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« Open verdict | Main | Last out of the box: hope » A luta continuaAn open debate on the future of the forum assembled this afternoon to find that a "Group of 19" had jumped the gun and sketched a Porto Alegre Consensus. Participants in the debate, titled "Power relations at the WSF", were mostly unimpressed. For example, Ezequiel Adamovsky, who had spent the whole forum organising and participating in the caracol intergalactica (one of the liveliest and most networked spots at the forum), told me that he and his comrades were taken by surprise. Many felt, as he put it in when the debate started, that this was just another illustration of the capacity of NGOs with resources and money to seize the agenda away from grassroots activists (sorry if I'm mistranslating your Spanish, Ezequiel). The lines were drawn: on the one side, many agreed with Michael Hardt, co-author Multitude (is biopolitics Empire's new clothes?), who warned against false notions of representation. On the other Immanuel Wallerstein, one of the Consensus signatories, asked if you really want to change the world what do you propose instead of the action plan outlined in the Consensus? Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Hugo Chávez is down at the Gigantinho (still speaking after more than an hour and a half as I write) bringing revolutionary bling if not bang to the end of the forum. Every few minutes, his voice rises to a ringing, rolling denunciation of imperlialismo. At one point, he sings a gentle song in praise of Che Guevara. The crowd loves every moment. As an icon, Ernesto Guevara is hands-down favourite at the forum. Che on T shirts. Che on handbags. Che on marijuana pouches. Che superimposed on the South American continent. His likeness outnumbers Bob Marley, Lenin, Trotsky or the Beatles by about fifty or even a hundred to one. Pictures Lula and Jesus are notable largely by their absence, although they are more common than Osama bin Laden, Ho Chi Minh and Joseph Stalin. January 30, 2005 in World Social Forum | Permalink TrackBackTrackBack URL for this entry: Listed below are links to weblogs that reference A luta continua: It would be useful to post the actual manifesto, so we can read it for ourselves Posted by: Neil Coleman | 17 Feb 2005 08:42:20 The comments to this entry are closed. |
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