THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Another World is Coming

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Feb.1-7, 2009

With very little coverage in the mainstream press, the World Social Forum (WSF) opened Tuesday, January 27, in the northeastern Brazilian city of Belem. Under the banner of "Another World is Possible," over 120,000 people came together to gain renewed strength and meaning from the ongoing global financial and economic crisis.

This is the ninth WSF, offering an alternative to the simultaneous World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This year, in the midst of a deepening global depression, the WSF offers new hope born out of the slow, patient, small scale efforts of thousands of organizations and individuals who have been working to create real alternatives for sustainable living in the face of the devastation and destruction of globalization.

With each passing day it is becoming clear that the forces of globalization and the governments advocating it have very little idea of how to stop the downward economic spiral moving across the globe. Their only answer is to try and support the institutions that brought the crisis into being. After pouring billions of dollars into collapsing institutions to rescue banks and car companies, there is little evidence that these efforts will restore the global economy. No one expects this year's gathering in Davos to come up with new thinking or strategies.

Meanwhile, on the edges of the Amazon rain forest, activists from around the globe are gathering in a spirit of hope and promise. "The global financial crisis is an opportunity for us who were born to oppose the neoliberal globalization that is now crumbling. It is a chance to show that something else is possible," Candido Grybowski, one of the WSF organizers, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.

"We always advocated state regulation (of the financial system), but so far things are only being done to save the system, not to change that system that is a castle of cards, a casino. In such a setting, the World Social Forum gains weight as a space for the emergence of new ideas and to confirm its own precept that 'a different world is possible' beyond what the owners of the world say it is," said Grybowski.

The WSF hosts hundreds of non-governmental organizations offering over 2,600 activities. It provides an open space to debate not just the financial and economic crisis, but also the energy crisis, the food crisis and climate change.

This year's choice of Belém, the capital of Pará state and the northeastern gateway to the Amazon region, as the WSF venue indicates emphasis on environmental and climate issues, as well as social concerns.

As in the past, the 2009 WSF provides an opportunity to share alternative ideas on development from those who have been working to protect communities, cultures and the earth. In Belem the voices will be those of indigenous people, especially the quilombolas, Afro-Brazilian communities descended from escaped slaves, along with riverside dwellers, small-scale extractors of natural products like rubber and nuts, and other Amazon peoples. They will offer not only a critique of globalization, but new ways of creating life.

"Amazonian social movements and organizations want to play a leading role, discussing local models of development and alternatives, rather than just host the forum," said Graça Costa, one of the WSF organizers and the national adviser on gender issues for the non-governmental Federation of Organisations for Social and Educational Assistance. "The voices of original peoples, like indigenous communities, will be important."

These voices, as well as those of the more than 100,000 gathered in Belem, offer hope and possibilities for remaking our world on principles that value life, born out of experience, experimentation and reflection.