trol of the latter); it has employed public forums as part of the "participatory budgetmaking" that is now being imitated in other cities such as Belém; and the PT and Lula were instrumental in calling the first World Social Forum.
The organising committee comprised the Brazilian Association of NGOs, Brazilian ATTAC, Commission for Justice and Peace, Initiatives for Citizenship, TUC (CUT), Institute of Social and Economic Analyses, MST (landless workers' movement), and
BRAZIL MEETING: "Politics transformed - Can
Lula find a way out of the
Brazilian crisis?"
SATURDAY 8TH MARCH
School of Oriental and
African Studies, Russell Square, London, 10am-2pm lain Bruce NOTHING could have shown more dramatically the usefulness of the Social Forum movement than 15 February. If it hadn't been for the call coming first from Florence, then amplified by Porto Alegre, the extraordinary Mexican wave of protest that started in UKland, passed round the world to San Francisco, and ended up back in Sydney the following morning, might never have happened.
The rest of this year should see this dynamic spread to other areas too. Here are just some of the plans being laid. Many of the exact details and dates are still tentative. THE WAR AND G8 The weekend (1-2 March) saw simultaneous meetings called in London and Geneva to plan, firstly the continusecondly the mobilisations against the G8 at Evian in southwest France. The aim is to get 100,000 or more to a demonstration and counter-summit at the end of May. There'll be a big emphasis on local mobilisations from the regions of France, Switzerland and Italy closest to Evian, and a strong youth involvement. WTO IN CANCUN The WTO General Assembly in Cancun, Mexico, on 9 September, is potentially the most important focus alongside the war. Campaigners believe there is a real possibility of derailing the attempts to launch a new full-blown round of free-trade talks. GATS, which obliges countries to open up their local services to the market, is the cutting edge, with a number of campaigns, marches and September, there will be a mobilization at Cancun itself. But the aim is to make this a big international day of action, with an impact comparable to 15 February. There are plans for a big event somewhere else (IGMetal in Germany and other big unions are backing this, and other actions - possibly Argentinianstyle road blockades - across Asia, Africa and Europe. EU AND CONVENTION The EU and its current Convention process will continue to draw fire at events in Greece at the end of their presidency (20-21 June), and in Italy in December for the end of the Convention. THE ESF IN PARIS All these strands and many more will European Social Forum, this time in Paris/St Denis in November.
The French organising committee is already very broad, with the major trade unions and NGOs all taking an active part.
But this also makes the age profile older, and gives greater space to conservative tendencies in the movement.
(This is the exact opposite of the English Mobilisation, where nobody doubts the energy and radicalism of the movement, but where the active involvement of major unions and NGOs remains absent.) It will be necessary to combine the strengths of these different processes, bringing to bear the energy and youth of the anti-war movement and the G8 mobilisation on the ESF organisation in Paris.
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World Social Forum/GATS actl ance March 2003 2l