We Fight the Forum

Wladek Flakin

from Left Hook

Angela Merkel meets Angelina Jolie. Bill Gates meets Brad Pitt. States and corporations meet NGOs and media. That is the World Economic Forum (WEF), which has met every year in the Swiss ski resort Davos since 1971. From January 26 to 29, this year's WEF dealt with "projects in hunger, anti-corruption, financing for development and public-private partnerships" [i.e. the privatisation of public services].

2,300 participants, including executives from top companies, lots of ministers and a few heads of government like German Chancellor Merkel, chairpersons of charity organizations, religious advisors and a few celebrities, discussed "The Creative Imperative" (this year's motto) in "Improving the State of the World" (permanent motto). Representatives of Western aid organizations -- like Tombraider/UN goodwill embassador for refugees Angelina Jolie -- were there to speak in the name of billions of people suffering from hunger, who of course were not invited to speak themselves.

Like at the last G8 summit in July 2005, the policy makers in the political and economic sphere were very concerned about "the world's problems". The president of the European Central Bank admitted that the "developing countries finance the industrial nations", and he called this situation "intolerable in the long term." Even the richest man in the world, Bill Gates, professed alarm at the spread of tuberculosis and the inaccessibility of universities to three fourths of the US population. But they were unable to connect these problems to the concentration of wealth in the hands of ever fewer corporations, the massive debts of third world countries and so-called "preventative war" -- policies the WEF has advocated in the past and continues to advocate.

Altitude Sickness / Notes on a Trip to Bolivia*

Colectivo Situaciones

from Chtoldelat

1. In its heterogeneity and permanent movement, Bolivia is at the same time the experience and the fracture of magma. It is there where faces, bodies, and languages tell stories that challenge those seeking to understand, accompany, and enjoy. Our trip, in February 2005, was a struggle between this attempt to understand and the difficulties of adaptation (of which altitude was not the least of obstacles). It is also a wager on the distinctive outlook opened by what took place in recent years in Argentina. And this dialogue between processes of de-institution-construction is vital for both.

2. To arrive in Bolivia is to be surprised at an atmosphere that concentrates an extreme tension between different elements, a polymorphous dynamic that today characterizes, in different ways, the syntaxis of the movements and struggles of a good portion of Latin America. To connect with Bolivia is part of a necessary and renovated literacy.
It looks as though any image let itself be seen and read. Today the space referred to as “Latin American” appears to the public through the emergence of so-called “leftist” national governments. The literacy we propose is one that allows us to have new keys to read this process. These governments—each in its own way—function as an extension, interpellation, substitution, subordination, displacement and/or reorganization of the movements and experiments that strive, in entire regions of the continent—precisely the hotter and more creative ones—to unfold a politics from below. This democratic impulse does not thrive without moments of insurrection, which spatialize and open new terrains, but, evidently, nor does it emphasize the constructive and innovative dimension of the processes that have been opened.

3. As with the “piqueteros” in Argentina, in Bolivia the struggles summon new expressions. The media invent new ways of naming each irruption. Thus, the aggressiveness displayed by the struggles is immediately called “war for” (water, coca, gas). These “wars,” however, are not moments of organization within a designed and consistent strategy over the control of the apparatus of the state, as it could have been conceived only two decades ago, althought it is evident that the consequences of these conflicts have a bearing on a constant politicization and a neutralization and erosion of central power’s ability to command. The so-called violence in the struggles in Bolivia is not decided and deployed by traditional revolutionary organizations, but by communitarian impulses more or less configured as such. This is why the coexistence of an electoral strategy of indigenous and popular groups along with harder or hidden resistances is not only highly conflictive but also persistent and even partially articulable at some moments.

ANOTHER / AUTONOMOUS (ESF) PLAYGROUND

Invitation for the creation of an autonomous space during the 4th European Social Forum (Spring, 2006, Athens)
This spring, the 4th European Social Forum will take place in Athens. Thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of people from all around Europe, from an entire galaxy of social and political movements, organizations and collectives, will meet in our city to get to know each other, to exchange views and practices, to strengthen and extend the networks of resistance and creation, or even build new ones.

These meetings were born by the explosion of the so-called “anti-globalization movement”: that is the source of their massive, rich and diverse character. Our collective has been a “child” of this movement and we participated with great interest in the three previous meetings: in Florence, Paris and in London, but also during other European activists gatherings (like the People's Global Action in Belgrade - summer of 2004). We discovered that – despite the distance – there are many things that unite us with collectives and people from other countries. We got ideas and inspiration, new viewpoints and practices, and we also tried to spread our own experience. We made fruitful contacts, that may become more fruitful in the future. We went down to the streets, we acted, played and enjoyed ourselves like a multitude without borders.

We think that the next meeting in Athens can be a very good opportunity to broaden and enrich these relations. Since the event will take place in our city, we have to (and we'll be glad to) take on practical responsibilities around it, in return to the hospitality and hard work of previous meetings. And we want to do this with other collectives and people from all over Greece who want to participate in a productive and cheerful gathering, osmosis, networking procedure... in a big activist playground!