The highlight of the opening day of the 3rd World Social Forum -Thursday 23 January- was an impressive march attended by social, political and labour organizations, which left the city centre at 6pm. Preliminary estimates from official WSF sources set the figure of participants in the march at approximately 140,000.
Women, men, children, youngsters and the elderly from all over the world -although Brazil, as the host country, had the largest delegation- marched some 25 blocks, protesting against the threat of war against Iraq, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) project, International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies, and demanding democracy on the Latin American continent.
Less than a month after Luis Inácio Lula da Silva took office, the mass of marchers (shouting or waving banners) demanded that the president of Brazil initiate a plebiscite against the FTAA and go back on his decision to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (Switzerland). The WEF is an annual meeting in response to which the Forum taking place in Porto Alegre was originally conceived.
The march took place peacefully and without incident, and as well as bringing together a series of different demands, was a demonstration of joy, desire for change and colour. By sunset, at 8pm, the crowd arrived at the Pôr-Do-Sol Amphitheatre, on the shore of Lake Guaíba, where a concert, with a range of different music acts, went on till after midnight.
That afternoon, the official Forum inauguration ceremony had taken place at the Catholic University, attended by representatives of the World Social Forum International Council, local and government authorities and special guests. Another activity that had taken place during the day, were the meetings of the Regional Forums that had been organized in the run-up to Porto Alegre. On Friday 24th the enormous number of scheduled workshops, conferences and panels get started, continuing until Tuesday 28th, in the four Forum focal points.
Choike will be shortly publishing a photographic report of the opening march, as part of the special coverage that the Choike team is offering from Porto Alegre.
