ITALY-DEVELOPMENT: Activists Flock to European Social Forum

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

FLORENCE, Italy, Nov 7 2002 (IPS) - Activists from 105 countries are participating in the seminars of the European Social Forum in the central Italian city of Florence, which is holding a flurry of debates and protests against the negative effects of globalisation, and the United States’ plans to wage war on Iraq.

Food sovereignty, the foreign debt, immigration, information, culture, world peace and the economy were on the agenda Thursday, the first day of seminars at the first European chapter of the World Social Forum, which began to meet annually in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in January 2001.

More than 30,000 people have signed up for the 18 conferences, 140 seminars and 250 workshops and shows to be held through Sunday, under the theme ”Another Europe is Possible: Against Neoliberalism, War and Racism”.

Delegates from 426 civil society organisations are taking part in the workshops and debates, including French farm activist José Bové, Canadian author Naomi Klein, and Susan George, a leading U.S.-born writer and activist on social development and globalisation.

One of the participants in Thursday’s activities who received the strongest applause was Lindsay German, with the British Stop the War Coalition, which is opposed to an eventual joint U.S.- British military strike against Iraq.

German criticised her government, saying that whether out of ”imperialist nostalgia or short-sighted political convenience,” it has chosen to jump on the U.S. war bandwagon.

On Saturday, organisers hope to draw as many as 200,000 protesters to a demonstration against Washington’s plans to attack Iraq and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.

On the eve of the European Social Forum, a small protest was held outside Camp Darby, a U.S. military base near the northern city of Pisa.

German, who said a majority of British citizens are opposed to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy, underlined the participation of Muslim women in peace demonstrations in London, saying ”Their presence has forced many of us to take a look at our prejudices” regarding Islamic culture as well as the condition of Muslim women.

A campaign was launched at the Social Forum Thursday in favour of Palestinian farmers, who have been affected by armed Israeli invasions.

A call was also issued demanding that transnational corporations give peasant farmers, especially coffee-growers, fair treatment.

Colombian economist Héctor Mondragón criticised the impact of Plan Colombia, the partially U.S.-financed anti-drug programme, on peasant farmers in that civil war-torn country.

”If neoliberalism was brought in by governments like the ones headed by (former Chilean dictator) Pinochet, it can only get worse with Plan Colombia’s helicopters,” said Mondragón.

The ”dashboard of sustainability” will also be presented Saturday at the Social Forum. Developed by the Canadian International Institute of Sustainable Development, the software offers an instrument panel that tracks 46 indicators designed to inform decision-makers, the media and the general public on the status of a nation’s progress toward, or away from, sustainability.

”The dashboard is an instrument that monitors the social and environmental consequences of the decisions adopted by national and local governments,” said Roberto Brambilla, with the Italian Liliput church network.

The organisers said that one of the Social Forum’s aims is to make Florence the ”Porto Alegre” of Europe, referring to the Brazilian city which hosts the World Social Forum, a sort of counterpoint to the World Economic Forum held every year in the Swiss alpine city of Davos.

They were clear that there could be no repeat of the disturbances that occurred in 2001 in Genoa, when a young Italian demonstrator, Carlo Guiliani, was killed during the harsh crackdown on the anti-globalisation movement protests surrounding the summit of the Group of Eight most industrialised countries.

One of the first Social Forum conferences was opened by Haidi Guiliani, the activist’s mother.

”The world is sick, sick of too many problems, too much selfishness, ignorance and war. But it is a beautiful day here today. It is always a good day when so many free and honest people come together to confront problems and take the world’s suffering into their own hands,” said Guiliani.

Some 6,000 police are on hand in Florence to provide security during the Social Forum, where calm was maintained Wednesday night at a show in Santa Croce square, in which Italian Nobel Literature laureate Dario Fo spoke.

Fears of a replay of the Genoa disturbances were heightened after Italian reporter Oriana Fallaci published an ”open letter” to the residents of Florence in the daily Il Corriere della Sera, telling people to ”Close up everything. Close the shops, the bars, the restaurants, the markets, the theatres and the movie theatres…and hang up the sign that the brave put up in 1922 when the fascists marched on Rome: Closed for Mourning.”

Fallaci described the Social Forum activists as ”false revolutionaries. They live off of Daddy’s money, spout out foolishness about poverty, and blame all ills on the United States.”

A number of upscale shops shuttered their windows, and McDonald’s even took down its golden arch. But José Luis del Roio, one of the European Social Forum’s organisers, said most stores were operating normally Thursday, and the seminars were taking place in a climate of peace and celebration.

ITALY-DEVELOPMENT: Activists Flock to European Social Forum

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

FLORENCE, Italy, Nov 7 2002 (IPS) - Activists from 105 countries are participating in the seminars of the European Social Forum in the central Italian city of Florence, which is holding a flurry of debates and protests against the negative effects of globalisation, and the United States’ plans to wage war on Iraq.
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