DAVOS 2002
Worlds Social Forum ends in celebration
> BY ROBERT E. SULLIVAN
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

Chanting "Here another world is possible if we want it," some 6,000 of the more than 60,000 people who came to Porto Alegre for the forum stretched a morning closing ceremony well into the afternoon before dispersing in tears, hugs, and promises to return here next year for the third WSF, before the venue changes in 2004.

A few speakers blamed globalization, capitalism and multinational corporations for the problems in the current world, but most of the remarks were upbeat, with promises to work toward the goal of the meeting, "another world."

"Last year the meeting was really anti-Davos," said organizing committee leader Candido Grzybowski of the conference which is deliberately aimed as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum meeting held in New York this year, "But this year it was more of an effort to define our agenda of work, of what we are going to do in the future to make it a better world." "We had totally open workshops and seminars, everything under the sun was discussed, debated, then planned and organized," he said. "Last year we had some big-name speakers. This year, the leadership came from the people, where it should come from."

Francisco Whitaker of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference said "this year's conference was a success because we deepened the reflection, we widened the subject matter covered, we enlarged the articulation of it and increased our efforts to build a new world."

The forum was much larger than last year, roughly tripling the figures in almost all categories. According to the final statistics, 15,230 delegates came from 131 countries, representing 4,909 organizations. They attended more than two dozen plenary meetings, 100 seminars and 700 workshops, only very few of which were covered by the roughly 3,000 journalists coming from 48 countries.

The organizers said that some 50,000 to 60,000 persons came without delegates' credentials, just to attend the sessions. Among the delegates were 2,300 campesinos or peasant farmers, and 2,670 trade unionists.

Sergio Haddad of the Association of Brazilian Nongovernmental Organizations said the forum's website www.forumsocialmundial.org.br, got in excess of half a million hits per day for every day of the conference.

Haddad said the spirit of the meeting would go on and added that the organizing committee had decided to encourage demonstrators to go to protest future meetings of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and other traditional targets of the anti globalization people who clashed with police in similar meetings in Seattle and Genoa.

He said that although the G8 meeting of the eight most powerful countries in the world will be "hidden" in the mountains of Kananaskis, Canada this coming June, "we will be there."

The closing ceremony was youth-oriented with two groups of young rappers pounding out originals poems about the coming new world and the problems of the old one, and three youths reading a message from Nobel Literature Prize winner Jose Saramago who blamed globalization for violations of human rights around the world, and for the daily deaths of thousands from diseases "that are curable for some, but not for others."

An Indian from Colombia, who said multinational corporations were grabbing native lands, called for silence and played a haunting call on a conch shell which he said was traditional in his tribe for closing meetings. And then all hell broke loose.

Lisa de Jamarana, an elderly samba singer, started belting out some of Brazil's more popular sambas and everyone danced, with Rio Grande do Sul Governor Olivo Dutra among the first on his feet, followed by Porto Alegre Mayor Tarso Genro.

For some 30 minutes the dignitaries danced and waved on stage, while the spectators in the 6,000-seat conference hall formed conga lines of hugging conference goers.

Brazilian, Argentine, Palestinian and Israeli flags waved behind the dancers on the stage, the Palestinian and Israeli flags with their staffs tied together.

Dutra, a Workers' Party governor, danced with Hebe Pastori Bonafini, head of the "mothers of the disappeared" of Buenos Aires whose children were killed during Argentina's dirty war, and hugged everyone who came by, as the crowd mixed peace chants with samba and shouts of ""Dutra."

Delegates in native costume and large numbers of scantily clad Brazilians danced in the aisles, and when the music stopped, they started hugging each other and swapping business cards, e-mail addresses and promises to keep in touch in solidarity with the movement to stop the negative aspects of globalization.

Earlier, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan sent a message to the forum, saying "I know that you have come together to voice deep concerns and convictions about the direction in which globalization is taking our world, and about what we should do to remedy it. Some of these I share, some of them I do not. But whatever the case, I respect and share wholeheartedly your commitment to improving the lives of individual men and women on this planet."

Annan said that he spoke to the World Economic Forum in New York to share "some of the concerns that you and I do have in common," about world hunger and other issues affecting the world's poor.

He said he would tell the World Economic Forum, " These issues can no longer be settled in private conclave among the rich and powerful." Elsewhere at the WSF:

• Whitaker of the Brazilian Bishop's Conference officially launched a new campaign against state-sponsored terrorism, called "Impunity never more;"
• At least 20,000 WSF delegates and friends marched through downtown Porto Alegre Monday night protesting against the proposed formation of a free-trade area for all of the Americas;
• Police reduced the armed guard around the local McDonalds after famous French McDonalds trasher José Bové, arrested in 1998 for damaging a branch in France, left the conference two days early;
• A group of young delegates, noticing that one of the rooms in the Pontifical Catholic University was marked VIP Room and was, indeed, at times used for special guests, invaded it, trashed it, and chanted "everyone is equal." There were no injuries;
• French Sports Minister France Marie-George Buffet got a pie thrown into her face by a very polite protester, who whispered, "it's not you, it's the system."