New WSF analysis, by a founder

New WSF analysis, by a founder 
 

Chico Whitaker

With the success of the World Social Forum 2003 in Porto Alegre and its
process of globalization along the year of 2002, many questions about its
continuity raised. Many valuations have been written, pointing different
directions, as well as new proposals appear for the organization of 2003,
2004 and 2005 events. In fact, the Forum faces a positive crisis, of
growing, that demands a deeper look at some of the questions pointed at its
Principles Charter. To avoid the risk of destroying its potentialities, it
becomes necessary and urgent to overcome some ambiguities, before the
process evolution crystallizes no-return orientations. A good occasion for
this could be the next meeting of the WSF International Council - more
prepared and longer than the previous ones - expected for June 2003.

The present text intends to contribute for this debate, considering three
themes that become fundamental for the continuity of the Forum process:

  a.. The option between a Forum-space and a Forum-movement;
  b.. The relative importance, in the Forum events, of the activities
organized by the participants and of the activities scheduled by the
organizer committees, and the nature of these two activities;
  c.. The functions of the Committees which organize the Forum events.

The first of these questions is the most important, once the adopted option
generates different answers for the others. Another question, that should be
added, is the relations with the political parties. In the following notes I
will consider only the first three themes.



Forum: space or movement ?

To consider the Forum as a space or as a movement become a basic and
preliminary option in this stage of the process. To elude our answer, by not
putting it clearly, is the best way to create difficulties.

The Forum's Principles Charter defines it emphatically as a space. Although
not all think and act as if it was really only a space, or at least as if it
should remain always as a space.

Many consider it as a space that has something of a movement. To others, it'
s still only a space. That means, it can and should become an enormous
movement, or a "movement of movements", as some journalists name it. The
great success of the manifestations of February 15th against the war in all
the world - that allows the most enthusiastic to consider that this success
is also a result of the Forum, and even lead them to say it was directly
produced by the Forum... - encourages still more the desire that the Forum
assumes a mobilization function, like all movements.

Well, movements and spaces are completely different things. Without
manicheanistic simplifications, we can't be both things. One doesn't exclude
the other, which means, they can coexist. They are also not opposites, which
means that they do not neutralize each other, and can even be added. But you
can't be both things at the same time, not even be a part of each - this
would cause prejudice to one and to the other. Movements and spaces can be
seeking, which one with its role, the same general objectives. But each one
has its own way, aiming different specific objectives.

The main question to be analyzed is the following: transform the World
Social Forum in a movement, now - or not now but latter, during the
process - is it a good strategy to achieve the objective that aggregates all
participants, which means, the overcoming of the neo-liberalism and the
construction of "another world possible"? Or, inversely, is it helpful for
us, to achieve this objective, that we can count on - now and along the
development of the process - with the spaces that are opened by the World
Social Forum?

I have no doubt that it is fundamental to guarantee absolutely the
continuity of the Forum as a space not falling on the temptation of
transforming it now - or even latter - in a movement. If we maintain it as a
space, it won't obstruct or even cause prejudice - rather the contrary - to
the formation and the development of several movements. But if we opt by
transforming it in a movement, necessarily it won't be a space anymore,
losing all the potentials the spaces have.

More than that: if we do it, we will be - without being helped by those we
are fighting against...- throwing away a powerful instrument of fight that
we were able to create from the most important political discovery of the
last times: the power of the free horizontal articulation, that explains the
Porto Alegre success, as well as the ones of Seattle and of the February
15th movement against the war. And we can't forget that if the horizontal
social articulation still have so much to contribute now for our fight, it
will be necessary also in the process of construction of the world we want.

This conviction is based in the analyses of the advantages of the actual
character of the Forum as a space against an eventual condition of the Forum
as a movement.



What is the difference between a movement and a space?

