UniAlter

par Josée Madéïa

The last session I attend is put on by CACIM – the India Institute for Critical Action: Centre in Movement, entitled “Facing the Future: the WSF, Global Justice Movements and beyond”. Here we begin by talking about the WSF as an incubator of movements, a space where movements come to grow. The question put before us is “What is the future of the Forum?”
Andrej Grubacic discusses Democracy (with a capital D) that is, a democracy that is direct, with power that is socialized. He talks about governing from below and the Greek experience.

Marie-Josée Massicotte talks, like Haeringer and Houtart in the last session, about the importance of our clashes, our disagreements. Indeed, these mean we’re actually discussing, we’re creating spaces where we can genuinely work together, coming as we are from different perspectives, from different countries, from different movements. She also brings up the important counter-summits, not only those that counter Davos, but those that counter the WSF, underlining that this process and this creation of networks have been really important. From her experience at Le sommet des Amériques in Guatemala, she talks about the reappropriation of the Forum experience by those who weren’t involved in creating the WSF but who were interested. In Guatemala, she says, “the forum was of a much smaller scale and was attended mostly by indigenous, by women’s and by peasant movements. These social movements on the ground were appropriating the WSF process to do their work and this has been a really interesting and important development because it has become a tool that enables us to recognize one another, a tool that allows us to meet and gather in a different way (because prior to the Forum, organizations met through more formal political avenues, as labeled groups). Now, more classical voices are saying that the WSF is “dying,” but perhaps this is only because it’s being appropriated by others (by the grassroots). Let us remember that the WSF exists to create an open space and to then give and share that space with others.

Chico Whitaker begins his talk by saying that the forum is a process and that through the Forum we get to see and experience the global for three and a half days. We make decisions about how to help social movements work. To better understand this process we must consider what’s happening and how, not only with the WSF but with the local, national and regional forums. About the Forum experience, he says, “Let us continue. Let us talk about it and do it better, but let us continue.”