[WSF-Discuss] European Social Forum: a report from Malmo

[CACIM]

*"The workers... battle-cry must be: 'The Permanent Revolution.'" — Marx and
Engels, 1850*
European Social Forum: a report from Malmo

Last Sunday, the European Social Forum (ESF) came to a close in the city of
Malmö, southern Sweden. Nearly 10,000 people from across Europe took part in
hundreds of political and cultural events over four days, reports Wladek
Flakin, from the independent youth organization REVOLUTION.

The highlight was a demonstration on Saturday with 15,000 participants where
trade unions, environmental groups, autonomists, left parties and socialist
youth organizations together called for "Power to the People!".

The ESF participants came primarily from Scandinavia. For example,
14-year-old Vilma came with two friends from "Ung Vänster", the Swedish Left
Party's youth organization. "We have spent the last few days painting
banners, but we were also at the demonstration for immigrants' rights", she
said about her personal highlights at the forum. But activists from across
Europe - from Spain to the Ukraine - and even from Latin America were also
there. From Germany, dozens of people traveled in buses from the "Left Youth
- Solidarity" and the trade union youth. Even from the Basque Country, over
20 young activists came, after spending 40 hours in two small buses. The
ESF'ers stayed in gymnasiums and schools around the city, while the events
took place in public buildings, rented ballrooms and a mosque.

The ESF is an opportunity for different movements to network
internationally. Opponents of the U.S. Air Force base in Vicenza in Italy
could meet up with opponents of the planned U.S. missile base in Poland. In
a large gathering, they exchanged experiences and planned protests against
the forthcoming 60th anniversary of NATO. Representatives of European
students also had a special meeting to discuss a Europe-wide day of action
against education cuts.

Special events New for the ESF was a "Labor Youth Space": a church building
in which the trade union youth from different countries organized their own
workshops. "The point is to have the youth of the European trade unions
network from below" said Joachim Heckel, a young activist of the German
metalworkers' union from Nuremberg. "Here, we see that flexibility a huge
problem for young workers across Europe. That is why we must think about
organizing Europe-wide days of action."

At an event about the EU "terror lists", representatives of the
revolutionary left from Turkey, the left-wing independence movement from the
Basque country and anti-imperialist organizations from Denmark shared the
podium. They explained how these "black lists" are used to repress left-wing
parties and movements around the world. At the time of the forum, a huge
wave of repression by the Spanish state against the Basque independence
movement was in full-swing, in which several political parties were banned.
Ulrik Kohl from the Danish group "Fighters and Lovers," which sells T-shirts
with the logos of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
and the Colombian guerrilla organisation FARC, had been condemned the day
before for "supporting terrorism" – at the ESF, however, he announced he
would continue the solidarity work.

Riot and chaos

Over the the weekend, the Swedish tabloid press headlined: "Krawall och
Kaos!" or "Riot and Chaos!". This was referring to a "Reclaim the Streets"
party which had gone through Malmö's city centre on Friday evening. The
approximately 2,000 participants danced to hip-hop and techno - and because
the Swedish autonomists seem somewhat more class struggle-oriented than
their German counterparts, the whole party took place behind a banner with
the slogan "Klass mot Klass" ("class again class"). Some people sprayed
graffiti along the road and a window pane of the bank SEB was smashed - i.e.
it was hardly the mass riot that the press had been warning about for days!
The police, who were present, remained surprisingly reticent. "If they were
to attack, then everything would get much, much worse" said an ESF organizer
about the police tactics.

Outside the official ESF program, numerous actions by the anarchist-oriented
"Action Network" took place. On Friday, for example, around 1,000 people
gathered in front of the office of the energy corporation E.on to protest
against climate change. The day before, a few hundred had demonstrated in
front of the "foreigners' office" in Malmö to call for an end to
deportations.

The ESF ended on Sunday with the Assembly of Social Movements that decided
on a final declaration of the forum. A major mobilization for all ESFers
will be the protests against the 60th Anniversary of NATO in April 2009. But
the protests against the G8 summit in Sardinia in July 2009 or against the
climate conference in Copenhagen in November 2009 also have a great
significance. The venue and date of the next ESF has already been decided
too: 2010 in Istanbul.

A preliminary balance-sheet Overall, the forum was different from previous
forums in Florence (2002), Paris (2003), London (2004) and Athens (2006).
Malmö is the smallest city to ever host the ESF, and in light of this, the
15,000 participants at the demonstration represented a success. Since the
venues were scattered throughout the city, it was difficult for an
individual to get an overview of the forum – but the number given by the
organizers of 10,000 registered participants would certainly be accurate.

The size of the 5th ESF was below expectations (20,000) as well as below the
levels of previous ESFs (with the possible exception of the more or less
disastrous 3rd ESF in London). This can be partly explained by external
factors. For example, there were hardly any participants from Germany, given
that there were almost 60,000 people at different demonstrations at the same
time in Cologne, Berlin and Stuttgart. So the three buses from Germany were
on average only half full. But that's not enough to explain the ESF's small
size. The ESF is the great forum of "talking past" or "talking at" one
another – the political diversity amongst the participants, from social
democratic NGOs to environmentalist hippies to revolutionary Marxists makes
it difficult to find a common denominator. But the functioning of the forum
and especially the final assembly makes it completely impossible. The final
declaration is not decided by a democratic vote, but rather presented by a
more or less self-appointed preparation group and then rubber-stamped with
"consensus". The text contains bullet points to satisfy nearly all of the
participants, but no concrete mobilization plans. After years of
noncommittal chatting, many are wondering what the use of the whole event
is, and that is a good explanation for the almost constant decline in number
of participants.

Given the shrunken size of the ESF, the anarchist counter-activities on the
sidelines had a much greater weight than before. In past years, it was no
more than splinter groups who organized, parallel to the ESF, small (and
hard to find) "counter-forums". But this time, the "ESF Action Network"
represented a serious competitor to the ESF. Simply because of high ticket
prices (€40 or €20 for students), there were certainly more than 1000 young
people from southern Sweden or the neighboring Copenhagen who came to the
ESF, but not to the official seminars, only to the anarchistic actions on
the all around.

Problems and potential The vast majority of seminars were alienating for
young people. It was not unusual for an event lasting two and a half hours
to consist of two hours of speeches from the podium and half an hour of
"discussion", whereby the latter consisted in reading out different
communiqués. The demands in the flyer from REVOLUTION for independent youth
structures at the ESF proved to be completely correct. It was positive that
for the first time there was a "youth space" by the trade union youth, but
this was occupied by up-and-coming functionaries and offered little
opportunity for an independent organization.

The non-stop attacks on workers, migrants and young people in Europe, which
are centralized by the EU, make a common, Europe-wide resistance more
necessary than ever before. But the unofficial bureaucracy which dominates
the ESF (which is in turn made up of various social-democratic and trade
union bureaucracies) again and again prevents that the ESF from becoming a
focus of such resistance. We greatly appreciate the networking that takes
place at the ESF - after each meeting, activists from across Europe exchange
their email addresses - but overall the ESF is and remains pretty aimless.

As far as we are concerned, we will participate at the ESF - the relatively
larger revolutionary left in Turkey will certainly make the forum in
Istanbul more exciting - but always emphasize that a revolutionary
international organization is needed to turn the diffuse slogan "another
world is possible" into a concrete, socialist reality.

Wed 24, September 2008 @ 11:45

LATEST PUBLICATIONS

   - 'Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement' ESF Malmo 0908):
   http://www.netzwerkit.de/projekte/waterman/gc[image: external
link]<http://www.netzwerkit.de/projekte/waterman/gc>
   - 'Challenging Empires: The World Social Forum. (2nd Edition, 488 pp).
   Ordering: http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm[image: external
link]<http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm>
   - 'Back in the (Ex-) USSR':
http://zope2.netzwerkit.de/RusRepLatest.pdf[image:
   external link] <http://zope2.netzwerkit.de/RusRepLatest.pdf>
   - 'Recovering Internationalism; Creating New Global Solidarity',
   http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/6439.html[image: external
link]<http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/6439.html>
   - 'Prague 1968: "Workers of the World, Forgive Me!"',
   http://www.tni.org/archives/waterman/prague1968.pdf[image: external
link]<http://www.tni.org/archives/waterman/prague1968.pdf>
   - 'A Union Internationalism for the 21stC',
   http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745327563[image:
   external link]<http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745327563>
   - 'International Labour Studies in the UK', in "Work Organisation Labour
   and Globalisation", Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 180-200.
   http://www.analyticapublications.co.uk/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.openspaceforum.net/pipermail/worldsocialforum-discuss_openspaceforum.net/attachments/20081003/287f6189/attachment.html>