[WSF-Discuss] ESF 2008 Preparation: A Working document

[CACIM]

*ESF 2008 Preparation: A Working document *

Tord Björk 08/07/03

@
http://www.nigd.org/nan/nan-doc-store/07-08-2008/esf-2008-preparation-a-working-document/

The opinions in this paper are not the opinion of any organisation. I hope
they are useful for those international cooperation partners interested in
understanding the ESF process, and can be used constructively to improve
cooperation between very different movements that all have to be respected
in the common struggle against neolibealism, patriarchy, ecological
destruction and imperialism.

The piece is long and thus only for people really interested.

*Cessing ESF preparations 2008*

The enlargement of European Social Forum towards the Nordic countries have
changed some basic patterns of cooperation within the process both in
practical and political terms. What might seem as a more reluctant and less
political style from the Nordic Organising Committee when imposing its will
at preparatory meetings and less of left rhetoric and more of uncommon
activist organisations will not necessarily en in a less political ESF. But
it will be different and maybe will hep in renewing ESF.

A main problem is the lack of activists generally in Sweden and in a small
city as Malmö. This problem was aggravated by a conflict between
organisations with an activist culture among solidarity, environmental, anti
war, antiracist and other movements and political parties to the left on one
hand and Attac and main stream trade unions and one main popular education
organisation on the other hand in Sweden. This conflict has not occurred in
Finland and Norway that also participate in NOC but have less practical
responsibility. Now a balance between the two groups has developed which
into better effectiveness. With more respect for the 11 working groups and
some additional staff there might be capacity to solve most problems. At the
time being the work develops in a better balance between the different
tasks. Also political differences has now been solved in a better way than
in he beginning of the preparations giving more room both for radical
activist movements and reaching sympathisers of global justice that just
want to come o listen to interesting discussions.

All activist organisations and let parties involved in the ESF-process have
an understanding that the mainstream trade unions with their social
democratic contacts are of vital importance and without them there would not
have been a possibility to organise the event in Sweden or anywhere else in
the Nordic countries. The key organisation has been the Transport workers
union with their good connections to the mayor's office in Malmö, as chair
of the regional Skåne LO and a proponent of the ESF idea to other trade
unions. It is Transport that created credibility for the project. They are
known to be one of the most radical unions among the main stream but have to
act in such a way that most of the other unions join, something they
successfully and in the slow democratic manner of LO have done. It has been
a steady process and proven to be trustworthy.

Transport and LO Skåne have not chosen representatives in the board who are
well-experienced in broad international cooperation. In general LO is new in
the ESF process. Instead they have leaned on what they have perceived as
more well experienced Attac individuals and ABF, the Workers Educational
Association a mass organisation dominated by social democrats but including
also any leftist organisations and trade unions which has contact only in
Malmö with 220 migrant organisations. One of the ABF key persons from the
head office n Stockholm have explicitly stated the vision of ESF to be
organised as a book fair, something that probably fits well also among the
less radical main stream unions. The Attac individuals had a similar
professional vision o ESF as an open space without any political conflicts.
Those who claimed that it was necessary to address issues on the purpose of
ESF and the political aspects of organising the event was seen as
troublemakers while the majority of the involved organisations were totally
new to the project and listened to what was perceived as the most
experienced people involved in ESF and WSF.

His caused an open conflict in a different pattern from earlier ESF. There
ere no social democratic party like in London that wanted to control the
process in detail. On the contrary the more than 250 000 euro from Malmö was
given without strings attached. Instead of a conflict between radical and
les radical left or between what has been labelled horizontals and verticals
he explicit conflict developed mainly between Friends of the Earth and
Attac.

Both have similar social background and cooperated well in the U Summit
protests in Gothenburg 2001 were FoE Sweden together with the trade union
SAC had initiated a broad international network with 87 organisations that
jointly organised a counter summit and demonstration. The newly established
Attac came in late as a strong actor initiating among other things so called
constructive dialogues between the movement, the Swedish government and EU.
Later the local branch of Attac together with the local branch of FoE and
the Transport workers union in Malmö launched a successful appeal for common
welfare against privatisation that has turned into a national network and
became one of the inspirations for further cooperation to promote hosting
ESF in the Nordic countries. Another crucial factor was the strong attempts
by Attac to discuss with LO common strategies at yearly summer meetings at
Brunnsviks Folk High School which received support from think tanks related
to the trade unions. The was perceived as a dialogue between old and new
social movements which caught momentum also through many local social forums
were Attac, ABF, solidarity organisations, trade unions, FoE and other
organisations united their efforts. An interest in ESF and WSF developed and
slowly the broad Swedish popular movement tradition started to organise.
Folk High Schools linked to the environmental, peace and solidarity movement
and the left party seen courses to WSF and finally ABF organised study
circles all over the country resulting in the biggest Swedish delegation
ever at WSF in Nairobi ht many hundreds of Swedish participants.

The main promoters of ES in the Nordic countries were Attac Sweden and a
Social Rights Association in Denmark. Early 2007 a Swedish initiative
committee was established, all of the active people came from Attac, some
from trade unions and FoE. The Swedish initiative committee was well
integrated in the local social forums including the regional Skåne social
forums which had been organised many times with many thousands of
participants. It saw itself as part of a Nordic committee and contacts were
established between Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. An information text
about ESF was issued claiming the importance of ESF as a unique meeting
place for civil society and a place were initiatives as the demonstrations
against the Iraq war and the campaign against Bolkentstein public service
directive was launched. Furthermore the text argued that the reason why ESF
now came to the Nordic countries was an interest in the Nordic welfare model
and popular movement experiences. Slow and steady contacts were taken
between Swedish organisations building trust between movements ad a study
made to see if Malmö could practically host ESF. The other option was to
organise ESF in Copenhagen. Here a Danish initiative committee had been
organised faster with the Association for social rights as lading
organisation but without support from Denmark's Social Forum, KSF. A
national DKSF was planned for end of September 2007 and caught much of the
attention of activist organisations.

In June a Nordic meeting was held to decide were ESF should be placed.
Sweden was willing to take the responsibility and demanded that a decision
should be taken to enable the work to continue. All necessary contacts had
been taken with the mayor in Malmö and other actors of importance, no clear
commitments had been decided but there was rust in the initiative and that
support would come. The Danish committee had chosen the opposite strategy.
Instead of building from bottom up uniting activist organisations, social
forum organisers and bigger organisations with sizeable professional staff
the Danish Committee had started negotiations wit ministries. The goal was
to have half the sum needed to make ESF decided in short time before
committing oneself to place ESF in Copenhagen. There were no results yet in
the negotiations but there was hope for results soon. The idea was to put
the whole ESF in a professional conference center outside the city center
and have professional staff to take care of the practical mattes so
activists could go out in Copenhagen and do political action to reach the
public. This was explicitly called to renew ESF by conquering the
institutions. The Swedish participants at the meeting looked confused at
each other, in Sweden activists do not mind to both organise practical
meeting arrangements and go out on the streets, actually the secretary of
the official Democracy report that issued 50 books on how to democratise the
society stated that democracy in Sweden is created by building trust among
each other when carrying chairs at meetings Participatory democracy was seen
as an ideal. The Malmö proposal was completely the opposite of the Danish
professional conference center. In Malmö the idea was to have ESF in many
different localities within walking distance from the working class suburb
of Rosengård to the old workers movement amusement park in the city center
of Malmö.

