AP Worldstream | January 31, 2002 | By Tony Smith
Getting under way with a march of thousands against globalization, the World Social Forum opens Thursday for a second annual summit of protests and alternative policy talk that aims to tame the excesses of unfettered global capitalism.
Organizers said they were expecting more than 40,000 activists to descend on this Socialist-run city of 1.2 million in southern Brazil for the five-day Forum, a self-styled nemesis to the powerful World Economic Forum being held this year in New York City.
"The World Social Forum is not an event, it's a process," leading organizer Maria Luisa Mendonca told a news conference. "Last year we were surprised that, instead of the 4,000 expected, 20,000 came. This year we've been surprised again." With dozens of keynote lectures from globalization critics from around the world, more than 100 seminars and over 700 workshops, the Porto Alegre meeting tackles what it sees as the ills of capitalism - foreign debt, unfair global trade that favors the rich industrialized nations and all-powerful multinationals.
Speakers include intellectuals and activists ranging from American activist author Noam Chomsky to Argentine Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel. Also present is a strong lobby of politicians of all hues from France, a traditional doubter of U.S.-inspired free-market economics.
Following the march, the Forum will be officially opened and debate will begin to seek what Mendonca called "a new economic system based on different values."
NEJrs, a local environmentalist group, urged the Forum to launch a boycott on U.S. brands such as McDonald's, Nike, Disney, AOL Time Warner and - of course - Coca-Cola because of the Bush administration's refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol against global warming.
That refusal, NEJrs called "an offense against Humanity."
Despite such rhetoric, Forum organizers are worried the gathering could be a target for radical groups which in the past have wrecked international summits in Seattle and Genova, Italy, and on Wednesday had New York police on high alert.
Local anti-globalization radicals have labeled the Forum "economically reformist, politically traditionalist and socially conformist" and one group has pledged "powerful anarchist intervention."
More than 1,100 police officers and 600 reserves have been called in to police Porto Alegre streets. Deputy Gov. Miguel Rossetto promises: "We will allow no violence."
"We're not afraid. Why should they attack us?" asked Patricia Franca, flipping burgers Wednesday at a downtown McDonald's that last year was a target for marauding demonstrators.
"I'm an optimist. I don't think it will happen again," she said. But outside, security was doubled and guards said they were ready to call in reinforcements if necessary.
"All sort of protests are welcome, even those against the Forum," said organizer Kjeld Jakobsen. "But they must be peaceful and respectful of people and their democratic rights."
That is typical of the Forum's idealistic, some would say almost naive, view of changing how the world is run.
Organizers on Wednesday announced that the Forum would be held again next year in Porto Alegre, but that after that it would be staged simultaneously in various parts of the world.
They also revealed plans to hold a mini-event based on the Forum's mix of peace-loving grass roots movements in Jerusalem in the second half of this year.AP Worldstream:
