Blogging the WSF

Mumbai, Jan 15 - I'm writing this in Mumbai, the day before the Forum starts. It's an odd double vision experience being here, seeing things at the same time from the point of view of someone who lives in England, and also from the perspective of someone of Nepali descent - India is in a different century to Nepal, dramatically more developed.

I have some goals I can define precisely for being here: taking part in a nonviolence workshop that I was invited to be part of (on the 17th, 5-8, room B43); trying to talk to other anti-war activists from around the world about an initiative that Justice Not Vengeance is floating for 2005 (email info@j-n-v.org for more); meeting up with particular people I know. Other goals are harder to express.

Part of it is duty, I guess. Last November Voices in the Wilderness organized a speaking tour for me across the US and up to Vancouver, and donated the money raised during the tour towards my being able to attend this WSF for the nonviolent interposition workshop which they invited me to be part of. So that's how this trip is financially possible for me. (The speaking tour was a fantastic experience, by the way.)

I'm hoping to be part of discussions with people from different anti-war movements, and I would also like to be part of the discussions around 'alternatives to globalization'/the future/strategy. I've spent the last few weeks writing a first draft of a critique of George Monbiot's The Age of Consent, and I really want to hear the discussion he and Michael Albert are part of about all this.

I'd also like to catch some of the counter-conference which is called Mumbai Resistance. Impressively long stretches of wall nex to the road south from the airport are covered in Mumbai Resistance graffitti. The most memorable bits for me were: 'Fight patriarchy', and 'Discussion alone will not make another world.'

The report in the Times of India today says the conference is going to cost over a million pounds, something near two million dollars I think. 60% from two Dutch NGOs and Oxfam, 40% raised in India.

So far I've bumped into two activists from London, one originally from the US, one originally from Wolverhampton, and been part of a vigorous debate about the significance and role of local social forums in the international Social Forum process, and the right way forward for the proposed European Social Forum in London - proposed for later this year.

My feeling is that there is a tension between the expressed values of the Social Forum process, which is a lot about empowering the grassroots and so on; and the organizational and institutional reality of the big Social Forums, which seem to have been pretty top-down in their origins. This clash has been pretty fierce in relation to the proposed London European Social Forum, with a strong movement to 'democratise the ESF'.