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Photo by CHARLES SIMMONS One hundred thousand World Social Forum delegates participated in conferences for world peace and justice in Porto Alegre, Brazil. |
For the third consecutive year, the tidy and colorful port city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, threw open its doors in late January not to government officials or CEOs in their dark suits and sleek limos, but to those in shirtsleeves and jeans who fight in the trenches for the justice and peace of the poor people, small farmers and laborers of the planet.
Some 100,000 grassroots social-justice activists, peace activists and educators from around the world convened in the town of 1.3 million in order to compare notes and strategize remedies for the billions of impoverished and exploited people they represented.
It couldn’t have been an easy task to manage some 1,700 workshops scattered across the city, but the mood was raucous and festive with musicians, dancers, street demonstrations and theater. However, it was also dead serious with discussions of homelessness, women’s rights, fair trade, corporate-controlled media, the needs of indigenous peoples, environmental justice, public health, racism and education. Throughout the conference, there were frequent demonstrations in support of the rights of landless peoples and homeless youth.
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Photo by CHARLES SIMMONS One hundred thousand World Social Forum delegates participated in conferences for world peace and justice in Porto Alegre, Brazil. |
Although the gathering was intergenerational, the powerful and energetic presence of a rainbow of youth was reminiscent of the 1960s and 1970s. In the youth camp, the city hosted some 30,000 young folk who slept in tents spread throughout an expansive park.
Among their symbols of hope were T-shirts of 1960s Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara who, even following his death, continues to symbolize the moral strength of people’s struggle throughout Latin America. Also in the background were magnificent posters of the African Quilombo leaders who resisted Portuguese slavery and colonialism for centuries – a constant reminder to those who listen that racism is still a major issue throughout the Americas.
One of the most popular cultural workers in attendance from the United States was TransAfrica Chair, actor Danny Glover, who, following in the Human Rights footsteps of elder artist Harry Belafonte and the late giant Paul Robeson, called for participants to support the Feb. 15 worldwide mobilization to stop the Bush war on Iraq. Glover also denounced the policies of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and their systems of unfair trade that systematically rob the countries of the South, forcing them into poverty and making them increasingly dependent on rich, industrialized nations.
Glover warned the international cultural workers – particularly those involved in the film industry – not to look to Hollywood for endorsement of their independent projects that seek to tell about the reality of the poor.
"I hope we don’t fall into the same pitfalls of worrying about being anointed by Hollywood," Glover said. "I hope we can find ways to engage ourselves on a much deeper level. We have to come together with new ideas that we’re willing to fight for and not capitulate on."
Although this series of conferences began three years ago with opposition to the new phase of international theft of which Glover spoke, Africans throughout the diaspora had engaged in international dialogue and conferences from the days of the abolitionists down to the Pan-African congresses of the last century in order to liberate the people of what is now called the South.
The African-Americans, trade unionists and other social justice activists in attendance at this Porto Alegre forum were modern political and spiritual descendents of such abolitionists and human rights fighters, including Frederick Douglas, Ida B. Wells and Fanny Lou Hammer.
And their message was similar to that of Ms. Hammer: I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!