--Rahula, for Heads Up
USSF articles
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070716/berger
An Even Newer Left
by DAN BERGER
[posted online on June 30, 2007]
Atlanta
At first sight, the only applicable description of the first US Social Forum would be chaos. Utterly overwhelming. Ten thousand people mill about the Atlanta Civic Center and its environs, trying to choose between dozens of workshops, issue-themed tents, merchandise and information tables, meetings, and plain old socializing.
It is a scene perhaps best captured in fragments rather than full sentences. Organizers. Housing. Immigrant workers. Vision. Prison abolition. Puppets. Speeches, newspapers, fliers, banners, flags, books, shirts. Laughter. Dance parties. Water. Media. Fundraisers. Collaboration. Resisting state and interpersonal violence. Imagining.
Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, ghetto, barrio, reservation. The city. Youth. Networking. Strategy.
It is people running into old friends from across the country as they roll into Atlanta in buses from the Southwest to the Northeast. It is the sweaty hugs and warm handshakes of new friends collaborating on old projects, of people meeting others doing the exact same work across the country or complimentary work across town. It is a place of impassioned and often impromptu speeches. Spirited marches, ad hoc press conferences, and clever street theater seem as ubiquitous as the 1,000 panels taking place. The social forum is a gathering of veterans--of wars and of movements.
The forum can easily feel like just another conference, only supersized. The schmoozing, the talking heads, the exchanging of cards and brochures--it's all here, just on a bigger scale. People trying to call attention to their cause or organization pass out flyers announcing the workshops they are organizing. There are many different workshop tracks to choose from, both from themes the forum organizers decided upon or the self-organized tracks groups have collaborated on to organize. It would be easy to pick a track and only see people interested in workers rights, urban community organizing, Palestine, transformative justice, or rebuilding the Gulf Coast. In that, the Social Forum is a conference of conferences for a movement of movements.
A bird's eye view of the social forum would reveal an energy and excitement for something more. That desire is not just for an alternative to the Bush regime's sinking ship. At its best, the desire stretches for a new way of conducting politics and social movement based on but not duplicative of what has come before. It is a call to build a left that is grassroots and democratic, visionary and strategic, a left that manages to have unity without sacrificing its political principles. If, as the World Social Forum slogan puts it, Another World Is Possible, the US Social Forum proclaims that Another US is Necessary.
There are surely problems: the pockets of people for whom politics consists of haranguing the public with conspiracy theories or tired ideas of Bolshevism. More pressing is the propensity for the forum's size and excitement to outpace its ability. While less so than forums in the resource-strapped Global South, the US Social Forum is not exempt from the confusion of facilitators without panels or panels without rooms. The Ida B. Wells Media Justice Center has provided an impressive model of collaborative journalism, but its community newsroom started out in what seemed like a bathroom closet. The competition for, or at least confusion over, space and attention is apparent--even if it takes place in an atmosphere of inspiring cooperation.
The necessity for another America, one that, in Langston Hughes' famous words, has never existed, permeates the forum. Indeed, the forum is in no short supply of proscriptions for a radical remaking of this country, and therefore the world. Panel after panel, table after table, conversation after conversation, meeting after meeting--each one makes apparent the need for another society, and what the ingredients of it must be. A sometimes too-quick-to-applaud audience cheers on as speakers denounce injustice and celebrate what Martin Luther King once described as a revolution in values.
The energy is kinetic and infective. Still, the real test is not what happens here but what emerges from it. And there are already reasons to hope: numerous urban community organizing groups from across the country sponsored a workshop track, parties, and meetings to solidify a Right to the City network. Under the auspices of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the marginalized left voices within the immigrant rights movement had a chance to make their position known through workshops and a national press conference. A pre-forum gathering sponsored by Queers for Economic Justice and Southerners on New Ground took first steps toward building the infrastructure for a Queer Left, while another pre-forum gathering--strengthened throughout the week--brought together queer, feminist, and antiracist groups to envision solutions to state and interpersonal violence that don't involve the sprawling prison-industrial complex.
These examples show that a mass movement is slowly beginning to cohere. It is far too early to predict its success, failure, or specific forms. But the forum presents a picture of movements in motion, a chance to glimpse and above all participate in building the world we want to see. After years of patient organizing, the grassroots centers of social movements are beginning to burst through soil corroded by years of neo-liberalism and an impoverished dominant political culture. The consciousness, vision, and strategy emanating from the social forum is uneven and developing--and it may just be our best hope to have both democratic processes and liberating politics.
Photos of the opening march
http://indybay.org/newsitems/2007/07/05/18433450.php
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sherman040707.html
Achievements and Limits of the First United States Social Forum
by Steve Sherman
The first US Social Forum wrapped up on Sunday, July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. That it happened at all seems almost miraculous. It is hard to remember any previous comparable gathering of diverse currents of US social movements. This is not a particularly dynamic moment in their history -- the anti-war movement is bland and harmless, labor is largely flat on its back, student movements are weak and isolated, and the immigrant movement -- the most assertive in years in terms of taking to the streets -- has been weakened by the pervasive climate of fear. For that matter, in the eyes of many, the World Social Forum process has peaked (or at least is currently in a bit of a trough in terms of energy and creativity).
Yet the US social forum was a dramatic success in several important ways. Most significant was its diversity. Reportedly, about 9,000 people were registered as participants in the forum. Of that group, roughly half appeared to be people of color (it was difficult to accurately assess this, since I was not at the opening march -- for that matter, neither were many of the participants -- and there was no other moment when one could be confident that a large portion of the participants in the forum were present). Latinos and African Americans were highly visible, as were Asian Americans and indigenous people, in terms of both plenary speakers (who functioned as the self representation of the forum to itself) and participants. As the organizers had sought, large numbers of participants appeared to be the members or organizers of people-of-color, community-based organizations. The white people who made up the other half of the participants also appeared to be predominantly from activist groups. A considerable portion of the participants were youthful (under 25) flaunting a somewhat "anarchist" style of piercings, butch haircuts, tank tops, army caps. Particularly among the youth, it seemed obvious that the center of gravity of the left in the US is queer, much in the way that the center of gravity of the socialist left in Europe and the US once was Jewish. Broadly speaking, the white people present resembled the crowds of direct action protesters at the WTO meeting in Seattle back in 1999, while, as anthropologist Jeff Juris commented to me, the racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity was the result of a conscious and strategic effort to address the critique in Seattle epitomized by the famous question: "Where Was the Color in Seattle?" At the same time, the major labor unions that marched in Seattle did not show up in large numbers in Atlanta (most labor activists present appeared to be with the smaller, more grassroots efforts such as workers' centers and campaigns to organize day laborers).
What do people do at a social forum? Go to workshops and plenaries. Listen to the many bands. Visit the various tables and tents staffed by members of organizations. And talk to each other. One of the pleasures of an event like this is just striking up conversation with strangers, during which you can often learn more than at official workshops. Virtually all the workshops appeared to be "self organized" by interested groups. The plenaries focused on several themes (Katrina, war and militarism, indigenous peoples, immigration, sexuality and gender, workers) and, to as great an extent as possible, featured speakers from those groups most adversely affected by current dynamics. None of the current "celebrities" of the left (Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, et al.) were featured as plenary speakers. That the program did not list the speakers at each workshop, only the title and the sponsoring group, further tended to de-emphasize existing hierarchies on the left (some groups distributed fliers offering more details on the panels they sponsored, but good luck finding these before the panels took place). On the final day of the forum, there was a "people's assembly" that, in theory, would make decisions about how to move forward. In reality, little was decided (apparently one can now submit resolutions until September 1st -- it's not clear what will be done with them). About half of the people's assembly was a mini-plenary focused on "new paradigms of social change," while the other half was devoted to people briefly stating the reasoning behind resolutions they were proposing.
As sociologist Marina Karides commented, protest aimed at the forum is practically a tradition in the World Social Forum, but it was relatively subdued in Atlanta, perhaps because the principal organizing groups were close to the grassroots, rather than well-funded NGOs or political parties that have been central to the WSF. The most notable controversy occurred around Thursday evening's plenary session, when Yifat Susskind of MADRE described the situation in Israel/Palestine, and ended by attacking Hamas, stating that their rise had complicated images of "good Palestinians vs. evil Israelis." She went on to say that we should find those among the Palestinians who share our values. Her comments were met with both applause and catcalls. This isn't really the space to analyze this position, but we can speculate about what Palestinians and their firmest supporters in the Middle East and elsewhere were thinking at this point: here is a social forum that is "right on" about every possible struggle -- African Americans, Latinos, indigenous, LGBTT, etc. and yet, as always seems to happen on the American left, when the issue of Palestine comes up, suddenly things get complicated. The next night, following the indigenous people's plenary, the National Planning Committee stated they had made a mistake by inviting someone to speak on this issue who was not Palestinian (Susskind is Israeli, although this was not clear on Thursday night) and then a Palestinian woman spoke, offering an impassioned denunciation of Susskind as a supporter of imperialism and Islamophobia, before concluding that the Palestinians appropriately felt welcome on indigenous people's night. I suspect the apology and insertion of this speaker "preemptively" warded off a protest. At the people's assembly, one speaker referred to exclusionary practices of the "media justice" tent, but it was difficult to determine the specifics of this charge. And Medea Benjamin of Code Pink and Global Exchange was "pied" for alleged shortcomings of Global Exchange, an incident that was denounced by the National Planning Committee as being at odds with the values of the forum. Finally, at the people's assembly, a speaker (an Ecuadoran indigenous activist) had the microphone taken away when he spoke past his allotted time. After everyone had spoken, he was given the mike to finish what he had to say. This was followed by a Lakotan activist stating that what he had seen was insulting and racist. He delivered a lengthy denunciation of the crowd at the forum (many of whom had booed and yelled "let him speak" when the microphone incident first occurred) as being fake friends of indigenous struggles, which ended the event on a little sour note.
Limits of the United States Social Forum
Before I mention some of my reservations about the social forum in Atlanta, it is important to state that I think the forum overall was highly successful. It brought together diverse groups of activists in a way no other strategy at present can. Familiar critiques of the social forum model as ineffectual and dominated by non-profits strike me as irrelevant to this case. These sorts of events produce alchemical effects that cannot be determined in the short term, so it would be silly to fret much about the lack of clear next steps (this goal always struck me as unrealistic, in any case). Far from being dominated by the wealthier arm of progressive non-profits, such groups were typically pushed off to the sidelines. I criticize the social forum in the spirit of trying to improve something which is already very good.
In a nutshell, I think the weakness of the forum was its anti-intellectualism. Although this was often dressed up with vaguely radical notions like "popular education" and "having the people most affected by global problems speak," it in fact dovetails with the anti-intellectualism pervasive in American life. It was visible in a number of forms -- the tendency on plenaries to conflate capitalism and racism, class and race ; the priority given to "popular education" (indistinguishable from the sorts of games and group activities widely promoted by the educational establishment in the US as an alternative to the demanding and sometimes unpleasurable activities of reading and listening) over analysis and debate in workshops; and, perhaps most significantly, the exclusion of any academic voices from the plenaries.
