Porto Alegre and back again

Participants at the World Social Forum—the leftist counter-summit to the World Economic Forum—found a giant activist meet-and-greet rather than any definite plan to fight the global capitalist man. Still, says one participant, the event, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil at the beginning of February, did allow an estimated 60,000 activists to network and discuss a host of issues, from Argentina’s collapsing economy to managing large-scale demonstrations.
Alexandra Guité, a coordinator for the Montreal-based Alternatives, thinks the biggest success was the strengthening of Argentina’s nascent civil society out of the ruins of the country’s economic catastrophe. “People in Argentina have lost their faith in the government’s ability to do anything,” she says. She, along with about 20 other delegates, were in Buenos Aires for over a week following the Forum, taking part in various neighbourhood assemblies and rallies, a novelty to most Argentinians. “Thousands of people were mobilized,” she says. “About 7,000 people met last Sunday to talk about the government, the devaluation of the peso, the IMF negotiations and denunciations” of people implicated in Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship in the 1980s, during which up to 30,000 people disappeared.

“It’s a climate of pre-revolution,” Guité says. “In December there was nothing, and now people are organizing one demonstration after the next. “

Alternatives holds its next public assembly on March 2 at the Centre St-Pierre (1205 de la Visitation) at 7 p.m. The topic will be on Porto Alegre and beyond, with speakers from Africa, South America and Quebec. :

—Patrick Lejtenyi