[WSF-Discuss] Summary reports of CACIM events @ Malmo
Jai Sen
jai.sen at cacim.net
Fri Sep 26 10:14:45 UCT 2008
Friday, September 26, 2008
Dear friends on WSFDiscuss, Social Movements, and Debate (separately)
Copy : All speakers at the two events, and Magnus Wennerhag and Olav
Unsgaard at Fronesis; colleagues at CACIM
This posting is to share with you brief summary reports
of the four events - two ‘real’, one virtual, and one informal – that
we at CACIM co-organised at the European Social Forum that took place
in Malmö last week. In both the real cases, we have recordings of
the events, and will be uploading those along with photographs –
certainly, on www.openspaceforum.net and maybe also elsewhere – over
the next while; as outlined below. Watch this space for details !
And for the third event, see a couple of blogs by America Vera-
Zavala; links given below.
Before summarising the events though, I want to take the opportunity
of this posting to publicly again all the speakers at our events :
Thank you for making them the great events they were ! I also want
to publicly thank our new friends at Fronesis, in Sweden (http://
fronesis.nu/english/), Magnus Wennerhag and Olav Unsgaard, for their
generous collaboration in helping us organise the two events, and for
finding and sharing with us – for both events - the marvellous space
that they had found for their events : The Babels/Jeriko café and
theatre, which was just 150 metres away from the main ESF site, the
Folkets Park. A converted (and thoroughly re-formed) church, in my
opinion it had just the right ambience for our kind of event and
contributed strongly to making the two sessions what they became !
And also to thank America Vera-Zavala for her / your two great blogs,
at zero notice...
For CACIM
JS
The launch of the second edition of World Social Forum : Challenging
Empires
Thursday, September 18 2008, from 1-3 pm; co-organised with Black
Rose Books, Montréal. http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm
CACIM’s first event at the ESF – and which was one of the first to
take place in the European Social Forum as a whole, taking place at
lunch on the first day – was to launch the second edition of a book
that had come out in 2004, World Social Forum : Challenging Empires,
and that Black Rose Books of Montréal had asked Peter Waterman and
Jai Sen to prepare for them. We have audio recorded the session, and
with luck will soon be uploading both the recording and some
photographs on OpenSpaceForum (www.openspaceforum.net), with a link
also from www.cacim.net.
With the book coming out just in time for the ESF, BRB flew the books
over to Malmö, accompanied by Dimitri Roussopoulos himself, the
publisher; and where BRB also took a stall in the Folkets Park
(‘People’s Park’) for the book sales.
Following a welcome by Dimitri where he underlined that he felt that
this was an important book around an important political development,
the World Social Forum, Peter and Jai, in turn, put the book in
context and invited those contributors to the second edition who were
present to say a few words. We had with us there Emma Dowling
(scholar-activist from the UK), Gina Vargas (Articulación Feminista
Marcosur, Peru), Samir Amin (Third World Forum and World Forum for
Alternatives; Egypt, Senegal, and France), and Teivo Teivainen (NIGD,
Finland and Peru), each one of whom spoke briefly; and where this was
followed by a fairly long, intense, and spirited exchange between the
speakers and with several of those present, including Dorothea
Haerlin (ATTAC Berlin, Germany), Graeme Chesters (UK), and Gustave
Massiah (CRID, France). In all, we had some forty people there.
Another contributor to the book, Irene León from ALAI in Ecuador, was
also to have joined us, but was finally unable to come to Sweden
because of political developments in her country.
Among many other contentious points that were debated, Samir Amin’s
emphasis on what he sees as being “fragmentation” in the (global
justice) movement – and the need therefore for greater order - was
strongly contested by Gina Vargas and Dorothea Haerlin, and others,
who argued that seeing the diversity and plurality that they see as
the hallmark and strength of the global justice movement as
‘fragmentation’ was a part of the problem; and part of how those who
want more centralised, and centrally driven and led, movement see and
characterise what is by nature a very diverse movement, in their
attempt to being it under control and organise it. Samir,
unfortunately, left early, to go to another meeting; but it was
interesting to see Teivo Teivainen, who one normally associates with
taking other positions, in this case expressing his cautious
agreement with Samir’s point about fragmentation.
