The World Social Forum
The World Social Forum owes its origins to the counter-conferences initiated by ATTAC held in Switzerland as an alternative. to the World Economic Forum whilst it was meeting in the millionaires' ski-resort of Davos. Two Brazilians, Oded Grajew and Chico Whitaker, who attended the anti-Davos in January 2000 had the original idea of holding a world social forum.
Having been impressed by the powerful mass mobilisations of Seattle in November 1999 and the "practical" (ie reformist)" alternatives of Anti-Davos in January 2000, they came up with the idea of a positive (i.e. non-confrontational) but mass gathering which would spread anti-neoliberal (but not anti-capitalist) ideas.
They took this suggestion to Bernard Cassen, director of the French bourgeois review Le Monde Diplomatique, and president of ATTAC-France. Cassen liked the idea and made a proposal to hold the Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, because it was the capital of a state that was steadily becoming known all over the world for its 'participatory budgets'.
In Brazil it was immediately supported by a sizable list of large organisations, including the "Brazilian Business Association for Citizenship", plus the main Brazilian trade union federation, and the landless rural work...
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