Maude Barlow, a leading critic of corporate globalization, heads the Council of Canadians http://www.canadians.org/. "A Different World is Possible" I said, and meant it, that my heart would have been broken had I been unable to attend the first annual World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, last month. It was billed at first as the "anti-Davos" Summit, as it was deliberately held at the same time as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where the world's business and political elite meet annually to ski, sip champagne, and plan the next stages of economic globalization. As it turns out, however, the World Social Forum was much, much more than a counterpoint to the WEF; it was, in fact, the launching pad for a global civil society movement that will transform the world. Porto Alegre was a deliberate choice of venue..... Porto Alegre was chosen for the first World Social Forum because of its symbolism of civil society democracy in action and its stark contrast to Davos, playground to the wealthy. The Summit Here is how the Summit, whose official slogan was, "A Different World is Possible" was described in the official program: "From January 25 to 30, 2001, citizens from all continents who are engaged in the construction of a new world will inaugurate the new millennium by participating in the first World Social Forum in the city of Porto Alegre, state of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil. "The forum is a milestone of hope and a new international arena for reflection and for the organization of those who question neoliberalism and are building alternatives to enable human development and to overcome market supremacy inside each country and in international relations. "The proposal to create the World Social Forum results from mobilizations in Europe against the MAI, in 1998; from the demonstrations in Seattle, U.S.A., during the WTO meeting in November, 1999; and from the demonstrations in Washington, D.C. against World Bank and IMF policies. These mobilizations - and many others - have marked the emergence of a new worldwide civic movement of resistance to neoliberalism, that goes beyond national borders. "Therefore, in January, 2001, while those who defend neoliberal thinking convene at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, thousands of people who fight for a world without exclusions get together at the First World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. Two great themes are the focus of the forum: wealth and democracy. The theme of world wealth addresses the formation, concentration and distribution of wealth and the subthemes employment, environment, and freedom of financial capital. In the debate concerning democracy, the democratic limitation of national states before the ample operating freedom of financial capital, as well as the power of organs such as the IMF will be analyzed. "The World Social Forum provides an environment for formulating strategies, sharing experiences, and promoting exchange between organizations, movements, and people whose challenge is to build a better future for humanity. A different world is possible. Let us start building it together in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil." (See why I had to be there?) The event was overwhelming by any one's standards. Organizers expected 1,600 participants; they had over 10,000 plus over 1,800 journalists. There were probably a couple of dozen Canadians in attendance; too many to list, but they included the Council's own Hassan Yussuff (CLC) and Tony Clarke (Polaris Institute), Patty Berrera of Common Frontiers, Diana Bronson of Rights and Democracy, Jacques Tousignant of the University of Quebec, Dorval Brunelle of UQAM, Robin Round of the Halifax Initiative, Diane Matte, of the Women's March, Monique Simard of Alternatives, writer Naomi Klein, Mark Lee of CCPA, Vancouver and Jessie Smith of RAIN. VIPs included former French first lady and human rights activist, Danielle Mitterand; Guatemalan Nobel Peace prize-winner Rigoberta Menchu, Chilean writer, Ariel Dorfman, Uruguayan poet and historian Eduardo Galeano; Bolivian uprising leader, Oscar Olivera; Brazilian Workers' Party leader, Lula da Silva, Joao Pedro Stedile, head of the Landless Peasants' Movement in Brazil, French farmer, and anti-McDonald's activist, Jose Bove; Portuguese Nobel laureate writer Jose Saramago; and Algerian liberation leader, Ahmed Ben Bella. The opening ceremony, featuring fabulous poetry and drumming, as well as a true welcome from local and state politicians, was followed by a huge, colourful march of at least 20,000, through the city. Police, smiling and friendly, were in attendance to see that the marchers were safe from passing traffic; from their windows on the march route, thousands of waving local residents threw paper birds that gently circled down upon us like snow. All events were held at the Catholic University, an amazing and huge venue. Every morning, four simultaneous plenary sessions took place (translated into four languages), and hundreds of workshops were held in the afternoons on every aspect of trade, agriculture, human rights, the environment, labour rights, democracy, violence and civil society, to name just a few topics. At the end of each day, "testimonials" from writers and activists, many who had laid their lives on the line in the fight for justice against repressive regimes, were given to packed crowds. Each evening, wonderful musicians played to thousands of delegates and locals at the famed Sunset Amphitheatre overlooking Guaiba Lake, near the university. As well, all throughout the week, groups were gathered sharing information, exchanging names, and planning for protests and actions, both globally and locally. I was invited to speak on a plenary panel on the future of nation states that was chaired by Ricardo Alarcon, the President of the Cuban Parliament, and it was a hot panel, I can assure you. Ricardo Alarcon got into a fierce debate with some from the audience who demanded to discuss democracy in Cuba. His answer (the questioners were American) challenging the recent American election as being the most anti-democratic event in modern history, brought down the house. We