As noted above, the speakers at the plenaries were typically promoted as the people most directly affected by the problems they spoke about (although this policy was at first abandoned around the Palestinian issue and no Americans of Middle Eastern descent were invited to speak about the repression and surveillance enveloping the Muslim American community and its most outspoken supporters). Not only did this mean that academic voices were ignored; it also meant that the speakers possessed an aura that made criticism difficult (in any case, the plenary sessions did not typically include a period for questions from the audience). Additionally, since each speaker was talking about the problems specific to their community, criticisms of each other was difficult. Notwithstanding, a speaker from the Strategy Center in Los Angeles on the final day made several highly salient points (gently put, to be sure) -- the discussion at the plenaries, she noted, struck some as lacking depth. She added that the relationship of the forum to the global left, and to the historical legacy of the US left, was never broached, although both are highly relevant. For example, it was Venezuela and Cuba that sent the first medical aid to New Orleans after Katrina. And the bus workers she organizes often remark that we need a new group comparable to the Black Panthers.
The form of selecting the plenary speakers seemed to be heavily influenced by American notions of multiculturalism, in which everyone authentically speaks from the place of their cultural identity. This fits uneasily with the anti-corporate politics of social forums, since the latter requires alliances. Notably, the only alliance mentioned much during the plenaries was the "black-brown" alliance, apparently to be rooted in a joint experience of racist marginalization. Any discussion of how marginalized groups might ally with the middle class on some issues in response to the escalating wealth and power of the top 1% of American society was foreclosed with this approach. The concept of authenticity at work here can also obscure ways in which speakers enact power, a point made in numerous "intersectionality" and "post-colonial" critiques of multiculturalism.
Perhaps we are expecting too much of the plenaries, an opportunity for forum participants to come together to celebrate the struggles underway. Fine. But then the National Planning Committee should make some effort to open space up at the forum for debate about substantive issues -- to mention one that is becoming particularly prominent: is the dependence of most social justice groups on foundation funding jeopardizing their ability to wage uncompromised struggles? (The aforementioned pie-attackers of Medea Benjamin invoked "the non-profit industrial complex" in their press release.) It is not enough to say that there was at least one workshop on this topic, and others that touched on many other relevant debates (is socialism a useful concept? The left?). With over 900 workshops to choose from, they simply get lost in the shuffle. An alternative would be to have the National Planning Committee organize a handful of highlighted panels, thereby focusing the attention of Forum participants on these major issues. Such panels might also provide an opportunity to fruitfully mix up issues and perspectives on social change (i.e., combine labor and queer activists in the same panel) to combat the tendency of practically everyone at the social forum to both organize and attend panels within our respective "comfort zones," which at least partially contains the experience of diversity.
And these debates would greatly benefit from the participation of left academics. I know why the organizers are so suspicious of academics. They can be arrogant, obscurantist, competitive, oblivious to alternative ways of talking about realities (it is probably relevant here for me to mention that I have dropped out of academia and have no short-term plans to return). Academics frequently use the experience of activists as fodder to advance their careers. This does not, however, mean that they are irrelevant. In fact, academia is the major institutional site in the US where one can still talk using left concepts (imperialism, marxism, exploitation, etc.) relatively freely, although in significant ways this is under attack (and the social forum should be open about solidarity to maintain academic freedom). As a result, academia is a crucial site for the politicization of young people. Academics can often bring to the discussion historical and theoretical perspectives otherwise lacking. This does not mean turning discussions at the social forum into academic debates; rather it means complementing experiential perspectives of activists with those developed by academics (we should also note that many left academics consider themselves "academic activists," often with links to the World Social Forum).
A useful model for how academics can contribute to discussions and debates at the social forum can be found in a book on a topic alluded to above, The Revolution will not be Funded: Beyond the Non-profit Industrial Complex. The book sprang out of an a conference held at UC-Santa Barbara (among other things, academics often have institutional resources that can be redirected for such purposes). It is edited by a group that participated in the social forum (INCITE! Women of Color against Violence) and includes contributions from several others (including Project South and Sista II Sista). Several academics also make contributions, offering longer-term and theoretical perspectives. In this way they deepen, rather than obscure, the argument being made. It is precisely the sort of intellectual/activist engagement that should be central to the social forum. I suspect that such engagements would not only amplify the political effectiveness of the social forum; they might also help to revitalize the academic left, which, when isolated from social movements, tends to pursue theoretical curlicues for their own sake.
The remarkable accomplishment of the United States Social Forum was to bring together the largely white activists whose touchstone was the direct action at the WTO protests in Seattle with community and labor activists who mostly come from communities of color. This was all the more remarkable given the de facto racial segregation endemic on the US left for the last thirty years. I think it's fair to say that, by the end of the forum, the confidence of both groups that they belong together and can work with each other had increased. This new left can only get stronger if it fruitfully engages with the academic left and foregrounds the theoretical and historical questions we must deal with to move forward.
Steven Sherman is a sociologist who lives in Carrboro, North Carolina. He maintains the website lefteyeonbooks.org. He can be reached at threehegemons@hotmail.com.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38397
POLITICS: U.S. Social Forum Forges Common Ground
By Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA, Jul 2 (IPS) - In all, the crowds were huge, the workshops passionate and inspiring, and participants made ideological, relational and personal gains, both large and small.
The U.S. Social Forum wrapped up Sunday in the southern city of Atlanta with a People's Assembly, where civil society and native leaders read declarations on the meeting's main issues: Gulf Coast reconstruction in the post-Katrina era; militarism and the prison industrial complex; indigenous, sexual and immigrant rights; and labour struggles in the global economy.
Atlanta videographer Judy "Artemis" Condor said it was the youthfulness of the crowd that inspired her. "Usually, it's just us old folks at these marches and it takes all our energy just to get from point A to point B," she said.
The youth, on the other hand, were making music, singing, shouting, carrying huge puppets, and some even walking on stilts.
USSF Director Alice Lovelace said many participants were looking to possibly hold their own regional Social Forums in the months and years ahead.
In January 2008, there will be International Days of Action, Lovelace said. Next year will also feature a Social Forum of the Americas, and the USSF will send delegates. World Social Forums should resume in 2009, she said.
The Assembly did not go off without a hitch, as members of the Native American delegation rose in protest when a USSF organiser grabbed the microphone out of one of their speaker's hands because he went "over time." After backstage negotiations, the speaker was able to finish his comments and the Native Americans also held a "healing drum circle" to restore the speaker's dignity.
Still, according to two USSF organisers, some seasoned delegates to the World Social Forum walked away very impressed with the whole event.
"We hit 10,000 [participants], Lovelace said. "The sessions were brilliant. People made a lot of connections. We had proclamations and declarations. It was an extraordinary gathering."
"Members of the [World Social Forum] International Council were here. They said this presented a great challenge to them because it was the best Social Forum they ever saw. They said it raised the bar across the board in terms of diversity. The sessions were focused on the future, on vision, on strategies. They were going to have to step up their game to match what we did," Lovelace told IPS.
It was still vague by what process the USSF participants will be able to endorse the various resolutions.
"There was a decision to extend the process," of submitting resolutions to the Assembly, said USSF organiser Ruben Solis. It "would continue to be organised once people got back home so they would include more people that did not have the opportunity to be here in Atlanta physically at the USSF. All of July and August will be dedicated to that."
"The final adoption [of resolutions] will probably happen in September," Solis said.
The adoption process would involve both the Internet and the next Planning Committee Meeting. "Get them out to all the delegates, give us a process of consultation, adoption, and voting them in, and a process. Because it was a social experiment that has never been done -- even at the World Social Forum -- this was really groundbreaking. This made history in that sense as well," Solis said.
And despite the bitter dispute that erupted when one of their speakers was cut off, the Native American contingent also saw gains from their participation in the USSF.
"This was really an awesome opportunity for the indigenous people of the U.S. to develop family with indigenous people from the South, delegations from Guatemala, from Chile and Argentina who were here... It really provided us an opportunity to develop a family," said Tom Goldtooth, a leader with the Cherokee Nation.
"We're willing to share some of our knowledge," he added. "The Water Ceremony [at the USSF] was our opportunity to help inform all people about the unification of water."
"It was announced on the USSF website to bring water from their homeland, whether contaminated or not. This was a ceremony for all people to pray for the water of life. People brought water from all four directions. We had an indigenous woman named Josephine Mandamin, the Water Walker or the Water Keeper, she's walked around each of the Great Lakes," Goldtooth said.
Kimberly Richards from the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans, Louisiana departed feeling ecstatic on the People's Caravan. Richards joined hundreds of others on a caravan of several buses that came from the Western U.S., went through New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama, to join the USSF. Now she was returning home.
"I think there was a lot of progress made. People from the Gulf Coast were able to see oppressive and repressive systems in housing and health care. Atlanta's Katrina was the Olympics. The Olympics displaced people and increased homelessness just as Katrina. For Detroit it was the closing of the auto mills. For North Carolina it was the textile factories," Richards said.
"People are [now] able to understand the intensity of the human rights violations. People's don't [typically] understand the U.S. has signed on to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The evacuation was: get in your car and leave. People who didn't have cars were discriminated against. That's a human rights violation. We have to understand what our human rights are in order to protect and defend them," she told IPS.
Richards said the biggest benefit for the New Orleans delegation was the raising of consciousness.
"To organise, people have to have all those things. To have the action, you have to have the awareness. We don't need unconscious people to take an action. Those parts are critical to effective action, to effective organising. We do need to do something, but we need to do it with consciousness," she said.
Meanwhile, public housing advocates from across the country at the USSF were able to make connections and have planted the seeds of starting a national organisation to protect public housing, said Carl Hartrampf of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.
After the People's Assembly, a delegation of about 50 public housing residents and advocates marched and delivered an "eviction notice" to the Atlanta Housing Authority, which they taped on the office's front door.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38388
RIGHTS-US: Native Americans and Immigrants Share Common Struggle
By Jonathan Springston
ATLANTA, Jul 1 (IPS) - One group has lived here for millennia, while the other has just arrived. But Native Americans and immigrants have much in common, particularly the alienation and oppression they experience in U.S. society, activists and community leaders said on day three of the U.S. Social Forum (USSF) Friday.
The USSF, which concludes Sunday, has drawn about 10,000 civil society activists from around the United States to discuss their work on issues like gender, native and gay rights, immigration, and the anti-war movement.
"Indigenous rights are the foundation of human rights in this country and we have to come to terms with that," said Julie Fishel of the Western Shoshone Defence Project at a Plenary Session on "Indigenous Voices: From the Heart of Mother Earth."
Fishel joined Native American and indigenous speakers who spoke of indigenous heritage, gradual encroachment on indigenous land, and the lasting ill effects of U.S. oppression of indigenous peoples.
"We have experienced many things that have been passed down through generations," said Patty Grant-Long of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. "Because of our spirit, our relationship with our creator, and our relationship with our ancestors, we are still here."
Grant-Long was born to parents brought up in Native American boarding schools where they were forced to give up their identities.
"It is an amazing testament to resilience that indigenous people are still here," noted Ikaika Hussey of the Aloha Anina Society based in Hawaii. "That says a lot about strength and the ability to withstand in the face of all those struggles."
Hussey spoke of the militarisation of Hawaii, which has lasted for so long and become so prevalent that many visitors do not even recognise it as a problem.
The Aloha Anina Society is leading a charge to demilitarise Hawaii "because it helps the people of Hawaii and because it is part of taking apart the U.S. empire," Hussey said.
Faith Gemmill of the REDOIL Network in Alaska said 95 percent of indigenous land there is open for oil and gas mining.
"It is my hope that in my lifetime I will see our land returned to its rightful owners," Gemmill said. "People must change the way they are living. We must give Mother Earth time to repair and heal itself."
"Our Mother Earth is not for sale," Enei Begaye of the Black Mesa Water Coalition told the audience.
Begaye's organisation is a collective of Navajo and Hopi Native Americans that fight to keep corporations from destroying their land to extract natural resources and from polluting the water.
"There is a path toward peace," she said. "It will take all of us... stand[ing] together."
Native American perspectives were also shared in several of 900 workshops offered throughout the USSF.
"Ninety-eight percent of indigenous people died during the East to West movement," said Carrie Dann, a Western Shoshone Native American. "Why doesn't America want to talk about it?"
Dann spoke at a workshop called, "Where Have All the Indians Gone?", where attendees learned more about the plight of Native Americans as pioneers moved west during the 19th Century.
The Western Shoshone still own land in Nevada where there have been 1,000 nuclear bomb tests and where companies conduct dangerous and destructive strip mining for gold.
"They are destroying the land while exploiting it for money," Dann said. "The Earth should be taken care of and it isn't happening."
"So little attention is paid to indigenous peoples," agreed Ward Churchill, whose family is Cherokee.
It is important people have their attention drawn to the destructive practices that are destroying the Western Shoshone land, Churchill said.
"We take a lot of people to the United Nations because rallying indigenous people internationally is important," Alberto Saldamando, General Counsel for the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC), told attendees at a workshop about international efforts to mobilise indigenous peoples. The workshop was called, "Holding the U.S. accountable for discrimination against Native Americans."
The IITC works on all levels to build grassroots participation from indigenous peoples in order that they might address their concerns and work together to achieve their goals.
"We're all oppressed, just in different ways," Shauna Larson of the Indigenous Environmental Network said. "It takes everybody working together to achieve our goals."
The IITC is interested in working with groups who focus on environmental justice and women's rights because those issues overlap, Salamando said.
During "Defending Immigrant Rights," a workshop conducted in Spanish and English, presenters discussed the history of immigration in the United States, positive and negative immigration legislation, and activists' efforts in Florida to mobilise Spanish-speaking immigrants.
One presenter spoke of a five-part, three-year plan to move from defensive to offensive organising strategies focusing on local and state levels. Hispanics should work with African-Americans because of their history of struggle and oppression, she added.
"There is one objective: to respect all human beings as human beings," said Herman Martinez of the American Friends Service Committee.
"The only way to forge lasting alliances is to understand each other," said Gerald Lenoir of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration during the Immigrant Rights Plenary Session Friday. "African-Americans can no longer look at civil rights as a black and white issue."
"We are the testing ground for all the repressive issues you all face at home," said Alexis Mazon of the Coalicion de Derechos Humanos.
It is crucial for trade unions to include immigrants in the fold of organised labor and that both groups should work together to achieve their rights, said Ed Ott of the New York Central Labour Council.
"We have shown the power of people in the streets," Ruben Solis of the Southwest Workers Union said. "We want a world where everybody can fit."
"We are making history because we are making a new world," noted Glory Kilanko of Women Watch Afrika. "We want to build a network that challenges the oppressors."
"If we begin to allow the oppressors to build walls, then we are allowing them to win," Kilanko said.
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38374
POLITICS-US: "We're Living a Nightmare Called Katrina"
By Matthew Cardinale
ATLANTA, Jun 29 (IPS) - Under the banner, "If another world is possible, another U.S. is necessary," 10,000 civil society activists gathered in Atlanta, Georgia Wednesday for the beginning of the first U.S. Social Forum.
A spin-off of the annual World Social Forum, the USSF aims to "send a message to other people's movements around the world that there is an active movement in the U.S. opposing U.S. policies at home and abroad", according to organisers.
During the first plenary session on the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Katrina, held in a large auditorium at Atlanta's Civic Centre Thursday, Jerome Scott of Project South said, "The whole question of the [U.S.] Gulf Coast and the response the government had... pulled the covers on all the evil things that exist in this country."
A few thousand people attended the first plenary, and at one point several hundred Hurricane Katrina victims stood up to show their presence.
"We thought this was one of the most important issues we could have here at the first U.S. Social Forum," said Scott, whose group educates and trains community leaders.
"They've got the media saying Gulf Coast recovery is slow. It's not slow. It's a massive privatisation scheme," added Monique Harden of Advocates for Environmental Human Rights.
"The only people locked out of homes not damaged were public housing residents," Harden said of New Orleans, Louisiana, after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, killing at least 1,836 people and causing more than 81 billion dollars in damages.
"We have to understand our history," stressed Mwalimu Johnson, 70, of the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana.
Johnson spoke of the influential economist from the U.S. Revolutionary War era, Adam Smith, who said "Civil government is instituted as protection for the rich against the poor," in his book, "Wealth of Nations".
"That's important because... the areas I was dealing with, how could the government allow this to occur? The idea is, the government is responsible to the elite. You don't have to wonder why the government allowed it to happen," Johnson told IPS.