This, and many other points, led to a long and very engaged
discussion about the Forum and its possible futures. Because this
discussion took place on the very first day of the Forum, and as one
of the first session on the first day, this was perhaps one of the
very first such discussions to take place in this area at the ESF at
Malmö. And one could argue that it therefore may have contributed to
sharpening the focus of all those who were there – several of whom
are key players in the WSF process - on the deliberations during the
days ahead.
The session then moved to the bar part of Babels, where Black Rose
Books treated all those who bought a copy of the book to a drink, and
we at CACIM all the contributors to the book who had spoken, on
behalf of the editors. The discussions then continued in small
groups, deep into the afternoon….
Let us end this quick report by urging you all as people interested
in the WSF as a social and political phenomenon to please buy this
book and to promote it and push it as much as you can. While it has
been a great privilege to be published by Black Rose Books, they have
also invested heavily in doing so and in bringing the book over to
Malmö from Canada, and they need your help to make the book pay its
way. To order it, go through the publisher’s page on it, http://
www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm; and other things being equal, for
those in North America the book should be on the shelves of your
local bookshop any day now, and in Europe soon after.
In addition, please do urge other people to buy it : Especially Forum
and movement organisers, teachers giving courses in any and all
related areas (political sciences, social sciences, government, etc),
and libraries; please do try and get the book reviewed in journals
and newspapers – including by doing so yourself; and : please try and
get key people to prepare ‘testimonies’ that can help us promote the
book (and send those to mavros at blackrosebooks.net and to
jai.sen at cacim.net). Thanks for your solidarity !
For more information on the book and to place advance orders, see :
http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm
(See below for information on the speakers.)
Seminar on ‘How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for Social Justice
in the World Today ?’
Friday, September 19 2008, 10-1 pm; co-organised with Fronesis.
http://cacim.net/twiki/tiki-index.php?page=Malmo
Some 50-60 people came to CACIM’s second event at the ESF, a seminar
co-organised with Fronesis, a Swedish journal that aims to provide “…
tools for a radical comprehension of our time by gathering politics,
theory, and critique in extensive thematic issues” (http://
fronesis.nu/english/). The event was videotaped, and if all goes
well, CACIM proposes to upload both the recording and some
photographs on OpenSpaceForum (www.openspaceforum.net), with a link
also from www.cacim.net.
Organised somewhat as a roundtable rather than a panel discussion,
the seminar started off with a welcome by Olav Unsgaard, Chair of
Fronesis, and then an introduction by Jai Sen of CACIM, followed by
invited presentations by Gina Vargas (veteran feminist of the
Articulación Feminista Marco Sur, Peru, and a leading member of the
WSF’s International Council) and by Alex Callinicos (of the SWP –
Socialist Workers’ Party, in the UK, which after much struggle
ultimately took the lead role in organising the European Social Forum
in London in 2004). Citing both the intense and sustained criticism
and challenge that the WSF has been facing for the past year and more
from leading ideologues within the WSF such as Walden Bello and Samir
Amin, and also the distance that popular movements in India today
keep from the WSF - and where India was seen, just some years ago, as
the first major experiment in globalising the Forum - Jai invited the
speakers, and the panellists to follow, and all those present, to try
and focus their attention and presentations on the very hard and real
implications of the theme proposed for the meeting :
How Relevant is the WSF to Struggles for Social Justice in the World
Today ?.
Gina and Alex both, each in their own ways, located and problematised
the WSF at the present historical juncture. Gina placed focus on
some of the key issues that the WSF’s International Council is today
faced with and is going to address at its then-upcoming meeting in
Copenhagen, and – as in her presentation on the occasion of the
launch of the second edition of World Social Forum : Challenging
Empires (as reported above) – on the importance of nurturing
diversity. Alex, on the contrary, argued that the refusal of the IC
to prioritise issues, and its tendency instead to prioritise
diversity, means the institutionalisation of fragmentation; and that
the challenge that the Bamako Appeal has placed before the WSF is
very healthy.
