PORTO ALEGRE SOCIAL SUMMIT SETS STAGE FOR
COUNTEROFFENSIVE AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
By Walden Bello*

Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city. Located in one of Brazil's
more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and populated by people
mainly of European stock, this city of 1.2 million people is First World
when it comes to infrastructure and social services. In fact, it ranks near
the very top in terms of the country's "quality of life" index.

"ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE"
Yet Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum (WSF) last year and
again this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning
movement against corporate-driven globalization. Galvanized by the
slogan "Another world is possible," some 70,000 people are expected
to flock to this coastal city from January 30 to February 4. This figure is
nearly six times that for last year.

Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists from
Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be among those
making their way to Porto Alegre. But there will also be a sizable
contingent of people from the Northern countries. And the place will be
graced by personalities who have come to exemplify the diversity of the
movement against corporate-driven globalization-among others,
activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist-feminist Vandana
Shiva, Canadian people's advocate Maude Barlow, and Egyptian
intellectual Samir Amin.

COUNTERPOINT TO DAVOS
The World Social Forum emerged as a counterpoint to the World
Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global corporate crowd in
Davos, Switzerland. Proposed by a coalition of Brazilian civil society
organizations and the Workers Party that controls both Porto Alegre and
the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the idea triggered strong international
support from organization such as the French monthly Le Monde
Diplomatique and Attac, an influential Europe-wide organization
supporting a tax on global financial transactions, and received financial
support from progressive donors like Novib, the Netherlands
Organization for International Development Cooperation.

Driven by this energy, the first WSF was put together in a record time of
eight months.

A televised trans-Atlantic debate between representatives of the WSF
and some luminaries attending the WEF was billed by the Financial
Times as a collision between two planets, that of the global superrich
and that of the vast marginalized masses. The most memorable
moment of that confrontation came when Hebe de Bonafini, a
representative of the Argentine human rights organization Madres de la
Plaza de Mayo, shouted at financier George Soros across the Atlantic
divide: "Mr. Soros, you are a hypocrite. How many children's deaths
are you responsible for."

Since its first meeting the stock of the WSF has risen while that of the
WEF has fallen. "Already put on the defensive as a gathering to
'discuss how to maintain hegemony over the rest of us," as one of the
debaters on the WSF side put it, the WEF received a further blow when it
was forced to hold its 2002 meeting away from Davos since the Swiss
government could no longer guarantee the security of its corporate
participants. Providing protection for WEF 2001 had necessitated the
country's largest security operation since the Second World War, and
this provoked cries of protest from within Switzerland.

Thus, the WEF has moved to New York for 2002, and it is not clear when
and if it will return to Davos. But as observers point out, "a great part of
the attraction of the WEF is the 'ambience' of Davos as a retreat high up
in the Swiss Alps. Without this, it is headed for oblivion."

The centerpiece of this year's gathering in Porto Alegre are 26 plenary
sessions over four days structured around four theme: "the production
of wealth and social reproduction," "access to wealth and sustainable
development," "civil society and the public arena," and "political power
and ethics in the new society." Around this core will unfold scores of
seminars, a people's tribunal on debt sponsored by Jubilee South, and
about 5,000 workshops. Marches and demonstrations of workers and
peasants are also expected, led by the Brazilian mass organizations
CUT (Central Union of Workers) and MST (the Movement of the
Landless) that are among the key organizers of the WSF.

TUMULTUOUS YEAR
The anti-establishment forces gather in Porto Alegre after a tumultuous
year. Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalization movement came
during Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the third week of July, when
some 300,000 people marched in the face of police tear-gas attacks.
Shortly after the Genoa clashes, in which one protester was killed by
police, there was speculation in the world press that elite gatherings in
non-authoritarian countries might no longer be possible in the future.
And indeed, Canada's offer to hold the next G-8 meeting in a resort high
up in the Canadian Rockies in the province of Alberta seemed to
confirm the fact that the global elite was on the run from the democracy
of the streets.

Then came September 11, which stopped a surging movement dead in
its tracks. The next big confrontation between the establishment and its
opponents was supposed to take place in late September in
Washington, DC, during the annual fall meetings of the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund. Unnerved by the prospect of a week
of massive protest that was expected to draw some 50,000 people, the
Bretton Woods twins took advantage of the September 11 shock to
cancel their meeting. Without a target and sensitive to the sea change
in the national mood in the US, organizers cancelled the protest and
held a march for peace instead.

The establishment followed up on the unexpected opportunity to
reverse the crisis of legitimacy that had been wracking it prior to
September 11 by pressing the developing countries to approve a
declaration launching a limited set of trade negotiations during the
Fourth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha,
Qatar, in mid-November. Third World governments were told that
unless they agreed to talks leading to greater liberalization, they would
have to take responsibility for worsening a global recession that had
been accelerated by the World Trade Center attack.

Taking no chances, the WTO secretariat and the Qatar monarchy had
worked to limit the number of legitimate NGO's attending the meeting to
about sixty. This ensured that the massive demonstrations on the street
that characterized Seattle, which had served as a context for the famous
developing country revolt at the Sheraton Convention Center, were not
present in Doha, and under these circumstances, developing country
opposition collapsed.

REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
Had the WSF meeting been held in late November of December, the
mood of people coming would have been different. The Bush
administration would have been riding high after its devastating triumph
in Afghanistan. However, in the last few weeks, history, cunning as
usual, has dealt Washington two massive body blows: the Enron
debacle and Argentina's economic collapse.

Enron has become the sordid symbol of the volatile mixture of
deregulation and corruption that drove the US' "New Economy" in the
1990's and helped lead it to what is possibly the worst global recession
since the 1930's.

Burdened with an unpayable $140 foreign debt, its industry in chaos,
and 2,000 of its citizens falling under the poverty line daily, Argentina
serves as a cautionary tale of the disaster that awaits those countries
that take seriously the neoliberal advice to liberalize and globalize their
economies.

As the WSF opens, these twin disasters have brought back with a
vengeance the crisis of legitimacy that the global elite and its project of
corporate-driven globalization were experiencing prior to September
11. Porto Alegre provides the perfect site and the perfect moment for
the counter-offensive on the part of the movements that believe that
"another world is possible."

* Dr. Walden Bello is the executive director of the Bangkok-based
policy and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor
of sociology and public administration at the University of the
Philippines.