"They systematically performed genocide behind the guise of a disaster," Johnson said.
"The hurt that I feel for New Orleans, point blank murder," Sharon Harshaw of the Mississippi group Coastal Women for Change said at the meeting.
Speakers and audience members emphasised that Hurricane Katrina is also symbolic of so many other problems people face in the U.S. and around the world, day to day.
"If you're working in criminal justice, you're talking about Katrina. If you're talking about health care, you're talking about Katrina. If you're talking about housing, you're talking about Katrina. We're living in a nightmare called Katrina. The source is a backwards, capitalist, racist system," one audience member said in public remarks.
The first day of the USSF began with a massive parade throughout downtown Atlanta under a scorching hot sun.
Hundreds of organisations were represented in the march, and equally, hundreds of issues cropped up on banners and signs, including workers rights, sexual orientation equality, peace, impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, compassion for immigrants, and preserving public housing, just to name a few. Large street puppets also made appearances.
The march route was changed just weeks before the Forum, when the City of Atlanta and police denied the requested permit. USSF organisers and the city came to an agreement which kept the protesters marching on downtown's visible Peachtree Street, but gave in to the city's wish to not go by City Hall.
A hundred public housing residents and advocates from Atlanta and Chicago still held a rally, however, at City Hall, one hour prior to the USSF parade. Just yards away, thousands of USSF attendees stood around during that hour, oblivious to the public housing residents -- only a short block away -- who were pleading to save their homes.
Despite removing the City Hall action from the original USSF march route, USSF organisers made little effort to publicise the public housing issue being addressed only metres away.
The march kicked off with several speeches, including by civil rights movement veteran Joseph Lowery of Atlanta.
"Our national dilemma today is not technical retardation but moral deficiency. We have a moral deficiency in establishing priorities when putting our technological advances to work for the common good," said Rev. Lowery.
"We continue as a nation to put corporate greed above social needs and we insist on relying on militaristic solutions to political and moral challenges," Lowery said.
"We have sacrificed the ideals that could make us great, on the altar of our ambition that can make us big; but big is not the same as great," Lowery said.
"We have sown the wind of mean-spiritedness toward the poor, and lack of humaneness toward the stranger at our door. There is something terribly wrong with our system of economics and values when we have disparities, when any handful of people have more than they'll ever need while millions have less than they will always need," Lowery said.
"We are torn asunder by the erosion of our civil liberties," he added. "We are damaged by the misconception that might makes right and that we can resolve every conflict by sending smart bombs on dumb missions."
Several marchers told IPS they were excited about the Social Forum, which runs through Jul. 1.
"I've never seen any diversity like this [at any other event]. It's not just white folks. I want to see groups like this keep coming together and growing. The diversity in this crowd is like nothing I've seen in another march. The more mixing the better," said Randy Aronov, an Atlanta area activist.
However, diversity of agendas also presents some challenges to having concrete gains come out of the USSF.
"It's a difficult thing to get these people, very passionate about specific issues, to organise around a single focus. It would be good... [to have some goals with a] smaller focus," said Rev. Lauren Cogswell of Atlanta's Open Door Community.
"It can bring hope, you're not alone. Especially in the South, in the city of Atlanta. It's [usually] that same 40 people that show up to every protest," Cogswell said.
No link for this one yet…
Another U.S. is Starting to Happen
By Judy Rebick
After spending five weeks in Bolivia this summer, I was convinced that the new paths out of this destructive, hateful morass we call neo-liberalism would come from those most marginalized by its greed and violence. Little did I imagine that one of the strongest signs of this direction would come from the belly of the beast itself. Ten thousand people, overwhelmingly poor and working class, majority people of colour, at least half women, and including a massive number of youth gathered in Atlanta Georgia at the end of June for the US Social Forum (USSF) signaling what could be the birth of the most powerful social movement the U.S. has ever seen.
“Never in my wildest imagination, did I think I would ever see something like this in the United States,” Carlos Torres, a Chilean refugee now living in Canada told me half way through the forum. The sentiment was repeated again and again by Latin American visitors who were there as emissaries from the World Social Forum (WSF). It was radical, it was militant, it was feminist, it was anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist, it was queer, it was loud and lively and it was brimming with love, kindness and a deep sense of solidarity. The slogan of the USSF was “Another World is Possible, Another US is necessary.” It was interpreted both as another U.S. and another “us” meaning the left has to reinvent itself.
And it was a major step forward for the World Social Forum movement. The idea of a U.S. social forum came from a couple of people who went to the 2001 WSF in Brazil and then brought a few more with them in 2002. They formed a group called Grassroots Global Justice and began the process of organizing a U.S. Social Forum, firmly in the WSF spirit. One of them Fred Ascarate, then with Jobs for Justice, now with the AFL-CIO, explained to the opening plenary that “It took this long because we wanted to do it right by building the necessary relationships among the grass roots organizations and ensuring the right outcomes.”
The idea came from the WSF but they took it further than anyone else except perhaps the WSF in Mumbai. In Nairobi, poor people demanded a significant place in the WSF planning process and in Atlanta, they had one. The National Planning Committee represented what they call national and regional “base-building” groups, whose base is mostly poor and working class people. It seemed to me that the forum shifted the balance of power on the American left to the poor and oppressed from the middle class. Time will tell what impact this will have.
