World Social Forums bring a huge diversity of together. in the demonstrations danced along behind samba bands and Hare Chrishna chanters.
British megaphone lead chanting competed with Brasilian style trios (forty foot trucks containing a concert size sound system).
I was surprised to find myself sitting in a workshop behind a T-shirt commemorating England rugby union grand slam victory.
Add to that the dalits, the nobel prize winners, human rights activists, women campaigning against fudamentalism, street hawkers, cultural activists, alternative media
pacifists, all with specificaly allocated areas in the site and you get part of the picture. Lula and Chavez
The last time the World Social Forum (WSF) was held in Porto Alegre was in 2003. The event was heavily marked by the victory of Lula in the Brasilian Presidential election three months earlier.
When Lula spoke in 2003 he had not been in office a month and was riding a wave of great expectations. You only had to mention his name and you earned a cheer.
Even his speech in Davos that year when he outlined his social contract policy was greeted with cheering and long applause by thousands watching on a giant screen in the Gigantinho stadium.
This year two rallies in Gigantinho revealed Lula as a far more controversial figure. His own event was on the receiving end of a protest demonstration and heckling, as well as cheering.
At the Chavez rally four days later, though Lula wasn't there, a leading supporter divided the rally down the middle between hecklers and cheerers.
Chavez had become the man of the hour, the man who stood up for the people. If you wanted a cheer then mention him.
Chavez himself said positive things about Lula, he wasn't counterposing himself, but everybody knew that Chavez was the new point of unity. Policy and leaders
While the over 150,000 attenders were picking their neW hero-President by acclaim the question of leadership and direction for the WSF was becoming more intense.
On the final day, 19 of the most well known WSF figures released a manifesto (The Porto Alegre Consensus, to contrast with The Washington Consensus, see box) that they had been working on during the previous day.
This was instantly controversial and other leading figures declined to sign it, saying it had no more standing than the hundreds of other proposals.
The statement's content is not paticularly controversial, it is its purpose that is important. It provides a basic statement of unity that goes beyond the general another world is possible' and tries to set a precedent for more detailed policy and action beyond the calls for united days of action against, for example, the war in Iraq.
The largely reformist nature of this document belies the fact that a global mass movement built around these points would be a major obstacle for neo-liberalism.
Attempts to develop such a movement will highlight the other main problem that the WSF has to face up to - the narrowness of its social base. The numbers are big but what it represented, particularly an important point to register but it tends to forget, as do many people in developed countries, that 50 per cent are rural dwelling agricultural workers.
Organisations such as the in the WSF is an essential aspect of broadening its social base. Trade and the G20
Much of the controversy around Lula at the WSF was domestic, but on the issue of
trade the become international.
Lula has pushed a world trade agenda in which he has linked up with the most developed developing coun tries, the Group of 20 (G20); but also G3 with India and South Africa, and China.
This link up poses the US and the developed world with a problem, the increase in trade that does not involve them weakens their position.
However it appears to pose the rest of the developing world with a bigger problem, namely that the G20 will leave them behind in their own search for growth.
The inadequacy of Lula's project was strongly criticised. Walden Bello wrote that Lula was Washington's darling in the WSF site newpaper. Trade activists demanded that G20 stayed linked with the rest of the developing
Members of the African Social Forum even forsaw a situation in which, to mis-