The World Social Forum has no beginning and no end. On the morning of Tuesday 28 the members of the Organizing Committee gave a press conference that brought to a close the official activities of the Forum. At the same time, the rooms of the Catholic University were filled with people discussing and preparing their proposals for action, from campaigns and mobilizations to the preparation of future national and regional forums. On Wednesday the majority of Forum participants left Porto Alegre. They are arriving at their home countries with their suitcases and rucksacks full of ideas and projects.
The residents of Porto Alegre presented the delegates from India with a carved stone, symbolically handing over to them the responsibility and honour of being the next hosts. The World Social Forum 2004 is already underway.
According to the organizers, Porto Alegre was home to 100,000 participants, including delegates, observers, journalists and activists. 20,763 delegates registered, representing 5,717 organizations from 156 countries. To cover the event 4,094 journalists were accredited from 1,423 media in 51 countries. The event was financed with funds donated by the Ford Foundation and Oxfam International (some 700, 000 dollars), by the governments of Brazil, the state of Rio Grande do Sul and the city of Porto Alegre (around two million) and with the money raised from the registration fee paid by participants and presenters (800 thousand dollars). The direct cost of the Forum was some three and a half million dollars, not including the direct costs covered by the municipal government and the contribution of thousands of volunteers. On the other hand, the city of Porto Alegre received between 25 and 50 million dollars in expenditure by Forum participants on accommodation, food, transport and all kinds of "souvenirs". Not without reason does opposition party Governor Germano Rigotto, who had criticized his predecessor (from Lula's Workers' Party) during the electoral campaign for spending money on bringing "agitators" to the city, now say that, if for whatever reason the next forum cannot be held in India, it can safely count on the hospitality (and the financial contribution) of the state of Rio Grande do Sul.
Candido Grzybowski, director of IBASE, the Brazilian NGO that acts as the secretariat of the Organizing Committee, reiterated in the closing act the founding principles of the Forum as an open space that does not make declarations, present final documents, nor adopt political positions. "The final document of the World Social Forum is the sum total of everything that was said in all of the two thousand activities," he said. In this way he responded to the opinions like those of the sociologist Emir Sader, who expressed his support for the "politicization" of the Forum, in a column published in the daily newspaper Zero Hora. For the same reason, the organizers explained, the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who was present in Porto Alegre during the Forum, was not invited to participate in any Forum event. He made a speech at the Porto Alegre legislature, as a guest of the members of that body. In contrast, in the case of Lula, the organizers went on to say, since the very first Forum they had invited the president of the host country, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso had refused these invitations.
One thing that can be said, according to Grzybowski, is that concern for women's status and for gender equity was present throughout the Forum and its organization. Putting this concern into practice, however, has not been easy to achieve -only one woman was present among the six people giving the final press conference. The other common concern clearly manifest this year, he stressed, was the support shown for peace.
The press conference ended with an improvised chorus of "I have so many brothers and sisters that I can't count them". Indeed, it would be impossible to count all the people who, in the world, regional and national social forums are joining the struggle to build another world.