These two opening / ‘keynote’ presentations were followed by a short,
open question-answer session, then by short intervention
presentations by our panellists, and then by a sustained open
discussion in the round. Our panellists were Emma Dowling (scholar-
activist, UK), Geoffrey Pleyers (scholar-activist, Belgium), America
Vera-Zavala (writer, activist, and playwright, Sweden), Moema Miranda
(IBASE, Brazil, member, Brazil Organising Committee, and member, WSF
International Council), Gustave Massiah (CRID – Centre de Recherche
et d'Information pour le Développment, France), Raffaella Bollini
(ARCI, Italy, and member, WSF International Council), and finally,
Dimitri Roussopoulos (Black Rose Books and Urban Ecology Centre,
Canada).
Given the sheer range of experience, viewpoints, and locations – both
within and in relation to the WSF and the global justice movement,
and on the planet – that the panellists brought to the meeting, their
presentations almost inevitably led to a wide-ranging, rich, and at
times a little heated interrogation of the WSF and of the theme of
the meeting, filling out the full three hours we had for the session.
Several members of the audience also came in with substantive
comments and interventions, including Chico Whitaker of Brazil, co-
founder of the Forum and member of the International Council; Fazia,
a student from London; Graeme Chesters from the International Centre
for Participation Studies at the University of Bradford in the UK;
Jason Nardi, of Zoes and other initiatives in Italy and an active
member within the WSF International Council and its committees;
Kristophe, doing his PhD on the alter-globalisation movement; Peter
Waterman, labour internationalist living in The Netherlands and co-
editor of World Social Forum : Challenging Empires; Stellan
Vinthagen, Senior Lecturer at the School of Global Studies at
Gothenburg University and Member of the WRI (War Resisters’
International) International Council; Teivo Teivainen, of NIGD
(Network Institute for Global Democratisation) and from Finland (‘and
a little from Peru’, as he said); Thomas Wallgren of the Dept of
Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, and a key member of %
Movement in Finland in the 1980s and 90s; and others.
It is impossible to summarise the content of the discussion in a few
words; we urge those interested to view the video of the session when
it is uploaded. But many among other points, and from the panellists
alone, Emma Dowling asked whether the WSF was only for activists or
for everybody; Geoffrey Pleyers asked, in the context of the actual
participation in the Social Fora and also changes taking place in
society, whether members hip in the WSF’s Council should be only for
organisations or should be opened up to individuals; America Vera-
Zavala asked how a movement prioritises – and urged the ESF to be
less Euro-centric; Moema Miranda stressed the need for a common
agenda – and the need for addressing disagreement and conflict but
with diversity as the basis; Raffaella Bollini outlined crises
emerging in the movement in Europe given larger social, economic, and
political trends in the region towards the right and towards
fundamentalism, and towards the centralisation of wealth, and made an
appeal for help in thinking through the Forum and rebuilding it;
Gustave Massiah emphasised that the WSF is a part of a larger
historical movement – and that we must see in the longue durée; and
Dimitri Roussopoulos strongly echoed Raffaella’s appeal, underlining
that rebuilding the movement and the Forum was even more necessary in
North America, as the home of the militarised beast that is driving
this process – and without this, there can be no alternative future,
no other worlds.
One point that we from CACIM want however to take the privilege of
mentioning here, was an exchange about the dismal state of the WSF in
India. Moema Miranda and Chico Whitaker – both members of the WSF’s
founding Brazil Organising Committee and of its International Council
– questioned the somewhat negative, pessimistic picture that Jai had
portrayed of the WSF in India, and cited the views of members from
India on the IC to support their point of view. Jai responded first
by suggesting that citing their views – people who movements in India
see as being part of the problem – was surely hardly appropriate; but
more, he summarised briefly the consequences for the WSF in India,
and more generally for relations between social movements in the
country and the CPI(M) (Communist Party of India (Marxist)), which
the leading members of the WSF in India mostly belong to - of the
savage repression and killings that the CPI(M) unleashed in a place
called Nandigram, in the state of West Bengal, in 2007, to punish the
villagers for daring to oppose and refuse an industrial ‘development’
project being imposed by the state on their area that would leave
them landless and homeless (for information, see http://
sanhati.com/). This, along with other such developments in the
country (such as in Chengara in the state of Kerala), has created a
deep schism between independent movements and this part of the party
left and has in turn, because of the dominance of this grouping in
the WSF in India, also traumatised the WSF process; which in any case
had been left to languish since the Mumbai Forum in early 2004. It
no longer has any legitimacy.
