Subsidy for the IC meeting debate in Parma, written after discussion among members of the Brazilian Collective, in dialog with the Kenya Organizing Committee and the African Social Forum Secretariat (but it is not a document of those bodies).
Introduction
In its short history, WSF has been revealing as a fundamental space for the
emergence of a new political culture, besides the impact it has on the
imaginary, the mobilization that it is capable of generating in different parts
of the world and the huge diversity of social actors it is capable of gather.
Large part of its potential stands on its own character as open space, founded
on the respect by diversity and plurality among us. What gives vitality to WSF
as a fabric of ideas and proposals in opposition to the capitalist neoliberal
dominance is to acknowledge the principles and ethical values of liberty of
choices and opinions, equality within difference, solidarity and
interdependence, of participation and co-responsibility, non-violence, sharing
and preservation of common goods of life and nature. Disputes, divergences,
confrontation, consensus and dissension are part of WSF ambiance and conditions
for generating a new political culture.
WSF has been a methodological laboratory since its first edition, in Porto
Alegre, in 2001. It is a persistent quest of the “how to do” in order to give
visibility to ideas and proposals of “another worlds”. Literally, on the
previous editions until now, we have never repeated the same format. And we are
learning very much on this constant innovation, looking the best forms for
knowing and recognizing each other, exchanging experiences and confronting
views, analysis and proposals, interlinking, building networks and coalitions,
define campaigns, always with the same desire of thinking to action, without any
protagonist a priori or exclusion. Rescuing the memory of this collective
learning is a task to be pursued urgently by us.
The methodology to be used in Nairobi is inspired on this previous process, but
intends above all to answer to the challenges that we are facing now. In March,
during the IC meeting in Nairobi, we have adopted as general methodological
guideline for building WSF 2007 program as an expression of struggles and
proposals in which we are engaged. We launched then an world consultation in
order to give to us a preliminary frame of the large sets of actions that
mobilize us. This initiative made possible to advance into a new step: from
organizing the program around themes to organizing it around our actions and
struggles for implementing alternatives. On the Methodology and Content
commissions meeting held in Rome, on July 7 and 8, together with members of the
African Social Forum Council and the WSF Organizing Committee – Nairobi 2007, we
debated some guidelines in order to complete this process in a good way and in
time.
This note presents the methodological decisions debated in the Methodology and
Content commissions meeting held, subsequently, in Nairobi in September 3 to 8.
Some of the aspects of this proposal, due to the implications for the whole set
of WSF process, must be examined by the IC, which is the adequate space for that.
Politically and historically, WSF in Nairobi is an essential moment. We have the
opportunity to consolidate WSF roots in the African continent, cradle of the
humanity, making the process even more inclusive of the people’s, culture and
actors diversity. In Africa and from Africa the different fields of citizenship
in action on building other worlds can have better opportunities to emerge. This
will give a new dynamic to the WSF itself. Due to the forms of dominance,
exclusion and devastation imposed by neoliberal globalization to African
people’s and countries, this WSF will be - for the world citizenship - a
committed and radical way to demonstrate the character and reach of its struggles .
Presuppositions
1. The main goal is to give visibility and to strength the alternative proposals
on the construction of other worlds; proposals that are, in some way, bases of
concrete struggles. In this sense, it is a matter of passing from thematic
terrains, as during the WSF 2005, to terrains defined according to the
objectives or aims of the actions, campaigns and struggles in which we are
engaged, taken as concrete and live expression of effective alternatives to
neoliberal capitalist globalization that we have been implementing. Given WSF
character, the basic criteria of grouping the citizen struggles in order to form
the terrains is the world dimension of their aims.
2. In the definition of the terrains, it is essential to assure the conditions
to incorporate the diversity of actors and plurality of perspectives, on the
frame of the Charter of Principles that we adopt. In this way, each terrain must
allow that dialog, confrontation and exchange be a practice of the encounter
inter diverse actions, campaigns and struggles with common strategic goals,
unleashing a process of wide convergences and divergences. It is not a matter of
searching a least common denominator among the members of the terrain, which
limits and excludes in some way. On the contrary: it is a matter of identifying
challenges in confronting and exchanging, renewing themselves and strengthening
mutually on this search of the maximum possibilities for each action, campaign
or struggle, which can or cannot lead to make decisions on larger joint actions.
The terrains are collective constructions that are taking dimensions and forms
of their own participants.
3. In term of methodology, the big challenge is giving more emphasis to the WSF
process, without losing sight of the importance of the event itself.
Constructing spaces of campaigns, actions and struggles must start now, in the
WSF 2007 preparation. The physical architecture, the program and the event
dynamic itself, in Nairobi, in January 2007, must be a practical space of
meeting, exchange, confrontation and, also, interlinking and collective planning
of WSF process continuity, giving base for developing the WSF process during
all the 2007 year, deepening, mapping and mobilizing even more campaigns,
actions and struggles. ON the horizon, we have the WSF 2008 and after. It will
make possible to build a world map of struggles and goals, according to the
active citizenship that is engaged on the process.
4. It is fundamental to reassure the self management principle as base of
activities organization and development within WSF. This principle has been
decanted and consolidated as defining WSF character as open space itself. This
is the why it is essential to make everything respecting this methodological and
political principle. WSF participants are those who will define how WSF will
looks like. The campaigns, actions and struggles terrains to be decided – and
that will continue being under construction – are not impositions, but
references and incentive in order to facilitate the encounter, interlinking and
the process of aggregating activities. As many nuclei or aggregations within
each terrain as necessary can be formed. Independent activities can also be
developed. What we intend to achieve with the terrains is giving the possibility
of overcoming fragmentation and dispersion, due fundamentally to the lack of
mutual recognition and dialogue than to the lack of will to meet, exchange,
confront, interlink and acting jointly while respecting diversity. In this way,
we must assure the principle of self management, in which each participant can
register its activity on the terrain that it belongs to without losing its own
identity. But, at the same time, it will be unleashed an active facilitating
process in order that various possibilities of aggregations registered under a
terrain can have the opportunity of being formed, always according its aims. The
layout of the terrains have as base the consultation carried out.
5. We also have been learning that each WSF has its specificity, due mainly to
the local movements and organizations, essential in the WSF final organization.
This is the why we have defined that each WSF Organizing Committee e to the
coalition of actors formed as its local concrete support – in this case, the WSF
Organizing Committee of Nairobi 2007 and the African Social Forum Council – can
and must to define and develop activities that give a local flavor and, at the
same time, bring to the whole set of participants their visions, concerns,
demands and struggles. Those activities includes big conferences about African
issues of world dimension, African personalities testimonies, round tables of
dialogue and controversy among movements and participant’s organizations and
people responsible institutionally by political parties, governments and
multilateral organizations, as well as other kinds of expression, always
intending to affirm an African perspective about other worlds. These activities,
whose principle is the co-management among WSF organizers and participants, need
to be valorized without competing with self organized activities, within the
terrains. This is the why it is absolutely necessary to avoid simultaneity of
those two types of activities. See below what is the proposition to solve that
issue:
Pratical criteria
1. Consultation
During the Methodology and Content commissions meeting in Nairobi, on September
4 and 5, 2006, the results from the consultation already carried out were
evaluated and 09 terrains around which the campaigns, actions and struggles in
which we are engaged in were identified. The WSF territory in Nairobi will
relate to the same 09 terrains. These terrains, defined as “objectives of
action” for all WSF participants, are the following:
- Building a world of peace, justice, ethics and respect for diverse
spiritualities - Liberating the world from the domination of multinational and
financial capital - Ensuring universal and sustainable access to the common goods of humanity
- Democratising knowledge and information
- Ensuring dignity, defending diversity, guaranteeing gender equality and eliminating all forms of discrimination
- Guaranteeing economic, social and cultural rights, especially the
rights to food, healthcare, education, employment and decent work - Building a world order based on sovereignty, self-determination and
rights of
the peoples - Constructing a people-centered and sustainable economy
- Building real democratic political structures and institutions with
people’s participation on decisions and control of public affairs and resources
2. Registration
Activities registration starts in beginning October and will last up to XXXX.
