Z

will be attending the third annual World Social Forum from January
23 to 28 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This year, interestingly, instead
of the state where the event is held being friendly to it, the entire
country is friendly, with the new president of Brazil, Lula, scheduled
to participate.

The
first World Social Forum had about 10,000 participants from around
the world. The second had about 50,000. The best guess is that this
year over 100,000 people will converge for WSF 3.

The
World Social Forum is a gigantic conference of panels, presentations,
and celebrations. The event has two overarching themes: (1) Get
together; (2) “Another world is possible.” In short: solidarity
and vision.

The
WSF has thus far emphasized the first message—get together.
It includes a huge number of diverse viewpoints, projects, organizations,
and movements concerned with creating a vastly more just, equitable,
and caring world. While participants don’t all see eye to eye,
they have nonetheless begun to develop a mutually supportive solidarity
that is prerequisite to winning change.

Similarly,
the WSF slogan, “Another World Is Possible,” has propelled
the second message to pay attention to vision—on economics,
politics, race, gender, ecology, and international relations. Participants
have taken seriously the question, “What do you want?”

But
beneath these shared and prioritized themes, two central tensions
have characterized the WSF project to date. The first concerns who
decides the WSF’s content and focus.

The
WSF undeniably evolved from the top down. It was first an idea in
very few heads. Key actors in Brazil have done the bulk of the work,
but others in Europe, largely from French ATTAC, also participated,
particularly in the planning. From its inception, there have been
efforts to involve people outside those central circles in decision
making—people who represent constituencies and organizations
around the world. Accomplishing that, in a large and international
operation, is bound to be difficult, which is one reason why it
has been slow for the WSF. It must be admitted, as well, that those
in charge haven’t been eager to give up the reigns. Nonetheless,
there is progress and democratization seems within plausible range,
assuming that the struggle continues and that advocates of participation
and democracy make their desires and effective alternative approaches
strongly felt.

What
is perhaps a more important fact about WSF participation and democracy,
however, is its proliferation. What began as a week of events in
Porto Alegre has in three years stimulated activity all over the
world. In Italy, which is an exceptional example but perhaps also
a barometer, over 100 cities and towns have their own Social Forums.
While Italy is the biggest success story, it is not alone in generating
local activity. There are forums in cities, towns, and regions across
the world, most recently in the United States. These proliferating
forums are locally organized, focused, and motivated. The central
WSF messages, to promote solidarity and vision, characterize the
local projects too. Something is happening in all this venue building
and coming together that is, at the grassroots, very participatory.

The
second tension—after decision making—characterizing the
WSF process has to do with its overall aims. Some argue that the
WSF can only have so many gatherings before it is repeating itself.
More, why gather if it is not to move on to some greater degree
of organization. Shouldn’t we be increasing capacities for
local shared activity as well as developing a shared international
agenda? This tendency says, okay, we are moving forward, but now
let’s build on our successes to generate a new kind of international
movement. The countervailing opinion, however, is that the venue-building
project should not be risked by trying to accomplish too much, too
soon. The WSF should keep on with what has worked and leave the
rest until well in the future.

Our
own inclination is to feel that until the internal democracy problem
is better dealt with, the goal of an international activist umbrella
organization, or movement of movements, is out of reach. But, we
also think that once greater international democratic representation
and accountability are at hand, it will make sense to promote not
only a forum agenda, but also an activist one.

Of
course, in thinking about moving toward a higher degree of international
unity and shared agenda, the question arises, how would an activist-oriented
Social Forum (or other mechanism) combine all the many differences
in politics and analysis of the participants without splitting at
the seams?

One
way might be to consider how a society combines different tendencies
without splitting apart. Maybe the WSF, as an activist international,
could become the sum total of all its participants, including all
their agendas and contradictions.

From
our perspective, one of the greatest needs of the WSF process if
it is going to move toward an activist agenda is for radical activists
to develop a greater coherence around new vision and strategy. In
light of those feelings, Z has allied with a Brazil-based organization,
Porto Alegre 3, to co-sponsor a conference within the WSF conference
called “Life After Capitalism.”

At
this year’s WSF, Life After Capitalism (LAC) will present sessions
on program, strategy, and vision for 16 areas of social involvement
including media, art, sexuality, work, religion, consumption, race,
ecology, family life, education, class, international relations,
health, the city, cyberspace, and globalization. It will have sessions
presenting various economic and political visions and then also
exploring and debating them. There will be sessions in which representatives
from some of the major major movements all around the world—Brazil,
Italy, India, Argentina, the U.S., England, etc.—present their
organizing perspectives and then contrast and debate them, trying
to see whether, indeed, they could become parts of an international
“movement of movements.”

Finally,
LAC will bring its roughly 60 presenters together for various evening
panels and discussions among themselves, trying to develop ties
between their respective projects and also to discern common themes,
as well as differences, that could be presented publicly near the
end of the event.

Our
intention is that the Life After Capitalism discussion will not
end January 28. Conferences are wonderful, or can be. But what matters
more is continuing the exchanges. To those ends, we will maintain
a website at (www.zmag. org/lac.htm) that will feature as many of
the LAC presentations as we can transcribe. We will also facilitate
on-going discussions among the participants and with people throughout
the represented movements.

So
if you are going to be in Porto Alegre, by all means check out the
Life After Capitalism events. We look forward to seeing you there.
If you can’t make it to Brazil, don’t despair. We are
going to transcribe as much as possible for the website. Also, we
will be filming many LAC sessions, which will be available sometime
in March from Z Video Productions.