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Tens
of Thousands Gather In Brazil For Second World Social Forum
PORTO
ALEGRE, Brazil, Feb. 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Some 60,000 people
are gathering here to participate in the World Social Forum, an
anti-globalization conference timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum in
New York, news agencies reported.
In
meetings which commenced at 20:30 GMT Thursday, participants are to develop
alternatives to the march of free-trade globalization they say favors rich
nations and threatens the world's poor, AFP reported.
It
is possible "to bring several hundred disparate organizations together to
reflect on alternative proposals through dialogue," forum coordinator
Candido Grzybowski said.
A
host of seminars is planned to develop strategy that goes beyond one-time
protests such as the massive and destructive demonstration that hit Seattle in
1999 during a meeting of the World Trade Organization.
The
star of the Porto Alegre forum, or FSM (Forum Social Mundial) is French activist
Jose Bove, who said the second annual Porto Alegre gathering had established its
legitimacy in drawing a great number of politicians to Brazil.
"Nowadays
it is the politicians who are asking to understand," said Bove, who founded
a French anti-globalization group that last year helped destroy genetically
modified products in a lab south of Porto Alegre belonging to U.S. agribusiness
giant Monsanto.
Globalization
expert Ronald Walters, a professor of government and politics at the University
of Maryland, emphasized the need for developed countries to move towards closing
the gaps widened by globalization.
"Globalization
has made it possible for developed countries to compete at such a sophisticated
level that [so-called Third-World] countries simply in no way can match
that," he told IslamOnline.
"There
needs to be some way to bridge the gaps between these countries that
globalization has formed," he said. "I see very little being done
about that," he added.
The
World Social Forum attempts to find alternatives to globalization that would
heal those growing wounds, according to its web site.
In
an article posted on the site, media critic Norman Solomon, the director of the
Institute for Public Accuracy, described the roots of the FSM in social
movements derived from the heyday of opposition in the 1960s.
He
referred to an InterPress Service article describing the FSM as "the child
of 1968" in that the various struggles that exploded in much of the Western
world during the 1960s proliferated and closed off into less obtrusive movements
over the next three decades.
But
those movements - for civil rights, environmental activism, feminism, democracy,
human rights and many others - began to coalesce and converge with the first
World Social Forum, the IPS article said.
According
to the FSM's web site, the idea for such a large and diverse gathering came
directly from opposition to the WEF, traditionally held in Davos, Switzerland.
The
"Anti-Davos" thinkers, in Europe and in South America, proposed a
World Social Forum to integrate all those opposed to the
"neo-liberalist" ideology of globalism, to go farther than
demonstrations and mass protests and find answers to the problems of
globalization, the web site said.
The
forum was symbolically set to coincide with the WEF, and its location in Brazil
was also chosen because of that country's "third-world" status, as
opposed to the WEF's Swiss locale.
By
early Thursday, some 6,500 people had gathered in a park in Porto Alegre,
setting up camp for a "March for Peace" just steps away from imposing
state capital buildings. Ten thousand people signed up to stay there; the
participants in the camp include young people from 52 countries, AFP reported.
"We
believe another world is possible and we are here to make our
contribution," said Angela de Avila, 16, seeking a place to pitch her tent
after traveling 500 kilometers (310 miles) from northeastern Rio Grande do Sul
state.
"I
am going to participate in debates and attend shows. Young people are massacred,
suffocated by the system ... We want to dialogue together to create a world
where you don't have people who are privileged and people who are
marginalized," said Fernanda Mattioni, also 16.
Another
participant, Renaud Blais, came from Quebec to represent the "Quebec
Farmers Group" a three-month-old organization that boasts 2,000 members.
The
facilities at the camp are free, and registration at the Forum costs $50, said
Mateus Zimmerman, a camp organizer, adding that in New York, at the World
Economic Forum, "registrants have to pay $25,000 to attend
conferences."
As
the buildup of the FSM gathered momentum, some 300 homeless families occupied an
abandoned building in Porto Alegre early Friday, AFP reported.
"We
want to protest the lack of public policy for housing, the lack of real urban
reform," said Juliana Gonzales, director of the National Movement for the
Struggle for Housing.
The
group's red flags were draped at the door and many windows of the 14-story
building, filled with excrement, dead birds and other signs of neglect. The
building belongs to an insurance company, Sulamerica, its occupiers said.
A
U.N. official in charge of housing issues for Latin America and the Caribbean
visited the squatters. "The U.N. has as one of its objectives working with
the poor to reduce poverty, and secure housing as a right," the official,
Yves Cabannes, told AFP.
With
Additional Reporting by Ayesha Ahmad, IOL Correspondent
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