A decision was postponed a Denmark refused to give Sweden the lead and was
not willing to take the lead themselves either. Furthermore it became clear
afterwards that the Association for social rights had kept the place of the
Nordic meeting secret for Attac Denmark who was interested to participate.
Attac Denmark is very active in DKSF and was reluctant to have ESF in
Copenhagen if not the political purpose was clear. A bigger conflict was on
the rise within Denmark and between the two initiative committees but did
not erupt. The Danish ministry said not to fund ESF and the responsibility
was now given to the Swedish Initiative committee to take the lead in July
2007.

*ACT I*

Summer, autumn and winter conflict on content and form

The task was now to initiate a host organisation and to motivate interest by
stating why people should be interested in ESF in Malmö. On each of these
aspects a conflict emerged, in the beginning as a conflict between FoE
Sweden and members of Attac Sweden.

Concerning content the conflict started in the end of July when a new
version of the information text about ESF was sent out from the official
email address of the Swedish initiative committee. This new version excluded
all references to ESF as a place to initiate action and the examples of the
Iraq war demonstrations. All references to why ESF was going to take place
in Malmö due to interest in Nordic politics and movements were also
excluded. The earlier text with this more politically motivating content
used by the initiative committee was suddenly whipped away without prior
decision in the initiative committee and a new version anonymously written
and sent from the official address controlled by people from Attac was now a
fact.

Friends of the Earth reacted against this change but the immediate practical
tasks were so many that there were no time to solve the conflict directly.
Instead a conflict on the content developed further both concerning
information on ESF and how to formulate thematic areas for the program. It
was not resolved until the European programme meeting in February changed
the proposals made by the Nordic Organizing Committee program group
dominated by the thinking of Attac and for information in May after that
both the information working group with activists and the information
function among the staff had stopped working and a major conflict between
the board and the working groups was settled in a compromise.

The people from Attac who had been very active in the international work had
together with a key person in ABF with implicit support from the trade
unions promoted an idea that ESF should not be predefined. It was presented
as democratic visions of an open space were the participants themselves
bottom-up through a webpage they define the content of ESF. Thus it
was wrong to state anything about the content in advance except for the WSF
declaration that was the basis for ESF according to Attac. Many initiatives
had emerged out of ESF, to handpick just two like the Iraq war
demonstrations and the campaign against the public service directive was to
predefine certain issues as more important than others and that was not
democratic. To state something on why ESF was placed in the Nordic countries
by saying there was an interest for the Nordic welfare model and movements
was equally a problem predefining welfare and movements as more important
than other issues.

Any criticism against this political idea of an open space lacking any
predefinition or motive for being placed in the Nordic countries was
attacked as being ways to politicise the process, a way for leftists to
start quarrelling and split. That it was the non-leftist environmental
organisation FoE that protested was ignored, instead it was a common picture
of quarrelling among small leftist organisations that was presented as a
risk to the ESF-process. There were only two choices, either for open space
or for making social forums into decision-making bodies like some leftists
wanted internationally. These leftists were a danger to WSF as an open space
and anyone criticising the visions of people from Attac and ABF was
perceived as political troublemakers causing the process to be diverted from
a neutral organising of an open space into a political battle ground.

This vision of an open not predefined space claiming inspiration from Chico
Whitaker who inspired and took part in initiating WSF had many admirers when
the organizing committee should be established at a Nordic meeting in
Gothenburg in the beginning of September. Here the book fair was launched as
a model for ESF by the invited key note speaker from ABF, no one except FoE
Sweden seemed to disagree. Furthermore the working group set up by the
Swedish initiative committee in mid July on popular education with the aim
to collect material on the Nordic welfare model and popular movement
experiences to help promoting knowledge in the process on these issues
previously announced as an important motivation for having ESF in the
Öresund region was dismissed. Even the representative from the Left Students
Unions agreed to the idea that NOC should totally avoid any predefinition
and be a neutral provider of an open space. FoE Sweden who had initiated the
working group gave up.

The ideologues behind the Swedish open not predefined space had a vision
that besides NOC a network or different networks of organisations should be
established were the political motivation and mobilisation for ESF should be
organised. FoE argued that this was a dream as there were no resources for
such a broad separate network for all movements involved without any other
policies common interest than to organise events at ESF. Furthermore, NOC
had the responsibility to inform about all the ESF preparations including
political content of importance both from previous ESF and what might come
up as central in the preparations for ESF 2008. People in common are
interested in what issues will be discussed at ESF, not much how it is
organised. It was also necessary to see that also all practical issues as
choice of venue, of funders etc. had a political dimension necessary to
address openly. This position gained no support.

*Open space, popular movement cooperation or denouncing ESF?*

In Sweden four political attitudes developed among the movements towards
ESF.  The large majority was new to the process and overwhelmed by the
practical immediate tasks and to start planning for their seminars, maybe
thinking of cooperating with their most likeminded cooperation partners.

ABF and Attac and less explicit the large main stream trade unions worked
according to the open not predefined open space strategy. They became
facilitators of the board, got in charge as coordinators of the politically
crucial working groups as mobilisation and the programme group and had soon
one Attac member as employed half time for information. To ABF a joint
popular education effort was of no interest as their immense national
organisation already was on the way to start study circles all over the
country with their own material on WSF and ESF using the successful model
for mobilising to WSF in Nairobi from Sweden. The trade unions were a bit
afraid of an ESF with too much leftist rhetoric's as main stream union
members in Sweden are not used to this. At a meeting with most trade unions
in Sweden the cooperation developed slow and very well, a main topic for the
trade unions were protecting workers rights.

The whole Attac-ABF idea was to have a horizontal not predefined process
professionally administrated were all participants could submit their
proposals for activities through a webpage and merge from bottom up. In this
vision at first there should be no themes at all, only after proposals had
been made themes should emerge. Attac influenced the program working group
with this vision and the result was a political denial of any words in the
NOC program working group proposal that stated that the theme was against
something or had content related to struggle. All themes should be what were
claimed neutral. FoE Sweden who only had a marginal position in the program
group together with other activist groups putting their main energy into
more practical work protested in vain. In the board a representative from
the Left student union in the last minute put up a counterproposal stating
many against and struggle the wording of the themes, e.g. the failure of
neoliberalism and economic alternatives instead of only economic
alternatives. FoE Sweden had a position in the board discussion somewhere
between promoting some so called neutral wordings but also have wordings in
the themes that were more mobilising stating against war and not only for
peace. This in between position was ignored and the left students somewhat
rhetoric proposals strongly rejected.

By mistake the NOC proposal for themes was not sent out before the EPA
meeting in Istanbul early December. Here it was totally rejected, a European
program group was set up and in February themes could be decided in a
balanced way including wordings in some themes on what the seminars oppose
and even include struggle in the main title.

During the autumn the conflict concerning the general information about ESF
issued by NOC was also evolving. More and more activists from organisations
with Left party or left students now joined the process and the information
working group. ABF made a proposal for the general information with an
inclusive introduction and exclusion of explicitly stating ESF as a space to
take political action, nor mention such cases. The information group made a
proposal with a less inclusive introduction and stating ESF as a place to
take political action and not only for discussing. This conflict continued
until end of November when finally texts presenting ESF as a place for both
popular education and taking initiative for effective political action could
be presented officially by NOC. But the conflict concerning the content and
the organisation of the information work continued.

FoE Sweden developed a popular movement cooperation strategy to contribute
to the ESF-process. To FoE the political motivation was the most important.
For environmental movement cooperation there already exists a number of
spaces for international cooperation. Before environmental organisation had
been involved in ESF but mainly as organisers of specific seminars and not
in a very coordinated manner. FoE Sweden saw ESF as a place to connect to
many different popular movements by putting cooperation for political
demands and campaigning at the center of the ESF preparations for the
environmental and like-minded popular movements. To FoE Sweden ESF was a
compromise between those that wanted to organises lectures and discussions
with the audience without commitments to follow-up political action and
those movements that had political collective change as their main
motivation. Both are needed. The open not predefined space strategy opened
for positive solutions as if it was followed it was made possible to link
like-minded organisations and movements to each other instead of developing
a large ESF bureaucracy for organising main parts of the programme. It was
also an obstacle as it defined the political task of hosting and organising
the information of the process as something that should only allow for the
vision of presenting methods and not content.

FoE Sweden thus presented an idea of starting a political campaign during
the preparatory process which could be followed up after ESF during 2009 as
WSF was going to be held in Amazonia, the Swedish EU presidency during the
autumn and the Climate Summit was held in Copenhagen in December. The
proposed demands included for common welfare, against privatisation, for
peace against war and occupation, for food sovereignty and fair trade, for
sustainable urban planning and land use, against climate change. Such an
alliance between activist organisations could be a platform for cooperation
also on activities at ESF, not only concerning assemblies, seminars and
workshops but also politically motivating information material and united
efforts to take care of foreign guests and enable political cooperation
during ESF.

Only one organisation in Sweden responded positively, Nordbruk, a Via
Campesina branch of the international peasant organisation. This
organisation is very small, lacks an office and the political work are
carried out voluntarily by small farmers with very little economic support.
By many other NGOs and leftist organisations they are considered as
uninteresting. To FoE Sweden it is the opposite, peasants are considered as
the main ally on many environmental issues. Nordbruk also have a strong
position on global justice issues with no problem of opposing war and
occupation, defending common welfare and similar questions. Attac, trade
unions or any other organisation in the left spectrum of politics were not
interested in the popular movement cooperation strategy. The leftist
organisations were busy with their own preparations and considers often
environmental and peasant organisations as being single issue movements with
members that later can develop a more coherent left anticapitalist and
socialist or communist ideology and thus become political. They cannot per
definition be multi-issue movements with a non-leftist ideology

FoE Sweden had already with Finnish solidarity and environmental
organisations a very well-established cooperation on a wide range of
cooperation and campaigning methods in relation to the social forum process
but also in general on global popular movement cooperation. The Finnish
organisation often has few activists but practical minded activists are
often closely related to intellectuals and very broad organisation with
contact to major parts of the Finnish population. The Finnish organisations
also are well connected to popular movements in the third world and the only
organisations in the Nordic countries that are continuously engaged in the
International council of WSF since the beginning. There were also contacts
in Danish movements interested in political motivation for the ESF. FoE had
also god connections to many loosely organised activist networks against
climate change, on urban conflicts and since the Gothenburg EU-Summit
protests.

Steadily popular movement cooperation started with Nordbruk and FoE Sweden
as key cooperation partners. It focused on campaigning and organising ESF
seminars of common concern as being against monoculture, on land use and
other agricultural and environmental issues as a main part in quantity
terms. But equally important was a broader general global justice agenda
challenging the unholy alliances between reformist and revolutionary leftist
ideology that hitherto had dominated ESF.

The idea was to bring to ESF strong rural and indigenous movements that had
been marginal or even put outside the forum process although they were
essential to the global justice movement. Since many years FoE Sweden had
publically criticized the social forum process for excluding the Zapatistas
and thus splitting the global justice movement. Now preparations for
inviting the Zapatistas to ESF started and finally a delegate was sent to
Chiapas to invite them with the support of 30 Latin American solidarity
groups in Denmark, Sweden and Finland and FoE and Via Campesina Sweden.
Simultaneously preparations started to invite radical civil disobedience
movements from the third world as the Narmada movement in India and
Indigenous movements capable of taking power in countries like Bolivia and
Ecuador as well as the global leadership of Via Campesina and Friends of the
Earth. As the Swedish branches of these global organisation had no money the
Finnish organisation Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam linked to popular movements in
India and WSF started fund-raising for most of the third world speakers
needed and Latin American groups started to fund participation of Indians
from Americas. There seemed to be practical problems with the participation
of the Zapatistas but with the other movements the preparations continued
well.

FoE Denmark, Finland and Sweden made a joint letter to all sister
organisations, FoE Europe and FoE International. This strategy was chosen as
FoE Europe had been somewhat reluctant to ESF. So it was good to start from
bottom up. The Young FoE Europe reacted positively as did some other FoE
groups and some campaigners within FoEE. The strong linkage with Via
Campesina in Sweden proved to be a key to success as this was especially
well received by FoEI. Cooperation with Via Campesina is seen as a strategy
of global importance but the cooperation lacked somewhat in countries in
Europe. Soon young peasants took initiatives to organise a youth camp and
young environmentalists as well which became a joint Via Campesina and Young
FoEE project and a number of joint seminars were starting to be prepared
with Via Campesina who also at the European level have small resources and
FoEE and FOEI with more resources. In Sweden the popular movement
cooperation and campaign idea gained some wider interest in the beginning of
2008 from groups like Latin American groups, Anti Racist Academy, Popular
movement against EU and the Anti war network.

Within the official process FoE Sweden did put its main energy into
enlargement bringing in new political and cultural groups, cooperating with
Central. Eastern Europe and practical issues making it possible to arrange
ESF and support CEE to participate. Thus FoE representatives became
coordinators of the group coordinating all working groups and active mainly
in the working groups for fund-raising, culture and contacts with Europe and
the World. The three working groups were all coordinated by people from the
Left or FoE which worked well. This was a political choice as it was
regarded as important to take practical responsibility to create trust among
other popular movements and that the priorities decided by EPA of mobilising
CEE countries and new groups was very much in line with the political
priorities of the FoE Sweden popular movement cooperation strategy.

The smaller trade union SAC and some anarchist groups developed a fourth
strategy. Especially SAC in Malmö looked upon ESF as a project created by
Main stream trade unions and Attac to set up a new social democratic
reformist project against the interest of revolutionary forces. In the
preparations for the Summit-protests in Gothenburg 2001 the local and
national SAC had been main cooperation partners together with FoE Sweden to
initiate a broad popular movement campaign and demonstration. After the
Gothenburg experience with riots and activists put in total 50 years in
prison there were many splits. Especially within and between leftist
organisations. Some anarchists who had been active in the Global Justice
movement wanted both engagement within ESF and a separate anticapitalist
action gathering, others wanted only to oppose. The outcome of this strategy
has been fairly little so far, at least what has been visible politically.
But it has caused great concerns among the police.

Many smaller left parties and groups have not been very active at the
general level in the ESF process. They have submitted some own proposals for
seminars and are active in the demonstration working group.  In general the
radical left in Sweden is not very active at the moment. SAC turned their
interest away from general politics after Gothenburg and started partially
with some success to reorganise its trade union work, and other important
tasks. Struggle against racism, Nazism and the populist Swedish democrats
now close to get into parliament in the opinion polls with 4 per cent takes
most of the energy. Radical activism is now also developing linked more to
the radical anti-war and pacifist movement against producers of weapons and
cars and airports to protest climate change. These radical activist
movements are much involved in the ESF-process together with their
international cooperation partners.

*Horizontal open space professionalism vs. democratic activism*

The other conflict among Swedish organisations in NOC that developed early
was also expressed most explicitly between Attac and FoE Sweden on
organisational issues. FoE wanted an organisation model combining both
stability and flexibility giving motivated influence to both organisation
with many formal resources in terms of nation wide organisation and
fund-raising capacity with major donors as well as activist organisations.
This was at a meeting in Malmö called by the Swedish Initiative Committee to
discuss organisation made into a proposal for a formal organisation with a
board elected early in the process at an annual general meeting to create
stability responsible for economy, staff and European contacts and working
groups elected by membership meetings responsible for carrying out the work
within delegated principles. In this way stability could be established
early before many organisations had had the time to be members of the Nordic
Organizing Committee but new organisations could influence the process by
appointing new members in workings groups at regular membership meetings
later on. The model was apart from the appointment of working groups a
normal popular movement democracy model were the staff are excluded from
having voting rights in the board or other democratic fora in the
organisation as they have informal strong influence anyway.

Central people in Attac did not participate in the meeting in Malmö but met
in Gothenburg. They presented another idea of a professional project
organisation. A project coordinator should together with other professional
staff be responsible for the work in a coordination group having executive
power reporting to a board. Professional coordinators should be responsible
for each working group. All the professional staff should also be members of
the board. Mobilisation and the content of the forum should be completely
separate from the NOC and instead organised in a separate network. If
organisations wanted to be active in political work they should choose to
become members of the network, if they wanted to become involve in what was
presented as practical matters they should choose to become active in NOC.

As both activist organisations and trade unions in Sweden are alien to an
idea that staff should have democratic rights in the steering bodies of an
organisation the proposal for professionals having voting rights was
rejected. A final compromise was done mainly according to the principles
decided in Malmö. But many influential organisations continued to be worried
about that the organisation was not only classical democratic centralistic
with a board in charge of all the work. That working groups could make
decisions that could make it impossible for the board to be democratically
responsible to next regular AGM to be held after ESF was of great concern.

FoE Sweden was worried about the slow speed in the organisation process.
What had saved the process in August was many new activists from the Left
party and youth organisations that started to take responsibility. But the
core of the organisation was slow to set in motion. FoE initiated an
election committee for the NOC board and a balance of activists and large
organisations was agreed upon with Attac in a key position. The hope was
that Attac after a while should have more understanding of the activist
movement's opinions and act as a bridge towards the main stream trade
unions. A board also with representatives from Denmark, Finland and Norway
was elected according to the balance proposed. In the board the Kvarnby Folk
High School in Malmö connected to the Left Party, the anti-war network and
FoE had a strong position as activist organisations. Kvarnby was represented
by a leading regional Left party politician, FoE Sweden by the chair living
in Malmö and the Anti-war network by a person that also were member of the
national board of the Left party. The Left students representative became
soon inactive and the representative from the antiracist movement had
practical problems to be involved living far away. The board thus had Attac
as key organisation with two members from trade unions, ABF and the European
feminist initiative as supporters. The trade unions, ABF and Kvarnby had the
advantage of that their representatives could use some of their
professionally paid time for the board work. There were problems in
structuring the board work in such a way that representatives from Denmark
and Finland as well as activist organisations became integrated. A problem
that was aggravated when the representative from the anti-war network became
hired on part time for fund-raising in the staff on 25 percent and thus
could not be part of the board anymore. One person from Attac was hired on
half time for the information work and one for visa and interpretations on
25 per cent. The interest for the working groups was low and mainly FoE and
Kvarnby took the responsibility to coordinate the 11 working groups, Kvarnby
also had a key position as NOC treasurer.

In the working groups three models emerged. One was to treat the work as
normal democratic procedure in popular movements, mainly by informal
consensus and if necessary by formal majority decisions according to the
mandate given by the organisation. The Contact group for Europe and the
World as well as many other groups worked well according to this model. The
other models were groups were there was strong political conflict, mainly
the information group. It was dominated by activist organisations with a
board political attitude to the work while Attac and ABF also had quite
different opinions than the majority. But this working group started well
establishing many subgroups and beginning its task producing a rudimentary
webpage, poster, and different proposals for a leaflet as well as
preparations for a media center, a press group, documentation etc. Two
groups worked according to the idea of the horizontal open space
professionalism, the program group and the Nordic mobilisation group. In the
program group the idea of neutralism became dominant and caused some
problems as many anyway wanted to discuss content. Many were interested in
content and saw the program group as a possibility for discussing their
issues which caused some prolonged debates with little results. After that
the European program group was established the internal problems within the
NOC program group aggregated as the anti-political ideology of the group had
made the purpose of the group unclear and that the hierarchy within the
group became stronger. The European Contact groups solved the problem
differently. It stated that on the formal level NOC and the group had
nothing to do with the organising of the program but informally the Contact
group should do everything to give service to those groups prioritised by
EPA in the enlargement process to enable them to influence the program by
connecting them to possible cooperation partners in advance, during and
after the merging process.

Its most clear expression did the horizontal open space professional model
get in the mobilisation group. Here its key proponent was elected
coordinator in July. Nothing happened until the first meeting to establish
NOC took place in Gothenburg early September. Here according to the standard
procedure in professional popular education but also many popular movements
in Sweden a group discussion was organised were everyone was asked to
contribute their ideas to the mobilisation plan. Contrary to movement
procedure but maybe on line with professional popular education methods then
a second round was organised on a similar mobilisation issue, and so on. The
group was never asked to agree upon what was most important, nor coming into
the position of starting to share responsibilities. The horizontal dialogue
was supposed to be summarised afterwards by the professional popular
educator into a plan to be agreed upon by a working group. At next EPA
meeting the same procedure was repeated. The working group itself were the
popular educator from ABF had been in charge since July was never called
until three months later in October. At this telephone meeting some
immediate business was attended to but afterwards no one in the presumable
large group wanted to respond to the calls of the coordinator anymore. A
physical meeting was cancelled and the coordinator stated in November that
there was a crisis in the mobilisation that needed to be solved by more
professional staff.

Half or more of the coordinators in the working groups or more and many
among the activists doing practical work came from the Left party or their
sister organisations due to the fact that Malmö is a city with working class
traditions and that activist organisations often have Leftists as key
organisers with the capacity needed in organising ESF.  These Left party
activists had no common position coming from very different organisations
and from a party with a wide spectrum of ideas although they had a tendency
of coming into opposition towards Attac and ABF visions. This caused delays
and frustration. At the same time FoE Sweden representative in the board
sensed that it was very hard to get any respect for the needs of the working
groups in the board and activist movement ideas. The conflicts caused the
Kvarnby and the Attac member in the board to propose that the board should
take all strategic decisions and a conflict resolution mechanism be put in
place. FoE Sweden rejected strongly internally to the board and the
coordinators of the working groups on this proposal. A criticism against the
way Attac and ABF had delayed the work and how impossible the idea was that
every other group than the board should start to discuss first if their
decision might be strategic and if so send it to the board and then if it is
not strategic make the decision and start working. The letter caused strong
reactions from Attac and ABF people but nobody else and the coordination
group voted in consensus according to the proposal of FoE Sweden to reject
the strategy part but say yes to a conflict resolution mechanisms. The board
excepted the revised proposal from the coordination group.

After this settling of some problems and the rejection of the NOC theme
proposal at EPA in Istanbul things started to seem to go in the right
direction. In December a working weekend and membership meeting was held to
coordinate all the working groups with some 50 participants. All the staff
was sick or for other reasons not there but for a short visit. But the
working groups were able to coordinate themselves well anyway and new people
started to be active. In January the first big grant came and by February an
office placed at Kvarnby could be staffed by four full time persons
including one more from Attac in the staff apart from the three already
employed. Activist movements started to cooperate among themselves to
prepare events at ESF, from the national office at ABF in Stockholm study
circles were organised all over the country to mobilise to ESF, the
mobilisation group in Malmö continued to work well and at the Global Day of
Action activities were organised not only in Malmö. Gothenburg, Stockholm
and Uppsala but also by SAC and FoE in Falun were a pro-Palestinian Green
party veteran was invited speaker at Dalarna Social Forum. Localities was
inspected, meetings with police and other authorities arranged and a
cultural program being organised. The European Contact Group organised
mobilisation tours to Chechia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland,
Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Italy, Spain and Portugal. 50 000 euro out of the
first money granted was put into the Solidarity fund.  The capacity of both
NOC staff and working groups gradually expanded and it seemed as it should
be possible to continue the needed further expansion to take care of
organising ESF.

*ACT II*

*The spring implosion*

There were some problems. The last newsletter sent out by the staff was in
November and email addresses were not collected to send information to. All
the time the responsible staff person seemed to be devoted to the program
work. It was hard to get regular information out and thus make it easy for
interested organisations to follow the process and mobilise. The European
contact group started to cooperate with the information group to plan make
mass mailings on a broad range of issues from the need of mobilising
translators, support the solidarity fund and to start mobilising issues not
addressed in other material mostly focused on the program.

There were also the problems with many inactive people in the board. This
problem was addressed by the board at a membership meeting and an extra AGM
was settled by the end of April to enable new active persons to become
members of the board. The two remaining activist organisation members from
Kvarnby and FoE had also the feeling that they were delegated tasks but then
that the majority in the board did not approve of their work as was the case
when a new person from Attac was employed at the office in January contrary
to their proposal after they had made the interviews and prepared the
employment. There were also never any agreement in the group appointed by
the board on how to manage the staff, the persons with most daily contacts
from Kvarnby and FoE had different opinion from the person from Transport
living in Stockholm and thus the responsibility for information was never
clarified which caused problems both within the staff and for the working
groups.

What finally caused an implosion in NOC when the organisation needed to
expand was a controversy on budget principles and how to organise the web
work. Since early January the staff person responsible for information had
propagated and made investigations why NOC needed to fund the
openesf.netweb page and also seen a need to take away the handling of
the program
registration from the Swedish voluntary technical web group to someone that
should be employed for the two tasks. There were tensions between the
technical web group and the staff member, both seeing that the other as
delaying the work. The board had given the information group the task to
make a study on how to solve the problem. There had been delays both from
the voluntary web group responsible for the content, the technical web group
and the staff member. But the conclusion was that the problems could be
solved and that the technical web group was competent enough to solve the
problems in time ahead.

The board decided differently against the will of both the information group
and the treasurer. They saw web program registration as crucial to the
process and did not trust the technical web group or information group to
solve the problem in time as there had been delays earlier. They also meant
that it was necessary to support the openesf.net webpage and hire a full
time expert to develop the web site further until September, a person in
Greece who also could handle the program registration formula at the cost of
15 000 euro. The problem was not only that for the coordination of the
information work but also that the decision was contrary to the principles
that in practice had been guiding the work so far which was that no decision
regarding allocation of money was taken if not the money were at hand. The
15 000 euro was outside of the budget and there were no money, a principle
that the treasurer had seen as important for maintaining economic disciple
in NOC.

The result was that the technical web group resigned as they had not been
consulted on the issue of how the organisation registration that now should
be handled from Greece could be integrated with all the other registrations
also linked to organisations regarding stalls, accommodation etc. that
should continue to be the responsibility of the Swedish technical web group.
The coordinator of the information group also resigned and the information
group disappeared or was fragmented into its parts. Many of its tasks have
not yet been re-established. Then also the treasurer resigned as he did not
see that he could be responsible anymore when the board voted against the
principle of not using money that yet were not guaranteed.

What severely aggravated the situation was that the staff member from Attac
in a letter to the board argued that a Left party trio was blocking the
process not being interested in the program preparations and thus
uninterested in solving the web problem. She accused in general others of
politicising and making conflicts out of something that easily could get a
constructive solution. The Left party trio accused to block the program
process was in practice the treasurer, the coordinator of the information
group and the person in the staff responsible for fund-raising. As the Left
party had low opinion polls under what was needed to get into parliament and
the accrued persons in question did not want to have public conflict the
elected persons chose to resign without explaining politically why while the
staff member stayed. Also other left party activists chose to resign or
become passive. As the left party and its sister organisations provided half
of the well-experienced activists to run the practical work there was a
severe crisis.