Implying that somewhat similar other such processes have also taken
place elsewhere in the world, in relation to the WSF, Jai asked Chico
and Moema, and all members of the IC, and all those present, to
reflect on the implications of such deep inversions, and especially
in the face of the profound multiple challenges that the WSF is today
facing and, more broadly – and as the panellists made clear - that
the world is today facing.
As Geoffrey Pleyers remarked after the seminar, what was remarkable
about the meeting was the extent and depth of critical engagement
that was present in the exchanges, which in his experience of the
past several years of the Forum – since its inception – was rare; and
in his estimation, this was something that CACIM’s sustained focus
and insistence on engagement has contributed to. Alex Callinicos
even berated the members of the International Council for their
complacence, and urged them to engage with issues far more self-
critically.
It was a great session; many, many participants said so, after it
ended. This summary does little justice to it; and given that we
expect to have a full recording uploaded, we strongly urge you to
take the time to view and study that when it is up.
(See below for information on the speakers.)
America Vera-Zavala’s blogs on the Malmö ESF
http://openspaceforum.net/pipermail/worldsocialforum-
discuss_openspaceforum.net/2008-September/000929.html
and
http://openspaceforum.net/pipermail/worldsocialforum-
discuss_openspaceforum.net/2008-September/000936.html
The third ‘event’ that CACIM helped give shape to at the Malmö ESF
were the two very interesting blogs by America Vera-Zavala on
politically and historically locating the ESF. They were posted on
these lists on September 18 (the first day of the Forum) and 19/20
(written 19th, posted 20th), and got some responses.
TOIM – Time Out in Malmö ! : A daily get-together at the Nya Tröls
Bar & Restaurant
Another event is possible ! Along with the three ‘serious’ events,
we also took the initiative of organising another kind of event at
the ESF, a daily get-together between 5-8 pm at a bar just 500 m from
Folkets Park called the Nya Tröls Bar & Restaurant (http://
www.nyatrols.se/). The idea was to make space and time to also have
some good toim together in Malmö - to create a space where friends,
old and new, could take a moment out and have the chance of
definitely meeting each other, and pleasant new friends, over a drink
and maybe also snacks or a meal. The word spread, and though we even
started with a great evening on the 17th, starting at 5 or so and
going, with a break for the inauguration at 6, till 11, people came
each day whenever they could during the announced period. Many
brought new friends with them, and some started independently using
the Nya Tröls Bar as a place to meet other people whom they met at
the Forum.
Some more information on the main characters in this play – the
invited speakers and actors in the various CACIM events at the Malmö
ESF :
Alex Callinicos
Alex Callinicos is Professor of European Studies at Kings College
London and a member of the SWP (Socialist Workers Party) in the UK.
alex.callinicos at kcl.ac.uk
America Vera-Zavala
A writer and an activist, America Vera-Zavala has written
commentaries for Znet since 2001. She has published three books in
Sweden and her book Democracy Lives : A World Mosaic of Participatory
Democratic Experiences was released in Turkey in 2006 and published
in English in 2007. She lives in Sweden. She has been active in both
the Left Party and in founding the Attac movement in Sweden. She is
currently writing a play on sans papier, paperless workers.
america at americavz.com
Chico Whitaker
A member of the Brazilian Organising Committee of the WSF, Chico
Whitaker is one of the co-founders of the WSF, and received the Right
Livelihood award in 2006 for this. Author of A New Way of Changing
the World (Nairobi : World Council of Churches, 2007; published in
Portuguese and Spanish in 2005).
intercom at cidadania.org.br
Dimitri Roussopoulos
Dimitri Roussopoulos is a well-known activist in Canada for some four
decades working from the local to the regional level and back again
on issues dealing with radical democracy and urban ecology. He is
also a writer and book publisher, having been educated as an
political economist.
dr at urbanecology.net, mavros at blackrosebooks.net
Emma Dowling
Emma Dowling is active within the social forum movement and in
struggles for global justice. Based in Berlin, she is currently
studying for a PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London, where
she is researching the development of neoliberal global governance
from the perspective of social conflict and resistance. Her research
interests include social and political change; autonomous politics
and global democracy; radical practices of political participation;
immaterial and affective labour; and border regimes, detention, and
deportation. She has published a number of articles on the social
forum process and has been an active participant in the organisation
of the ESF and WSF (both the official and autonomous spaces).
