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US Social Forum Forges Common Ground
ATLANTA - In all, the crowds were huge, the workshops passionate and inspiring, and participants made ideological, relational and personal gains, both large and small.
The U.S. Social Forum wrapped up Sunday in the southern city of Atlanta with a People's Assembly, where civil society and native leaders read declarations on the meeting's main issues: Gulf Coast reconstruction in the post-Katrina era; militarism and the prison industrial complex; indigenous, sexual and immigrant rights; and labor struggles in the global economy.
Atlanta videographer Judy "Artemis" Condor said it was the youthfulness of the crowd that inspired her. "Usually, it's just us old folks at these marches and it takes all our energy just to get from point A to point B," she said.
The youth, on the other hand, were making music, singing, shouting, carrying huge puppets, and some even walking on stilts.
USSF Director Alice Lovelace said many participants were looking to possibly hold their own regional Social Forums in the months and years ahead.
In January 2008, there will be International Days of Action, Lovelace said. Next year will also feature a Social Forum of the Americas, and the USSF will send delegates. World Social Forums should resume in 2009, she said.
The Assembly did not go off without a hitch, as members of the Native American delegation rose in protest when a USSF organiser grabbed the microphone out of one of their speaker's hands because he went "over time." After backstage negotiations, the speaker was able to finish his comments and the Native Americans also held a "healing drum circle" to restore the speaker's dignity.
Still, according to two USSF organisers, some seasoned delegates to the World Social Forum walked away very impressed with the whole event.
"We hit 10,000 [participants], Lovelace said. "The sessions were brilliant. People made a lot of connections. We had proclamations and declarations. It was an extraordinary gathering."
"Members of the [World Social Forum] International Council were here. They said this presented a great challenge to them because it was the best Social Forum they ever saw. They said it raised the bar across the board in terms of diversity. The sessions were focused on the future, on vision, on strategies. They were going to have to step up their game to match what we did," Lovelace told IPS.
It was still vague by what process the USSF participants will be able to endorse the various resolutions.
"There was a decision to extend the process," of submitting resolutions to the Assembly, said USSF organizer Ruben Solis. It "would continue to be organised once people got back home so they would include more people that did not have the opportunity to be here in Atlanta physically at the USSF. All of July and August will be dedicated to that."
"The final adoption [of resolutions] will probably happen in September," Solis said.
The adoption process would involve both the Internet and the next Planning Committee Meeting. "Get them out to all the delegates, give us a process of consultation, adoption, and voting them in, and a process. Because it was a social experiment that has never been done -- even at the World Social Forum -- this was really groundbreaking. This made history in that sense as well," Solis said.
And despite the bitter dispute that erupted when one of their speakers was cut off, the Native American contingent also saw gains from their participation in the USSF.
"This was really an awesome opportunity for the indigenous people of the U.S. to develop family with indigenous people from the South, delegations from Guatemala, from Chile and Argentina who were here... It really provided us an opportunity to develop a family," said Tom Goldtooth, a leader with the Cherokee Nation.
"We're willing to share some of our knowledge," he added. "The Water Ceremony [at the USSF] was our opportunity to help inform all people about the unification of water."
"It was announced on the USSF website to bring water from their homeland, whether contaminated or not. This was a ceremony for all people to pray for the water of life. People brought water from all four directions. We had an indigenous woman named Josephine Mandamin, the Water Walker or the Water Keeper, she's walked around each of the Great Lakes," Goldtooth said.
Kimberly Richards from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans, Louisiana departed feeling ecstatic on the People's Caravan. Richards joined hundreds of others on a caravan of several buses that came from the Western U.S., went through New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama, to join the USSF. Now she was returning home.
"I think there was a lot of progress made. People from the Gulf Coast were able to see oppressive and repressive systems in housing and health care. Atlanta's Katrina was the Olympics. The Olympics displaced people and increased homelessness just as Katrina. For Detroit it was the closing of the auto mills. For North Carolina it was the textile factories," Richards said.
"People are [now] able to understand the intensity of the human rights violations. People's don't [typically] understand the U.S. has signed on to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The evacuation was: get in your car and leave. People who didn't have cars were discriminated against. That's a human rights violation. We have to understand what our human rights are in order to protect and defend them," she told IPS.
Richards said the biggest benefit for the New Orleans delegation was the raising of consciousness.
"To organise, people have to have all those things. To have the action, you have to have the awareness. We don't need unconscious people to take an action. Those parts are critical to effective action, to effective organising. We do need to do something, but we need to do it with consciousness," she said.
Meanwhile, public housing advocates from across the country at the USSF were able to make connections and have planted the seeds of starting a national organisation to protect public housing, said Carl Hartrampf of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.
After the People's Assembly, a delegation of about 50 public housing residents and advocates marched and delivered an "eviction notice" to the Atlanta Housing Authority, which they taped on the office's front door.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service
7 Comments so far
Show AllThanks for sharing your experience. I am thrilled at the 10,000 attendance, since air fare to Atlanta was prohibitive for my partner and myself from Tucson AZ, and there must have been many like us who would have gone if that were not the case. I have been looking for information about the SF, and hope that someone will issue a really complete report, as well as open the process for voting.
If Another World is Possible, then Another US is Necessary! (a perspective on the US Social Forum)
The first U.S. Social Forum took place in Atlanta, Georgia from June 27 to July 1, 2007 and AMI was in the mix. Of the 900 something workshops given, AMI led and facilitated three workshops, participated in various "tracks", heard top-notch plenaries, and danced (metaphorically and literally) with progressives of all stripes.
