The success of the World Social Forum 2003 in Porto Alegre and its process of globalization throughout the year of 2002, brought about many questions about its continuity. Many valuations have been written, pointing to different directions, as well as new proposals have been put forward for the organization of 2003, 2004 and 2005 events. In fact, the Forum faces a positive crisis, one of growth, that demands a deeper look at some of the issues remarked in its Principles Charter. To avoid the risk of destroying its potentialities, it is imperative that some ambiguities are overcome, before the process moves toward irretrievable crystallized orientations. A timely occasion for this could be the next meeting of the WSF International Council - better prepared and longer than the previous ones - expected for June 2003.
The present text intends to contribute for this debate, approaching three themes that have become fundamental for the continuity of the Forum process:
- The option between a Forum-space and a Forum-movement;
- The relative importance, in the Forum events, of the activities organized by the participants and of the activities scheduled by the organizing committees, and the nature of these two activities;
- The role of the Committees which organize the Forum events.
The first of these questions is the most conclusive, once the adopted option generates different answers for the others. A fourth issue, that should be addressed, is how it should relate itself with the political parties. In the following notes I will consider only the first three themes.
Forum: space or movement ?
Whether the Forum is to be considered as a space or as a movement has become a basic and preliminary option in this stage of the process. To elude our answer, by not putting it clearly, is the best way to create difficulties.
The Forum’s Principles Charter defines it emphatically as a space. Nevertheless, not everybody thinks and acts as if it was really only a space, or at least as if it should remain always as a space.
Many consider it as a space that has something of a movement. To others, it’s “still” only a space. That means, it can and should become an enormous movement, or a “movement of movements”, as some journalists name it. The resounding success of the manifestations of February 15th against the war in all the world - that leads the most enthusiastic to consider that this feat is also a result of the Forum, making them even deem it a sheer product of the Forum... - encourages still more the desire that the Forum takes up a mobilization function, like all movements.
To begin with, movements and spaces are completely different things. Without oversimplifying in a Manichaen way, either they are one thing or the other. Nevertheless, one does not exclude the other, that is, they can coexist. Nor are they opposites, which means that they do not neutralize each other, but rather, they may even be counterparts. But you can’t be both things at the same time, not even be a bit of each – which would end up by impairing one or the other. Movements and spaces may be seeking, each one performing its roles, the same general objectives. But each one works in a way of its own, aiming at different specific objectives.
The actual discussion then turns ou to be: would transforming the World Social Forum into a movement, now – or if not now, later on, as the process advances – be a good strategy to achieve the objective that aggregates all participants, that is, the overcoming of the neo-liberalism and the construction of “another possible world”? Or, inversely, would it be helpful for us, in order to attain this objective, to be able to count - now and along the development of the process – on spaces like those that are opened by the World Social Forum?
As far as I am concerned, there is no doubt that it is fundamental to ensure at all costs the continuity of the Forum as a space and not yield to the temptation of transforming it now - or even later - in a movement. If we maintain it as a space, neither will it prevent nor hinder the formation and the development of several movements – but rather, much on the contrary it will grant them. But if we opt for transforming it in a movement, it will inescapably fail to be a space, all the potentialities inherent to the spaces being then lost.
Furthermore: if we do it, we will be – without any help from those we are fighting against...- throwing away a powerful instrument of struggle that we were able to create drawing on the most important political discovery lately: the power of the free horizontal articulation, which explains the success in Porto Alegre, as well as in Seattle and of the February 15th manifestations against the war. And we have to bear in mind that if the horizontal social articulation still has so much to contribute now for our fight, it will also be necessary in the very process of construction of the world we want.
This conviction is based on the analysis of the advantages of the current character of the Forum as a space as compared to a contingent condition of the Forum as a movement.
What is the difference between a movement and a space?
A movement congregates people - its militants, as the militants of a party - who decide to organize themselves to accomplish, collectively, certain objectives. Its formation and existence entails the definition of strategies to reach these objectives, the formulation of action programs and the distribution of responsibilities among its members – including those concerning the direction of the movement. The one who assumes this function will lead the militants of the movement, getting them – through authoritarianism or democratic methods, according to the choice made by the founders of the movement - to be liable for their commitment in the collective action. Its organizational structure is necessarily pyramidal, however democratic the internal process of decision and the way used to choose those who will occupy the different levels of management might be. On the other hand, its efficacy will depend on the explicitness and precision of its specific objectives, and therefore, of its own delimitation, in time and space.