Organizations and movements will do registration through the website, through
form presented in annex (???) and will indicate the terrain in which each
proposed activity can be better placed. Special tools will be developed in order
that those actors registering activities can know right away what are the other
activities placed under the same terrain or in others. Following, the process of
dialog in order to aggregate activities or interlinking activities start.
3. Architecture of WSF program in Nairobi
The proposal is that in 2007, during WSF, the terrains in which the WSF
territory will be organized achieve consistency and emerge as true working
fields, giving bases to the process along 2007, but having in mind also 2008 and
after. Those terrains will be necessarily different, not only due to the
difference of goals, but also due to the size (number of activities and size of
each one, nuclei/ set of aggregated activities etc.) The WSF territory will look
for attending those specificities.
As basic criteria for program architecture, the full four days of activities in
Nairobi (21 to 24) will be divided in two parts: the first to take place on the
first three days and the second, on the last day.
– On the first three days all the self organized activities will be held,
on their respective venues, as well as the co-managed activities.
– These three days will be divided in four (4) collective working
sessions; the
first three sessions will be dedicated to the self organized activities, on the
correspondent terrains. The fourth and last every day session (or the second
session) will be used for the co-managed activities. According what was
mentioned before, these activities would be large conferences about African
issues with world dimension, testimonies of African personalities which are
heritage of the humankind, round tables of dialog and controversy among
movements and multilateral organizations, as well as other types of expression.
On programming these activities, it must be searched a way in which each issue
be complementary to the others, without overlapping themselves. The list of
these activities will be presented to the IC for discussion.
– During the fourth day the work will be carried out also by terrains and in
self-organized manner, to expose to the others their proposals to give
continuity to their campaigns, actions and struggles, to interlink themselves
around future activities and to define their working plans for 2007 and the
future (looking already to the format of 2008 WSF).The activities in this 4th
day will be divided in two parts: the morning and the afternoon.
– The morning of the fourth day will be dedicated to the presentation of
actions, types of work and struggles and social actors behind them in their
diversity, with convergences and divergences that were raised. The aim is to
increase interlinks and possible aggregations.
– To make this possible the Nairobi WSF organisers will analyse the set
of self
organised activities registered, after the inscriptions have finished, to
identify the themes arising from them. The themes then proposed will be
presented before the beginning of the event – as soon as possible – and, in each
terrain, thematic sub-terrains will be prepared, to make possible to
participants to meet in the sub-terrain they find more linked with their actions
and struggles. In the information to be given to participants during the
inscription period this possibility of working together in the morning of the
4th day will be already presented, although only later the themes of the
subterrains will be proposed to them. Anyhow if participants decide to meet in
different thematic sub-terrains they will be free to do that, as the dimension
and charateristics of the WSF territory will make this possible.
– The afternoon of the fourth day will be dedicated to interchanges,
linking and
planning of actions, struggles, and campaigns having a world dimension or having
a world level impact, letting as clear as possible the goal of each action or
set of actions. This planning can include proposals of approaching to new themes
and the expansion of the process to areas of the world not reached so far.
– To facilitate the organisation of activities in the WSF terrain, the WSF
organisers will identify – also from the existing inscriptions of activities –
the actions, struggles and campaigns of this type and level, in each of the WSF
terrains. They will then contact the organisations leading such actions,
struggles and campaigns to consult them about their accordance to their
placement in the WSF terrains. During this consultation, participants will be
also invited to propose and register activities of this type in the afternoon,
indicating the terrain where the activity should be placed.
– Participants would be invited also to reflect on that afternoon – and to
present propositions – about how the WSF could be organized in 2008, as well as
in 2009.
– On this perspective, the different IC commissions could meet also
during all
the 4th day, in order to program the development of their own activities of
support to the whole process.
