Un otro mundo es posible - Another world is possible

MORE than 100,000 political activists from 150 countries flocked to the Amazonian city of Belém in Brazil in the last couple of weeks for the 9th World Social Forum. Braving torrential downpours and sizzling temperatures, people attended meetings, discussions, workshops and cultural events over a six-day period.

The World Social Forum was set up in 2001 as a huge eclectic gathering of progressive leftists: from socialists, environmentalists, indigenous, anarchists and Amazon tribes to name but a few.

While no binding decisions are made at this event, it is a crucial opportunity for grassroots activists and movements to engage and organise. Although conceived and reared as a purely grassroots, non-governmental movement, this year saw the attendance and participation of five of South America’s – in fact the world’s most progressive and radical – presidents, namely Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and the host, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who notably shunned by that other gathering in Davos, the World Economic Forum.

This overtly political and governmental participation was criticised by some of those in attendance, however it must be acknowledged that these presidents have come to power due to the very support of grassroots movements. They are simply government manifestations of all those groups gathered in Belém, a political culmination of all their agitation.

ALIVE
Chávez, who delivered a lengthy and powerful speech, praised the World Social Forum as “the most important event of the year”. Whilst the political elite of the wealthy, so-called developed nations were meeting with their capitalist cronies in the exclusive Swiss resort of Davos in Switzerland to attempt to save their beloved capitalism, Belém was alive with those activists and presidents who are proposing and developing a true alternative to the current economic capitalist system, which has gone into freefall.

The over-riding theme of the World Social Forum is that ‘Another World is Possible’; this year’s event focused on ‘Saving the Amazon’. Chávez said:
“In Davos, the world that is dying is meeting; here, the world that is being born is meeting.”

The midwives of this new world, a socialist and environmentally sustainable new order, are everywhere and now is a crucial time for all to act and ensure that this new world not only lives but flourishes to deliver social justice to the masses.