A space has no leaders. It’s only a place, basically horizontal, just like the earth’s surface, despite admitting ups and downs. It’s like a square without owner - if the square has an owner other than the collectivity, it fails to be a square, becoming a private territory. The squares are generally open spaces that can be visited by all those who find any kind of interest in using it. Their purpose is solely being a square, whichever is the service they render to its users. The more they last as squares the better for those who avail themselves of what these offer to the realization of their respective objectives.
On the other hand, even when a square contains trees and small hills, it is always a socially horizontal space. The one who climbs the trees or the hills cannot intend, from high above, to control, neither entirely, nor even partially, the actions of those inside the square. Being considered ridiculous by the others on the square is the least the climber should expect. Should he become insistent or inconvenient, he will end up by talking to himself, for the visitors will leave the square - or even come back with “public authorities” who will make him leave or stop preaching from above, restoring the peace and tranquility typical of the public squares.
The Forum as a space able to incubate movements
The Forum’s Principles Charter strongly opposes the assignment of any kind of direction or leadership inside it: nobody can speak on behalf of the Forum - there is no sense speaking on behalf of a space - neither on behalf of its participants. Everyone - people and organizations - maintain their right to express themselves and act during the Forum and after it according to their convictions, embracing or not positions or proposals introduced by other participants, but never on behalf of the Forum or the entirety of its participants.
As the squares, the Forum is an open space, as its Principles Charter also specifies. But it is not a neutral space like the public squares. The Forum opens from time to time in different parts of the world - in the events where it takes place - with one specific objective: to allow as many people, organizations and movements as possible that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and struggles of others, discuss proposals of action, to become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Thus, it is a space created to serve a common objective of all those who converge to the Forum, functioning horizontally as a public square, without leaders nor pyramids of power in its interior. All those who come to the Forum are willing to accept these conditions - for this reason, in order to join this “square”, one must agree with its Principles Charter.
In fact the Forum works as a “factory of ideas”, or an incubator, from which as many new initiatives as possible, aiming at the construction of another world we all consider feasible, necessary and urgent, are expected to emerge. That means we can expect the birth of very many movements, bigger or smaller, more or less combative, each one with its specific objectives, to perform their own roles in the same struggle whose development is the primary aim of the square.
As a matter of fact, the biggest potentiality of the Forum-space is precisely that: to create movements that amplify the struggle. Conversely, when a movement generates new movements, this happens unwillingly, against the grain, as a result of internal divisions. And that is what would occur if the Forum became a movement.
The objectives of these new initiatives, in their turn, do not have to be all clear and precise, differently from what occurs in the movements. Some are still being apprehended, in a generating process, - waiting to be hatched in the incubator - demanding time to mature.
On the other hand, the Forum allows for the exertion of more or less fervor in the common struggle, depending on the phase each one finds oneself engaged in the pursuit, together with all humanity, for another world. Conversely, in a movement there is a natural mutual expectation between the participants.
The advantages of not having a “final document”
The Forum’s Principles Charter reinforces even more this perspective when it deals with the question of “final documents”. Even if they succeeded in not being oversimplifying or narrowing, as it is usually the case with “final documents”, it so happens that the Forum does not have them, as a Forum. It is not a matter of non-commitment with the fight and with the mobilization needed to face the neo-liberalism, as the ones most concerned in transforming the Forum in a movement might interpret. The fact is that a square does not make “declarations”. It is clear that those inside it can do it. The participants of the World Social Forum can do whatever final declarations they wish - and these are most welcome. But they will never be declarations of the Forum as Forum. As a common space to all, it does not “speak”. Or rather, it “speaks”, and a lot, through its own existence. As more and more people and organizations get together in order to find ways to overcome the neo-liberalism, this is in itself an expressive political fact. It is needless that somebody should speak on behalf of the Forum.
Each and every document or declaration proposed in it will be, this way, a manifestation of those and solely of those subscribing it freely, without pressures or controls as for the positions adopted. That is why the Forum’s Charter sets forth that declarations and proposals cannot be voted or acclaimed by the participants of the Forum, as manifestations of the whole of the “visitors” of the “square”. In fact, this would lead many to leave the Forum-space, for not accepting or for not agreeing with leaders who intend to conduct them from the top of ridiculous hills and trees.
This option adopted in the Forum was, by the way, easily grasped by a great number of participants in its last edition in Porto Alegre, who contributed to the “panel” with “Proposals for action adopted during the 2003 Forum”. In addition to the fact that this “panel” enabled everyone to express themselves, the final proposals and declarations brought - or sent later - clearly depict the richness and the diversity of the engagement of the participants. The proposals can already be found in the Forum’s web page, but it was not possible this year to show everything that its participants decided to do as a result of the Forum, once the “panel”, as an innovation introduced in this edition, was poorly publicized.
Nevertheless, its present diffusion through the Internet - indicating how to contact the authors of the proposals –opens yet other perspectives: through the new contacts and relationships now made possible, it will allow the enlargement of the new articulations around the proposals during the Forum. As if the Forum’s square had become permanently open, outliving in time and space, lasting longer than the limited five-day event of Porto Alegre. The contacts may be multiplied and lead to more concrete actions, fostered by the unlimited new possibilities opened by the Internet. The same can happen with the “panel of proposals” set up in others events.
But the forum-space still has further advantages.
The diversity
As an open space, the Forum has the possibility of ensuring the respect to diversity, unlike it would occur if it were a movement. The principle of respecting diversity, adopted by the WSF Charter, has, in fact, a deeper importance: it’s grounded on the conviction that one of the fundamental characteristics of the other world we intend to build - or as we also say the “other possible worlds”- must be exactly the respect to diversity.
As a result of this principle, the Forum also allows - without falling in the total neutrality of the public squares - each one to maintain his/her own freedom to choose the sector or the level in which to act so as to transform the reality. This action can be either very wide and comprehensive or rather restrict; it might intend to interfere both in the deeper causes of the problems the world faces, and in the superficial effects of these problems. The vast range of themes discussed during the Forum and the objectives sought in it can be thus very wide, such as is the range of changes required for the construction of a new world. Nobody in the Forum has the power or the right to tell that this or that action or proposal is more important than others, neither should he have the power or the right to give or to demand a bigger visibility to his own proposals, “usurping” to his own objectives the space that belongs to everybody.
This is, in fact, an issue that demands a more careful reflection, in view of what is being witnessed in the “marches” and street manifestations which tend to characterize the conclusion of the Foruns. The banners should be the banners of all, as a final visible expression of its diversity and of the variety of proposals sheltered by it or born from it. To priviledge this or that struggle, in the “commissions” to rank first in the march or in the appointment of contingent public speakers in the final acts of the marches, contradicts the principles of respect to the diversity, and conveys a vision of a Forum-movement instead of a Forum-space. But this is another question to be discussed.
All these features of the Forum certainly account for its great acceptance and appeal and the success of its events: its participants feel respected as for their own options, rhythms and the level of engagement. Some may come to the Forum as militants of a specific movement but the majority do not do it as an obligation or in obedience to the orders of their principals. They come to the Forum driven by their belief that it is important to come, to exchange experiences, to learn and to join others, keeping the freedom that they had before and will continue to have during and after their participation in the events. They know that in it they won’t be given orders nor will they have to follow words of command, that they will not have to render account of what they have done or not done, that they won’t have to give proofs of fidelity and discipline, nor will they be expelled if they don’t do it - much the contrary of what would occur to them had they come to participate in any meeting of an organized movement.
The joy and the mutual responsibility
I would go as far as to affirm that it is this character of the Forum that explains the great joy that reigns in this “square”, like an enormous fair – a real party with spaces even to manifestations and “performances” of different types in the circulation spaces. Nobody is anguished because nobody has to fight to see his or her own proposals and ideas prevail over the others. Nor is one worried for having to defend oneself from others trying to control, impose orientations or rules of behavior – still less of political behavior, as it occurs in groups and “delegations” that have to get together to evaluate, decide, undertake tasks, as in good and disciplined parties or movements. Such meetings are even possible but never obligatory for those who are not militants of this or that movement. Those who want to take advantage of the opportunity to do so, also have freedom for that, provided that they limit themselves to gather their own militants with these objectives in mind.
It would be in fact a pity if this joy of the “square” was lost - as it would tend to occur if it wasn’t a “square” anymore. It’s a joy - the same joy that we would like to always see in the “other possible world” - that ends up by taking hold of and invigorating everybody, inspired as it is by another finding of the Forum, while destroying the divisions that segregated the struggles that the different movements fostered: the fact that we are many in the same fight. In that way, in the open space provided to all by the Forum, the militants of these different movements meet up with and recognize each other: the ones fighting for the women’s rights, for the rights of the urban and rural workers, of the environment, of the children, the ones who seek new economic domestic relations or at the level of international organizations, the ones who work for democratic participation in the governments or for the enhancement of the spiritual dimension in the human being, etc., in the great diversity of the existing “movements”.
