Talking Back To the Global Establishment

MUMBAI -- As the Bush administration struggles with setbacks in its global trade and Iraq agendas, the opposition World Social Forum opened festively this week with 150,000 global justice activists primarily from India and South Asia, marking a successful transition for the grassroots experiment from its original site in Brazil.

The growing legitimacy of the WSF, formed as a counter to the annual corporate-based World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland was reflected by the presence on opening night of Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi of Iran, who expressed hope that "there will be a world where globalization will not be synonymous with inequality." She was joined by former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson, who called for controls of global arms trafficking that contributes to the deaths of a half-million people annually.

The ceremonies also reflected the radical anti-war spirit that has flared among global justice activists opposed to the U.S. occupation of Iraq. A representative of Iraq's social movements condemned the U.S. privatization of Iraq's economy, and famed Indian writer Arundhati Roy called for shutting down American and British contractors profiting from the economic takeover. Legendary Vietnamese revolutionary Nguyen Thi Binh criticized capitalist globalization on behalf of "the higher globalization of movements for peace and progress."

Cultural resistance was symbolized by the performances of Junoon, a Pakistani sufi rock band, the South African Siwele Sonke dance troupe, and the Brazilian singer and cultural minister Gilberto Gil, who was last year's honoree at the Latin Grammy Awards. Film superstar Amitabh Bachchan represented the Bollywood left.

It is mainly a spirited carnival of the marginal, with hundreds of labor, farmer, fisherpeople, women's and student organizations representing the very poor, Aadivasis (indigenous), and Dalits (untouchables). Anger churns at the fact that 300 million Indians subsist on less than a dollar a day, many surviving in roadside shantytowns just outside the forum conference grounds. Reflecting the crisis of children, 100 million Indian families live without domestic water and hundreds of thousands of children work in cottonseed production and sweatshops, the forum is featuring a special conference of 2,000 children's representatives.

Overall the forum allows in-depth grassroots review, dialogue and networking through 1,200 panels, which are often cumbersome and repetitive. The emphasis is on learning and sharing the detailed lessons of diverse struggles, which range from saving the Narmada Valley from being flooded for giant dams to expanding landless people's struggles like those mushrooming in Brazil. The forum avoids the classic left-wing pattern of fighting over correct lines or specific platforms, while allowing space for networks to discuss collaboration. For example, that is how last year's unprecedented anti-war protests were planned, involving four to five million people in over 600 cities globally.

Anti-WTO Campaigns

Many panels here are focusing on the global campaign against the World Trade Organization (WTO) whose trade summit was derailed last fall in Cancun, Mexico. The WSF explicitly avoids adoption of specific programs, while leaving space for activist networks to design campaigns against the WTO or the Iraq occupation. Coincidentally this week, U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick sent a letter to 140 governments promising to breath oxygen into a stalled U.S. trade strategy.

Only last fall, Zoellick was vowing to marginalize "won't do" countries like Brazil while pursuing parallel free trade agreements with unspecified "can do" countries. But he failed in Miami to achieve a free trade zone (FTAA) pact for Latin America, fell short of his goals for a Central American agreement, and currently is delayed on bilateral agreements with Australia and Morocco. At last week's Latin American economic summit in Monterrey, Mexico, Brazil refused to sign a joint communique acknowledging the Bush Administration's January 2005 deadline for the FTAA.