Euphoria at the enormous quantative participation in the Social Forum has obscured the question of its quality. The Euraction hub, a self-organised creation of a dozen Italian and European groups, was conceived as a space both outside, and interlocutor to, the 'main event', where horizontal and ludic actions could find expression. As it turned out, the gigantic scale of the forum eclipsed our actions to a great extent. Nonetheless the Hub was characterised by the formation of new collaborations and a significant extension of contacts, though it remains to be seen how efficient such a form of international organisation will prove itself to be.

Some dues should first of all be paid: to the Italian friends from Milan, Roma and Bologna who did the lion's share of the work. Acknowledging their efforts is also an indictment of the manner in which the space was not in fact really self-managed. Most participants arrived on the wednesday, the eve of the commencement of the ESF, and thus were not in a position to share the basic logisitical tasks implicit in the action.These practical difficulties were exacerbated by the uncoopertaive attitude of the ESF whereby the keys to the space were received only two days beforehand, and simple necessities such as tables were not provided. Had we known this in advance steps could have been taken to look after our own needs directly, rather than depending upon the buraucracies and their mediators to provide for us.

Most of the workshops suffered from similar lack of organisation, exceptions to this were the Expertbase Project (who installed a satellite network link and distributed copies of their Make World tabloid), Yo Mango (who enchanted us all with their incitement to mass-partcipatory shoplifting and their crafty propaganda), and Candida TV (who established a pirate channel broadcasting in the vicinity for the 48 hours in which the Hub workshops were to take take place). What distinguished each of these projects was preparation, and the fact they had something practical to implement which directly involved others or responded to the needs of the event through practices of self-sufficiency (such as the satellite, the Yo Mango'd meals).

Furthermore, during the demonstration there was nothing to differentiate us at the level of practice from the main body of the forum. Following the party on the friday night people were basically disinterested in strategising for the demo. Otherwise direct action was absent without leave, the sole exception being the invasion of the Forum Area proper by a 150 or so Hubbies on the friday - under the banner: Stop the World! Another War is Possible! - to raise the profile of the Hubspace and speak with people to convince them to come down and participate. The results were immediate and that night thousands converged on the hub for dinner, dancing and polymorphous pleasure in general.

20,000 participants had been anticipated by the ESF, but by Saturday morning the number had exceeded 57,000. The atmosphere at the Fortezza was unpleasant, with a character somewhere between a time machine and a trade fair. Every vintage of dislocated leftist was to be found, obsolete ideologies from the '30s, '60s and '70s littered the floor. Newspaper sellers abounded. The sessions themselves were unfathomably large, some attended by up to 4,000 people, and this format epitomised the representative nature of the ESF - the logic of the audience, the herd, and the orgainising hand to prod you in the right direction.

Although the Hub was physically nearby, the sheer volume of events and people at the the Fortezza generated a space of infoprmation overload - with a high ration of noise to signal - and little prospect that people would leave the establisehd enclosures to find other fare elsewhere. In this sense, we clearly underestimated the scale and composition of the Forum and were isolated from the main dynamic. Thousands of young and not so young people, many of them with no previous contestational practice, were present. Our concerns at the ideological nature of the Forum's organisers impeded us from focussing on the crucial work of communicative retransmission to those with no investment in the NGOs or old left. After returning to Rome we met some Argentinian friends and went to eat in the Social Space 32 in Via dei Volsci, there I met two young women with exactly this background and attitude: they went to Florence seeking contact with groups practicing direct action and self-organisation and had no idea that the hub even existed.

On a practical level, holding the party earlier in the week would have brought more partcipamts to the workshops which were otherwise sparsely attended. A comfy space where people could have hung out and socialised in less than ascetic conditions would also have been welcome. Many hub participants knew one another and this can nurture a form of intimacy intimidating to those with no previous experince of such a place. This discussion is obviously proceeding elsewehre related to the professionalisation of 'activism' and the crypto-hierarchies which are partially its product, but on an everyday level, in our spaces, we must be alert to the tendency towards closure towards the exterior which may sometimes appear like the natural expressio of social networks, or more worryingly, counter-cultural posturing. The latter was scarcely in evidence during the Hub, but the former was tangible.

Sunday's plenary was the moment for a candid recognition of this failure. Several speakers also articulated concern at the process of recuperation of creative social tensions by mainstream political forces who seek to colapse this desire and anger under their representative umbrella. Others underlined the need to understand that during the last twelve months the initiative behind the international dynamic has shifted from the grassroots formations to the forces around the Social Forum. In the shadow of the demonisation set in train in Genoa last year, there has been a general retreat from direct action and a corresponding return to the sterility of mass mobilisations which in concrete terms achieve little apart from temporarily allaying sentiments of isolation and impotence.

Another suggestion made during the discussion was that participation in high-profile international events such as Porto Allegre could be built on a local level. Thus the streaming of some of the sessions to local community or social spaces could allow particpation by those without the funds to fly, and generate discssion within a more territorial dynamic as opposed to the ephemeral cosmopolitan and polyglot encounters that these international events have become.

Whether the ESF constitutes 'a central constitutive force inside the movement of movements' now is a debatable claim, and one whose validity varies over the different regional zones. In France, Italy, Spain and perhaps Greece, the emerging hegemony of this alliance has advanced through a largescale integration social and environmental associations. Elsewhere, the Social Forums are almost non-existent (eg Germany) or transparently the vehicles for trotskyist manipulation (as is the case in Ireland and the UK). In the latter cases these groups are largely uninvolved in the significant social conflicts (such as those against the Nice Treaty in Ireland, or local action against the privatisation of social servioces), simply coattrailing the movement against capitalist globalisation or attempting to build united front style coalitions against the war in Iraq.

Even here in Italy, it remains unclear whether the Social Forums have the capacity to maintain any sort of dynamic, and highly doubtful that they can achieve material gains. Last month's mobilisation of nearly a million people in Rome by the Girotondini, and the mass demonstration of two and a half million in March organised by the Trade Unions. In short, the period since Genoa has been characterised by a diffuse mobilisation which has taken place under the auspices of different organisations. None of them, so far, have absorbed this numerical strength into local structures of any significance, so that the singularity of each of the subjects as yet appears to escape any straightforward process of institutionalisation.

The fact remains that the space for manouvere has narrowed significantlyin the last year, as groups obsessed with respectability have assumed a more dominant role in the organisation of these moments of visibility. A means must be found to remove the muzzle over direct action put in place by these forces. To materialise the differences in terms of action demands that we place more weight on synchronising exchanges of skills, knowledge and tools, this is an important aspect of our horizontality which could be expanded as a social process. The Days of Free Culture and Knowledge and the Subjugation of Scince to Human Pleasure and Health could be a moment in which this could be put into practice on an international level.

http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2002/11/107854.php

A similar fate awaited the Disobeddienti, installed in their own space at the Ippodromo under a program entitled 'No Work No Shop'. Personal accounts indictae that almost nothing happened there, although they did make a direct action against Caterpillar on the friday.

Myriad future collaborations were proposed during the ESF: networks against the war, a general European mobilisation on february 15, a Mediterranean Social forum in Barcelona and then another ESF, this time in Paris, grassroots unions invited the CGIL to build another general strike against the war, and also to co-organise a day of struggle against labour precarity.