Such “militants” of so many struggles - many of them long being severed due to different ideological and political options - find in the Forum an unprecedented opportunity to know each other and, if possible, to get together, overthrowing the partition to which they were driven by the dominant parties. This meeting with “old friends” - if one might put this way - is initially, for many, a surprise, followed by joy, when they realize that they are in fact united.
Supposing that the Forum becomes a “movement of movements”, none of these movements would be able to open this space and succeed in having all the others accept its invitation without conditions. The reunion would be curbed by the need to start belonging to another structure intending to unify, with all the rules established to make it possible- agreed among all… - And then, inside it the competition would again emerge and with it the division, as a result of the fight for space and the direction, and also for the definition of objectives of the new movement.
One last outcome of the character of the Forum-space is the feeling of mutual responsibility that permeates the realization of its events. The fact that it is a “square without owner” promotes this fairly easily, more than in movements where the development of this feeling is sought. In the Forum nobody can go against anybody, nor is willing to supervise each other’s commitments. Even the errors of the organizers - in general a lot, considering the dimension that the events have taken - are accepted and corrected by the initiatives and creativity of the participants. In the WSF 2003 edition in Porto Alegre a serious and involuntary mistake - that forced the organizers to make a great effort trying to minimize its effects - could have destroyed the entire event: only on the 2nd day were the workshops’ programs published. Nevertheless, the participants found ways to compensate the failure by their own, and there were even initiatives from “outside”- as the “savage” publication of the program which availed itself of the Internet information in the evening prior to the beginning of the works.
Risks that we face at present
To maintain the WSF as a space is then, maybe, the best way to guarantee its biggest asset, which must be preserved at any cost. Therefore, without overrating, we could go as far as to say that, those who want to transform it into a movement - will end up, if they succeed, by working against our common cause, whether they are aware or not of what they are doing, whether they are movements or political parties, and however important, strategically urgent and legitimate their objectives might be. They will be effectively acting against themselves and against all of us. They will be hindering and suffocating its own source of life – stemming from those articulations and initiatives born in the Forum - or at least destroying an enormous instrument that is available for them to expand and to enlarge their presence in the struggle we are all engaged in.
Initiatives taken by a certain number of movements, self-nominated “social movements”, seem however to point to this direction. Justifiably concerned with the need of a popular mobilization to fight against the neo-liberalism, they seek to absorb the Forum inside their own mobilizing dynamics, to serve their own objectives.
Such movements know that they don’t congregate all the participants of each event - although convening important organizations. But even so they consider that their own final document could be presented and understood as a “final document” of the Forum – once it has not its “final document”... One initiative in this sense - born in the incubator square of the 2001 Forum - has already given rise to several tensions and misunderstandings after the Forum. But the pressure in order for that to happen has been recurrent in others events, even after the 2003 Forum, although with less easiness. This last attempt nearly jeopardized the mobilizing effects and the articulations made possible with the “proposals of action’s panel”.
Recently the “co-ordination” of this movements has gone even farther: as members of the organization committees of the events, they propose to include in the last day of the Forum schedule their own final meeting, that is normally held in the end of the Forum. This meeting, unavoidably partial, appears - at least to the media – as the conclusive meeting of the Forum as a whole. If this orientation is adopted, it will create, in fact, a new tension: each one will feel necessary to bring to this meeting the results of his own activity, to ensure that these results will be implemented by those who would “coordinate” its effective realization, as in a good and organized movement. Focusing the attention in the end of the Forum to the meeting they organize - and that will never be joined by all the Forum participants - this meeting will, in fact, ignore or disrespect the other proposals of action advanced. Or it will create the need of “representations”, that will transform the Forum in the usual pyramid, without the joy of the horizontal “square”.
In fact, a great challenge emerges, in my opinion, for the continuity of the Forum process, and for the fulfillment of its vocation of “incubator” of more and more movements and initiatives: to multiply such “spaces” worldwide – genuinely open and free, without drawing the attention only to specific proposals. We must hope that nobody, however inadvertently, contributes to drive the Forum to a closing process until it disappears as an open space.
However,it is all a matter of choice. People and organizations who are preparing events this year or in the next ones, within the process of the World Social Forum, and the members of its present International Council or of the enlarged Council that will get together in June, may consider that they should adopt an orientation of the type proposed by the so-called “ social movements”. Nobody can prevent this decision. It’s an option. Each of the participants of the Forum process will then decide about the continuity of its own participation, for one should bear in mind that the Forum is not yet a movement and there are no rules to belong to it or of respect to majority decisions even when they are taken in a way considered democratic. What we cannot do is fail to discuss this question clearly and frankly, so that we can be fully aware of the consequences of such decisions.