The first to react to the crisis was the European contact group. There had
been severe problems already when the Nordic mobilisation group never became
active, something the European contact group tried to solve by having one of
its members in the its working committee from the Left Students union to try
to vitalise the contacts on the email list and initiate some mobilisation
efforts in Sweden. Now when also the information group had been fragmented
and the responsible person in the staff did not help in the information
efforts necessary for mobilisation there were a crisis for the mobilisation
both in Sweden and internationally. The European Contact group informed its
closest cooperation partners and started a set of initiatives to get a
better balance between the different task of NOC were now the task of
mobilisation, fund-raising, translation and other issues had been
marginalised and the interest of the program process had been made the only
task having status with needs overruling the needs of most other tasks.
Among the initiatives was to suggest that fund-raising and mobilisation
became a point on the agenda of the European program group meeting in the
end of April in Malmö, to give support to CEE participants to be able to
come to the Malmö meeting and EPA in Kiev and to continue to demand that
someone in the staff needed to help with making mass mailings from the
official email address to support mobilisation and a broad range of needs.

FoE Sweden also reacted as the only Swedish activist organisation now left
in the board. The immediate concern was to stop more Left party activists to
leave or becoming passive. Another was to create more respect for the
working groups. A letter was addressed to Attac Sweden, and also sent to the
facilitator of the NOC board, Attac Denmark, Finland and Norway to inform
about the graveness of the situation, ask for immediate discussions between
FoE and Attac and the need to stop groundless accusations against political
parties from NOC staff members from Attac. On a mobilisation tour
to Finland mainly to coordinate environmental and solidarity movements'
efforts for ESF and participate in Finnish Social Forum preparatory meeting
the conflict was also addressed with Attac, FoE and some other key
organisations in Finland. Attac Sweden did not answer in many weeks. After a
month a meeting was arranged with persons from the national leadership of
Attac Sweden and FoE. It then became clear that the representatives from
Attac Sweden in the board and the central work never had reported back and
was not asked to do it, to Attac Sweden. What had been received was only
pleasant news in spite of the severe conflicts that had occurred since July.
FoE was also informed that Attac was a horizontal organisation in such a way
that the persons active at the national level in the ESF process were as
independent from Attac Sweden as the local groups of Attac who have a
completely independent status from the national organisation. Independent
local groups are standard within activist organisations as FoE but that also
working groups representing a national organisation like Attac was equally
independent was new to everyone else. Thus it was not an organisation who
had participated in the preparatory process in the key position since the
beginning but some individuals lacking the continuous backing and democratic
control from an organisation. Attac promised to be better informed in the
future of what their representative ion the board did, the staff members
from
Attac had they nothing to do with.

FoE Sweden also made a motion to the extra AGM to promote some principles
for the work in the future including better balance in the preparatory
process and better respect for the working groups. Also the key trade union
Transport was approached and a meeting took place with the vice chairman and
their NOC board representative. Transport had chosen to give some more money
to solve the immediate NOC economical crisis. A dialogue took place but no
deeper understanding of each other points. The interest FoE had in getting
agreement between the key organisations before the extra AGM on a better
coordination of the staff, coordination group and board to open up the
possibility for mobilising interest from activist organisations to
strengthen the board received no positive response. As chair of the election
committee a member of FoE Sweden had the responsibility to get new active
members in the board.

The culture working group also started a rebellion among the working groups.
A tendency occurred that people in the staff or board took issues that was
the responsibility of a working group and went directly to the board when
they sensed resistance to the proposal from the working group out of lack
experience or using their privileged position. This caused all working
groups to react and a letter proposed by the culture group to the board
demanding more respect was signed by all coordinators of working group
including one from Attac and Transport.

The core of NOC deteriorated further. The staff was in heavy conflict with
each other. The new organising of the website proved to be delayed. The
deadline for submitting proposals for the program was postponed a month.
Much content on the old web site did not come up again and is still not up
three months later including that there is no link to the official
fse.esf.org web site as before. By mid April only two members in the board
participated at a board meeting out of 15 members and at the coordinating
group meeting 5 out of 17 members participated, in both cases with FoE as
half or almost half of the participants. Work continued in the working
groups and subgroups. Mobilisation tours went to Greece, Albania, Macedonia,
Serbia and Bosnia. But the momentum was going down rather than up at a time
in need of expansion.  In the middle of NOC there was an implosion.

Meanwhile FoE, Via Campesina and Latin American Groups in Sweden and like
minded organisations in Finland started their political campaign by jointly
attaching the Finnish Swedish forest corporation Stora Enso which promotes
monoculture and the violent evictions of Via Campesina activists from
plantation land in Southern Brasil. This was done on 17th of April, the
global action day for peasants in three cities in small scale but with good
results in the press. The cooperation between the Swedish and Finnish
solidarity, environmental and peasant movement and their international
cooperation partners developed further in the preparations for ESF.

*ACT III

Modus vivendi*

The extra AGM took place at the same time as the European program meeting in
the end of April. After the meeting decided against the will of some trade
unions to start with the questions on principles raised by FoE Sweden a
constructive debate took place. Some smaller changes were made in the
principles for further work presented by FoE Sweden and the letter from the
working groups excepted by all.

When there had been no interest from neither the dominant organisation in
NOC nor other activist organisations to strengthen the board ABF in
Stockholm made a great effort in finding more persons including the vice
chairman from Left Youth from a fraction interested in cooperating with LO
and negative towards cooperation with smaller leftist groups and trade
unions. This proved to be a good solution. All Swedish activist
organisations left the board with FoE to leave as the last and instead a new
treasurer from Transport and people from another trade union and social
democratic youth filled the ranks.

The hope was that the new situation would make responsibilities more clear.
Activist organisations did not want anymore to be delegated tasks and then
ruled against but saw it as necessary that the majority that had chosen a
course against the will of working groups and economic principles creating
trust and stability now had the full responsibility for their decisions.
With a more clear division of responsibilities and better understanding of
each other tasks maybe a more effective work could develop.