were virtually pinned down by dozens and dozens of reporters. In my talk, I said, "Look around you. This is what democracy looks like. And this is what winning looks like." A hit of a statement, I can tell you! There is no way to describe the feeling of being in one place with ten thousand people from all over the world whose views you share. Sure, there are huge differences in our ages, backgrounds, and experiences. But the energy of hope and transformation that flowed through that place was awesome. Thirty-five degree heat didn't stop anyone from sitting through hours-long seminars in stuffy windowless rooms. People were there at all hours of the day from early morning to late evening, not wanting to miss one testimonial, one spontaneous dance, or speech, or demonstration. Oh, yes, there were demonstrations - on abortion, on public education on water privatization, and many other topics. Most were friendly demos inside what was essentially itself a great big demo. At one point on the last day, there were at least a half dozen large demonstrations going on at once, filling the grand hall with music, chants and shouts of solidarity. (I mused that things at Davos were likely a tad different.) But some were pointed at the Summit itself. People of colour make up half of Brazil's population, but were not represented on the organizing committee at all or in the plenaries and workshops in adequate numbers. Organizers promised to rectify this next year. And France's Jose Bove was detained by police for, with 1,300 farmers from the Brazilian Landless Workers' Movement, destroying five acres of soybeans at a local Monsanto farm. Never for a moment was there silence; music, extemporaneous dance, people in their own dress from all over the world: this was the true United Nations of peoples. The Mothers of the Plaza, and of the Disappeared from several countries were visible everywhere; mostly very elderly, bent, small women, they had embroidered the names of their dead and disappeared into beautiful little blue and white head scarfs. Every time I saw one of these women, my throat constricted and I fought back tears. Much work was done on the Council of Canadian's main campaigns during the week. The issue of food security and corporate concentration in agriculture was a key theme of the Summit. Genetically modified foods and biotech issues were front and centre all week. No matter where one went, people were talking about water, and we were able to tell them about our Water for People and Nature conference coming up in July. We held meetings on our international anti-GATS campaign and a number of workshops were held by the Hemispheric Social Alliance to advance our work against the FTAA and to plan for protests in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Quebec City, both in April. I got wonderful contacts for my FTAA paper, which is being translated into Portuguese, Spanish and French. In the closing plenary, it was decided to hold the Summit in Porto Alegre again next year and then it will move to different venues, but always at the same time as the WEF in Davos. (Who knows how long Switzerland will want to host this corporate Summit, given the protests and the police over-reaction to them in both Davos and Zurich?) As well, there was a closing statement, the Porto Alegre Appeal for Mobilization. Peoples and groups around the world are exhorted to fight the "hegemony of finance, the destruction of cultures, the monopolisation of knowledge and of the mass communications media, the degradation of nature and the destruction of the quality of life" carried out by transnational corporations and the global trade and financial institutions that promote them. The statement called for cancellation of the foreign debt, reparations for colonization by wealthy countries, a tax on financial speculation, and a global trade system that ensures full employment, food security and fair terms of exchange. Agrarian reform, a ban on GMOs, public control of food and water, a halt to patenting of life forms; these and other demands were clear areas of consensus from the Summit. But more important than any words on paper was the extraordinary feeling of being present at the birth of a movement and watching it form the fundamental characteristics and values that will guide it. The Porto Alegre Summit, says Ronnie Hall of Friends of the Earth, UK, proved several very important things about our new movement: contrary to the charges against it by mainstream politicians and some media pundits, it is diverse, peaceful, very well informed, and not just a northern phenomenon with a northern agenda. In fact, as another observer noted, the Forum was nurtured in the logistical, political, ethical and spiritual context of the civil society project of Porto Alegre and the liberation politics of the South. Out of Porto Alegre emerged a movement whose time has come. An unstoppable force with passion, insight, and an alternative vision of the future was born in that hot January week. Just to be there was magic. _ _ _ _ _ __ What I Learned from the World Social Forum by Starhawk 31 Jan 2001 Although I've spent a lot of the last year and a half at antiglobalization actions and meetings, many of which included forums of various sorts, and although in at least some of my incarnations I am a Respectable Adult with a college education and books to my credit who even gets asked to speak at conferences and universities, and even though some of my best friends work for NGOs, this is the first time I've actually made it up out of the direct action trenches and into the conference rooms. I found it highly educational (although like most university education it had its moments of airless, deadly boredom.) The amazing number of participants, thousands more than expected, coupled with limited translation facilities and a high degree of confusion meant that I often didn't get to workshops I would have liked to attend or didn't know about events until after they happened. What follows, therefore, is an extremely limited picture of all the immensity of discussion and debate and strategizing and organizing that went on around hundreds of issues. In order to get this out, I've limited my focus to issues that affect groups I'm currently working with. WATER: Water is a key issue worldwide, as there is a strong push from corporate interests to privatize water resources and water delivery services. The FTAA, the WTO, and a whole list of smaller bilateral and regional trade agreements open the door to the privatization of water. For me, this issue had eerie echoes of the negative society I imagined in my novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, where the poor could not afford to drink and people were imprisoned for stealing water. The antiglobalization movement now must assert that water is a human right, linked to the right to life. There is no substitute for water; therefore there must be a limit to private ownership and control of water resources. WOMEN'S ISSUES: Are key in the antiglobalization struggle. There was a powerful workshop on feminist perspectives on globalization, and many other workshops on women's issues. The main morning panels, however, tended to be quite male dominated, and there was much talk of the need for an even stronger focus on women. I was able to connect individually with some of the women working on antiglobalization, and hope that our women's action in Quebec City in April will bring our issues more to the forefront. There was great interest in it among women I met and as soon as the call is finalized I will be able to get it out to some of the women's networks I've connected with here. INDIGENOUS PEOPLES' STRUGGLES: For me, the most moving and clear talks I heard in the entire five days were two indigenous speakers who spoke so heartfully and poetically (and in such clear, blessedly slow Spanish!) that I felt like I was drinking cool, spring water after days of stale coffee. There was an encampment of youth, the MST (Landless Rural Workers' Movement) and indigenous groups, but unfortunately it was separate from the main campus and also there was no clear announcement of the fact that there were ongoing meetings, speeches and presentations of the indigenous people's networks. Had I known, I probably would have spent most of the conference there. As it was, I got there only almost at the end, in time to learn that the situation in Chiapas is not happily resolved under Vicente Fox, that he is also trying to outlaw abortion, and that the growing struggle in Chiapas will also focus on water rights. High on the corporate agenda is control of the hydroelectric potential represented by Chiapas' rivers: Bay Area folks, take note in light of our current energy 'crisis'! THE FTAA: I knew about the FTAA, I knew it was bad enough that I'm devoting most of my time currently to organizing against it, but I didn't know in detail just how bad it is: PRIVATIZATION OF SERVICES: Education, medical care, libraries, water delivery - the FTAA would open those areas to regulation by international trade agreements. It's one of the things the WTO hadn't quite gotten around to yet. Presumably, that could mean a corporation that runs prisons could sue a government for providing its own and thereby limiting its potential profits. Ditto with water, schools, health care, etc. Of course, for most countries in Latin America the World Bank and the IMF have already dealt with their health care and educational systems. But the FTAA would make it difficult or impossible for local or national governments to take control of their own schools, health care programs, or utilities and run them for the benefit of their own citizens instead of for corporate profit. AGRICULTURE - probably the most important aspect for the South, for farmers and indigenous people. The agreement would make it impossible to support small farmers, to ensure biosafety standards around genetically engineered foods and seeds, to prevent market manipulations and crop dumping that destroys traditional cultures. NATURAL RESOURCES AND THE ENVIRONMENT: The agreement would undermine every legislative and regulatory tool for conservation of resources and environmental protection, from the Endangered Species Act on down, and override local and federal laws. INVESTMENT - remember the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, that was defeated back in '97 by the opposition of civil society? This agreement brings it back, opening the door to 'investors' rights' to control of government regulations and financial systems. END RUN AROUND THE WTO: The FTAA, along with a whole lot of other bilateral and smaller multilateral agreements, are part of the new strategy of the corporate globalists. Since the body blow that was dealt to the WTO in Seattle, what they're trying to do is put in place piecemeal the provisions they couldn't yet put into the WTO. The WTO: May or may not hold it's next meeting in Quatar in November - although the media is reporting it as a sure thing, it will actually be a couple of weeks before they confirm the decision. It is less of a priority for corporate interests, however, because their strategy has shifted to bilateral and regional trade agreements that essentially put its noxious provisions into place. DIRECT ACTION: We did do one forum on direct action in FTAA organizing, with groups from Brazil and Argentina. But in general direct action is sort of the stepchild of the NGO world. It happens around the edges: the MST (The Landless Rural Workers Movement) did a great action pulling up bioengineered crops on the first day of the conference. Unfortunately we were still en route and couldn't take part. The Respectable Adults know about direct action; they often support it, and some of them actually take part in it. The introduction to the Forum Schedule credits the movement sparked by Seattle and DC and Prague. But many of the groups seem to have a bit of difficulty actually focusing on the direct action component of that movement or thinking about it as part of their strategy. Of course, they have funding to protect, so maybe they're better off not linking to us too directly. Maybe we don't need joint strategies and these parallel worlds can just continue to exist semi-separately. But I can't help but think that we're their best friends - we're the reason why the World Bank is going to read a letter of protest with alarm and concern, or look at a petition, or pretend