Another World is Possible

Abstract

The third World Social Forum met in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from January 23 to January 28, 2003. It was big and diverse. One hundred thousand people came together from 156 countries and a broad array of social movements united in their opposition ofneoliberal capitalist globalization. The first such forum, in 2001, was conceived as a response to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and as a protest against the dictation of social and economic policy in the south by northern countries and the international institutions whose policies they command. Against Margaret Thatcher's oftrepeated injunction that there is no alternative to transnational capitalism, the forum's slogan insists that another world is possible. The forum was created by the Brazilian Workers' Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores-PT) and Action for the Taxation of International Financial Transactions in Support of Citizens (Association pour la Taxation des Transactions pour l'Aide aux Citoyens-ATTAC), the France-based international movement promoting the Tobin tax-a proposed tax on international capital movements that would make southern countries less vulnerable to capital flight. The PT plays a central role, even though the forum is a declaredly nonpartisan event to which parties as such are not invited. The forum has grown rapidly. Attendance has always exceeded expectations, doubling from each year to the next. The forum has struck a responsive chord in a broad array of movements from around the world. Although its huge size created logistical and organizational problems, the scene was bursting with energy as people from a cross section of the world's social movements-women's, environmental, indigenous, and economic justice organizations, human rights advocates, AIDS and other health activists, educators