Self-organized activities X program of the organizers
This discussion is all so crucial because, besides the pressure of participants to transform the WSF in a movement, the organizers of events themselves will tend to adopt this option if the present method of organizing is maintained. The option between WSF-space and WSF-movement will necessary rebound in this organization.
In a Forum-space the self-organized activities would have priority, in the minds of the event organizers, once it’s with them that the WSF works more clearly as a space. However, we verify that the part of the events programmed by the organizers is over-valued, at the expense of meetings and seminaries programmed by the participants themselves. These activities, the core of a Forum-space, are treated almost with negligence. They are almost looked down on, like secondary, less important activities holding low prestige, even as if they were a load that the organizers are forced to carry, after this way of organizing the events was invented in the 2001 Porto Alegre’s Forum.
In fact, the choices of the themes and of the lecturers of the conferences and panels have always taken most of the organizers’ time, in all the Forums already held. This also occurred with the International Council: the meetings of Bangkok and Florence had devoted great part of their working program to this type of decision, to prepare Porto Alegre’s Forum. Long meetings beyond the Council’s schedule have become necessary, and even a special meeting, in Brazil, between Bangkok and Florence, of the new working group created for this – bringing together the “coordinators of the main themes” - with all the costs that such meetings entail. Actually, the themes and the lecturers turn out to be the “showcase” of the Forum, or the public and visible demonstration of what it deals with and what is discussed in it, and this must be carefully planned, in order to keep its positions and proposals clear. As it occurs with the Davos’ Forum, which has not self-organized activities and has to choose carefully, in each circumstance, the main theme of its events...
Meanwhile, the preparation of the part of the WSF events programmed by its participants - that, besides its themes, is a hallmark of the WSF – follows a purely administrative dynamic, nearly bureaucratic: a deadline is established for the enrollment of seminars and workshops, and at the the end of this term the which cannot be accepted are analysed – based on the Principles Charter – in a way which is rather insufficient, given the short time that the organizers have to do it, being the denial of enrollments virtually applied only to the parties and armed organizations that declare explicitly their character... There follows the distribution, also administrative, of dates and places allocated for these activities, and the printing of a “catalog” with the name of each activity and of its proponent, the date and the place it is going to be held – almost always, by the way, issued along with the traditional corrections, that not all participants receive, of last minute changes.
On the other hand, as the number of these activities tends to be big, only some fortunate one have the possibility of taking place in the central areas of the event, the rest being distributed in the best possible way in all available spaces – sometimes in different places of the cities, even of difficult access. Adding to these difficulties, the “catalog” of the workshops and seminars is distributed during the registration of the participants on the first day of the event, along with their identification cards – or even later, as unfortunately happened in Porto Alegre 2003.
It follows from that, therefore, that the participants in the workshops and seminars tend to be their own organizers and those they had themselves invited, or those who were able to rapidly identify the activities that interested them.
The situation gets even worse when the organizers of the event manage to bring renowned persons to the part of the event that they organize, and when these conferences with celebrated people overlap with the workshops and seminars, as occurred in Porto Alegre 2003: the big conferences attracting most of the participants, leaving the self-organized activities to those who really insist on participating in them. In this perspective, besides, the function of the big conferences and panels in an event would have to be reexamined.
Several precautions could be taken to avoid all that. For example, the deadline for the enrollment of workshops and seminars might be fixed long before the event - at least two months in advance for the big events. This would make it possible to disseminate the proposals by the internet ahead of time, allowing inter-links to be established previously to the workshops, a distribution of places and spaces that facilitated these inter-links, and a better preparation of the participants themselves, allowing them to come to the Forum knowing already which activities they would like to join.
A second but equally important precaution would concern the distribution of places for the self-organized activities: these should be held in the main space of the events, in the main “square”, with better infrastructure, easy access and good divulgation. And they could not suffer the concurrence of the events oriented to all participants - as occurred in Porto Alegre’s 2003, giving reason to those who said that the big “stars” usurped the Forum...