to have a dialogue. And that it might be nice occasionally, or smart strategically, for that to be a little more clearly acknowledged. Our direct action movement gains a lot when we do work together with the groups which have a level of sophistication and expertise that paid staff can develop - for example, in our San Francisco organizing around the FTAA there are a number of NGOs and also some union people who bring an incredible amount of knowledge and sophistication to the issues. But I'd also like to see more of the high level strategists come down to the convergence center and actually listen to the anarchists and the dreadlocked youth and the black bloc who have a level of radical clarity that can get lost after years of reading reports and pressing for minor policy changes. Anyway, I amused myself by tossing out radical proposals: "Great, you guys send out a joint letter of protest and meanwhile we'll shut down every major stock exchange on the planet." And some people seemed genuinely interested. There are, however, awesome groups down here that are organizing around direct action. There are groups in Sao Paolo, Belo Horizonte and Buenos Aires that did solidarity actions around the S26 protests in Prague and are now gearing up for actions around the preliminary FTAA (ALCA in Spanish) meeting April 7 in Buenos Aires. They're serious, determined and radical - the Argentinians want to make the Quebec City protests unnecessary by shafting the FTAA before it ever gets to Quebec. It's a joy and a privilege to be down here sharing some of our experiences and helping in that endeavor. Starhawk is a longtime grassroots direct action activist in the San Francisco Bay Area, and a leader in socially-conscious Wiccan circles. She is author of the utopian novel "The Fifth Sacred Thing", among other books. _ _ _ _ ___ excerpt from The Guardian Weekly 8-2-2001, page 26 Tony Juniper in Davos and Hilary Wainwright in Porto Alegre report on two forums on globalisation Wearing comedy business suits, complete with fat cigars, dark glasses and outrageous jewellery, "Franc Suisse", "Mark Deutsch" and "Dave Dollar" strode purposefully towards the barbed wire and lines of riot police. Surrounded by television cameras, they walked straight into the security zone of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Mingling with the chief executives of the world's biggest corporations and their invited high-level political guests, they distributed leaflets that set out alternatives to the global economy. The police finally caught on and arrested the Marx Brothers-style executives and their "lawyer". They were dragged out into the snow and questioned by policemen deeply embarrassed that their ring of steel had been so easily penetrated. The action highlights how symbols count. People wearing jeans could not get within miles of the Swiss ski resort; yet suits, even comedy ones, could march straight in. So determined were the authorities to block out the voices of dissent that the mighty conducted their discussions behind police barricades that spread for miles through the valley. As outside the halls of Davos, so inside, where the meetings were closed to the public, with just a few carefully chosen non-governmental groups and individuals invited to address the WEF delegates, who were mainly male, North American and European. This year one delegate suggested that if the Earth were visited by beings from outer space, the elite gathered in Davos should be responsible for speaking for humanity. If Planet Earth had a board of directors, this would be it. The WEF is the deeply influential international club for big business. Its past political successes include starting the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (Gatt) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). Most of globalisation's leading players were there. Sir John Browne and Mark Moody-Stuart, of BP and Shell, rubbed shoulders with the leaders of the main oil-producing nations. Yet these architects of globalisation were clearly worried, not so much by the protesters in the street, but the new ideas emerging from dozens of citizens' movements from all over the world. The comfort once found in the old ideas is crumbling, and their rhetoric of growth, markets, liberalisation and competition - still reassuringly exchanged between the executives and leading public figures - was different from previous years. There was a sense that globalisation is in trouble, and the "board of directors" was neither asking the right questions nor had a clue what to do. How are the ecological limits of a finite planet to be respected in the face of policies designed to promote never-ending growth? How is the widening gap between rich and poor to be closed when many of the signals that companies respond to are designed to reward greed? How can the needs of the 10bn people who may inhabit this world in 2050 be met without drastic changes to consumption patterns? These and other critical questions were not on the Davos agenda. Only Public Eye, a non-governmental group not invited to participate in the main meeting, had any answers. It hired an asthma clinic and staged debates on trade liberalisation, corporate control and financial policy. Its panels and workshops were open, and the clear message was that an alternative economics is crystallising from global NGO networking. It has at its core sustainable development, environmental protection and social justice. It is gathering momentum in many places. Witness Porto Alegre, 8,000km away in the radical capital of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. Here, running concurrently with Davos, 12,000 people met last month for the first Social Forum. If Davos was for the elite, this meeting of people from 120 countries was the opposite. _ _ _ _ _ __ The World Social Forum Website is http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/ingles/ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Tom Atlee * The Co-Intelligence Institute * PO Box 493 * Eugene, OR 97440 http://www.co-intelligence.org * http://www.democracyinnovations.org * http://www.co-intelligence.org/CIPol_Index.html ============================================================================