esd at riseup.net
Geoffrey Pleyers
Geoffrey Pleyers obtained a PhD in sociology at the Ecoles des Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). He is currently FNRS Researcher
at the University of Louvain (Belgium) and at the Centre d’Analyse et
d’Intervention Sociologiques (Paris) and a Visiting Researcher at the
Centre for the Study of Global Governance (London School of
Economics). Geoffrey Pleyers is a member of the Open Space Forum
discussion network and has attended the seven World Social Forums. He
has conducted field research on the Global Social Justice Movement in
Western European and Latin American countries including France,
Belgium, Mexico, Argentina, and Nicaragua. His recent publications
include Forums Sociaux Mondiaux et defis de l’altermondialisme
(‘World Social Forums and the challenges of alter-globalisation’, in
French), Brussels: Academia.
Geoffrey.Pleyers at uclouvain.be
Gina Vargas
A veteran Peruvian feminist sociologist and founder of the Centro
Flora Tristan in Peru, Gina Vargas is one of the 1,000 women
nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the year 2006. She is
associated with the Articulación Feminista Marcosur in Latin America,
and the Program of Democracy and Global Transformation in San Marcos
University, Lima. She has taught at universities worldwide and
currently teaches the Master of Sexuality and Public Policies course
at San Marcos University in Lima, Peru. She is a member of the WSF
International Council.
ginavargas at telefonica.net.pe
Gustave Massiah
Gustave Massiah is President of CRID – Centre de Recherche et
d'Information pour le Développment, France.
guma at globenet.org
Moema Miranda
Moema Miranda (Moema Maria Marques de Miranda) has worked at IBASE,
the Brazilian Institute of Social and Economic Research, since 1992
on different projects and initiatives. She is an anthropologist with
an MA in Social Anthropology from the Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro, where she studied rural labour and politics. Currently, she
is a coordinator of two programmes at IBASE : the World Social Forum
(WSF) process, and Democratic Alternatives to Globalization. She has
also recently taken charge of IBASE’s Human Rights initiative. As
IBASE’s representative on the WSF International Council, she has been
a member of the organising committee of the last five global WSF
events. She has also been the Secretary-General of the Agrarian
Reform National Campaign in Brazil; between 1998 and 2001, she was a
member of the steering committee of the National Forum on Urban
Reform; and she was an active participant of the Citizenship Action
against Hunger and for Life, one of the largest popular mobilisations
in Brazilian history. A ‘Carioca’, as natives of Rio de Janeiro City
are called, she has two daughters and one son.
moema at ibase.br
Raffaella Bolini
Raffaella Bolini is the Coordinator of ARCI, in Italy, and of the
International Council of the WSF.
bolini at arci.it
Samir Amin
Samir Amin is Director, Third World Forum, located in Dakar, Senegal,
and Chair, World Forum for Alternatives, Cairo, Egypt, and Louvain,
Belgium. An economist and intellectual, he is regarded as one of the
foremost thinkers on the changing dynamics of capitalism. Since
2001, he has been actively associated with the World Social Forum as
well as the regional fora. Amin has authored my articles and books,
including Accumulation on a world scale (1970), Transforming the
revolution : social movements and the world system (1990), Beyond US
Hegemony : Assessing the Prospects for a Multipolar World (2006), and
Memoirs of An Independent Marxist (2006), and with François Houtart
in 2002, he edited - Mondialisation de resistances : L’etat des lutes
2002 [‘The Globalisation of Resistance : The State of the Struggles
2002’, in French] (Paris : L’Harmattan / Forum Mondial des
Alternatives).
Samir.Amin at wanadoo.fr
Teivo Teivainen
Chair of World Politics, and Professor and Head of the Department of
Political Science at the University of Helsinki, Teivo Teivainen is a
past President of NIGD (Network Institute for Global
Democratisation), a member of the International Council of the World
Social Forum, and co-founder of the Program of Democracy and Global
Transformation in San Marcos University, Lima, Peru.
teivo.teivainen at helsinki.fi
______________________________
Jai Sen
jai.sen at cacim.net
CACIM, A-3 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110 024, India
www.cacim.net
Ph : +91-11-4155 1521, 4155 0963 - PLEASE NOTE NEW SECOND NUMBER !
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