– In this way, by the end of the WSF event we will have a big map of
proposals of actions and new initiatives, we will have defined the process in
which each terrain and, in its interior, each nuclei formed think to follow in
order to empower its mobilization and struggle. We will have defined also
conditions to enlarge the active mapping of campaigns, actions and struggles
around each terrain, join activities, planning and organizations for the process
continuity.
4. Systematization and memory
It is essential to create practical mechanisms that allow us to register the
process and feed it on the way to the future. Given the size that WSF normally
acquires, it will be impossible to visualize everything, even within each
terrain to be built. Systematization and memory of the work along its
development is essential to allow that dialogue, exchange, confrontation and
interlink (the so-called aggregation process) happen and are used to strength
the process in its continuity and give consistency to our diversity. The
Methodology and Content commissions, with the Organizing Committee, must think
strategically in this activity. This is important also for our incidence on the
public debate.
Implications of this proposal for the WSF continuity
It is possible to have a notion of possible developments of the adoption of the
above proposal in the WSF process and its future. This is not a matter for the
Methodology and Content commission but of the International Council. The
folowing ideas intend only to facilitate and deep our reflection, extracting
from the proposal for Nairobi 2007 the perspectives that it opens for the future
of the WSF process.
We have already started a debate on how to proceed concerning 2008: if we must
to continue with annual events, or if we must carry out WSF events every two
years or if we must intercalate a year with a global event and the other with
polycentric/descentralized events or other possible format. From the proposal
for WSF 2007 in Nairobi - which brings about terrains of campaigns, actions and
struggles organized according its aims and having one day, the last one, to make
an evaluation of the interlinks, proposals and build a plan for the continuity -
we can arrive, naturally, to a innovating and audacious solution concerning WSF
in 2008, with developments at least for 2009. This is due to the fact that, with
this proposal, the process of WSF itself became essential for the good success
of the event.
If the 9 terrains of campaigns, actions and struggles defined for Nairobi
achieve enough adhesion and internal diversity in terms of actors who hold them;
if their plans point towards the empowerment of the same proposals that come out
from their struggles and if they advance on the construction of new proposals
based on the convergences and divergences, resulting in more mobilization and
new actors, then the possible format for the WSF 2008 we will start to be drawn.
A hypothesis could be, for instance, that WSF 2008 would be organized around the
objectives of the campaigns, actions and struggles. Forums would be carried out
in continents, countries or cities where the movements and organizations who
adhere to it consider that it presents the best political conditions to express
the objectives of their proposals and struggles as well as the effective
possibility of carrying on the event and the opportunity of large local
mobilization but with world dimension. The advantage of a WSF with multiple
venues and in many regions of the world, if compared to the dynamics of the
polycentric 2006, is the fact that each venue be more global and less regional
due to the meaning of the struggle and to the participants, even if it takes
place in a specific region. Each venue will be born and will develop with a
global vocation of the WSF itself. In this sense, many simultaneous events, as
many as the Nairobi terrains – or objectives - that we organize and make viable,
instead of dispersing efforts will give us the exact dimension of our world
dimension, of our capacity of building and deepening proposals, as well as of
the struggles that we are carrying concretely in order to build other worlds. In
this way, a WSF as a citizen network that is able to embrace the whole world at
the same time is being drafted.
For this reason and for creating a big echo and provoke a huge political impact,
it is desirable that the different venues for WSF 2008 have some sort of
simultaneity, let’s say, on the end of January, in memoriam of the world
citizenship calendar, with some sort of coincidence and as a counterpoint to
Davos. Beside the mobilization and the event itself, by giving visibility to the
process of exchange, confrontation and interlink around proposals WSF 2008 would
be a moment of evaluation and planning for the whole year, up to 2009 at least.
WSF 2009, in its turn, would be then a unique event, again on the end of
January, having as a center the map of the citizenship in action, in the
extension that we reach till there. This real map, a true report of the world
citizenship, would have as base the terrains of campaigns, actions and struggles
on building other worlds, systematized, memorized and visualized in order to
allow to think news audacious possible tasks.
October 3, 2006