A movement congregates people - its militants, as the militants of a party -
that decide to organize themselves to realize, collectively, certain
objectives. Its formation and existence needs the definition of strategies
to reach these objectives, the formulation of action programs and the
distribution of responsibilities among its members - including those
concerning the direction of the movement. Who assumes this function will
lead the militants of the movement, getting them - with authoritarianism or
with democratic methods, according to the choice made by the founders of the
movement - to realize the part of each one in the collective action. Its
structure is necessarily pyramidal, even when the internal process of
decision and the way used to choose those who will be in the different
levels of decision is very democratic. On the other hand, its efficacy will
depend on the explicitness and precision of its specific objectives, thus of
its delimitation, on the time and space.

A space has no leaders. It's only a place, basically horizontal, just like
the earth's surface, although admitting ups and downs. It's like a square
without owner - if the square has an owner different than the collectivity,
it becomes a private territory. The squares are generally opened spaces that
can be visited by all those who find any kind of interest in using it. They
don't have any other function than the function of the squares, offering a
determined kind of service to those that frequents them. The more they last
as squares the best for those who utilize what they offer to the realization
of their respective objectives.

On the other side, even when a square contains trees and small hills, it is
a socially horizontal space. Who climb on the trees or on the hills cannot
intend, from high above, to command, nor entirely, neither partially, those
who are inside the square. The minimum that can happen to the climber is to
be considered ridiculous by the others on the square. Or if he becomes too
much insistent and inconvenient, talking for nobody, the visitors will leave
the square - or even come back with "public authorities" able to make him
stop, giving back the peace and tranquility of the public squares.

The Forum as a space able to incubate movements

The Forum's Principles Charter strongly opposes the nomination of any kind
of direction or leadership inside it: nobody can speak on behalf of the
Forum - there is no sense about speaking on behalf of a space - neither on
behalf of its participants. All - people and organizations - maintain their
right of talking and acting during and after the Forum according to their
convictions, assuming or not positions or proposals introduced by other
participants, but never on behalf of the Forum or of the whole of its
participant

As the squares, the Forum is an open space, as also specifies its Principles
Charter. But it is not a neutral space like the public squares. The Forum
opens from time to time in different parts of the world - in the events
where it takes place - with one specific objective: to allow to the maximum
possible of people, organizations and movements that oppose themselves to
the neo-liberalism to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with
the experiences and struggles of others, discuss proposals of action, become
linked in new nets and organizations aiming to overcome the present process
of globalization dominated by the large international corporation and by the
financial interests. Thus, it is a space created to serve a common objective
of all those who converge to the Forum, functioning horizontally as a public
square, without leaders neither pyramids of power in its interior. All those
who come to the Forum accept these conditions - for this reason it is
established that the participants agree with its Principles Charter.

In fact the Forum works as an " ideas factory", or an incubator, in which it
is expected to emerge the maximum possible of new initiatives aiming the
construction of another world, that we all consider possible, necessary and
urgent. It means that we can expect that several and several movements
emerge, small or big, more or less combative, each one with its specific
objectives, to perform their own roles in the same struggle for which
development the square stands for.

In fact, the great possibilities of the Forum-space are exactly the
following: the one of creating movements that amplify the struggle. On the
contrary, when a movement generates new movements, this happens against the
will, as a result of internal divisions. And this would occur if the Forum
becomes a movement.

The objectives of these new initiatives, in their turn, don't have to be all
clear and precise, differently of what occurs in the movements. Some can
still be in a generating process - warming in the incubator - demanding time
to mature.

By the other side, it is accepted in the Forum that each one devote more or
less favor in the common struggle, according the stage in which each one
finds himself/herself in his/her own journey to the engagement in the fight
of the humanity for another world. On the contrary, in a movement there is a
natural mutual requirement between the participants.



