[WSF-Discuss] [Fwd: [DEBATE] : Report on European Social Forum, Malmo]

Madhuresh madhuresh at cacim.net
Wed Sep 24 18:52:29 UCT 2008 


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	[DEBATE] : Report on European Social Forum, Malmo
Date: 	Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:42:50 +0200
From: 	peter waterman <p.waterman at inter.nl.net>
Reply-To: 	debate: SA discussion list <debate at debate.kabissa.org>
To: 	debate: SA discussion list <debate at debate.kabissa.org>, CACIM 
<cacim at cacim.net>, "nigd >> Network Institute for GD" <nigd at nigd.u-net.com>



  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/409366.html



  European Social Forum in Malmö

Wladek Flakin | 24.09.2008 12:05 | Free Spaces 
<http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/freespaces/> | Social Struggles 
<http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/topics/socialstruggles/>

Last Sunday, the European Social Forum (ESF) came to a close in the city 
of Malmö in southern Sweden. Nearly 10,000 people from across Europe 
took part in hundreds of political and cultural events over four days. 
The highlight was a demonstration on Saturday with 15,000 participants 
where trade unions, environmental groups, autonomists, left parties and 
socialist youth organizations together called for "Power to the People!".

The ESF participants came primarily from Scandinavia. For example, 
14-year-old Vilma came with two friends from "Ung Vänster", the Swedish 
Left Party’s youth organization. "We have spent the last few days 
painting banners, but we were also at the demonstration for immigrants' 
rights", she said about her personal highlights at the forum. But 
activists from across Europe - from Spain to the Ukraine - and even from 
Latin America were also there. From Germany, dozens of people traveled 
in buses from the "Left Youth - Solidarity" and the trade union youth. 
Even from the Basque Country, over 20 young activists came, after 
spending 40 hours in two small buses. The ESF’ers stayed in gymnasiums 
and schools around the city, while the events took place in public 
buildings, rented ballrooms and a mosque.

The ESF is an opportunity for different movements to network 
internationally. Opponents of the U.S. Air Force base in Vicenza in 
Italy could meet up with opponents of the planned U.S. missile base in 
Poland. In a large gathering, they exchanged experiences and planned 
protests against the forthcoming 60th anniversary of NATO. 
Representatives of European students also had a special meeting to 
discuss a Europe-wide day of action against education cuts.

Special events

New for the ESF was a "Labor Youth Space": a church building in which 
the trade union youth from different countries organized their own 
workshops. "The point is to have the youth of the European trade unions 
network from below" said Joachim Heckel, a young activist of the German 
metalworkers' union from Nuremberg. "Here, we see that flexibility a 
huge problem for young workers across Europe. That is why we must think 
about organizing Europe-wide days of action."

At an event about the EU "terror lists", representatives of the 
revolutionary left from Turkey, the left-wing independence movement from 
the Basque country and anti-imperialist organizations from Denmark 
shared the podium. They explained how these "black lists" are used to 
repress left-wing parties and movements around the world. At the time of 
the forum, a huge wave of repression by the Spanish state against the 
Basque independence movement was in full-swing, in which several 
political parties were banned. Ulrik Kohl from the Danish group 
"Fighters and Lovers," which sells T-shirts with the logos of the 
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Colombian 
guerrilla organisation FARC, had been condemned the day before for 
"supporting terrorism" – at the ESF, however, he announced he would 
continue the solidarity work.

Riot and chaos

Over the the weekend, the Swedish tabloid press headlined: "Krawall och 
Kaos!" or "Riot and Chaos!". This was referring to a "Reclaim the 
Streets" party which had gone through Malmö's city centre on Friday 
evening. The approximately 2,000 participants danced to hip-hop and 
techno - and because the Swedish autonomists seem somewhat more class 
struggle-oriented than their German counterparts, the whole party took 
place behind a banner with the slogan "Klass mot Klass" ("class again 
class"). Some people sprayed graffiti along the road and a window pane 
of the bank SEB was smashed - i.e. it was hardly the mass riot that the 
press had been warning about for days! The police, who were present, 
remained surprisingly reticent. "If they were to attack, then everything 
would get much, much worse" said an ESF organizer about the police tactics.

Outside the official ESF program, numerous actions by the 
anarchist-oriented "Action Network" took place. On Friday, for example, 
around 1,000 people gathered in front of the office of the energy 
corporation E.on to protest against climate change. The day before, a 
few hundred had demonstrated in front of the "foreigners' office" in 
Malmö to call for an end to deportations.

