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P P E T S
Babel. Here at the WSF everyone is talking
the same, or at least similar language, right? Portuguese,
Spanish, English, no matter. But it does matter. Language
can create problems that are a little more complicated than
heading down the wrong street.
US delegate Rebecca Hanscom wanted a picture of the audience
raising hands against war to take back to Chicago. "Wage
War", she asked the audience to repeat after her, with
her arms raised.
Most of the Brazilians raised their hands and shouted "Wage
War!" But not the English-speakers. "Wage War!"
she shouted again. And that is what many of the Brazilians
repeated, but with a little less certainty.
Hanscom had made a slip, Freudian or not. She quickly corrected
herself: "Wage Peace!" This time the English-speakers
joined in. Good thing you cannot hear photographs.
* * *
Lost in Porto Alegre? As Forum-goers fill themselves with
high ideas about the way forward, spare a thought for the
manager at the bus station outside the Gigantinho, who has
been showing thousands of visitors the way, day after day.
His enthusiasm to direct the next lost person, with at least
three accosting him every minute on the first day with the
pace hardly dwindling since, seems remarkably undiminished.
A couple of days back a bus driver lost his way, detouring
the bus that the manager had worked so hard to fill. Even
he cannot manage everything.
But seems a little more tanned from the sun beating down
on him, and only a rather substantial moustache gives him
partial shade. Every day his voice sounds a little more hoarse.
He just might lose it by the end of the conference. That will
be a quiet period for many of us in so many different ways.
* * *
Red is beautiful. The colour code at the conference is distinctly
red. Remember when you saw it last. All those films on the
Bolshevik revolution, that stuff from the archives on the
days of Mao.
It did not help, therefore, when a young manager with an
NGO asked a friend looking for her in the crowd at the Gigantinho
to meet her by the red flag. Or when she told a journalist
the next day to spot her in the crowd because she would be
wearing red. She had gotten into the mood of it all without
quite realising it.
* * *
Demonstrations galore. There was the big rally the day the
WSF began. Then came Lula, and that turned into another rally
and another huge meeting. The gatherings at the giant Gigantinho
stadium are not all sober, and often turned into rallies or
demonstrations at the drop of a remark here, the raising of
a slogan there.
To the outsider, this is delightful, but not always easy
to understand. A fellow foreign journalist is a little uncertain
when Brazilians are protesting and when they are celebrating.
There must be method in this, but he has so far failed to
figure it out.
Maybe he will by the time the next Porto Alegre Forum rolls
around.
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