One highlight came during the workshop on Migration and Racism in the Dominican Republic. Yours truly, Sherry Flyr, and Luckner Millien of the Farmworker Association of Florida were the panelists to get the ball rolling: (What is racism? How have politicians used racism to deflect attention and scapegoat Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent? What are the parallels to the xenophobia surrounding migration in the U.S.), but then the excellent group of participants did the rest in a wide ranging but passionate dialog, the bulk of those being Dominicans and Haitians now living and working in progressive organizations in the U.S. Not only did we flesh out a deep analysis of the mainstream Dominican identity whereby the African and Haitian heritage is denied and denigrated, but we had live testimonies of conversion. One young Dominican activist told how she once blindly followed the herd and did not have a clue about her own Africanness, until her experience in the U.S. led her to see that she was indeed Afro. She proudly affirmed: "I am proud to be an Afro Dominican! Proud of my African blood.!" This was greeted by affirming applause by others present. Haitian participants provided historical context, speaking in Kreyol translated into English. And we strategized on the anti racist, pro-human and civil rights advocacy campaign we hope to participate in, with one notable caution about the effectiveness of pressuring the DR government through conventional means.
Other AMI workshops were facilitated on Food Sovereignty: Land and People in Harmony and Abundance and had stellar panels and participants: Lucas Benitez and Julia Perkins and others of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Megan of the Student Farmworker Alliance, Alberto Gomez of UNORCA (National Union of Campesino Organizations)/ Via Campesina from Mexico, John Kinsman of Family Farm Defenders/ National Family Farm Coalition (NFFC), Dena Hoff of High Plains Resource Council/NFFC, Bill Christisen of Missouri Rural Crisis Center/NFFC, Eric Holt-Jimenez of Food First, Dennis Olsen of Institute of Agricultural and Trade Policy, among others. Participants shared in an in-depth dialog on the various elements and analysis of food sovereignty and heard about the various corporate and legislative campaigns, and about the Farm Bill struggle. New ideas sprouted on the spot for possible future actions together.
At the US Social Forum there were major plenaries on Katrina, the War, Gender and the struggle against Homophobic Patriarchical Violent Capitalism, Immigration Rights, Worker Justice and Indigenous Peoples and their Prophetic Struggles and Cosmovision.
An unfortunate cross-cultural incident seemed at first to mar the final plenary, but ended up yielding unanticipated fruits. Those of us who were presenting proposals, reading snippets of declarations, or, like myself, bringing a message from delegates who could not get US visas, from Cuba, were told we would be allowed 2 minutes and no more to deliver our messages. That we should make it inspirational, short and to the point, and think of this as a pep rally. One indigenous spokesperson from Ecuador, dressed traditionally, reached his two-minute mark but had more to say (a lot more). The tall African American woman assigned to move things along took the microphone out of the man's hand, so he continued his speech shouting out to the auditorium. This perceived insult so aroused many indigenous and others in the hall that a few minutes later a large contingent took the stage, carrying Lakota drums and the indignities of five plus centuries. The Ecuadoran got to make a much longer speech, we got to hear passionate accusations of us evidently as representatives of the Occidental world, as well as healing reconciliations and a gracious apology from the woman who had taken the mike.
So the long journeys home were spiced by reflections on dignity, Western notions of time and the heart beat of Mother Earth, represented by the drum accompanying the Lakota chants. Earlier during the indigenous plenary a woman from one of the First Peoples of Alaska told of a prophesy of her people: that one day when humanity would reach a moment of greatest danger, a voice would rise from the north to warn humanity and call humanity back to harmony with Creation. Given the melting and burning of Alaska, and the drowning polar bears, she said, that time is NOW.
The youthful energy of the Forum, along with the wisdom of the elders, made for a potent convergence that is sure to bear many more fruits throughout communities in the U.S. and the world. The next Americas Social Forum is scheduled for Guatemala in October 2008 and the next US Social Forum is slated for 2010! A new generation is competently and radically taking up the mantle of struggle! We felt that energy in Atlanta!
Oh, I wish I could have been there! I am disabled now with environmental illness, a victim of living 64 years in a toxic world. I founded Wildflower Stew, an organization to promote living in the world without losing our creative spirit and our connection to the natural world. I will follow your progress and spread the word in my blog at http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com
Keep up the good work!
Hey there,
I was at the USSF too and found most of it was not in the spirit of the last incident at the people's assembly/plenary. I blogged about it here:
http://redredbecca.blogspot.com
I agree that the diversity and the preponderance of youth were great successes of the first USSF. But I think there was a problem with logistics--specifically, it may have been a good choice to do the froum in Atlanta, but then did it have to be in July? It was in the upper nineties during the march and for the first few days. Secondly, the venues were scattered around and there was no shuttle. With half an hour between workshops, you pretty much had to skip lunch if you wanted to go to all 3 workshops in a day. I went to one of the World Social Forums in Brazil--it was held at a university which was empty for the summer, so most of the events were in one location (and there were good buses to the others).
I made it to 4 workshops and one plenary and most were good (it wasn't just the lunch issue--helping my group put on a workshop kept me from being able to attend 4 workshops). But I found that some of the most valuable conversations I participated in were not actually within these officially sponsored events. That, of course, is part of the idea--creating the space where such conversations and connections happen.
Thanks to Esteban Bartlett, I have a better understanding of the speech issue which was reported pretty shoddy in the rest of the media; thanks!
i'm an old man.... mankind cannot survive without a social concience. when every child on the face of the earth has an equal opportunity, then we will be a mature, compassionate species. the best to you all.