The advantages of not having a "final document"

The Forum's Principles Charter reinforces even more this perspective when it
deals with the question of "final documents". Even when they don't reduce or
simplify conclusions, as it occurs in general with "final documents", the
Forum can't have them, as a Forum. This is not an option for any engagement
in the fight and in the necessary mobilization to face the neo-liberalism,
like the most concerned in transforming the Forum in movement could say.
What happens is that a square doesn't make "declarations". It is clear that
those inside it can do it. The participants of the World Social Forum can do
whatever final declarations they want - and it is good that they do it. But
these will never be declarations of the Forum as Forum. As a common space to
all, it doesn't "speaks". Or it "speaks", and a lot, through its own
existence. Once more and more people and organizations get together in order
to find ways to overcome the neo-liberalism, this is itself a great
political fact. It becomes unnecessary that somebody puts himself to speak
on behalf of the Forum.

Each and every document or declaration proposed in it will be, in this
manner, a manifestation of those and only of those whose signed it, freely,
without pressures neither controls in the positions chosen. That is why the
Forum's Charter establishes that declarations and proposals can't be voted
or approved by the participants of the Forum, as manifestations of the whole
of the "visitors" of the "square". In fact, this would lead many to leave
the Forum-space, by not accepting or by not agreeing with leaders who intend
to conduct them from the top of ridiculous hills and trees.

This option adopted in the Forum was, besides, well understood by a great
number of participants in its last edition in Porto Alegre, who brought, to
the "board" offered for it, their "proposals for action adopted during the
2003 Forum". In addition to the fact that this "board" made possible to all
to publicize their ideas, the final proposals and declarations brought - or
sent latter - show us the richness and the diversity of the engagement of
the participants. The proposals are already on the Forum's web page, but it
was not possible in this year to show everything that its participants
decided to do from the Forum, once the "board", as an innovation introduced
in this edition, was weakly made public.

Its present diffusion through the Internet - with the indication of how to
contact the authors of the proposals - open another perspectives: through
the new contacts and relationships now possible, it will allow the
enlargement of the new articulations occurred around the proposals during
the Forum. As if the Forum's square becomes permanently open, persisting in
time and space, much more than in the time and space limited by the five
days of Porto Alegre. The contacts may be multiplied and lead to more
actions, counting now with the enormous new possibilities opened by the
Internet. The same can happen with "boards of proposals" set up in others
events.

But the forum-space have still other advantages.


The diversity

As an open space, the Forum has the possibility of ensuring the respect to
the diversity, unlike it would occur if it were a movement. The principle of
respecting diversity, adopted by the WSF Charter, has, in fact, a deeper
importance: it's founded in the conviction that one of the fundamental
characteristics of the other world we intend to build - or as we also say
the "other possible worlds"- must be exactly the respect to the diversity.

As a result of this principle, the Forum also allows - without falling in
the total neutrality of the public squares - that each one maintain his/hers
own freedom to choose the sector or the level in which he/she will act to
transform the reality. This action can be either very wide as very restrict;
can intend to interfere in the deeper causes of the problems the world
faces, as in superficial effects of this problems. The vast range of themes
discussed during the Forum and the objectives in it sought can be in this
way very wide, as occurs in the great range of changes that the construction
of a new world demands. Nobody in the Forum has the power or the right to
tell that this or that action or proposal is more important than others,
thus neither has the power or the right to give or to demand bigger
visibility to his own proposals, "usurping" to his own objectives the space
that belongs to everybody.

This is, in fact, a question that demands a more careful reflection,
considering what is happening with the "marches" and street manifestations
in the last day of the Forum. The banners should be the banners of all, as a
final visible expression of its diversity and of the variety of proposals
made in it or born from it. To privilege this or that struggle, in the first
ranges of the marchers or in the designation of eventual public speakers in
the final acts of the marches, is against the principles of respect to the
diversity, and shows a vision of a Forum-movement instead of a Forum-space.
But this is another question to be discussed.

