Press Release

Jan. 18, 2003

Contact: 
Vivian Stockman, OVEC, 304-522-0246
More info: www.worldsocialforum.org/ (click on English)

OVEC sends delegation to World Social Forum in Brazil
100,000 international opponents of corporate globalization expected for meeting on alternative economic and social vision

HUNTINGTON, W.VA. – A different world is possible. That’s the founding idea and driving principle behind the third annual World Social Forum (WSF), meeting Jan. 23 – 28 in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

For the first time, two representatives of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) will attend the WSF to gather ideas, share experiences and join the international network of people working for more just societies worldwide. Attending for OVEC are the organization’s co-director Dianne Bady and communications coordinator Vivian Stockman. Mary Wildfire, immediate past president of the West Virginia Environmental Council attended the Forum last year.

The WSF, which attracted nearly 15,000 participants to its first gathering in January 2001 and over 60,000 to its second in February 2002, anticipates over 100,000 attendees this year. About 100 U.S. activists attended the Forum in 2001, and nearly 500 last year. That number should be exceeded this year, with many attendees coming from community-level grassroots organizing groups like OVEC.

Delegates to the event address a diverse array of issues in their daily work including human rights, economic justice, anti-war activism, labor rights, immigration, women’s and minority rights, and trade, environmental and health issues. What each delegate holds in common is her or his work to challenge the status quo, work that ultimately helps to build alternatives to corporate-driven globalization.

One of the Forum’s early champions, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva, Brazil’s new president, is expected to address the delegates on January 25. Lula rose from poverty to become a union steel worker and eventually leader of the Worker’s Party, before becoming president on January 1. WSF participants see in the working-class progressive’s presidential victory hope for a fundamental and global shift in economic and social values. Silva, however, has caused anxiety at the Bush White House and on Wall Street.

“OVEC members have been working since 1987 for regional environmental and social change,” Bady said. “It is exciting to know we will be meeting with our counterparts from all over the world. This is a gathering of people who have already made positive changes for their communities, and who, together, have the imagination and drive to create a better future.”

“The World Social Forum drives home the point that the way things are is not the way things have to be,” Stockman said. “The status quo has a lot invested in denying human imagination and potential. For instance, in West Virginia, the coal industry wants us to believe that coal is the only way to keep the lights on. But the truth is, less-polluting, job-creating renewable energy sources are now developed to a point they could meet the world’s energy needs. All that is lacking is the political will. The Forum aims to build, from the grassroots, the political will necessary to make all sorts of changes that will disrupt the status quo, but will elevate the plight of humanity and our only planet.”

The World Social Forum began as a popular response to the World Economic Forum, the closed-door “summit” of top business executives and world political leaders, who began meeting annually in Davos, Switzerland in the early 1970s. The World Economic Forum interrupted its routine last year to meet in New York City, but returns to Davos this year, meeting on the same dates as the WSF (January 23 - 28).

As in previous years, activists will be protesting the Davos meetings and offering alternative sessions on economic and social issues. While the World Economic Forum once prided itself on producing innovative ideas, it has in recent years been devoted to defending the powerful and wealthy against charges of greed, corruption, and perpetuating a radically uneven economic system. The site of innovation has moved to the WSF.

The World Social Forum has spawned several regional events, including the European Social Forum, which drew 60,000 to Florence, Italy in November 2002. The African Social Forum held its second meeting, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia during the first week of January, and the Asian Social Forum held its first meeting in Hyderabad, India at the same time. The 2004 World Social Forum is expected to move from Brazil to India or another Asian country.

“The World Social Forum is a platform where Americans can meet their counterparts from around the world in an environment not dominated by U.S. issues or power,” said Soren Ambrose, a Washington-based activist who has attended the last two Forums, and is helping organize the Grassroots Global Justice delegation, with which Bady and Stockman are traveling.

“In Porto Alegre, our country is one among many in the world, and we are part of the global movement to distribute power and resources more fairly and democratically among the world’s people,” Ambrose said. “It is particularly important that so many of the people from the U.S. who will be attending the Forum are not from organizations that frequently go to international meetings, but rather from community and labor organizations making strides to integrate their work into an international vision.”

The Ford Foundation is sponsoring the OVEC delegation's trip to the World Social Forum. OVEC's Bady, co-director Janet Fout and late organizer Laura Forman won the Ford Foundation's and Advocacy Institute's Leadership for a Changing World Award in 2001.