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<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><b><span style="font-size: 24pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">ESF 2008 Preparation: A Working document </span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Tord Björk 08/07/03</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">@ <a href="http://www.nigd.org/nan/nan-doc-store/07-08-2008/esf-2008-preparation-a-working-document/">http://www.nigd.org/nan/nan-doc-store/07-08-2008/esf-2008-preparation-a-working-document/</a>
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The piece is long and thus only for people really interested. <br>
<br>
<b>Cessing ESF preparations 2008</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>ACT I</b><br>
<br>
Summer, autumn and winter conflict on content and form<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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<br>
than other issues.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Open space, popular movement cooperation or denouncing ESF?</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
peace. This in between position was ignored and the left students somewhat
rhetoric proposals strongly rejected.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
definition be multi-issue movements with a non-leftist ideology<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Horizontal open space professionalism vs. democratic activism</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>ACT II</b><br>
<br>
<b>The spring implosion</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a href="http://openesf.net">openesf.net</a> web 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.<br>
<br>
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 <a href="http://openesf.net">openesf.net</a> 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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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<br>
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<br>
Attac had they nothing to do with.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a href="http://fse.esf.org">fse.esf.org</a> 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>ACT III<br>
<br>
Modus vivendi</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>The European preparatory process</b><br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.</span></p>
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