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Click here for our regular US Social Forum Newsletter!

World Social Forum 2013: Tunis

The World Social Forum will Meet in the city that began the Arab Revolutions March 26-30. More than 30 thousand people representing over 4500 organizations from 127 countries spanning the five continents have registered to attend.


News Coverage of the WSF

Declaration of the Social Movement Assembly. Click here for (Spanish version)

Click here for the Schedule of Events being organized by networks linked to the US Social Forum delegation.


Recommended Readings: Here's what delegates to the World Social Forum have been reading in preparation for their trip. Those who wish to get up to speed on the exciting work being done to make another world a reality will enjoy these.


WATCH LIVE from Tunis via Skype:


Grassroots Global Justice Alliance delegates will be documenting our experiences at the World Social Forum through this blog, please follow along! [1]


US Activists continue discussions from the WSF Free Palestine at World Social Forum in Tunis

Winter 2012-2013

Canadian Peoples Social Forum Gains Momentum More than 150 organizers turned out for a planning meeting for the 2014 social forum when just 50 were expected. A quarter of the delegates were First Nations leaders, and the Canadian Forum “gives equal importance to the role of Canadian, Quebecois and Indigenous Nations.” Expansion committees organizing in different cities and regions are helping build the Canadian Social Forum.

The WSF-Free Palestine

Activists Show International Solidarity With Palestinians at World Forum
Report from Quebec Delegation to WSF Free Palestine in Alternatives Journal
World Social Forum Free Palestine Report Back-International Jewish Antizionist Network
The World Social Forum-Free Palestine: An Alternative to State-Centered Narratives
US-Canada Joint Delegation video from WSF-Free Palestine
The World Social Forum-Free Palestine: An Alternative to State-Centered Narratives
Radio interview-Sahar Francis, chair of Addameer, a Palestinian organization recently raided by the Israeli army
International Women's Peace Service at WSF-Free Palestine
"Brazilian Youth Advocate for Peace in Palestine"
"After Free Palestine Forum Brazil Prepares Mission to Help Palestinians Harvest Olives"
"Report from Porto Alegre: Association des Universitaires pour le Respect du Droit International Palestine"
"Letter from Brazil: 'The cause of humanity today is Palestine'"

Fall 2012

WSF 2013-Tunis

Tunisia Gears Up to Host World Social Forum

Spring 2012

Links between Occupy Wall Street and the U.S. and World Social Forum Process-- A Summary of Left Forum 2012 Workshops

Executive Summary

Several workshops at the 2012 Left Forum addressed the connections between the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and the World Social Forum process. Participants noted the importance of the energy, direct action-orientation, and wide popular appeal that has marked the OWS movement in its first few months. The emergence of new fronts of struggle around the world raises new challenges for the World Social Forums. As Michael Leon Guerrero points out, we need to consider what the appropriate vehicle is for advancing our movements in this current moment. The key challenge for organizers seems to be helping people see the connections between global structures and processes and local experiences. But perhaps more difficult is the task of finding ways to encourage meaningful grassroots organizing and activism that can target these global forces. While the large-scale convergences advanced in the WSF may have helped nurture global identities and political imaginations in the past, in the U.S. and elsewhere they’ve not been able to respond quickly to openings created by grassroots mobilizations like those in Madison in the fall of 2010, the Arab Spring last winter, and now in OWS. Moreover, there seems to be rather limited progress made in developing cross-sectoral connections through the USSF process thus far.

Read More... (.pdf)

March 2011

The program includes analyses and resports on key issues such as the impacts of the revolutions in North Africa, the formation of a worldwide movement for climate justice and against land grabbing. It also looks back to the origins of the Forum, to its current challenges and future perspectives.
Guests include: Samir Amin (Third World Forum, Dakar), Nnimmo Bassey (Chair of Friends of the Earth International, Nigeria, and winner of the "Right Livelihood Award"), Nicola Bullard (Focus on the Global South, Bangkok), Susan George (Transnational Institute/Attac France), Wangui Mbatia (People's Parliament, Nairobi), Pat Mooney (ETC Group, Canada, winner of the "Right Livelihood Awards"), Jai Sen (CACIM, New Delhi), Immanuel Wallerstein (Yale University, USA), Chico Whitacker (one of the founders of the WSF, Sao Paulo, and winner of the "Right Livelihood Award"), and many others.

