Africa World Social Forum: 'We Don't Want Everybody to Think the Same'
Isolda Agazzi

Dakar — It is only the second time that the World Social Forum (WSF)
takes place in Africa, the first one having been held in Nairobi, Kenya,
in 2007. Since the start of the WSF in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 10 years
ago, the organisers have been building African participation.

The number of people attending the WSF has steadily gone up: from 20,000
to 150,000. In Nairobi it dropped to 70,000, which made some observers

University of Puerto Rico Students Resume Strikes
Rossana Rodriguez

Students from six campuses in the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) system have held a series of 48-hour strikes in the last week to oppose the imposition of an $800 fee that is scheduled to take effect at the beginning of the January 2011 semester. Students at the Río Piedras campus were among of the first to go out after they held a December 1 mass assembly and voted by an overwhelming majority to strike if the administration does not rescind the new fee by December 14. The chancellor of the Río Piedras campus used every means possible to try to stop the students from gathering, including the canceling academic recess, freezing the bank account of the student council so that it couldn't pay for the sound system, and denying students the use of a space for their meeting. But UPR students are already used to doing things the hard way, so the night before, they raised funds by approaching cars stopped at traffic lights so they could rent a sound system for the outdoor meeting that lasted five hours under the harsh rays of a sunny day at the university's athletic track.