Every plenary focused on building alliances among the myriad of grass roots movements across the United States. Most emphasis was on a “black-brown” alliance to combat the racism that divides African Americans from their Latino and immigrant brothers and sisters. But there was a lot of focus on student/labour alliances and environmental issues were completely linked to social justice issues. Support for gays, lesbians and transgendered people who have been major targets of the Bush administration seemed universal. The forum ended in a People’s Movements Assembly, where various regional and issue caucuses presented their resolutions. Several new national networks were formed and the bonds of solidarity were deeply forged among those who are usually divided. People left with the commitment to organize social forums in their regions, cities and neighbourhoods. Over the course of the week, the social forum became a synonym for creating a movement of movements everywhere.
“People are asking me when Atlanta has ever seen something like this “Jerome Scott of Project South and veteran Atlanta activist speaking of the opening march. “I’ve been reflecting on that and my answer is Atlanta has never seen anything like this. The Civil Rights movement was mostly African American and last year’s May 1st (immigration rights) demo was mostly Latinos but this march was the most multi-national action I have ever seen. It was beautiful.”
Most of the 900 workshops over four days were filled to the brim with activists sharing strategies on everything from food security to community/labour alliances to a new taking back our cities movement against gentrification. Women, people of colour, and young people were in majority in the plenary speakers. There was not a single left-wing star among them. In a culture obsessed with celebrity, the organizing committee decided they didn’t need any, even the good ones. None of the big NGO’s in the United States were on the planning committee. There is a big debate in the United States about what they call the NGO-industrial complex. The idea that foundation-funded, majority white, centrist and Washington dominated NGO’s and think tanks have hijacked the left was present throughout the forum. These groups were welcome to participate but not in a leadership capacity.
Another extraordinary feature of the forum was the role of indigenous people who led the opening march and participated on several panels as well as their own plenary. Much of the vision came from them. After talking about the melting of the glaciers, Faith Gemmill from the REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Land) in Alaska said, “Our people have a prophesy that there will come a time in the history of humanity when people are in danger of destroying ourselves. When that time comes, a voice will arise from the North to warn us. That time is now. I was sent here to give you part of our burden to speak up now against the greed.”
And Tom Goldtooth who represents the Indigenous Environmental Network on the national planning committee said, “"We must talk from the heart and shake hands with one another. A prayer has taken place that this spirit is going to grow. No matter who we are we must demand not reform of a broken system but transformation. We need to organize from the grassroots." And many did speak from the heart.
The plenary on Katrina was stunning. If the first American Revolution was started by a callous colonial power dumping tea into Boston Harbour, the second one might be caused by a callous, racist, arrogant government thinking it could wipe out the hard fought place of Afro-Americans in New Orleans after a storm provided them the opportunity. Monique Hardin from Advocates for Environmental Human Rights opened the forum saying, “New Orleans is a man-made disaster. Bush is the man and Bush is the disaster. Reconstruction on the Gulf Coast is a massive privatization scheme to destroy people of colour and poor white people.” Dr. Beverley Wright speaking from the floor said, “our parents and our grandparents fought to buy a house to pass on to their family and they are trying to take that away from us when they talk about turning the place we lived in East New Orleans into a green space. They’re not talking about turning the place rich white folks live into green space. “ Another community leader said, “Katrina is both a reality and a symbol. If you work in justice, if you work in health care, if your work in housing, you are in Katrina.”
One of the most powerful speeches was from Javier Gallardo from the New Orleans Workers Centre[1], A guest work from Peru, he explained that when African Americans were displaced, hundreds of workers, like him, had been brought in from Latin America for Gulf Coast reconstruction and their employers names are on the passports. Their ability to stay in the U.S. is dependent on the employer. He said that there is now a practice that when the employer is finished with the workers, he sells them to another employer for $2,000 each. “What is that?,” he asked. “We call it modern day slavery. They want to divide us but the old slaves and the new slaves can join together and together we can defeat them,” he continued to thunderous applause. The old slaves/new slaves metaphor wove its way through the rest of the forum in the powerful idea of a black-brown alliance, that veteran activists said would transform left-wing politics in the United States and especially in the South where the vast majority of the working class is now black and brown.
Another impressive feature of the forum was the handling of conflict. When the Palestinian contingent objected that they were the only group not permitted to speak for themselves in the anti-war plenary, the organizers read their letter of protest to the next plenary. When the report of the indigenous caucus was stopped at the end of their allotted time by the moderator of the Peoples Movement Assembly by removing their mike, they took grave offense and felt silenced. Within ten minutes most of the indigenous people in the room were on the stage with the consent of the organizers. What could have been an explosive divisive moment with a lot of anger and hurt was handled with incredible skill by both permitting the protest and making sure it was interpreted in a way that created unity rather than division. I had the feeling that a new culture of solidarity was being born, one we tried for in the feminist movement but never quite accomplished.
Of course there were weaknesses in the forum. While strongly rooted in the traditions of the Civil Rights movement by the symbolic location in Atlanta and the presence of veteran civil rights activists, there was less discussion of working class or even feminist history. Yet the impact of those movements were strongly felt in the powerful female leadership present everywhere and the strong emphasis on workers issues and organizing. None of the big environmental groups were present. While the issue of the war and U.S. imperialism had pride of place, the mainstream anti-war movement had little presence. The forum organizers bent the stick towards poor, working class, indigenous, queer and people of colour groups and perhaps this was necessary to create the kind of movement really capable of making change in the United States.
In her famous speech at the 2002 World Social Forum in Brazil, Arundhati Roy famously said, “Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. “
It wasn’t a quiet day in Atlanta but I could hear her shouting there, “What do we want? Justice. How will we get it? People Power.”
Judy Rebick is a long-time socialist feminist from Toronto. She holds the Canadian AutoWorkers Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University and is the founder of rabble.ca. Her latest book is an oral history of the Canadian Women’s Movement called Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Penguin).
