Sydney Social Forum launched

BY NICK EVERETT

SYDNEY — On August 15, 80 people attended an information night at
the Tom Mann Theatre to learn more about the upcoming Sydney Social Forum,
which will be held on September 21-22 at the University of Technology,
Sydney. Two short documentary films about the 2002 World Social Forum held
in Porto Alegre, Brazil, were screened and several WSF participants addressed
the meeting.

It was announced at the meeting that a ministerial meeting of the World
Trade Organisation, part of the WTO negotiation round known as “the Doha
Development Agenda”, will be held in Sydney on November 13 and 14. The
next social forum organising meeting will discuss protesting at this meeting.

WSF participants described how inspiring they had found the forum. “A
highlight for me was the mass demonstrations. Thousands of people in the
streets chanted slogans I had never heard before, such as 'viva socialismo'”,
Sholto Macpherson told the launch.

Dick Nichols described how the first WSF in 2001 had “planted the flag
of defiance against the World Economic Forum and the rule of capital”.
The second WSF in 2002 had, he argued, started to “develop alternatives
to corporate globalisation”. The third, to be held in January 2003, would
focus on strategy: what type of body the WSF is.

The meeting also heard from Pat Ranald, convenor of the Australian Fair
Trade and Investment Network (AFTINET), and Don Sutherland, the national
education coordinator for the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, who
attended the forum as the representative of the Australian Council of Trade
Unions.

Sutherland described the forum as a “learning experience” for activists
worldwide and stressed the increased participation of unions in the second
WSF. However, most union federations still did not attend, he explained.
Instead they attended the World Economic Forum meeting in New York. “Really
there were two movements [at the WSF]”, he said. “There was the institutional,
formal, European trade union movement, and there was the Latin American
union movement, which was more like a social movement.”

Sutherland urged activists to learn more about the social forum movement
by studying the WSF's charter of principles and by travelling to a future
meeting of the WSF.

Organisers of the Sydney Social Forum were optimistic about bringing
the WSF spirit to Sydney. Plenary sessions are planned around the themes
of: environment, the “war on terror”, racism and nationalism, activism
in Sydney and alternatives to neo-liberal globalisation.

Workshops, film screenings and entertainment are also planned. The event
will also discuss the international social forum movement. Continental
(European and Asia-Pacific), city and thematic social forums are now beginning
to be organised.

To find out more about the Sydney Social Forum, visit <http://www.sydneysocialforum.org>
or phone Nick on (02) 9690 1977 or Luke on 0419 135 019.

From Green Left Weekly, August 21, 2002.

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From GLW issue 505