The World Social Forum in Belém do Pará - January 2009

  • Michael Löwy

Resumo

As is known the World Social Forum was created by an initiative of social movements in 2001, as a counterpiece to the World Economic Forum of Davos, a celebrated conference of the financial and political elites of the Western capitalist world. The WSF soon became an important planetary meeting place for popular movements - trade unions, peasant associations, women movements, ecological networks - NGO’s, intellectuals and youth, united by their opposition to neo-liberalism - « The World is not a Commodity » - and their hopes for change : « Another World is Possible ! ». In reality, the Forum is only the most visible part of a larger current, the Global Justice Movement - altermundialista in Spanish or Portuguese - a world-wide « movement of movements » born in 1999 with the mass protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organization. After several meetings in the southern Brazilian town of Porto Alegre, the WSF moved to Mumbay, then to Nairobi and now returned to Brazil, but this time in the Amazonian town of Belem, capital of the state of Para (several times bigger than France).

Publicado
2018-11-06
Como Citar
LÖWY, M. The World Social Forum in Belém do Pará - January 2009. CADERNOS DE PESQUISA: PENSAMENTO EDUCACIONAL, v. 4, n. 7, p. 15-17, 6 nov. 2018.