It became the case with the Attac representative in the board who totally
accepted the new situation and now promoted the ideas of mass mailings which
FoE Sweden and the European contact group long had wished should take place.
A letter was sent to some 4 000 addresses with broad information on what was
of interest for the mobilisation, programme and other practical matters even
including a PS informing about the important peace demonstration at the
first ESF in Florence and supporting the accused peace demonstrators that
organised this demonstration sentenced to 91 years prison in Italy in
January this year for an earlier peace demonstration in Florence. The board
member from the left Youth became the effective coordinator of the
Mobilisation group for Sweden and a regular newsletter in Swedish started to
be issued. The web page was and still is a great obstacle from the point of
view of mobilisation but there is now an understanding and will to give a
much better balance also addressing those that are not organising seminars
at ESF but want to participate. A tour was already planned in Sweden from
the South to the North as well as a tour to reach festivals during the
summer, both now well managed with good results. The fund-raiser in the
staff initiated a mobilisation newspaper printed in 120 000 copies paid in
full by advertising organisations and distributed all over the country. The
mobilisation of translators was taking off and soon more than 100 persons
willing from the Nordic countries had announced their interest. After a
visit from Babels volunteer translator network the board decided to put 85
000 extra euro in the budget for the translation in addition to the 100 000
euro that already was included. Otherwise many things were down sized to
suit a tight economic situation.

The many delays in the program process and with the decisions on the
Solidarity fund continued. The board accepted the will of the European
contact group to use some money for the CEE participation at the European
program meeting in Malmö but did not decide on the proposal from the contact
group to also support CEE participation at EPA in Kiev in advance.  Then the
European contact group made the decision themselves as it did not change any
budgets and the principle to support CEE participation from the solidarity
fund also in the preparatory process already was approved by the board with
their decision to support it in the case of the Malmö meeting. This caused
the board to overrule the decision by the contact group. The group defended
its decision taken in consultation with its CEE cooperation partners. The
coordinator of the group gave the board an ultimatum that if they did not
change their decision he would resign. Then the board accepted the decision
by the European contact group and support was given to 30 CEE participants
to come to Kiev in addition to extra money given by Western participants
which allowed for even more support to more CEE participants.

Weakened but more united the NOC delegation could come to Kiev. The Swedish
activist organisations had an as important role as the NOC board and staff
and this has continued to be so in the ESF preparations.

Overwhelmed by the task of the merging process and the beginning of the
vacation season in Sweden a balance in the preparatory process is now better
respected. Three new people have been employed all active in working groups,
one half time and two 25 percent time for logistics, visa and culture. The
European Contact group has somewhat exhausted itself after re-establishing
the mobilisation group for Sweden and taking many conflicts to get
information work organised and support strong CEE participation in the
preparatory process. There is still no English newsletter and there are also
other things not working. But in general all tasks are now considered and
the working mood a lot better.

In the merging process some leftists were afraid that large mainstream trade
unions and organisations close to them could dominate the outcome. This has
proven to be wrong. The dream of a neutral horizontal work has here come
true. It has not been very professional and there have been unnecessary
delays but the outcome has not been dominance by resourceful Swedish
organisations like the trade unions or ABF. In general the merging process
has been less dominated by the hosting organisations and more organised at
the European level with some influence also from CEE countries. Many Nordic
organisations have had great problems in understanding the practicalities
and the strategy for surviving the merging the way one wants, a task
especially problematic and impossible to many as the vacations has started.
The organisations that are easiest to influence the merging process are
organisations with well established international contact networks like
Attac and FoE.

The strategy chosen by FoE Sweden to avoid the program group and focus upon
mobilising new groups and the practical part of the work within NOC and
political campaigning with like minded organisations outside the official
process have proved to be successful to influence the merging process. With
this strategy linking strongly politically to cooperation partners links
have been built that has been very useful in the merging. Regular phone
conferences with FoE groups in Europe have united the efforts and made a
strong linkage to Via Campesina possible. The theme 2 on environmental and
agriculture has according to the coordinator of the program group been the
most successful in merging the proposed activities. Late FoE Sweden was
asked to do their share in the NOC responsibility for the merging groups.
Reluctantly at the time of the Kiev meeting this was accepted but on other
themes than theme 2 who already was in good NOC hands from Denmark. Thus a
further FoE insight in merging was gained.

Finally FoE Sweden and its Swedish and Finnish cooperation partners not only
had in mind of organising agricultural and environmental activities but also
to challenge the content of main debates on the role and future of the
global justice movement and strategies for social change at ESF. The idea to
have radical movements outside the social forum process to discuss the role
of the global justice movement together with some that were inside and
having movement leaders in the panel rather than left intellectuals
commenting the movement seemed as very different from other proposals that
stated that it was the organisations within the WSF process that should
discuss the future of the movement. But instead of confrontation between the
mains stream of ESF and WSF organisations and the environmental, rural,
anticapitalist and indigenous movements a merger took place with acceptance
of all the proposed radical movement speakers with one additional person
from the WSF secretariat responsible for enlargement. Other broad
initiatives to have popular movement speakers to discuss with each others
and the participants of a seminar have received similar good response from
the global leadership of FoE and Via Campesina to ABF in Sweden. So has the
idea to have indigenous people as facilitators of the inauguration and in
all the main seminars proposed by FoE Europe inspired by the Finnish Swedish
alliance and in line with the EPA decision to promote new groups to
participate. From Finland an activist sailing ship promoting fair trade will
come to ESF and the activist camp for peasants. Environmentalists, peace
activists and trade union delegations are also well on their way to make ESF
in Malmö a place were movement activists meet.

In general it is impossible to survey the merging process at the moment
accept for the themes were the environmental movement is especially active
as theme 2 and theme 10 on general transversal issues.  There are still many
problems ahead until the program must be decided in Brussels on 12th ofJuly.
But in general it seems as the volunteer merging was far more in the
preparatory process before Athens when only 700 out of 800 proposals merged
voluntarily.

*The European preparatory process*

In the beginning at EPA in Stockholm both Eastern and Western Europeans were
impressed by a Nordic mood of organising the process with less long talks
and participatory means and Solidarity fund efforts. But the less
politically open leadership also caused confusion and at EPA in Istanbul a
rejection of the theme proposal. It was even stated in a report from the
group discussions held at EPA for the first time in Istanbul that NOC should
report its internal conflicts more openly, a request that never was
answered. With some radical movements that have left ESF and the left both
in Western and Eastern Europe in a defensive state of transition and
fragmentation old customs among the key organisers of the ESF process have
prevailed. There has been much interest in controlling the program process
and very little in mobilisation apart from movements in many CEE countries.
Eastern Europeans have welcomed the strong efforts to support CEE
participation in the preparatory process. Radical anti-repression movements
have been surprised at so many activists charged for crimes against
terrorist laws, sabotage against air traffic and insulting a racist have
been chosen by NOC to be speakers at the inauguration, demonstration and ESF
party. French delegates at EPA chose the opposite position and wanted to
postpone the decisions on speakers to next European program meeting thus
reducing the importance of EPA and placing European program meetings
inWestern Europe as the central decision point for more and more tasks in
the process. Also the demonstration demands were postponed to the program
meeting.

While the NOC political internal disputes to a large extent have been
settled and agreement have been reached to the interest for all groups
concerned parts of groups in Europe seems to not know how to estimate the
situation. To Nordic activist organisations the interest shown in Kiev in
using ESF for starting campaigning in the year 2009 have caused some
reluctance to Western Europeans that seemed mainly interested in organising
seminars to be diminished. That there seems to be little interest in
cooperating with the strong EU-critical movements in the Nordic countries in
the merging process is still an obstacle. While the Italian, Hungarian,
Ukrainian, Russian and Turkish movements seems to  come to an agreement with
the Nordic movements, some French and German movements have more problems.

With too few activists in the working groups, a board lacking well
experienced people in international broad cooperation and cooperation
partners in some other countries suspicious of the lack of political will
among the organisers and a growing task ahead one could see the
possibilities as rather problematic. But what has happened is also that
those activist organisations and movements most willing to cooperate with
other movements and across borders are those who get most influence as the
commitment to open space is true.

The conflict in Sweden has not been the normal between reformist and radical
left within the process nor between horizontals and verticals or advocates
of open space and those promoting changing social forums more into a
decision making body. Instead it has been between a non-leftist activist
organisation and the leftist Attac. It has been between the in economic and
political issues more vertically democratic environmental organisation with
horizontal activism whenever needed in struggles against corporate projects
and the state and professional organisers of horizontal popular education.
It has been activist organisations that have been most clearly demanding
stability and clear principles for how the NOC should work and take
democratic decisions while the more professionally project oriented
organisations have claimed that they promote horizontal relationships. This
while they in practice believed in professional leadership and thus behind
the horizontal rhetoric's were quite vertical. There was no room in Sweden
for activist organisations to establish a fraction in the process demanding
more horizontal methods, mainly because it was seen as more interesting to
have a equal democratic power position in the process rather than being in
opposition as self proclaimed horizontals, a term like grass root often used
by professional organisations and political parties to talk to people and
have them stay at the grassroots level while the professionals and leaders
talking about horizontal relationships and grassroots remains having the
central positions.

In the dominating debate between promoters of open space and those wanting a
more decision-making body FoE Sweden reduced both concepts as useless
dichotomy. FoE Sweden fully agreed upon that open space idea that neither
NOC nor EPA should organise any activities in the programme except for
inauguration, demonstration culture and the like. All seminars and workshops
should be the result of what the participants organised themselves. What FoE
rejected was that NOC or EPA had no informal right and duty to take
political action to promote a use of the ESF as a tool for popular movements
to organise campaigning and take action. The task of informing about ESF was
a political task which had to be addressed as such, not a task of presenting
a self evident neutral vision of an open space"unique" for"civil society"
previous without history and without any content that could be presented to
motivate people to come except for a global declaration once established for
all times. The inclusiveness and openness was in itself enough and to add
anything else would cause political conflict while being neutral was seen as
an unquestionable position with no political content. FoE Sweden saw this
introvert language as useless for telling people in common why they should
come to ESF in Malmö. Together with many other organisations ESF was seen
simply as a place where discussions and solidarity was organised by popular
movements from many countries and those organisations that wanted to support
that. During ESF of course like minded organisations could set up
assemblies, seminars or workshops as decision-making bodies in practice
including both political parties and liberation movements into the
calculation when making the decisions. ESF can also be used as a
decision-making body already so well expressed when a small meeting at ESF
in Florence decided to launch the global anti Iraq war demonstrations held
in 2003.  ESF should be a place both for such decision-making activist
movements and for participants that do not want to be part of decisions on
political action or be the legitimation of resolutions in the name of all
participants at ESF. Thus ESF is both a place for decision-making bodies for
popular movements that in their own name wants to take collective action
together with others and an open space to anyone vaguely or strongly
sympathising with the WSF platform critical towards neoliberalism and
imperialism.

The sincere attempts by Attac and ABF to take the open space concept
sincerely might be useful to the global social forum process. The concept
have then been put to its limits and the strength and limitations has than
become clear. Open space lacking any commitment to democratic will to take
collective action becomes a tool for professionals to split the movement
into service providers of a book fair and individual consumer of politics,
between radicals and reformists. At the bottom of the concept is a
neoliberal form of politics in opposition to the state centric forms of
earlier models for global cooperation as World Youth festivals or ILO.
Social forums as an open space with all its positive aspects of not
demanding of every participant a common agenda and thus remaining open to
different groups of people also at its bottom have competition between
different resourceful actors as a key form. Without a concept that
explicitly promotes ways to collectively during the forum create political
action and culture social forums becomes a market ruled by capacity to
compete. Organisations with resources in terms of international contacts,
money or a well coordinated party in the back ground or intellectuals with
an established name on the market for consumption of politics can easily get
a disproportional part of attention.

Into this competitive market form radical groups opposing the ESF by
establishing parallel activities fits perfect. They help the resourceful
actors within the official process to claim that ESF is an attractive
democratic process creating wide interest of different kinds without that
they have to be confronted with demands of taking part in collective change
of society together with radical groups. They also help to split the
movement according to market principles into the selling of images of
radicals worthy of attention due to their confrontational form and
reformists due to their willingness to be part of the system while uniting
political substance is marginalised. With the implosion of the NOC
preparatory process during the spring with its consequences showing the
theoretical, practical and professional incompetence among the promoters of
open space an experience has been done that will have consequences for the
future.

So does the fact that the best wishes of the promoters of open space also
have had good consequences. By taking the open space concept and believe in
horizontal methods sincerely half hearted routines within ESF has been
challenged and weaknesses been made more open. It has given the chance for
both working class organisations as LO with more than 70 percent of the
labour force unionised and smaller peasant and environmental organisations
to be part of the process on equal levels and challenging the previous
leftist dominance with concept of popular education or popular movement
cooperation. The different front organisations for competing left parties
and NGO professionals organising seminars together with other professionals
at other NGOs on the civil society market within the ESF process have been
challenged.

It will not solve a main social problem for the social forum process, that
of the marginalisation of high educated activists or NGO professionals. Here
the US social forum is a lot better example. But it may help on the war to
make the social forum process a bit more inclusive. There will also be a
model of how to solve political conflicts in an organising committee with
the help of democratic rules and routines for statues and meetings rather
than less transparent informal decision making procedures.

Easiest to adopt to the new realities have so far been the environmental,
peasant, third world solidarity and partly peace and indigenous movements.
The Swedish left have many more people active in the process but have had
less international contacts but say that they start to learn. Eastern
Europeans are also actively learning how to get influence. Italian and
Finnish movements who are well connected to each other and internationally
seem to easily adjust to the new situation and the Western NGOs. In the rest
of Western European movements there seems to be some confusion. Hopefully
the Nordic way of influencing the preparatory process can result in a more
European Social Forum less dominated by the host countries and a Social
Forum with a more wide spread participation and creating cooperation between
different movements on more equal level. The many youth activiinitiatives
from different movements, action-oriented interests and stronger integration
of CEE countries in the preparatory process are hopeful sign that can bring
a needed renewal to the ESF process.
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