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By Firoze Manji
www.pambazuka.org
(2007-01-26)

The World Social Forum, which took place in Nairobi, Kenya for the first time in Africa, was supposed to be a forum for the voices of the grassroots. But Firoze Manji writes that, despite the diversity of voices at the event, not everyone was equally represented.

As one would expect, WSF was highly heterogeneous. There was a lot going on. At one level no one can deny the diversity of people from all parts of the world. WSF seemingly reflected the heterogeneity of civil society internationally: there were initiatives from grassroots women’s organisations, from feminists, social movements, …

The following is a portion of an essay by Kolya Abramsky entitled The Bamako Appeal and The Zapatista 6th Declaration (Written in May 2006). It is, briefly stated, a comparison of the Bamako Appeal and The Zapatista’s Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona

The full essay was originally posted on www.zapagringo.blogspot.com

Part 2: The Bamako Declaration and the Zapatista Sixth Declaration - Revealing Tensions Within Global Networks of Anti-Capitalist Resistance

Differing Origins of the Two Documents

From their very early days, the Zapatistas were quick to call for international attention, and equally quick to receive it. One of their very early …

Here’s a website where you can watch the WSF, currently taking place in Nairobi http://www.worldsocialforum.tv/ (January 20-25)

And, here’s another with regularly updated video material from this WSF and other events http://www.cs-tv.tv/

Wangari Maathai on World Social Forum
By Teresa Abeja + Agency, Jan 24, 2007
The seventh annual World Social Forum continues in Nairobi, Kenya. Delegates from both the developing and developed world are discussing the problems affecting the world poorest, from trade, poverty, to war, and the environment. The Forum is the first to be held on the African continent.

Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner and …

The World Social Forum must represent the best of the new world not the patriarchal worst of the old. By Patricia Daniel, www.opendemocracy.net

The seventh annual gathering of the World Social Forum brings the world to Africa as activists, social movements, networks, coalitions and other progressive forces from Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, north America, Europe and all corners of the African continent converge in Nairobi, Kenya for five days of cultural resistance and celebration (20-25 January 2007).

The first World Social Forum (WSF) meeting took place in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001,

…

What the U.S. Social Forum Means to Me.
by Alice Lovelace - Atlanta, Georgia

Imagine a world where everyone has what they need, where people make the decisions that matter and where government truly is for and by the people. Now, imagine we are working, talking, debating and planning to bring that world into being.

This is the World Social Forum (WSF) process, an open space where tens of thousands gather together to imagine and then work to realize that “other” world. Over the years, the World Social Forum has helped to advance fundamental regime change throughout the world. In places …

(oops, pressed the wrong button. This article is a year old - though it remains to be true If we don’t [...] step forward, we will forever be nothing more than social tourists )

by Humberto Márquez, Caracas - “As Aristotle said, everything is politics,” Brazilian presidential secretary Luiz Dulci stated at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Venezuela, referring to the debate on the politicisation of the global civil society gathering.

The discussion of whether the WSF should remain a space for mere reflection and protest or should begin to design campaigns for concrete action began at the fifth edition …

By Ezequiel Adamovsky (20 - 1 - 2005)

As campaigners from around the world prepare for the fifth World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Ezequiel Adamovsky argues that the ‘movement of movements’ has reached a crossroads. It needs a new political focus: inventing institutions that embody not hierarchies of power but cooperation among equals.

For all the extraordinary variety of issues under discussion at the World Social Forum, each year there seems to be one fundamental question floating in the air. 2001 was mostly about establishing the source of our problems and naming our enemy ‘“ capitalism or …