And, here’s a couple blog entries I’ve found about the USSF:
http://www.mwsocialforum.org/node/1248
http://thirdwavefoundation.blogspot.com/
---please post links to other blogs or articles about the ussf so I can update this compilation!
edited to add:
this indybay page has links to several different articles, blogas, and radio shows:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/06/29/18431645.php
and here's a new article, which I ahven't read yet...hope it's good!
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/07/the-us-social-forum-creating-an-alternative-world/
The US Social Forum: Creating an Alternative World
by Jason Del Gandio / July 9th, 2007
The first US Social Forum occurred this past week, meeting in Atlanta, Georgia from June 27th to July 1st. Approximately ten thousand people participated in hundreds of events addressing all kinds of issues, concerns, strategies, and visions. Immigration rights and Gulf Coast rebuilding were obviously major topics. Indigenous rights, movement building, and US imperialism received much attention. And issues of race, class, sexuality, and gender (particularly transgender) were very notable. These are all important and necessary for creating a different, more humane United States. But from my personal perspective, the US Social Forum cut across issues and highlighted something else: the possibility of creating an alternative world within the already existing world.
The slogan, “Another World is Possible!” probably seems cliché by now. We are all too familiar with this ear-popping phrase and its evocation of local-and-global justice. But is another world really possible? Does this phrase really point to something different? Are we really capable of creating something new, fresh, and exciting? After attending the US Social Forum, I say yes, yes, and yes.
It was on the third day of the Forum when it hit me: this Forum points to something different. But in that moment I also realized something else — that changing the entire world is probably not possible. The world seems too big, too complex, and too far away to change entirely. But creating an alternative world within the already existing world does seem possible. My realization is not really new or original. Plenty of people have made similar arguments throughout the ages: We are capable of creating our own separate world, of creating a fully functioning alternative society, of creating an autonomous community within a larger community. The US Social Forum affirms this possibility and that’s why it was so powerful for me personally. It allowed me to sense the future, to see the alternative, to touch the intangible.
In the span of a few days, thousands of people from across the country came together under a common goal — to discuss the state of the world and strategize for change. But this common goal did not erase or negate our diversity. While we talked, shared, and communicated with one another, we also argued and debated. Forum operations were often criticized, workshops got heated, and one prominent organizer was even cream-pied (for something she allegedly did eight years ago). All this unity/and/friction highlights our individual and collective ties. We are individuals with particular biases, concerns, needs, wants, and visions. But we are also part of a collective, bound together by an inter-communal vision of a better day: a day when the world is no longer controlled by war, profit, competition, occupation, exploitation, narrow minded “isms,” top-down paternalisms, and deeply ingrained fears of a truly open, planetary existence.
The US Social Forum stands in contradistinction to such unpleasantries. We seek to usurp this empire of empires and implant new realities. Sure, we all have our own agendas and our own ideas about the best approach. But there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it seems natural to the human species. Our personal experiences cultivate our personal concerns. But our individual views do not have to compete with one another. We can stand side by side and co-exist peacefully … even as we argue. We can have dialogue and debate. And we can even help one another achieve our goals and dreams. There is political space for all of us.
That’s the message of the US Social Forum: we are capable of creating mutually shared space even as we disagree over the specifics of our politics. Rather than having one world, we can have many worlds. And these many worlds can link up, crisscross, and create networks of people, places, ideas, and ways of life. In doing so, we give birth to a twenty-first century, global alternative. Does this change the whole world entirely? No, not necessarily. But does it create an active, self-creating world of participatory values and agendas? Yes, and this new world can exist (antagonistically) within the already existing world.
The US Social Forum occurred in Atlanta amongst all the capitalism, consumerism, apathy, indifference, and personal and cultural tensions of any major city. But it occurred nonetheless, and successfully so. We came together amidst the world we are against and still affirmed not only our vision but also our ability to create an alternative reality. For five days we systematically practiced our values of open, inclusive, participatory democracy. The Forum was far from perfect. But such imperfection is part of the twenty-first century alternative. We no longer look for a perfect world. Instead, we actively move toward a better world, one in which each individual is given the opportunity to contribute to our collective creation. That was achieved (however imperfectly) in Atlanta.
I realize that my description may suffer from romanticization. But a vision without romance is lifeless, hopeless, and boring. I also realize that my description is not very instructive. What else needs to be done? What more must we do? What’s the next step? Such questions are far too complicated for this brief essay. But I can say this: I know what I experienced and I know that I’m hopeful about the future. In the days and years to come we will understand the US Social Forum as another episode of liberation — Zapatismo, Bolivarianism, the Battle of Seattle, Genoa, the other Forums, etc. We will then understand these brief and fleeting moments as the building blocks of our newly created world of interconnected participatory democracies. We will then realize that the future was already created and it only took time for it to become reality.
Jason Del Gandio is a writer and activist, and lecturer at Temple University (Philadelphia). He specializes in social commentary, global justice issues, and the philosophy of human communication. He's also working on a book entitled Rhetoric for Radicals: A Handbook for Twenty-First Century Activists. He can be reached at rhetoric4radicals@gmail.com .
and, well, of course at the ussf website there's some stuff...here's a link to photos from the forum
http://movementphotos.org/main.php
and Max from the editorial collective of Left Turn recently posted this account:
http://ideasforaction.blogspot.com/
Max's account is long, but really good reading, I recomend it. (I couldn't post it here because this post is too long!!)
A report on a GI Resistance meeting at the USSF
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/327/1/
and here's a blog post from the Student/Farmworker Alliance
http://www.sfalliance.org/2007ussf.html
