In one way, the WSF became a reflection
of many of the social problems facing the world: too little space for too many people; too
few facilities for those who most need them; too many groups marginalized; too much noise
and too few listeners; and never enough food or water.
A McKenzie in TERRAVIVA,
the independent newspaper of the WSF
"The WSF is the creation of some very thoughtful,
innovative people. They hit upon a creation that looks to have been wildly successful
beyond their dreams. It is not a Ford creation."
Lisa Jordan of the Ford Foundation
speaking to
OpenDemocracy.net
‘'We are not engaged with the working class. We are
unintelligible to each other. The process leading up to our movement is a process that
does not come from the bottom. We are unintelligible to each other. We have to turn the
organisation upside down. There has been a capture of this movement by the international
intellectuals.''
George Monbiot, a British writer,
speaking at a session on' The Future of WSF'
"To understand what’s really going on here it
helps to know something about the recent history of this city (Mumbai). There was a huge
textile industry here until recently. But the mill owners, recognising that scarce land in
the city had much higher value if redeveloped, ran their mills down. Many lakhs [hundreds
of thousands] of mill workers lost their jobs. It’s been going on for twenty years.
People are very angry. They’ve lost their jobs and live in unspeakably terrible
conditions. The land is being redeveloped with glitzy new shopping centres and so on,
shoved right up to and in the faces of the destitute. You should go and see it."
Meenakshi Shedde of Times of India
talking to Caspar
Henderson of OpenDemoracy.net
"The forum had to remain an open space because if it
became a movement it would die. "The forum is on a knife edge, on one side is
domination by an avant-garde; on the other is chaos. The WSF must be a process somewhere
between these two events, one that overcomes differences."
Chico Whitaker, a Brazilian
social activist who is one of the
creators of the World Social Forum
‘’If this is all about networking and building
solidarity, then it is okay, but that is not the case, since they are trying to change the
world by declaring that ‘Another World is Possible,’’ but not saying how.
There is no agenda for action to back such impressive words.
This is cheating.’’ D Raja, a member of India’s
Communist Party, told Inter
Press Service
"The usual hackneyed clarion calls of the socialists/ leftists [IMF – Out of
the South!; Down with Imperialists and Capitalist Oppressors!] mingles with the rhetoric
of the oppressed [Forced Occupation of Iraq]. A local reporter remarks snidely on a
morning column, "This is no Bushover!" of the shrill voices raised all over this
mela. But these are no disparate voices. There is a pattern, a larger orchestrated design.
It is part of a global process that began no more than three years ago. "What we see
now is a grappling of a large, very large emerging scenario that is truly worldwide,"
says the mild-demeanoured Ludovic Jonard, a French architect-activist who heads the
international Architecture and Design, and who works on networking peoplein countries
across the North [the rich but minority nations] and the populous but poor South, on how
to make our cities not the nightmare they all are."
Hariharan, head of Biconserve India Foundation, writes in
an article on WSF2004
''First they squeezed out Latin America by propping up banana republics, then they
moved to South-east Asia and created rapacious dictators in countries like the Philippines
and Indonesia who had to be removed through people power and now they have set their eyes
on the Asian region but we are ready,''
Amarjeet Caur, secretary of the
powerful All-India
Trade Union Congress as quoted in TERRAVIVA
 "If Porto Alegre can be duplicated here in Asia, then why not in Africa? So,
in fact, the (globalisation) of the WSF is beginning here"
Boaventura de souza Santos, a
Portuguese sociologist speaking at the WSF2004
"There
has been a capture of this movement by the international intellectuals" |
"The World Economic Forum (WEF) begins its annual
meeting Wednesday in Davos, a gathering of national leaders, corporate executives,
financiers and economists — most of whom are entrenched supporters of the neoliberal
economic credo. The WEF is also a space, but they have all the tools they need: They have
the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the G8 (Group of Eight most powerful
countries). We haven't all these tools. For these reasons the only place in which we can
organise our campaign is here."
Christophe Aguiton, French activist and
a spokesman for ATTAC (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transfers) for the Aid of
Citizens) |