All this characteristics of the Forum explain certainly its great
acceptation and power attraction and the success of its events: its
participants feel themselves respected in their own options, in their rhythm
and in the level of their engagements. There are those that can come to the
Forum as militants of an specific movement but the majority do not do it as
an obligation or by obedience to the orders of chiefs. They come to the
Forum by their own conviction that it is important to come, to exchange
experiences, to learn and to join others, keeping the freedom that they had
before and that they will continue to have during and after their
participation in the events. They know that in it they won't receive orders
neither will have to follow words of command, they know that they will not
have to render account of what they have done or not, that they won't have
to give evidences of fidelity and discipline, neither they will be expelled
if they don't do it - the contrary of what would occur to them if they had
come to participate of any meeting of an organized movement.

The joy and the mutual responsibility

I would still affirm that it is this character of the Forum that explains
the great joy that reigns in this "square", like an enormous fair - one
truly party with spaces even to manifestations and "performances" of
different types in the circulation spaces. Nobody is anguished because
nobody has to fight to see his or hers owns proposals and ideas predominate
over the others. Not even worried with resisting to others that would try to
control them, impose orientations or rules of behavior - still less of
political behavior, as it occurs in groups and "delegations" that have to
get together to evaluate, decide, assume tasks, as in good and disciplined
parties or movements. Such meetings are even possible but never obligatory
for those whose aren't militants of this or that movement. Those who want to
take advantage of the opportunity to do it also have freedom for that, if
they limit themselves to gather with these objectives only their own
militants.

It would be in fact a pity if this joy of the "square" was lost - as it
would tend to occur if it wasn't a "square" anymore. It's a joy - the same
joy that we would like to see always in the "another world possible" - that
encompass everybody and is also energizing because it is inspired by another
discovery that the Forum provides, when it destroys the divisions that
separate the different movements: the discovery that we are many in the same
fight. In that way, in the open space provided to all by the Forum the
militants of this different movements meet up with and recognize each other:
the ones fighting for the women's rights, for the urban and rural workers,
for the environment, for the children, the ones who desire new economical
relations inside the countries or at the level of international
organizations, the ones that work for democratic participation in the
governments or to reflect on the spiritual dimension of the human being - in
the great diversity of the existing "movements".

Such "militants" of so many struggles - many separated for a long time
because of different ideological and political options - find in the Forum
one opportunity of knowing each other and, if possible, of overcoming the
division to which they were led by the dominants. This meeting with "old
friends" - if it is possible to say so - is initially, for many, a surprise,
followed by joy, when they realize that they are in fact together.

If the Forum becomes a "movement of movements", none of this movements would
have conditions of opening this space managing all the others to accept its
invitation without conditions. The meeting with others would be restricted
by the need of building another structure intending to unify, with all the
rules to make it possible - then inside it the competition would again
emerge and with it the division, as a result of the fight for space and the
direction, and also for the definition of objectives of the new movement.

One last derivation of the character of the Forum-space is the feeling of
mutual responsibility present in the realization of its events. The fact
that it is a "square without owner" make this to occur easily, more than in
movements where the development of this feeling can be sought. In the Forum
nobody can go against anybody, neither can ask for the accomplishment of
responsibilities of others. Even the errors of the organizers - in general a
lot, considering the dimension that the events have taken - are accepted and
corrected by the initiatives and creativity of the participants. In the WSF
2003 edition in Porto Alegre a serious and involuntary mistake - that forced
the organizers to make a great effort trying to minimize its effects - could
have destroyed the entire event: only in the 2º day the workshops' programs
was published. Although the participants found ways to compensate the
failure by their own, and there were even initiatives from "outside"- as the
"savage" publication of the program from the Internet information available.

Risks that we face presently

To maintain the WSF as a space is then, maybe, the best way to guarantee its
richness, which must be preserved at any price. In this sense, the movements
or political parties who want to transform it in a movement - even when they
have important, strategically urgent and legitimate objectives - will end,
if they succeed, by working against our common cause, having or not a clear
conscientiousness of what they are doing. They will be effectively acting
against themselves and against all of us. They will be blocking up and
suffocating a source of life - as the one of those articulations and
initiatives born in the Forum - or at least destroying one enormous
instrument that is available for them to expand and to enlarge their
presence in the struggle in which we all are engaged.

