The World Social Forum

The World Social Forum is an annual Woodstock without the drugs or mud, a global peace rally and a human rights campaign rolled into one, held in a futurist hothouse surrounded by shanty towns. Launched three years ago in Port Alegre, Brazil, the WSF is timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum, and keeps gathering momentum. While this year’s Social Forum attracted its share of star thinkers and Nobel Prize winners, it is fundamentally a grass roots festival of dissent, tribal dancing, workshops, roundtables and renewal. (CLICK here for Quicktime movie). www.richardneville.com.au/content_RHindex/WSF.html

For five days 100,000 delegates from all over the world crammed into vast, dusty exhibition grounds on the outskirts of Bombay, united in the dream that Another World is Possible. At the opening plenary, writer Arundathi Roy exploded like a roman candle, urging the crowd to march to the headquarters of war profiteers Bechtel and Halliburton. Other speakers were less histrionic, though steeped in history: Ahmed Ben Bella (first President of Algeria), the Iraqi writer Abdul Amir Rekaby, British MP Jeremy Corbyn, Shabani Azmi (filmstar, water warrior, fatwa target), Shirin Ebadi (2003 Nobel Peace laureate) and – to resounding applause on the last night, Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture and a local rock God. The Iranian human rights activist, Shirin Ebadi, made the point that "terrorism has to be countered legitimately."

Chaos & Craziness Held Sway

Other political heavies included Madam Nguyen Binh, Vice President of Vietnam and, thanks to a big screen video clip, Nelson Mandela. Abdul Amir al-Rekaby, a dissident under Saddam Hussein, now a democratic activist, told the crowd that “the resistance in Basra, Najaf and in Baghdad needs to know and feel that you are there for them”.

Like all revolutions in the making, chaos and craziness held sway. The 120 page multi lingual program had still not been distributed to delegates by the start of the hundreds of seminars, workshops and cultural programs. Sound systems were tragic, sessions were late, the official website a disaster, the translations inept. I felt a chilling premonition that Another World is Impossible. For all this, as the days unfolded, the World Social Forum became one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

It was a non stop festival of singing, dancing and street theatre, with no Big Brother or revolutionary elite, no corporate sponsors, no imposed vision. In the thick of the crowds for several days I didn’t witness a single act of drunkenness or bad behaviour, (apart from two dreadlocked media reps), not even when delegates turned back the delivery trucks from Coca Cola. It was a riot of free speech and feisty debate. There was even a revolution against the revolutionaries, instigated by an aggrieved phalanx of the disabled: “Look us in the eyes”raed the banners. Most of all, this was a solution-seeking celebration of ideas, of grass roots aspirations, and a living, breathing demonstration of the massive, multi-cultural yearning to turn the future into a friend, instead of a concentration camp.

Weak Signals of Enormous Change at the Last Minute

This hasty report cannot do justice to the array of provocations lurking within the hundreds of seminar tents, many of which could be regarded as “weak signals” of oncoming issues of significance. Water, water everywhere, so much of it privatised, re-branded and being pushed upmarket by multinationals, who shut off the “blue gold” when payment is late. The sovereignty of citizens over natural resources, food, plants, DNA and even the building blocks of matter is slipping away. 50 of the 92 elements of the periodic table are available for sale, two of which, americium and curium, have already been patented.

This surprise fact was gleaned from a session on nanotechnology, about which most futurists are gung ho. (It would be instructive to compare the agendas of the World Social Forum and the World Future Society, both of whose gatherings are mind expanding). Many still believe nanotech is a long way off, but there’s already over a hundred products on the market, none of which have been tested. A transparent sun cream sold in Australia contains macro particles of titanium oxide, which have the capacity to penetrate the skin, the blood stream and even our organs “No-one knows the medical implications of this”, reported bio-tech activist Roy Pat Mooney in a scary session, as there is no requirement to re-test ingredients at the sub atomic level, where the behaviour of elements can alter. The commercial use of nanoscale is being likened to either "the next best thing to sliced bread or the next asbestos." Blue Lizard sun cream boasts that its Baby Formulation contains “only nano-micronized titanium dioxide and zinc oxide and no other active ingredients”. There is zero regulation in this emerging industry, in which a major investor is the Pentagon.

Are You Ready for Free Software?

As you can see, I’m already getting bogged down in detail. My daughter, who I was lucky enough to be allowed to accompany, came out reeling from a session on vegetarianism. She learned that chickens possess as wide a range of individuality as dogs, and that farmers use hot blades to burn off the beaks of day old chicks. CNN’s nightly shots of battery hens with bird flu seemed unsurprising this context and made us glad to be in the thick of the world’s best vegetarian cuisine, some of it on sale at the forum. And as for India, shining India, the country that has lost its cringe but not its soul, shimmering with innovation, good humour and a flair for the philosophy of every day life, well, that’s another story for another journal.

The forum’s tabloid program is 120 pages thick, with an average of 12 sessions per page, so any attempt to convey its gist is foolhardy. Here’s some of the sessions which caught my eye:

• Corporate Crime – testimonies from affected communities.

• Ecological Debt.

•Street Vendors in a Globalising World

• World TV – plans for a global movement to own its own co-operative TV station.

• The Transit of Venus Experiment, (which remains a mystery….)

• The free software movement www.gnu.org

• Citizens audit of odious debt.

• World Citizen Foundation

• The Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious & Spiritual Leaders

• Australian Imperialism in Asia & the South Pacific.

• The torture of lesbians.

You get the drift. To find out more, go to Google. One moving session gave voice to the personal stories and pleas for justice from an array of erotic minorities, whose opportunity to wander free and proud in a public space is all too rare. The deeper impact of the WSF is as much about body and spirit as mind.

When All the Rainbows Meet

Australians think of themselves as multi cultural, despite the punitive obsessions of our politicians (the gallant new opposition leader favours jailing asylum seekers), but rainbow Oz is low voltage compared to the ethnic vibrancy of the five day forum, as you will see in the Quicktime movie. (www.richardneville.com.au/content_RHindex/WSF.html). Deep down I realise the forum will not change the world in a flash, that the gap between rich and poor is widening, that sooner or later we are all stuck behind the sink with a mortgage, watching friends being carted off to chemotherapy, sighing as comrades are cajoled by a cynical media into fussing over the contours of Nicole Kidman’s lips, or is it her hips, turning our backs on our past, settling for the shopping religion, reeling from gadget envy …. no longer bemused by the wrinkled ex dope dealer’s offers of bulk Viagra & Prozac , no longer amazed by promotions of IBIZA HIPPIE CHIC the new perfume by ESCADA “ happy, wild, crazy, energetic, excessive, trendy”. And meaningless. We’ve lost the Balearic isles, we’ve lost Byron Bay. Can Brave New World be far behind?

Not if the World Social Forum can help it.