Associated Press | February 1, 2002 | By Harold Olmos
Ask three different people from three different countries at the World Social Forum what globalization means. The answer, in all three cases, is some sort of loss.
Antonio Dias Abreu fears losing his job at a clothes shop in the Brazilian capital, Brasilia. Luis Candia believes his country, Chile, loses its natural resources. Adelaide Gaggio Giuliani has already lost something she cannot replace: her son, Carlo, was killed by Italian police during a violent anti-globalization demonstration in Genoa last year.
It is these experiences that organizers say are the strength of the Social Forum that has drawn about 50,000 activists to this southern Brazilian city for a second summit, which opened Thursday.
The meeting is being held at the same time as the World Economic Forum, a gathering of business leaders, politicians and academics that is convening in New York for its 32nd summit.
Although the hundreds of grass roots organizations and citizens' rights groups gathered in Porto Alegre might not produce a final document or a coherent alternative platform to the free-market-oriented economic order that currently dominates the globe, the five-day gathering allows individuals like Abreu, Candia and Giuliani to voice their frustrations about the present, and their hopes for the future.
"We can agree to be obedient and give the centers of illegitimate power the freedom to do what they want," said Noam Chomsky, one of the speakers. "Or we can ignore that ridiculous order."
"Over the next few days, major priorities will be set," he told a news conference. "We hope that out of these efforts will come a common vision and understanding to serve as guidelines" for a new world economic order.
Marching through the streets of Porto Alegre to open the forum on Thursday, Candia led a group of a dozen Chilean labor activists from the northern mining town of Concepcion.
Shouting anti-globalization slogans, they joined thousands of other like-minded activists in a festive, peaceful protest.
"Globalization means the exploitation of Latin America's natural resources," he said, stressing that, under a free trade zone proposed by the United States and stretching from Alaska to Argentina, the region would not get a fair price for its resources, although it would be forced to open its markets to U.S. goods.
Abreu fears his job at a garment store in Brasilia would be jeopardized by the free trade zone.
"Under the FTAA, we would lift our import controls, and would be forced to import their goods, while they don't give us the technology to compete with them," said Abreu. "So, we lose jobs."
In Giuliani's case, the loss was so personal, she still finds it difficult verbalize.
Her 23-year-old son, Carlo, was shot by an Italian policeman during anti-globalization protests at the Group of Seven meeting last year in the port city of Genoa. Video images caught the moment when a police jeep ran over his body.
In commemoration of what many here feel was a hero's death, Carlo's name was given to the forum's youth camp, a tent city pitched in a Porto Alegre park, filled with colorful flags and the heavy scent of marijuana.
"There shouldn't be deaths in this manner," Giuliani told The Associated Press. "When Carlo died, we (the family) said there was nothing that was worth the life of a young man."
Despite her loss, she realizes she is no exception.
"There are so many mothers in Latin America who have suffered losses, just as I have," she said. "I want to collect the names of all young people who have died in democratically governed countries in times of peace, practically assassinated by the state."Associated Press:
