The Most Important Conference You Never Heard About

By Frank Joyce, AlterNet. Posted February 16, 2007.

"G-8, G-8 -- We've got a Question for You
Why do you want us to suffer?
Why do you want us to perish?
We are the creditors
Cancel Debt, Cancel Debt"
--Lyrics to a song performed by HOPE RAISERS, a Nairobi Hip Hop group at the 2007 World Social forum held in Nairobi, Kenya

It's best to look at the recently concluded World Social Forum (WSF) 2007, held in Nairobi, Kenya through a telescope, not a microscope. What you see is a gathering force, a mood, an attitude. It's the kind of thing you might have sensed, if you knew where to look, in Montgomery, Alabama or colonial Africa in the late 1950's or, for that matter, in the British colony of North America in the 1770's.

Officially, more than 66,000 participants came together for WSF 2007. They were nuns, slum dwellers, academics, activists, Nobel Prize winners, students, trade unionists, NGO staffers and government officials including Kenneth Kaunda, the former President of Zambia. There were more than 1,400 participating organizations from 110 countries. More than any of the previous world forums, they came from Africa. That made the 2007 WSF the most globally representative yet.

As a cultural and political phenomenon, there is nothing quite like the WSF which started in Porto Alegre, Brazil in 2001. Even if you visit the United Nations or attend the Olympics, you won't be so engaged with people from so many countries speaking so many languages, wearing so many different styles of clothing and so driven by a broadly shared social vision. Nowhere else can you have this kind of six day opportunity to march, sing, dance, demonstrate, talk, listen and learn. WSF 2007 included 1,200 workshops formal workshops (the newsprint program was 176 tabloid size pages long), rallies, musical performances and other events.

It would be inconsistent with its nature and character for the WSF to take place in plush surroundings. And so the participants had to contend with numerous organizational and logistical tribulations. Workshops met in the less than ideal meeting conditions that came with holding the conference in the Kasarani sports complex, miles from the center of Nairobi. The acoustics were poor. Moreover, especially when sound systems worked, fabric "room" dividers did little to stop the audio from bleeding into the adjoining workshop. Bench seating for meetings scheduled to last two and half hours also leaves a lot to be desired.

Also problematic was the distance of the stadium from virtually any available accommodations including those in downtown Nairobi -- a $15 cab ride over crowded, pothole filled roads. That's $30 round trip, times five days of meetings. Public transportation in the form of buses and Matutu's (a common form of transportation in urban Kenya) were available. Using them, however, was discouraged because of rampant crime.

Admittedly, it isn't easy to find a venue anyplace for tens of thousand of people from all over the globe, especially when most are not affluent. And holding scores of simultaneous workshops in a soccer and track stadium does have one advantage. It is big enough to accommodate in one place all of the myriad WSF activities including meetings, workshops, demonstrations, eating facilities, vendor sales booths and cultural performances. Some who had attended previous forums considered that a worthwhile tradeoff from events held in many scattered locations. In any case, the net result was a vibe that was generally warm and friendly. And the quality of the conversations on labor rights, water, debt relief, resisting or reforming the architecture of global capital (the World Bank, IMF, WTO etc.), HIV/AIDS, tax issues, bio-diversity and a host of other subjects was quite high.

Was there a lot of Bush bashing? You might expect so. But you would be wrong. Sure, there was an anti Bush poster or reference here and there. One African group was selling a T-Shirt featuring a picture of Paul Wolfowitz that said, "Send the Wolf Back to Bush!

But mostly Bush and, for that matter, the US, were little mentioned. WSF participants simply take it for granted that the US symbolizes the world that stands as the polar opposite to the WSF slogan "Another World is Possible." Further, the meeting was in Africa. The African struggle against colonialism left a legacy of deep understanding that oppression and exploitation come from a system. It is simply not the "deviant" policy of a "bad" leader like George Bush. (One of the more profound and more amusing banners at the WSF read, "MAU MAU -- Fighting terrorism since the 1800's.")

See more stories tagged with: 2007, world social forum, kenya

Frank Joyce is a journalist and labor communications consultant. He is writing a book on reinventing unions.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »