WSF 2005 Will Be an Alternative Global Village

Dear friends,

Following the meeting of Quito, the Commissions on Content and Methodology of the International Committee of the World Social Forum met again in Sao Paolo on August 23 and 24, in presence of other members of the International Committee.

This meeting had several objectives: to define the format of the forum, using the results of the consultation, in which more than 1800 organizations took part; to think about the functioning of the articulation groups (agglutinating groups) and on how to organise better the work between these groups; to launch the workshop on the memory and systematization of the forum itself.

The World Social Forum 2005 will be considered as a territory, inside of which will be experienced and debated practices and experiments aiming to make possible this other world. It will be divided in different spaces, around ten, that will constitute the districts of this territory, inside of which will be put together the organizations working on similar themes. Nevertheless every organization will be free to choose to which space(-s) it wishes to take part, and will have the possibility to articulate with organizations that opted for other spaces. It will thus be possible for the articulation groups to work in a cross-cutting way, and they will organize themselves in a spontaneous and voluntary way. Even though the spaces are not still officially defined, it should be more or less according to the following proposal (I let them in the original language while waiting for the definitive formulation and translation):

* reclaiming common assets of earth and peoples (in opposition to commercialization and monopolization)

* building people’s economies (in opposition to economy driven by profiteering)

* desmilitarisacion, paz, y lucha contra la guerra y el neoliberalismo armado

* pensiamento proprio, socializacion de los saberes y conocimientos contre homogeneizacion y mercantilisacion

* diversidad, pluralidad y identidades multiples contra toda forma de discriminacion

* luchas sociales, estado, y nuevas formas de democracia contra la globalisacion neoloberal

* etica, cosmovisiones diversas y espiritualidad

* derecho a la communicacion, vision social de la tecnologia

* cultura, arte, creacion

* derechos humanos y dignidad

* por una nueva arquitetura democratica internacional

These spaces respect naturally what came out from the consultation. There are nevertheless as much the reflection of the considerations of the members of the International Committee who were present at the meeting of Sao Paolo. We are currently thinking about the methods enabling to take full advantage of the answers to the consultation, so that each can have a comfortable and clear access to the answers of all the organizations.

The registration phase should begin in the days to come. Every registration of an activity will be modifiable until the end of October/beginning of November according to the progress of the work between the articulation groups.

The International Committee proposes however that some organizations facilitate the work of each of the spaces, not to impose articulations that will be transversal to the spaces but to help with the concrete coordination of each of them. The mobilization call to participate in the work of facilitation of these groups should be launched during the next days.

We also made progress concerning the memory and systematization of the Forum 2005. The idea is to work to two complementary projects: on the one hand, to document, in direct, through diverse forms (writings, audio, video, pictures) the forum, with the support of outside teams and in link with the independent and alternative medias present at the WSF, to allow the people who won’t be present in Porto Alegre to know what happened there; and, on the other hand, to build a more sustainable memory, on the basis of documents (texts, audio, pictures, videos) provided by the organizations present at the WSF, this memory aiming at making easier the future articulations and preparations of the meetings to come (social forums of all types or other meetings), besides it would aim to put in discussion the proposals resulting from the WSF 2005.

Nicolas