February 2011

The World Social Forum meets in Dakar, Senegal 6-11 February

The 2011 Dakar World Social Forum will gather participants and organizations from 123 countries and also from Palestine and Kurdistan. WSF organizers estimate that 70 thousand people have participated in this year's Forum.


Reports from the World Social Forum in Dakar

  • Climate Justice Action at WSF Movements and organizations working for climate justice prepare for the 17th Convention of the Parties of the Climate Convention in Durban later this year. Their challenge? To DEMOCRATIZE CLIMATE NEGOTIATIONS!


Analayses

  • "Many Protests One Revolution" Jackie Smith sees protests in Egypt and the World Social Forum as part of a single movement with some shared characteristics of leadership, networking strategies, commitments to nonviolence, and desire to change the underlying structures of the world economic system.


USSF Delegations to the World Social Forum

Detroit to Dakar Blog
Detroit to Dakar Delegation
Grassroots Global Justice Alliance blog
Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Coalition (EMEAC)
Poverty Working Group & Twitter feed
Meet the Tech Activists from May First/People Link The folks who made the USSF web site and communications technology run so smoothly in Detroit this past summer have been working tirelessly to bring some of what they've learned to technology/communications activists in Africa.


Report-back Events

March 1-- Detroit's delegation to Dakar reports on what they saw, did, learned.... Details TBA
  • Media updates/links
World Social Forum Virtual Media Center The World Social Forum in Dakar
* WSF TV: Online video of WSF workshops, interviews with participants, and more!


OTHER LINKS The World Assembly of Migrants met in advance of the WSF to create a World Charter of Migrants. Find out about people's struggles to improve the lives of migrants around the world.


* LIVE Web Streaming & Online Discussion

Tuesday, February 8' 7:00 PM Eastern US time-- Report from U.S. Detroit-to Dakar Delegation
Thursday, February 10, 7:00 PM Eastern US time IndyMedia Center-Convergence House Discussion
IndyMedia Center activists (from IMC Africa) have been working with MayFirst/People Link and IndyMedia activists from other parts of the world to organize and maintain a Convergence Center -- a house in Dakar where over 50 media makers and activists from more than a dozen countries of Africa are living, meeting, working and training together. Media activists who have helped report on the WSF will report to the rest of the world on their experiences, impressions of the Forum and the potential and challenges of media and information transmission they have encountered there.

November 2010

September 2010

July

June

May

April

March

February

January

December 2009

2007


Broadcasts

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Announcements & Dispatches

Please post links to announcements leading up to USSF 2010: - newest at the top. Placement order: date, publication. URL, explanation/title of piece.

June

May

April

March

February


Videos/TV

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Please post links to video leading up to USSF 2010: - newest at the top. Placement order: date, URL, name/explanation/title of piece.

July

Very true! Makes a change to see seomone spell it out like that. :)

May

April

March

*reposted at API network'
*reposted at DailyMotion.com

February


Radio/Audio

edit here Please post links to radio/audio leading up to USSF 2010: - newest at the top. Placement order: date, URL, name/explanation/title of piece.

July

June

May

April

March

February

Activity

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Follow the Action
Many Roads Lead to Detroit:

The US Social Forum Writers Network's special correspondents will help keep our writers and the general public informed about all the exciting ways people are preparing the "road to Detroit." This space will provide updates from people around the country who are biking, walking, marching, and caravaning to Detroit as well as those who are paving the way to Detroit through outreach to the diverse groups of people who need to be part of the conversation about the new country and world we are working to build. To become a correspondent, email us at writers@ussf2010: .org .


ARCHIVE: June 13, 2007 See Yes! Magazine's Sarah van Gelder's blog from the 2007 People's Freedom Caravan to Atlanta


  • The Red Road to Detroit: Native People Bring their Voices to the USSF

scroll down to the end



  • On the ground in Detroit

Testimonials

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Here are stories from the people responsible for helping make the USSF in Detroit possible. Their stories can help people better understand and appreciate the process, and we hope they'll inspire more folks to join us in Detroit this June!

We invite you to share your testimonials about your USSF Atlanta 2007 experience. Help us tell others what the Social Forum is about as we kick-off for USSF Detroit 2010! Need wiki help?

Some ideas about your experience may include:

  • How did you get there?
  • What social movement organization or activists did you travel with?
  • What were you most interested in learning about or doing at USSF Atlanta?
  • What what your favorite session or panel?
  • What was it like to participate in the Opening March?
  • What information did you share with others when you returned home?
  • How did USSF Atlanta change the organizing work you do in your grassroots group or organization?


  • The Children's Social Forum was my main reason for going (and bringing my 6-year-old daughter) to the 2007 US Social Forum.

Last summer, we had done a tour of northeast anarchist and radical bookfairs. I had co-presented a workshop called “Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind” about the need for the anarchist community to support the parents and children in its midst. The workshops were generally well-received by a predominantly childless audience, some of whom already helped the parents and children in their groups, some of whom had never thought about the issue. Siu Loong had participated in the various childcare and kids’ programs at each bookfair and had always had a good time, although I noticed that, for the most part, the kids’ activities had little to do with the issues at the adult workshops.

For me, the Children’s Social Forum was an opportunity to see how the broader social justice movement was incorporating the next generation. This wasn’t just childcare—a room set off to the side where well-intentioned volunteers and kids were isolated from the goings-on of the larger group. No, this promised to be a forum for kids to explore the issues that we grown-ups were talking about.

I wrote a piece about our experience at the Children's Social Forum here: http://www.leftturn.org/?q=node/971

and am hoping that next year's USSF in Detroit will also have children's programming and inclusion.

Victoria Law, NYC


“Mi nombre es Flor Crisóstomo, Soy indígena Zapoteca de Oaxaca. Mi situación es la movilidad constante dentro de US debido a la persecución por parte leyes migratorias rotas. Es importante que organizadores de las diversas comunidades hagan acto de presencia en el foro que se llevara a cabo en Detroit para poder conocernos y trabajemos en buscar soluciones para hacer un mundo justo que sabemos es posible.”

“My name is Flor Crisóstomo. I’m Zapoteca from Oaxaca, Mexico. My situation is one of millions where I must constantly be moving within the US because of government persecution under broken immigration laws. It’s important to me that all organizers come together in Detroit so that we may know each other and find collective solutions toward the just world we know is possible.”

Reflections

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USSF in Atlanta in 2007


Vermont Workers Center made a video about the 2007 USSF, highlighting some of their members' experiences there: http://blip.tv/file/590773/


I wrote an extensive blog reflection on my experience here: http://mindpowercollective.wordpress.com/ideas-and-thoughts/


My main memory is being hit by a pie in the face because I wasn't "radical enough." It was not a nice experience. Medea Benjamin


What a Summer~USSF 2007

I was fortunate enough to have friends living in Georgia and arrive with around nine other people to attend the forum together. I remember being overwhelmed by the amount of workshops and the task of getting to all of them in a timely manner. The opening march was very hot, and it was nice to have people handing out water. The puppets were fabulous! i was shocked to learn that the park which had many of the venders and tents was just days before a place were houseless people normally slept. These folks were arrested and taken to jail in preparation for the forum! Instead of being invited to participate in the event, they were criminalized by the very people who days later would listen to workshops and panels focused on this very struggle! The forum needs to be more accessible and welcome to the people!!

My favorite workshops were part of the gender/sexuality track. Folks from Southerners on New Ground (S.O.N.G.), Sista II Sista, INCITE!, and FIERCE! were on point, their workshops were packed, and there was a real sense of movement in those spaces. Several hundred people wanted to further our discussions around moving beyond the non-profit industrial complex.

Another concern I have is the lack of time we had to meet regionally. We were given such little time for this, that we barely could introduce ourselves before the time was up. I think more structured time needs to be given to regional organizing/networking. When you are in workshops and then the plenaries all day, it's difficult to eat, sleep, and meet outside of that in one day. Also, I think it would be worthwhile to have the opening plenary focus solely on work in Detroit so attendees know what's happening locally.

The way that I shared what went on at the forum was recording workshops, editing them, and giving them away as CD's.

Thanks to all the organizers, past and present!


Ashley
Oakland, CA