During the first World Social Forum, more than a thousand people representing hundreds of social movements, NGOs and trade unions of the whole world gathered in a common assembly and approved the "Porto Alegre Call of the Social Movements for Mobilization". This document evaluated the consequences of neo-liberal policies across the world and called on social movements to mobilize against a series of institutional events in the year ahead, such as the annual meetings of the World Bank and IMF, the ministerial meeting of the WTO and the G8 Summit in Genoa.
The second call of the social movements emphasized the rise of militarism and their opposition to war, as well as highlighting the failures of neo-liberal capitalism demonstrated by Argentina's economic and political crisis and the collapse of the US corporation, Enron.
For the 3rd World Social Forum, some of the organizations (see list below) involved in the previous social movements assemblies drafted a discussion document proposing that a debate be initiated on how the social movements that started to come together in Porto Alegre could move in the direction of a more permanent articulation, while clearly preserving the differences between this initiative and the WSF. This suggestion is now being framed as a proposal to establish a "Social Movements World Network".
>> See full text of the document: "Building a social movements world network".
This proposal to formally establish a social movements world network was presented by CUT (Brazilian Trade Union Congress) representative Gustavo Codas to the thousands of delegates at the first of this year's assemblies of social movements at the WSF. An article by Helena Tagesson describes how it was received. The general opinion: good idea, slightly questionable process, but there was no consensus.
(SOURCE: ATTAC)
>> See full article.
