A tale of two forums: USSF and the Forum of the Americas

By Marc Becker

At the end of June 2010, fifteen thousand social movement activists gathered
in Detroit, Michigan for the second United States Social Forum (USSF). Less
than two months later, about half that number met at the other end of the
continent in Asunción, Paraguay for the fourth Americas Social Forum (ASF).
The contrasts between the two forums were more dramatic than the similarities.
While the social forum process appears to have run its course in South
America, it still continues to pick up steam in North America. Although
politically the United States lags behind South America, lessons from the
north can help rejuvenate the process in the south.

Only a handful of people attended both forums. In the case of the USSF, the
lack of participation from the rest of the Americas was perhaps to be expected
because, after all, it was a national forum. The barriers of access to time,
resources, and, more than anything, visas, further hindered those from outside
the country who might want to participate.
More surprising and disappointing, however, was the lack of northern
participation in the ASF. Rather than a hemispheric forum, it became a defacto
South American forum. A common theme and slogan in Asunción was the
unification of Latin American struggles.

While a struggle for the realization of Simón Bolívar’s dream for a unified
Latin America is a commendable goal, an equally valuable achievement would be
the reintegration of the United States into a global system on the basis of
respect and reciprocity rather than domination. Social forums provide an
excellent opportunity for common people from the north to interact with their
counterparts in a horizontal and participatory fashion that would help build a
better, more unified, and more egalitarian world.

A lack of participation from the United States in the ASF is understandable

because it came so quickly on the heels of the very successful Detroit forum
that occupied the resources of many of the social movements in that country.
Grassroots Global Justice (GGJ), for example, one of the key players from the
United States in the social forum process that typically facilitates the
participation of dozens of people in forums, only sent a small delegation with
four people. For many individuals, attending the World Social Forum (WSF) in
Dakar, Senegal in Africa in February 2011 seemingly was a more appealing
alternative than traveling to the largely unknown South American country of
Paraguay.

Organizers had initially projected ten to fifteen thousand participants at the

ASF, which would have made it the same size as the USSF. Instead, about half
that number, seven to eight thousand activists, attended.
Whereas the Detroit forum was larger than the first USSF in Atlanta in 2007,
the ASF meeting in Paraguay was smaller than previous gatherings in Quito,
Ecuador (2004); Caracas, Venezuela (2006); and Guatemala City, Guatemala
(2008).

The ASF featured 350 sessions, about a third of the size of the USSF that had
1000 workshops. Larger is not necessarily better, and with so many sessions
participation tends to become very dispersed across the forum. For those who
have grown accustomed to oversized and unwieldy WSFs, the Paraguay meeting was
small, the grounds compact, and the program easily manageable. At the same
time, the ASF still covered the same range of issues such as neoliberalism,
militarism, Indigenous peoples, and gender justice that have come to be
expected at a forum.

The USSF had a more diverse face than the ASF. Coming out of Porto Alegre,
Brazil that was the recipient of a strong German migration, the WSF always has
had an European orientation. Furthermore, even though it was theoretically an
initiative that emerged out of social movements, NGOs have always had a strong
presence. The USSF, in contrast, was deliberately organized as an initiative
of grassroots communities of color. Building from the bottom-up, African-
descendants, Latinos, Indigenous peoples, and poor people were at the heart of
the forum.
Ironically, this gave the USSF more of a “third world” face than those
organized in Latin America. Even though in Paraguay Vía Campesina engaged in a
significant effort to mobilize rural groups, many of the local participants
still came from a more urban, westernized world.

More significantly, the USSF has moved much farther toward a horizontal
process than any other social forum. Heavily influenced by critical pedagogy,
the USSF discarded a standard conference model with panels of “experts” up on
the stage presenting their knowledge to a passive audience. Instead,
organizers urged a more participatory model of collaborative workshops to
bring people together to solve common problems. The result was a breath of
fresh air, with the organization of the panels mirroring the spirit of the
social forum process.

Unfortunately, many of the ASF panels still retained the standard conference
model of long monologues from featured speakers with little time or focus on
discussion and exchanges. More notable was the integration of governmental
officials into the program. To a degree never before seen in social forums
that originally emerged as a civil society response to neoliberalism,
presidents and other elected officials were given a formal and central
platform in Asunción to present their ideas. Each day’s discussions ended with
plenaries that included these officials. Presidents José Mujica from Uruguay
and Evo Morales from Bolivia joined Fernando Lugo from Paraguay on the stage
to close the forum. Their comments received more attention than did those of
social movement leaders or grassroots activists.

The governmental participation at the ASF, however, also points to the

dramatic political shifts that have taken place in Latin America over the past
ten years. Many of these government officials emerged out of social movements.
More broadly, the politicization and sophistication of political analysis in
Latin America is much advanced than that in the United States. For example,
the USSF featured a well-attended session on Haiti with powerful speakers. The
ASF also had a panel on Haiti, but it was much smaller and the presenter
Camille Chalmers was one of the few African-descendant participants in the
forum. Nevertheless, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano left the session at
the ASF impressed with its political depth and analytical sophistication,
particularly compared the reports he had received from its counterpart in
Detroit.

Although the social forum process came slow and late to the United States, it
continues to gain force among the most marginalized and impoverished
communities as a mechanism to struggle for social justice.
Although the United States lacks the political advances and sophistication
found in other parts of the Amerias, the USSF plays a valuable role in
contributing ideas and suggestions back to the broader social forum process.
In doing so, the USSF is pumping life back into transformative endeavors that
had threatened to become moribund.

Marc Becker is a Latin American historian and member of the Network Institute
for Global Democratization (NIGD). For more information on both the USSF and
ASF, see his webpage http://www.yachana.org/reports/.