Last week Atlanta, Georgia hosted the first US Social Forum. Sokari Ekine provides some reflective thoughts on the gathering.

10,000 people came together last week in Atlanta to celebrate grassroots activism across the United States (US). This was the first social forum to be held in the US. That it was held in Atlanta Georgia, home of the Civil Rights Movement and Martin Luther King was not lost on many participants. On the downside, there was the overbearing presence of the Market Place; exclusion of some citizens; over-representation of the Latino community and under-representation of other immigrant communities. However as good opportunities to network and some valuable issues emerged, such and the need to be less self-congratulatory and more reflective.

The opening march was attended by about 10,000 people. It was an uplifting experience to be amongst so many mainly African American and Latino activists from across the US. The main focuses were Katrina/the Gulf Coast, immigration, sexuality and social justice. In contrast to the World Social Forum (WSF), the US forum was not hijacked by the large NGOs, though there were a fair number of smaller US based ones present. Still, the majority of participants appeared to be from truly grassroots community organisations.

Logistically the forum was spread out across various hotels as well as the main Civic Center. This made it difficult to move from one workshop to another, with only a 30 minute break allocated between each one. It also felt very strange to be discussing neoliberalism and anti-imperialism in downtown Atlanta hotels, such as the massive phallic design of the Westin, where the only food available was provided by Starbucks. Atlanta is a city dominated by Coca Cola, the headquarters of Coca Cola with its own museum round the corner from the downtown hotels. Similar to the WSF, the issue of exclusion, cost of hiring space for organisational tents (as high as US$1000), exorbitant cost of food and the excessive Forum Marketplace were all features of the USSF. To enter the Civic Center you had to pass through not one, but a group of ‘guards’ who demanded to see your pass, thus preventing local Atlanta citizens, including a large homeless population, many of whom where just round the corner, from participating. Rumour had it that there had been a discussion over searching people’s bags but fortunately this idea was abandoned.

The $15 minimum entry fee also added to the exclusion of the homeless. You had the ironic situation of activists supposedly working with the marginalised communities having to walk past the homeless everyday as if they were a group of invisible men and women. Close by there was a sign reading ‘Commercial solicitation prohibited. No direct verbal address allowed’, presumably aimed at preventing the homeless from engaging with the rest of the public.

Three notable sessions were the on Gulf Coast reconstruction in the post-Katrina era, ‘Race and Immigration – Immigration Rights’, and from the Africa Tent, ‘Zimbabwe: The Way Forward?’. The Gulf Coast panel brought the house down with reports and moving testimonies from all the activists working on the ground. The main issue was that of the ‘Right to Return’, the right to land and housing as per pre-Katrina, and the struggle against developers and forced removal of local people.

Like the Gulf Coast session, these sessions were well attended. However it was clear that the US immigration activists’ movement is very Latino-centric and even within the Latinos it is very ‘Mexican’ centric. This is something that seriously needs to be addressed, as large numbers of immigrants are being marginalised and made invisible within the movement. African Latinos from across South America, people from all parts of the Caribbean, African and Arab immigrants were very much under-represented. A number of participants felt they had no voice whatsoever. Despite their speaking out, one still left wondering whether or not there needs would be addressed.

The discussion on Zimbabwe was excellent, though very polarised between those who supported the Mugabe regime and those that felt Africans and African Americans needed to condemn Mugabe and other dictators across the continent and work towards democracy and human rights, with social movements and civil society groups taking a lead. There was an assumption amongst some people that because Mugabe was condemned by America and the West that Mugabe himself was the victim; rather than of the reality, which is that the ordinary people of Zimbabwe are the victims of Mugabe’s repression and face resultant daily economic misery.

I missed the People’s Movement Assembly but attended the closing ceremony which was basically a couple of hours of self-congratulatory speeches around the forum with very little reflection and self-critique. I spoke with many participants. There were complaints that too many of the workshops were like lectures with short question and answer sessions and not solution orientated and participatory enough. The real success of the forum was outside the workshops, and the networking that took place between groups and individuals. For many grassroots groups this was the first opportunity to meet with people from other parts of the US working on similar issues. If contact between the various movements can be maintained, then there is hope that the forum will be the beginnings of a strong grassroots opposition to mainstream America, neoliberalism, racial oppression and criminalisation of the poor and immigrant population.

Future social forums must seriously address the issue of exclusion whether through the cost of participation, or as in Nairobi and Atlanta, the physical prevention of sections of the local community being refused entry and by virtue of being economically challenged, prevented from eating, let alone having access to water. Water was being sold outside the Civic Center at the USSF for $1 for a small bottle of water – people would not have had to buy this if sufficient water barrels were available. Two friends of mine who had applied for ‘camping space’ from the list of accommodation provided by the USSF website. On arriving they were told by the ‘commune’ that they had to pay $10 each per night – an amount they could not afford. They were then in the position of having to look for alternative space to stay. Eventually they found a household that agreed for them to stay in their backyard but refused them the use of any of their facilities. Thus to use the toilet they had to sneak into the ‘commune’ and use the bathrooms in the Civic Center. This is not acceptable at a social forum whereby so called progressive peoples take advantage of their comrades by adopting the very same market principles that they claim to object to.

Despite all this, I did however feel privileged to have met many US grassroots activists working on a range of issues and from across the country. It is important to know that there are people living in the ‘belly of the beast’ that are fighting from within and are aware of the impact of that beast on the people of the global South.

* Sokari Ekine is online editor of Pambazuka News

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org