The ESF ended on Sunday with the Assembly of Social Movements that 
decided on a final declaration of the forum. A major mobilization for 
all ESFers will be the protests against the 60th Anniversary of NATO in 
April 2009. But the protests against the G8 summit in Sardinia in July 
2009 or against the climate conference in Copenhagen in November 2009 
also have a great significance. The venue and date of the next ESF has 
already been decided too: 2010 in Istanbul.

A preliminary balance-sheet

Overall, the forum was different from previous forums in Florence 
(2002), Paris (2003), London (2004) and Athens (2006). Malmö is the 
smallest city to ever host the ESF, and in light of this, the 15,000 
participants at the demonstration represented a success. Since the 
venues were scattered throughout the city, it was difficult for an 
individual to get an overview of the forum – but the number given by the 
organizers of 10,000 registered participants would certainly be accurate.

The size of the 5th ESF was below expectations (20,000) as well as below 
the levels of previous ESFs (with the possible exception of the more or 
less disastrous 3rd ESF in London). This can be partly explained by 
external factors. (For example, there were hardly any participants from 
Germany, given that there were almost 60,000 people at different 
demonstrations at the same time in Cologne, Berlin and Stuttgart. So the 
three buses from Germany were on average only half full.)

But that's not enough to explain the ESF’s small size. The ESF is the 
great forum of "talking past" or "talking at" one another – the 
political diversity amongst the participants, from social democratic 
NGOs to environmentalist hippies to revolutionary Marxists makes it 
difficult to find a common denominator. But the functioning of the forum 
and especially the final assembly makes it completely impossible. The 
final declaration is not decided by a democratic vote, but rather 
presented by a more or less self-appointed preparation group and then 
rubber-stamped with "consensus". The text contains bullet points to 
satisfy nearly all of the participants, but no concrete mobilization 
plans. After years of noncommittal chatting, many are wondering what the 
use of the whole event is, and that is a good explanation for the almost 
constant decline in number of participants.

Given the shrunken size of the ESF, the anarchist counter-activities on 
the sidelines had a much greater weight than before. In past years, it 
was no more than splinter groups who organized, parallel to the ESF, 
small (and hard to find) "counter-forums". But this time, the "ESF 
Action Network" represented a serious competitor to the ESF. Simply 
because of high ticket prices (€40 or €20 for students), there were 
certainly more than 1000 young people from southern Sweden or the 
neighboring Copenhagen who came to the ESF, but not to the official 
seminars, only to the anarchistic actions on the all around.

Problems and potential

The vast majority of seminars were alienating for young people. It was 
not unusual for an event lasting two and a half hours to consist of two 
hours of speeches from the podium and half an hour of "discussion", 
whereby the latter consisted in reading out different communiqués. The 
demands in the flyer from REVOLUTION ( 
http://www.onesolutionrevolution.org/?p=277&language=en 
<http://www.onesolutionrevolution.org/?p=277&language=en>) for 
independent youth structures at the ESF proved to be completely correct. 
It was positive that for the first time there was a "youth space" by the 
trade union youth, but this was occupied by up-and-coming functionaries 
and offered little opportunity for an independent organization.

The non-stop attacks on workers, migrants and young people in Europe, 
which are centralized by the EU, make a common, Europe-wide resistance 
more necessary than ever before. But the unofficial bureaucracy which 
dominates the ESF (which is in turn made up of various social-democratic 
and trade union bureaucracies) again and again prevents that the ESF 
from becoming a focus of such resistance. We greatly appreciate the 
networking that takes place at the ESF - after each meeting, activists 
from across Europe exchange their email addresses - but overall the ESF 
is and remains pretty aimless.

As far as we are concerned, we will participate at the ESF - the 
relatively larger revolutionary left in Turkey will certainly make the 
forum in Istanbul more exciting - but always emphasize that a 
revolutionary international organization is needed to turn the diffuse 
slogan "another world is possible" into a concrete, socialist reality.

*Wladek Flakin*
- *Homepage:* http://www.onesolutionrevolution.org

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-- 



* 'Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement', ESF Malmo Update: http://www.netzwerkit.de/projekte/waterman/gc

* 'Challenging Empires: The World Social Forum. (2nd Edition, 488 pp). Ordering: http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm  

* 'Back in the (Ex-) USSR': http://zope2.netzwerkit.de/RusRepLatest.pdf

* 'Recovering Internationalism; Creating New Global Solidarity', http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/6439.html  

* 'Prague 1968: "Workers of the World, Forgive Me!"', http://www.tni.org/archives/waterman/prague1968.pdf  

* 'A Union Internationalism for the 21stC', http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745327563  

* 'International Labour Studies in the UK’, in "Work Organisation Labour and Globalisation", Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 180-200. http://www.analyticapublications.co.uk/




-- 

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