Jackie Smith

On February 15, 2003, an estimated 12 million protesters gathered in more than 700 cities in 60 countries to protest U.S. plans to invade Iraq. In many major cities, these protests were the largest ever recorded. Although the world’s governments working together could not dissuade the United States from its plans for war, the world’s people, acting together, helped to undermine the legitimacy of President Bush’s actions and to deny the U.S. government the international allies it sought. The action was so successful that a New York Times column referred to global public opinion as the “second superpower.”

How did activists organize such unprecedented protests? The answer to this question is important not only to social change advocates, but also to scholars hoping to understand the ways global change impacts political participation. A rapidly growing number of researchers are turning their attention to the World Social Forum (WSF), as evidenced by the number of conference panels and journal articles devoted to exploring the movement’s significance.

The idea for a global day of action and early planning for the event developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil, during the third meeting of what has become an annual World Social Forum. Mobilizing around the slogan “Another World is Possible,” the WSF began as both a protest against the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and as a response to the challenge of critics: “We know what you’re against, but what are you for?”

As the largest political gathering in all of human
history, the WSF may prove to be the most important political development of the 21st century. Whether it will fulfill its promise depends on how citizens and governments respond to its initiatives. The forum’s power flows from a recognition that globalization without democratization can yield a hybrid of imperialism, authoritarianism, and tyranny. As the Iraq war protests show, the WSF must do more than simply communicate world public opinion. It needs to promote and support international institutional arrangements that are more responsive and accountable to international public pressure.

The WSF is comprised of an annual global meeting, complemented by hundreds of regional, national, and local social forums. It all began in Porto Alegre in 2001, when some 15,000 activists — more than three times the number expected — gathered to promote alternatives to economic globalization. Since its origins in 2001, the WSF has met in Porto Alegre; Mumbai, India; Bamako, Mali; Caracas, Venezuela; and Karachi, Pakistan. It now draws more than 150,000 participants, while the proliferation of smaller meetings continues. Organizers see the WSF process as creating open space for citizens to explore the impact of global changes on their local and national experiences, while cultivating transnational dialogues and a social-movement network to address shared problems. Scholars are increasingly attentive to how the WSF might contribute to a democratization of global institutions.

In a global system where opportunities for citizen participation are rare, the WSF serves as a laboratory for democracy. Activists are testing new forms of participation and representation that can inform official efforts to democratize global institutions.

In its first five years, the WSF process has demonstrated a remarkable capacity for adaptation. Its pervasive culture of democracy encourages dialogue and respectful efforts to confront and address conflicts. It is mindful of the ways power operates to shape debates and to exclude some voices. In particular, the WSF has moved consistently in the direction of greater decentralization. This has expanded opportunities for people to be involved in global-level politics. It has also fostered new forms of networking among activists working on different issues, in different countries, and at different levels of action. And it has generated opportunities for people to learn and practice skills relevant to global advocacy.

Typically, 80 percent of participants in any social forum live within the host city’s region; thus the proliferation of forums enables more local activists to participate. The main web site for the WSF (www.worldsocialforum.org) provides links to national social forums on virtually every continent. Regional forums have met in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In addition, many cities have hosted social forums to bring together a broad range of activists who are increasingly aware of the interconnectedness and the global sources of the problems on which they work. The practice of holding “polycentric” global forums in multiple sites was tested for the first time this year, and the official World Social Forum was held in consecutive gatherings in Mali, Venezuela, and Pakistan.

The advantage of decentralizing the annual forum
is that it expands the possibilities for poor people and other marginalized groups to participate effectively. There is evidence that the involvement of less privileged groups has helped shape the forum, even though significant inequalities remain.

The most active region is Europe, which drew half a million activists to its recent European Social Forum in Athens. Africa remains the least active in the WSF process, although organizers expect that the Bamako forum in 2006 and the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi will reinforce African organizing efforts. U.S. activists have been notably scarce at the WSF. Nevertheless, there are efforts under way to mobilize the first U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta next summer, and many U.S. cities have been sites of local forums. Chicago hosted its third social forum in May 2006, and several hundred activists gathered this summer at the Southeast Social Forum (Durham, North Carolina) and the Midwest Social Forum (Milwaukee, Wisconsin). One important question that scholars are beginning to address is why there is such wide variation in WSF participation across different countries and regions.

Few structures of modern life provide opportunities for people from different class, racial, and professional backgrounds to come together to talk politics. The WSF not only does that, but also enables activists to make better use of technologies that facilitate regular communication across vast distances. However, technology alone cannot generate the robust social ties required for sustained political work. As activists point out, “The revolution will not be e-mailed.” This sentiment echoes recent research in the social sciences, which is less optimistic than earlier research findings about the contributions of technology to enhancing social ties. The social forums provide lively, but also routine and predictable, spaces in which activists can come together, generating the mutual understanding and trust required for global democracy.

Finally, as an expanding and inclusive political space, the WSF creates opportunities for individuals to cultivate the skills necessary for global citizenship. There are no elections for global officials, and few international policies are subjected to public debate, particularly transnational debate. The foreign-policy-making processes in most countries severely constrain possibilities for national governments to consult with their constituents about important international policies. The WSF fills this vacuum by providing a politicized arena where people can learn about and articulate positions on global issues. They do so as part of a dialogue with diverse groups of people, thereby fostering appreciation for the needs and perspectives of others while cultivating skills for political negotiation and compromise. If we are ever to have a more democratic world, we will need far more people with these sorts of skills.

The rise of terrorism, proliferation of political protest, and widespread decline in voter participation are all evidence that political institutions lack the popular legitimacy they need to effectively manage global problems. Although the WSF has largely escaped the attention of the U.S. mass media and many of those in power, the process is making global democracy happen from below by providing opportunities for people to engage in discussions about how to address the world’s most pressing problems. The WSF has become an important venue for nurturing democracy at local, national, and global levels. It helps to globalize civil society by nurturing transnational identities and dialogue. In doing so, it is a threat to the interests of the extremists on both sides of the “global war on terror” who thrive on political polarization, militarism, and war. Peacebuilders and peace scholars around the world should therefore be attentive to the World Social Forum movement and the possibilities it holds for shaping a more peaceful world order.

Jackie Smith is on the Kroc Peace Studies faculty and is an
associate professor in the Department of Sociology, University
of Notre Dame.

For more information:
http://www.indymedia.org/or/2006/01/831615.shtml

http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1557.html