Without any doubt the priority given to the self-organized activities – that expresses in the practice of the events organization the option for Forums-spaces and not for a Forum-movement - would be much conducive to accomplishing the objectives of the WSF, formulated in its Principles Charter and indicated in the beginning of this text: to allow as many people, organizations and movements that oppose themselves to the neo-liberalism as possible to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with the experiences and the struggles of the others, discuss proposals of action, become linked in new nets and organizations aiming at overcoming the present process of globalization dominated by the large international corporations and by the financial interests. Because in fact it’s in the self-organized workshops and seminars that this can occur, and not in the traditional context of large meetings and congresses, where the people listen passively to what respectable people have to say, and by chance be lucky enough to have the opportunity of formulating questions.
Organization Committees: facilitators or direction of a movement?
The discussion about the option of whether to be a space or a movement is also important because transforming the Forum in a movement can bear negative effects to the continuity of the process, as it opens the possibility of disputes of power, that can erode or even destroy it from inside. As the WSF Principles Charter establishes that WSF is not a space for disputing power, having – until now – the character of a horizontal and open space, this prevented the occurrence of such disputes effectively in its events. But their preparation is not immune to that.
When it is regarded as a movement – in this case demanding a “political” direction – it becomes strategic, for the political forces that participate in it, to integrate their Organization Committees, with a view to influencing the decisions. Tensions then arise between those who are already inside it and practically took “possession” of it, and those who feel themselves “excluded”, or simply want to get in and participate in that “direction”.
There are also those who deem it necessary to bring that dispute even to the Brazilian Organization Committee – currently the Secretariat of the Forum process – and to its International Council. They even say that the present composition of the Brazilian Committee is not representative, because it does not take into account the proportional participation of all the forces or political tendencies that should be in the direction of the Forum process. They also say that the International Council should be “conducted” by some persons, or reduced to a group representing the others.
These proposals would only be justified if the Forum was a movement, but they are not adequate to a Forum-space, to a “square”, that, as we have already seen before, does not admit a representing “political direction”. It demands, more than anything, people and institutions willing to perform the task of organizing the use of the square without interfering in the contents discussed in it and even less in the freedom that should be granted to all participants. That is to say, it depends on people and organizations willing to devote their time and resources – as an executive body – to promote the gathering and the articulation of all people engaged in the struggle for “another world”.
It would seem desirable that the composition of the Organization Committees of the Forums-spaces had a diversity ensuring the respect to diversity in the events. But it won’t be necessary to count on the proportional diversity and importance of the organizations and movements that will participate in these events, as these organizations and movements will not come to the forum to receive orders. And yet, still more important than the diversity in the committees is the credibility of people and organizations composing it. They need to invite all the others without leaving any doubt about the real interest of this invitation. Or without rendering those invited afraid of the possibility of being used, by those who invite, to carry out their own real objectives – as it might happen when political parties decide to assume “generously” the support of the process.
In this perspective, the concept better adapted to the organization committees and also to the International Council, within the option Forum-space, is of a “facilitator”. Facilitators do not command. What they do is making it possible for the existing or future movements to progress in their struggles. In order to create incubators of movements and engagements and to build “squares” and “factories of ideas”, they don’t need confrontations among them, discussing alternatives about how to change the world, still less do they have to try to impose ideas and proposals to each other. What they need is to be concerned within the common perspective that they adopt, in making each event organized by them accomplish the objectives of the Forum itself. What they need is to choose and operate, considering the political picture of each time, the best alternatives of organizing the time and the space that will be made available and will be used by those who should and wish to come to the “square” to discuss alternatives, advance proposals of action and, get together to fulfill them.
Naturally other levels of organization for valuations and propositions for the Forum process, besides the Organization Committees of the events – such as enlarged committees, councils, assemblies - can amplify the effect of the process, should they manage to incorporate an even larger variety and representation of movements engaged in the construction of the “other world”. But, in an option Forum-space, those types of organization - as it occurs with the organization committees – ought not to intend to direct those movements and organizations, but only to endorse and support the creation of more and more Forum-spaces.
Such perspective of work is more difficult to be adopted once it is not as “heroic” as the exercise of political leadership, provided by the option Forum-movement. Its adoption would perhaps lead to a decreased interest in participating in the organization of events. Sparing the efforts and resources to amplify adhesions, links and articulations during the event would be more crucial...
But if at the present moment it is useful and necessary that the barriers between different types and areas of engagement are brought down; that the articulations in the struggle against the neo-liberalism are spread all over the world and get amplified, stronger and more dense; that more movements, nets and initiatives of struggle are nurtured; that the debate of proposals and ways to overcome the domination of the capital are deepened; if this is the moment we are living in, we can be sure that the task of multiplying Forum-spaces is inestimable, irreplaceable and highly commendable, in our common engagement.
updated on 09/02/2010