Initiatives taken by a certain number of movements, self-nominated "social
movements", seems however to point to this direction. Concerned, with
reason, with the necessity of popular mobilization to fight against the
neo-liberalism, they seek to put the Forum inside their own mobilizing
dynamics, to serve their own objectives.

Such movements know that they don't congregate all the participants of each
event - although congregating important organizations. But even so they
consider that their own final document could be presented and understood as
a "final document" of the Forum - once it has not its "final document"...
One initiative in this sense - born in the incubator square of the 2001
Forum - has already created several tensions and misunderstandings after the
Forum. But this is happening again in others events, even at the 2003 Forum,
although weakly. This last attempt could risk to destroy the mobilizing
effects and the articulations made possible with the "proposals of action's
board".

Recently the "co-ordination" of this movements have been going further: as
members of the organization committees of the events, they propose to
include in the last day of the Forum program their own final meeting, that
normally they do in the end of the Forum. This meeting, with a necessarily
partial participation, appear - at least to the media - as the conclusive
meeting of the Forum as a whole. If this orientation is adopted, it will
create, in fact, a new tension: each one will feel necessary to bring to
this meeting the results of his own activity, to ensure that this results
will be implemented by those who would "coordinate" its effective
realization, as in a good and organized movement. Pushing the final
attention to the meeting they organize - and that will never be joined by
all the Forum participants - this meeting will, in fact, ignore or
disrespect the other proposals of action. Or it will create the need of
"representations", that will transform the Forum in the usual pyramid,
without the joy of the horizontal "square".

In fact, a great challenge emerges, in my opinion, to the continuity of the
Forum process, and for it to realize always more completely its own vocation
of "incubator" of more and more movements and initiatives: to multiply in
all the world such "spaces" - really open and free, without giving attention
only to specific proposals. We must hope that nobody, even without this
intention, will contribute to close the Forum until it disappears as an open
space.

All that, although, is an option. People and organizations that are
preparing events this year or in the next ones, in the process of the World
Social Forum, and the members of its present International Council or of the
enlarged Council that will get together in June, can consider that they
should adopt an orientation of the type proposed by the so called " social
movements". Nobody can impede this decision. It's an option. Each one of the
participants of the Forum process will then decide about the continuity of
its own participation, once the Forum is not yet a movement and there are no
rules to belong to it or of respect to majority decisions even when they are
taken in a way considered democratic. What we can't do is to avoid an honest
and clear consideration of this question, neither forget to analyze the
consequences of such decisions.

Self organized activities X program of the organizers

This discussion is also so necessary because, besides the pressure of
participants to transform the WSF in a movement, the organizers of events
themselves will tend to adopt this option if the present method of
organizing it is maintained. The option between WSF-space and WSF-movement
will necessary rebound in this organization.

In a Forum-space the self-organized activities would have priority, in the
minds of the event organizers, once it's with them that the WSF works more
clearly as an space. However we verify that the part of the events
programmed by the organizers is over-valued, disadvantaging the meetings and
seminaries programmed by the participants themselves. These activities, the
essential of a Forum-space, are treated nearly with negligence. They look
like secondary, less important and with low prestige, even as if they were a
load that the organizers are forced to carry, after this way of organizing
the events was invented in the 2001 Porto Alegre's Forum.

In fact, the choices of the themes and of the lecturers of the conferences
and panels have always taken the most part of the organizers' time, in all
Forums already realized. This also occurred with the International Council:
the meetings of Bangkok and Florence had dedicated a great part of their
working program to this type of decision, to prepare the Porto Alegre's
Forum. Long meetings beyond the Council's schedule become necessary, and
even an special meeting, in Brazil, between Bangkok and Florence, of the new
working group created for this - bringing together the "coordinators of the
main themes" - with all the costs determined by such meetings. Actually the
themes and the lecturers become the "showcase" of the Forum, or the public
and visible demonstration of what it deals about and what is discussed in
it, and this must be carefully planned, in order to keep clear its positions
and proposals. As it occurs with the Davos' Forum, that have not
self-organized activities and has to choose carefully, in each circumstance,
the main theme of its events...

Meanwhile, the preparation of the part of the WSF events, programmed by its
participants - that, beyond its themes, is a hallmark of the WSF - follows a
purely administrative dynamic, nearly bureaucratic: seminars and workshops
inscriptions are accepted till a date limit, then the ones that cannot be
accepted - according to the Principles Charter - are identified, through a
possibly insufficient analysis, given the short delay that the organizers
have to do it, practically denying only the inscriptions of parties and
armed organizations that declare explicitly their character... Follows the
distribution, also administrative, of dates and places to these activities,
and the printing of a "catalog" with the name of each activity and of its
proponent, the date and where it is going to take place - almost always
together, by the way, with the traditional corrections, that not all
participants receive, of last minute changes.

By the other side, as the number of these activities tends to be big, only
some of them have the possibility of taking place in the event central
areas, the rest being distributed in the best possible way in all available
spaces - some times in different places of the cities, even ones of
difficult access. To complete these difficulties, the "catalog" of the
workshops and seminars is distributed during the registration of the
participants on the first day of the event - or even later, as unfortunately
it happened in Porto Alegre 2003.

The result of all this is that those who tend to participate of the
workshops and seminars are only their own organizers and those they had
themselves invited, or those who were able to rapidly identify the
activities interesting them.

The situation become even worse when the organizers of the event are able to
bring renowned persons to the part of the event that they organize, and when
the conferences of these persons take place simultaneously with the
workshops and seminars, as occurred in Porto Alegre 2003: the big
conferences attract the most part of the participants, leaving the
self-organized activities to those who really insist in participating of
them. In this perspective, besides, the function of the big conferences and
panels in an event would have to be re-examined.

Several precautions could be taken to avoid all that. For example, the date
limit for the inscription of workshops and seminaries may be fixed long
before the event - at least two months for the big events. This would make
possible to disseminate the proposals by the internet with sufficient
antecedence, allowing inter-links previous to the workshops, a distribution
of places and spaces facilitating these inter-links, and a better
preparation of the participants themselves, allowing them to come to the
Forum knowing already which activities they would like to join.

A second but equally important precaution would concern the distribution of
places for the self organized activities: these should be realized in the
main space of the events, in the main "square", with better infrastructure,
easy access and good divulgation. And they could not suffer the concurrence
of the events oriented to all participants - as occurred in Porto Alegre's
2003, giving reason to those who said that the big "stars" usurped the
Forum...

Without any doubt the priority given to the self-organized activities - that
express in the practice of the events organization the option for
Forums-spaces and not for a Forum-movement - would be much more favorable to
achieve efficiently the objectives of the WSF, formulated in its Principles
Charter and indicated in the beginning of this text: to allow to the maximum
possible of people, organizations and movements that oppose themselves to
the neo-liberalism to get freely together, listen to each other, learn with
the experiences and the struggles of the others, discuss proposals of
action, become linked in new nets and organizations aiming to overcome the
present process of globalization dominated by the large international
corporation and by the financial interests. Because in fact it's in the
self-organized workshops and seminaries that this can occur, and not in the
traditional methods of large encounters and congresses, where the people
listen passively what respectable people have to tell them, with some times
the chance of formulating questions.

Organization Committees: facilitators or direction of a movement?

The discussion about the option space or movement is important also because
transforming the Forum in a movement can have negative effects to the
continuity of the process, as it opens the possibility of disputes of power,
that can erode or even destroy it from inside. As the WSF Principles Charter
establishes that WSF is not a space for disputing power, having - until
now - the character of a horizontal and open space, this allowed that such
disputes effectively have not occurred in its events. But their preparation
are not immune to that.

When it is seen as a movement - in this case it needs a "political"
direction - it becomes strategic, for the political forces that participate
of it, to integrate its Organization Committees, having in view to influence
the decisions. Tensions then appear between those who are already inside it
and practically took "possession" of it, and those who feel themselves
"excluded", or simply want to get in and participate of that "direction".

There are also those who consider necessary to bring that dispute even to
the Brazilian Organization Committee - presently Forum process Secretariat -
and to its International Council. They even say that the present composition
of the Brazilian Committee is not representative, because it do not take
into account the proportional participation of all the forces or political
tendencies that should be in the direction of the Forum process. They also
say that the International Council should be "conducted" by some persons, or
reduced to a group representing the others.

This proposals only would be justified if the Forum was a movement, but are
not adequate to a Forum-space, to a "square", that, as we have seen before,
do not admit a "political direction" with representativeness. It demands,
more than anything, people and institutions willing to perform the service
of organizing the use of the square without interfering in the contents in
it discussed and even less in the freedom that should be guaranteed to all
participants. That is to say, it depends on people and organizations willing
to devote their time and resources - as an executive body - to make possible
the gathering and the articulation of all people engaged in the struggle for
"another world".

It could seem desirable that the composition of the Organization Committees
of the Forums-spaces have a diversity ensuring the respect to the diversity
in the events. But it won't be necessary that they count with the
proportional diversity and importance of the organizations and movements
that will participate of these events, as these organizations and movements
will not come to the forum to receive orders. But still more important than
the diversity in the committees is the credibility of people and
organizations composing it. They need to invite all the others without
leaving any doubt about the real interest of this invitation. Or without
rendering those invited afraid of the possibility of being used, by those
who invite, to realize their own real objectives - as it can happen when
political parties decide to assume "generously" the support of the process.

In this perspective, the concept better adapted to the organization
committees and also to the International Council, with the option
Forum-space, is of a "facilitator". Facilitators do not command. What they
do is to make possible for the existing or future movements to progress in
their struggles. To create incubators of movements and engagements and to
build "squares" and "ideas' factories", they don't need confrontations among
them, discussing alternatives about how to change the world, still less they
have to try to impose ideas and proposals to each other. What they need is
to be concerned, in the common perspective that they adopt, with each event
that they organize in order that this event realizes the objectives of the
Forum itself. What is necessary is to choose and operate, considering the
political reality of each time, the best alternatives of how to organize the
time and the space that will be available, to be used by those who should
and want to come to the "square" to discuss alternatives, present action
proposals, get together to realize them.

Naturally other levels of organization for valuations and propositions for
the Forum process, besides the Organization Committees of the events - like
amplified committees, councils, assemblies - can amplify the effect of the
process, if they can incorporate one even larger variety and representation
of movements engaged with the construction of the "other world". But, in an
option Forum-space, those types of organization - as it occurs with the
organization committees - can't intend to direct those movements and
organizations, but only endorse and support the creation of more and more
Forum-spaces.

Such perspective of work is more difficult to be adopted once it is not as
"heroic" as the exercise of political leadership, provided by the option
Forum-movement. Its adoption would perhaps lead to less interest in
participating of the events organization. It would become more important to
save forces and resources to amplify adhesions, links and articulations
during the event...

But if in the present moment it is useful and necessary to knock down the ba
rriers between different types and areas of engagement; to spread all over
the world and get amplified, stronger and more dense the articulations in
the struggle against the neo-liberalism; to create more and more movements,
nets and initiatives of struggle; to deepen more and more the debate of
proposals and ways to overcome the domination of the capital; if this is the
moment we are living, we can be sure that the service of multiplying
Forum-spaces is inestimable, irreplaceable and extremely meritorious, in our
common engagement.


(17/03/03)