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WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Series of Global Protests to Begin in March
By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Jan 29 (IPS) - A day of international protests against the
occupation of Iraq, on Mar. 18, will mark the start of a series of
demonstrations and mobilisations organised at the sixth World Social Forum,
which ended Sunday in Venezuela.
A conference against the U.S. occupation of Iraq will be held Mar. 24-27 in
Cairo, Egypt, announced the international Assembly of Social Movements,
which met on the final day of the WSF in Caracas.
Some 2,200 civil society organisations organised nearly 1,800 seminars,
panels, workshops and other activities during the five-day WSF, which served
as a meeting-place for sharing ideas and experiences, but also for
organising networks to undertake concrete campaigns, as advocated by the
Assembly of Social Movements.
"We have around 300 organisations and networks that bring together more than
900 groups interested in taking part in this programme of campaigns," Piero
Bernocchi with COBAS, an Italian alternative network of trade unions, told
IPS.
Speaking before thousands of participants at the Forum on Friday, Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez said he hoped the WSF did not turn into merely a
"revolutionary tourism" activity, and called for it to come up with
programmes for concrete action against "political imperialism" and
neoliberal, free-market economic policies.
In March, civil society groups will organise protests and other activities
in Mexico parallel to the Fourth World Water Forum, to be held there.
The Assembly of Social Movements proclaimed that resources like water, land
and energy, as well as biodiversity, belong to the people and are public
goods, while it condemned the privatisation of communications, health care
and education.
The Assembly, which is among the participating groups and networks at the
WSF that wants to see the annual global civil society gathering take on a
more political focus and move in the direction of concrete action, also
called for protests to be held against the summit of the Group of Eight (G8)
most powerful countries in St. Petersburg, Russia in July and against
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank policies during their
annual assembly in September.
In a final statement issued in Caracas, the Assembly stated that Latin
America is seeing an "explosion of movements against free trade,
militarisation and privatisation, and in defence of natural resources and
food sovereignty."
These movements "have permitted political alternatives born in the heat of
popular struggles to reach government," as in the case of Bolivia, where Evo
Morales of the Movement Towards Socialism took office this month as the
country's first indigenous president.
Nevertheless, "given the access to government that is being gained by
political alternatives linked to popular struggles, social movements should
maintain political and programmatic autonomy," added the Assembly.
A cross-cutting theme in almost all of the WSF discussions was the debate
over the role that should be played by the annual civil society meet,
specifically, whether it should serve primarily as a meeting space, or
rather as a "catapult" for concrete actions. The latter stance was advocated
by Chávez, who urged participants to transform the WSF into a tool of
struggle.
A number of specific campaigns were proposed, including one in defence of
free, public and secular education, to be organised around World Students
Day, Nov. 17, and another suggested by U.S. activist Ariana Flores in
opposition to "Killer Coke", in reference to the alleged complicity of the
Coca-Cola corporation in the murders of eight trade unionists in Colombia.
The Caracas portion of the 6th WFS wrapped up Sunday with a final round of
discussion panels on political, trade union, environmental and
gender-related themes, as well as cultural and musical performances in
various venues throughout the city, which played host to an estimated 60,000
Forum participants this week.
An incident during a panel discussion on Decent Work, organised by Força
Sindical, one of Brazil's largest trade union confederations, highlighted
the political polarisation faced by Venezuela today.
After presentations by delegates from social democratic and left-leaning
trade unions in Europe, Manuel Cova, secretary general of the Confederation
of Venezuelan Workers (CTV), took the floor.
The CTV, Venezuela's oldest labour federation, was seriously discredited by
allying itself with the employers' association Fedecameras during the
short-lived April 2002 coup against Chávez, leading many affiliated unions
to break away and join the more recently established Nation Union of
Venezuelan Workers (UNT).
Cova was greeted with shouts from the crowd of "Get out, fascist." As a
result, the session was abruptly ended, and the opposition-aligned labour
leader was escorted from the room amid pushing and jostling.
After the first three editions in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which hosted the
event again last year, and a change of venue to Mumbai, India in 2004, this
year's sixth WSF was "polycentric", with a first session held last week in
Bamako, Mali - attended by 10,000 mainly African activists - and a third
planned for Karachi, Pakistan in March.
Next year's WSF will once again be held in a single venue - Nairobi, Kenya -
and the international organising committee, made up of roughly 100
organisations, announced that it will devote every possible effort to
ensuring the success of this seventh global civil society meet.
According to an organising committee evaluation, the Bamako WSF was a
political and popular participation success, although the activities were
highly dispersed and logistical problems were encountered.
Nevertheless, Brazilian activist Moema Viezzer stressed, the committee
should not become entirely consumed with organisational matters if this
means disregarding the political front.
(END/2006)
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