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[USSF analysis by Judy Rebick. Continued from above] Almost every one of the 900 workshops over four days was filled to the brim with activists who were sharing strategies in everything from food security to community/labour alliances to a new taking back our cities movement against gentrification. The plenary speakers were majority women, people of colour, and young people. There was not a single left-wing star among them. In a culture obsessed with celebrity, the organizing committee decided they didn’t need any, even the good ones. None of the big NGOs in the United States were on the planning committee. The idea that foundation-funded, majority white, centrist and Washington dominated NGOs and think tanks have hijacked the left was present throughout the forum. These groups were welcome to participate, but not in a leadership capacity. Another extraordinary feature of the forum was the role of indigenous people who led the opening march and participated on several panels as well as had their own plenary. Much of the vision came from them. After talking about the melting of the glaciers, Faith Gemmill from the REDOIL (Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Land) in Alaska said, “Our people have a prophesy that there will come a time in the history of humanity when people are in danger of destroying ourselves. When that time comes, a voice will arise from the North to warn us. That time is now. I was sent here to give you part of our burden to speak up now against the greed.” And Tom Goldtooth who represents the Indigenous Environmental Network on the national planning committee said, “We must talk from the heart and shake hands with one another. A prayer has taken place that this spirit is going to grow. No matter who we are we must demand not reform of a broken system but transformation. We need to organize from the grassroots.” And many did speak from the heart. The plenary on Katrina was stunning to me. While I certainly followed the immediate aftermath, I had no idea of the continuing efforts to whitewash New Orleans. Dr. Beverley Wright speaking from the floor said, “Our parents and our grandparents fought to buy a house to pass on to their family and they are trying to take that away from us when they talk about turning the place we lived in East New Orleans into a green space. They’re not talking about turning the place rich white folks live into green space.” Another community leader said, “Katrina is both a reality and a symbol. If you work in justice, if you work in health care, if your work in housing, you are in Katrina.” One of the most powerful speeches was from Javier Gallardo from the New Orleans Workers Center. A guest worker from Peru, he explained that when African Americans were displaced, hundreds of workers like him had been brought in from Latin America for Gulf Coast reconstruction and their employers names are on their passports. Their ability to stay in the U.S. is dependent on the employer. Gallardo said that there is now a practice that when the employer is finished with the workers, he sells them to another employer for $2,000 each. “What is that?,” he asked. “We call it modern day slavery. They want to divide us but the old slaves and the new slaves can join together and together we can defeat them,” he continued to thunderous applause. The old slaves/new slaves metaphor wove its way through the rest of the forum in the powerful idea of a black-brown alliance, that veteran activists said would transform left-wing politics in the United States and especially in the South where the vast majority of the working class is now black and brown. Another impressive feature of the forum was the handling of conflict. When the Palestinian contingent objected that they were the only group not permitted to speak for themselves in the anti-war plenary, the organizers read their letter of protest to the next plenary. When the report of the indigenous caucus was stopped at the end of their allotted time by the moderator of the People's Movement Assembly by removing their microphone, they took grave offense and felt silenced. Within 10 minutes, most of the indigenous people in the room were on the stage with the consent of the organizers. What could have been an explosive divisive moment with a lot of anger and hurt was handled with incredible skill by both permitting the protest and making sure it was interpreted in a way that created unity rather than division. I had the feeling that a new culture of solidarity was being born, one we tried for in the feminist movement but never quite accomplished. Of course there were weaknesses in the forum. While strongly rooted in the traditions of the civil rights movement by the symbolic location in Atlanta and the presence of veteran civil rights activists, there was less discussion of working class or even feminist history. Yet the impact of those movements were strongly felt in the powerful female leadership present everywhere and the strong emphasis on workers' issues and organizing. None of the big environmental groups was present. While the issue of the war and U.S. imperialism had pride of place, the mainstream anti-war movement had little presence. The forum organizers bent the stick quite far towards poor, working class, indigenous, queer and people of colour groups and perhaps this was necessary to create the kind of movement really capable of making change in the United States. In her famous speech at the 2002 World Social Forum in Brazil, Arundhati Roy famously said, “Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” It wasn’t a quiet day in Atlanta but I could hear her shouting there, “What do we want? Justice. How will we get it? People Power.” Judy Rebick holds the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University in Toronto. She is a founder and former publisher of rabble.ca. Her most recent book is Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution. |