[Nettime-bold] the end of porto alegre - view from a window

[Renata Aquino <renataaquino@yahoo.com>]

Hi

Today is the end of the World Social Forum in Porto
Alegre. Only the workers that built the structure for
the talks are the journalists are still in the
building. Some delegates are at the Healthy Eating
Space and some hippies selling Worker`s Party
memorabilia. 

So there`s not much to tell now but remember what this
was. I wasn`t on the 1st Forum but it`s hard to
imagine anything coming similar to this. 

There was such an unexplainable air of hope here. On
the local aspect, Brazil has been going through pretty
tough times. 3 mayors murdered, bad perspectives for
the elections, Argentine cacelorazos about to come to
us... But still people here were busy with building a
better world, learning, exchanging ideas, creating
tactics of survival. 

I'm far from being idealistic about anything but just
observing things like these is good enough to bring a
bit of hope to the future. For those of you who wanted
to know, a bit of what happened here:

* Ideologies
Chomsky was far the most discussed personality of the
Forum. While he criticized the press for not giving
too much attention to the 'real news in world' (social
problems), all the media had to come here and do
something about the forum. 
As for the rest of the 'thinkers' around here, all had
their say and audience to work on. 
It was nice to see also the environmental protesters
much more organised and displaying tactics of
discussion highly sophisticated. 

* Media
European media gave much more attention to the forum
than Brazilian, mostly because of the Worker's Party
media boycott here. Even so, local media had to come
and was angry for not being able to call the Forum
disorganized or "McDonald's buster" :).
Activism was well covered. Social movements are
becoming much more aware of ways to attract attention
using the media and also building their own channels. 
A media alternative discussion with Indymedia and Free
Software creator R. Stallman, among others, made onto
most technology websites.

* Coalition of social movements and/or ideologies
I guess the best of this Forum was to see that social
movements do have ways to come together, build a
project together and insist on political measures to
enable a better society. This may sound a lot of
blablabla but it is important when you're living rough
times as L. America currently is and gatherings such
as these will make all the difference 

Well, see you next Forum.

Renata Aquino
www.hotbits.com.br

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