Satya Sivaraman

After the euphoria of gathering thousands of people from all corners of the globe at the second WSF at Porto Alegre it was time for activists to reflect hard about the shape and future direction of the entire movement.

At a panel discussion on Sunday as leaders and ideologues of the anti-globalization movement addressed these issues the questions from the audience flew thick and fast.

'So what will victory look like ?' asked one. 'Why is the movement projected as one led by groups in the North?' asked another while several complained about the way trade unions and political parties were being treated WSF organizers as lower down in the pecking order to NGOs and civil society groups.

'The alternative is not civil society but civil disobedience' said Naomi Klein, activist and author of the acclaimed 'No Logo', who in a hard-hitting articulate speech warned about attempts being made to turn the WSF into 'yet another big meeting' bereft of any impact on the real world. Dismissing critical arguments that the anti-globalization movement did not have any specific goals she said 'there are so many alternatives evident at the WSF that they are spilling onto the streets'.

Klein said that the 'either you are with us or against us' approach of the global elites should be rejected because there was no one truth and there were many approaches possible any of the problems facing the world today. It is the nature of nature to want to spread' she said calling upon the anti-globalization movement to ' cross all borders and climb all fences'.

Answering the question from the audience on what the WSF movement hoped to 'win' Emilio Tadei of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences said that one should not talk in terms one 'big victory' but about a series of smaller victories from the individual to the international level. These victories he said would be about winning various rights and social advancement for the people while at the same time 'carrying out a revolution in our daily lives'.

Questions about the role and relevance of trade unions to the anti-globalization movement came up several times with a delegate from the Korean Congress of Trade Unions (KCTU) saying that there was a tension between trade unions and global civil society groups evident at the WSF. 'Trade unions have been at the forefront of struggles against neo-liberal globalization on a day-to-day basis in many southern economies' he said calling upon the WSF to adopt a clearer stand on the issue.

Eduardo Fernandez of the Southern Cone Trade Union Federation said that in Latin America in particular there were strong alliances between trade unions and civil society groups that were forged during the long years of dictatoriship throughout the region. 'If the WSF process has to go forward there must be respect for diversity within the movement' he said.

In his observations on how to make the WSF a more coherent movement without making it into another institution Suwit Watnoo of the Forum of the Poor from Thailand said that the various groups coming to the meeting need to have regular information linkages. He called for the regular organizing of more WSF conferences in the coming years and for global mobilization through the WSF on specific issues such as the demand for immediate release of trade union leaders in South Korea.

The issue of recurring incidents of violence at various anti-globalization protests such as at Seattle and Genoa also came in for animated discussion. Several delegates in the audience asked why the big NGOs, who were part of the movement, objected so strongly to the use of violent methods by anarchists and other small groups, when all they were doing was 'to counter the violence perpetrated by states pushing neo-liberal policies onto a helpless population'.

In reply, Vittorio Agnelotto, of the Genoa Social Forum from Italy said that the kind of violence carried out by the anarchists of the 'Black Bloc' at the G-8 Genoa meet last year was counterproductive and harmful to the entire movement. Such acts of violence he alleged gave an opportunity to the police and even neo-fascist groups to infiltrate the anti-globalization protests with dubious agendas of their own.