Agence France Presse | by MICHEL MOUTOT | January 31, 2002
Business and economic leaders from around the globe gather here for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Thursday while their anti-globalization counterparts hold a rival World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and plan protests in the Big Apple.
While the rich and powerful gather at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel from Thursday to Monday -- the first time the annual meeting is held outside the Swiss resort of Davos in 32 years -- thousands of people will take part in activities organized by leftist groups and associations.
While all involved have firmly rejected violence, the New York police department is not taking chances and says it is monitoring anywhere from a dozen to several hundred potential troublemakers.
Students for Global Justice spokeswoman Yvonne Liu has announced a meeting parallel to the WEF would be held with numerous discussion groups and participants from all around the world at New York's Columbia University. Liu said her group demanded to be included in global economy discussions and complained that her generation was under-represented. What her people wanted, she added, was a world based on clear policies, not on laws designed by corporations.
At the Waldorf Astoria, around 2,700 participants -- including more than 300 political leaders and dozens of top businesspeople, religious authorities and media company officials -- will meet for five days of talks.
Dozens of workshops on poverty reduction, economic recession, restoring business confidence, security, shared values and cultural differences, will take place, Frederic Sicre, a WEF managing director, said.
Sicre said there would be "unprecedented participation from the Islamic world," and noted that Hamid Karzai, chairman of the interim administration in Afghanistan, King Abdullah of Jordan, and Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammed were among those attending.
On the side of the activists, Jobs for Justice spokesman Simon Greer said union leaders from several countries would hold several meetings. He called for a demonstration Thursday outside a GAP clothing store, which is accused of getting its merchandise from developing countries that allow child labor.
Greer said WEF participants had ostensibly come to New York to show support to the United States in its war on terrorism, when in reality their intention was to push an agenda for deregulation and privatization.
His group, Greer said, had a one-word answer for them: Enron, referring to the energy giant that surprisingly went bankrupt, leaving thousands of employees and stock holders in the lurch.
Besides the meetings and counter-meetings, several demonstrations are planned in New York, the biggest of which will take place Saturday leaving Central Park to the Waldorf Astoria, under heavy police surveillance.
The prestigious hotel has begun to resemble an armed camp, with 41,000 police officers ready to crack down on the smallest sign of violent dissent.
Police have warned troublemakers that an 1845 law designed to hamper the Ku Klux Klan will be invoked to place under arrest any group of people covering their faces.
Meanwhile, in Porto Alegre some 60,000 people will participate in the World Social Forum, an anti-globalization gathering to coincide with the WEF.
In meetings which get under way at 2030 GMT, participants are to develop alternatives to the march of free-trade globalization they say favors rich nations and threatens the world's poor.
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.
It is possible "to bring several hundred disparate organizations together to reflect on alternative proposals through dialogue," said forum coordinator Candido Grzybowski.
The star of the Porto Alegre forum is French activist Jose Bove, who said the Porto Alegre gathering, now in its second-straight year, 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 US agribusiness giant Monsanto.Agence France Presse:
