Porto Alegre Social Summit Sets Stage for Counteroffensive against
Globalization
By Walden Bello
Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city. Located in one of Brazil's
more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and populated by people mainly
of European stock, this city of 1.2 million people is First World when it
comes to infrastructure and social services. In fact, it ranks near the
very top in terms of the country's "quality of life" index.
"ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE"
Yet Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum (WSF) last year and again
this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning movement
against corporate-driven globalization. Galvanized by the slogan "Another
world is possible," some 70,000 people are expected to flock to this
coastal city from January 30 to February 4. This figure is nearly six
times that for last year.
Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists from
Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be among those
making their way to Porto Alegre. But there will also be a sizable
contingent of people from the Northern countries. And the place will be
graced by personalities who have come to exemplify the diversity of the
movement against corporate-driven globalization-among others,
activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist-feminist Vandana Shiva,
Canadian people's advocate Maude Barlow, and Egyptian intellectual Samir
Amin.
COUNTERPOINT TO DAVOS
The World Social Forum emerged as a counterpoint to the World Economic
Forum, the annual gathering of the global corporate crowd in Davos,
Switzerland. Proposed by a coalition of Brazilian civil society
organizations and the Workers Party that controls both Porto Alegre and
the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the idea triggered strong international
support from organization such as the French monthly Le Monde Diplomatique
and Attac, an influential Europe-wide organization supporting a tax on
global financial transactions, and received financial support from
progressive donors like Novib, the Netherlands Organization for
International Development Cooperation.
Driven by this energy, the first WSF was put together in a record time of
eight months.
A televised trans-Atlantic debate between representatives of the WSF and
some luminaries attending the WEF was billed by the Financial Times as a
collision between two planets, that of the global superrich and that of
the vast marginalized masses. The most memorable moment of that
confrontation came when Hebe de Bonafini, a representative of the
Argentine human rights organization Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, shouted at
financier George Soros across the Atlantic divide: "Mr. Soros, you are a
hypocrite. How many children's deaths are you responsible for."
Since its first meeting the stock of the WSF has risen while that of the
WEF has fallen. Already put on the defensive as a gathering to "discuss
how to maintain hegemony over the rest of us," as one of the debaters on
the WSF side put it, the WEF was asked by the Swiss government to leave
Davos on the grounds that it could no longer guarantee the security of its
corporate participants. Sealing off Davos from demonstrators last year had
already necessitated the biggest Swiss security operation after World War
II, and the authorities anticipated a security and logistical nightmare in
the wake of the September 11 events.
As a result, the WEF is holding its sessions in New York this year, but
many observers say that Davos high up in the Swiss Alps was the key
attraction for corporate executives, and without this "ambience," the WEF
is headed for oblivion.
The centerpiece of this year's gathering in Porto Alegre are 26 plenary
sessions over four days structured around four theme: "the production of
wealth and social reproduction," "access to wealth and sustainable
development," "civil society and the public arena," and "political power
and ethics in the new society." Around this core will unfold scores of
seminars, a people's tribunal on debt sponsored by Jubilee South, and
about 5,000 workshops. Marches and demonstrations of workers and peasants
are also expected, led by the Brazilian mass organizations CUT (Central
Union of Workers) and MST (the Movement of the Landless) that are among
the key organizers of the WSF.
TUMULTUOUS YEAR
The anti-establishment forces gather in Porto Alegre after a tumultuous
year. Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalization movement came during
Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the third week of July, when some
300,000 people marched in the face of police tear-gas attacks. Shortly
after the Genoa clashes, in which one protester was killed by police,
there was speculation in the world press that elite gatherings in
non-authoritarian countries might no longer be possible in the future. And
indeed, Canada's offer to hold the next G-8 meeting in a resort high up in
the Canadian Rockies in the province of Alberta seemed to confirm the fact
that the global elite was on the run from the democracy of the streets.
Then came September 11, which stopped a surging movement dead in its
tracks. The next big confrontation between the establishment and its
opponents was supposed to take place in late September in Washington, DC,
during the annual fall meetings of the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund. Unnerved by the prospect of a week of massive protest that
was expected to draw some 50,000 people, the Bretton Woods twins took
advantage of the September 11 shock to cancel their meeting. Without a
target and sensitive to the sea change in the national mood in the US,
organizers cancelled the protest and held a march for peace instead.
The establishment followed up on the unexpected opportunity to reverse the
crisis of legitimacy that had been wracking it prior to September 11 by
pressing the developing countries to approve a declaration launching a
limited set of trade negotiations during the Fourth Ministerial of the
World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha, Qatar, in mid-November. Third
World governments were told that unless they agreed to talks leading to
greater liberalization, they would have to take responsibility for
worsening a global recession that had been accelerated by the World Trade
Center attack.
Taking no chances, the WTO secretariat and the Qatar monarchy had worked
to limit the number of legitimate NGO's attending the meeting to about
sixty. This ensured that the massive demonstrations on the street that
characterized Seattle, which had served as a context for the famous
developing country revolt at the Sheraton Convention Center, were not
present in Doha, and under these circumstances, developing country
opposition collapsed.
REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Had the WSF meeting been held in late November of December, the mood of
people coming would have been different. The Bush administration would
have been riding high after its devastating triumph in Afghanistan.
However, in the last few weeks, history, cunning as usual, has dealt
Washington two massive body blows: the Enron debacle and Argentina's
economic collapse.
Enron has become the sordid symbol of the volatile mixture of deregulation
and corruption that drove the US' "New Economy" in the 1990's and helped
lead it to what is possibly the worst global recession since the 1930's.
Burdened with an unpayable $140 foreign debt, its industry in chaos, and
2,000 of its citizens falling under the poverty line daily, Argentina
serves as a cautionary tale of the disaster that awaits those countries
that take seriously the neoliberal advice to liberalize and globalize
their economies.
As the WSF opens, these twin disasters have brought back with a vengeance
the crisis of legitimacy that the global elite and its project of
corporate-driven globalization were experiencing prior to September 11.
Porto Alegre provides the perfect site and the perfect moment for the
counter-offensive on the part of the movements that believe that "another
world is possible."
* Dr. Walden Bello is the executive director of the Bangkok-based policy
and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor of
sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines.
Focus on the Global South (FOCUS) Web Page http://www.focusweb.org
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