The World And Us Social Forums

The World Social Forum quickly became the largest political gathering in human history and continues to offer a direct challenge to the extreme inequities of corporate-led globalisation. It has expanded its presence and continues to be an exciting experiment in global and participatory democracy. The book's contributors have participated in World Social Forums around the globe. Recounting dozens of dramatic firsthand experiences, they draw on their knowledge of global politics to introduce the process, its foundations and relevance to ongoing transnational efforts toward democracy. This second edition of Global Democracy shows how the Forums have developed since their inception in 2001 and how they are now connected with other global movements including Occupy, the Arab Spring and beyond.

This volume provides a comprehensive examination of the World Social Forum, its relation to the US Social Forum, current debates and perspectives, and the relations involving principle actors, namely NGOS, activists, and academics.

The Annual World Social Forum has become a key part of the international global justice movement, attracting activists from around the world. Here Leite lays out the origins, development and challenges of this international movement for social, political and economic justice.

The WSF/USSF is an expression of the people's struggles to advance alternatives to the world-as-we-know-it. Since its first convening in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, it has captured the imagination of all who have come within its orbit and caught up by its vast and growing networks. It provides a large space for groups to mobilize, voice their oppression, exchange ideas, and express their desire for hope and another world. Central in the founding principles of the World Social Forum are: the advance of peoples' rights (including women's rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, the rights of minorities, the rights of peasant farmers, and, generally, the rights and dignity of all peoples now oppressed), participatory democracy, social and cultural pluralism, and the end of market tyranny. This volume captures the full range of topics dealing with the WSF/USSF. It is a fresh treatment of materials for the "insider" and provides ample background for someone who would like to attend.

Experimenting with politics that can cope with uncertainty.

The World Social Forum quickly became the largest political gathering in human history and continues to offer a direct challenge to the extreme inequities of corporate-led globalisation. It has expanded its presence and continues to be an exciting experiment in global and participatory democracy. The book's contributors have participated in World Social Forums around the globe. Recounting dozens of dramatic firsthand experiences, they draw on their knowledge of global politics to introduce the process, its foundations and relevance to ongoing transnational efforts toward democracy. This second edition of Global Democracy shows how the Forums have developed since their inception in 2001 and how they are now connected with other global movements including Occupy, the Arab Spring and beyond.

The World Social Forum (WSF) has become the focus for a diverse array of movements advancing alternative visions of globalisation. The numerous WSF's have helped to connect activists in an increasingly dense network of advocates for radical social change. They have mobilised hundreds of thousands of people and may be one of the most important political developments of our time. The Handbook of World Social Forum Activism brings together leading scholars of the social forum process from North America and Europe. The collection contributes to the ongoing process of reflection from the WSF experience, and is accessible to activists, students and scholars alike.

In 2001 the first World Social Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The meeting was viewed by many at the time as a new manifestation of the global Left, a people's opposition to the World Economic Forum that stood as the first real front to global capitalism since the collapse of the Soviet Union. While many activists and intellectuals on the left have since become deeply critical of the Forum, newer movements, such as Occupy, the Arab Spring and the indignados, have built upon its successes and innovations. Another World is Possible is the original collection of essays and demands from the heart of the 'movement of movements'. Based on the work of the first two annual meetings of the WSF, this classic collection not only set out the initial aims of the movements that came together, it also paved the way for the theoretical study of new social movements, their multiple and participatory character. Today, as many crises affect all our lives, it is time to revisit the original demands of a global solidarity movement, united in its determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of our earth, and to reconstitute a global left.