This vision supposes a major challenge for the left and progressive forces in general, while the other tendencies of the political spectrum lean more and more to the right and the extreme right as one of the supreme projections of neoliberalism.
It is with this objective that the World Social Forum (WSF) was born in 2001, cataloged then as “the most forceful expression of resistance to neoliberal globalization that social and political leftist movements managed to capture in recent decades.”
So it was a complete success for progressive thought and action by consolidating itself as an articulating mechanism of strategies in the face of a political and economic model that only widens the gap between rich and poor, the global climate crisis and levels of extreme poverty, among other problems.
However, some founders of the WSF warn about the need to find new strategic directions due to the constant changes experienced by the world during the last 20 years.
By the way, some twenty prestigious intellectuals such as the Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Ezquivel, and the Brazilian analysts Emir Sader and Boaventura de Sousa, propose to reform the Forum to avoid what they call “a slow extinction”, refers an open letter published in the Argentine newspaper Page 12.
With this objective, they state two proposals that point to a necessary modification of the WSF Charter of Principles to adapt its purposes to the design of responses to concrete problems common to all geographical areas such as racism, the vindication of women’s rights, and the fight against climate change, among others.
For this, the signatories consider necessary for each call the election of a General Assembly with a representative Executive Committee that allows participation in the debates about the different problems, and turns the Forum into a political subject with its own voice.
Second, that the aforementioned committee be “an active, visible and purposeful part of global civil society.”
-How necessary are the reforms?
Brazilian historian Fátima Mello warned in 2017 about the need to reform the WSF in an article published in the Argentine magazine Nueva Sociedad.
Then he insisted on the radical changes experienced by the global and Latin American scenario during the last two decades as causes for the necessary evolution.
He recalled that in its first editions the WSF was erected as a convergence space “of the struggles against neoliberalism and imperialism”, but the 2008 crisis represented from now on a radicalization of “the brutality of capitalism”.
Mello pointed out in the opinion article Challenge of a Weakened Social Forum, that in this scenario, this mechanism was not “prepared to generate responses.”
At another point in the text, he optimistically clarified that “the insufficient response capacity of the WSF (…) does not mean that the resistance has ceased.”
Since the author, a former member of the WSF International Secretariat, published the aforementioned article, reality has been constantly changing, and analysts agree that the progressive forces are aware, once again, of the need to unite to successfully confront to common challenges.
Along these lines, the intellectuals who signed the open letter look forward to the next edition of the Forum, to be held in Mexico from May 1 to 6, with a program that combines face-to-face and virtual activities.
They already assure that it will be “a lively and positive experience for the participants”, but they warn about the risk of an almost zero impact, as, they consider, happened with the previous appointment.
For their part, the Mexican organizers insist that the WSF “will only fulfill its role with the necessary political relevance if we take into account the current reality and manage to strengthen our articulations to advance our dreams and utopias, and build common transformative agendas.”
mem/avs
* Journalist, head of the Central-South Editorial Office of Prensa Latina
