World Social Forum

The World Social Forum (WSF) is a constantly changing process dedicated to the idea that “another world is possible.”

The WSF process was born in 1999 as a response to the lack of democracy, accountability, and transparency of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The WEF is a global decision-making body that meets annually in Davos, Switzerland, to formulate global economic policies. The WEF is dominated by Western/Northern Hemisphere political and economic elites and not accessible to all interested parties. Therefore, various non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor activists, and political networks (primarily from Brazil) decided to create a particular venue in order to discuss current projects, struggles, and new forms of organizing in order to discuss and realize viable alternatives to current political, social, and economic relations and institutions. Initially, the WSF was envisioned as a counter-think tank, similar to NGO countersummits that had been held in order to critique the UN Summit Process in the 1990s. Because of political pressure by explicitly radical Brazilian political organizations and their NGO allies, the vision of the WSF process transformed into a meeting space for all individuals and collectives interested and engaged in the process of envisioning and realizing alternatives. The WSF process is therefore not a single event. Though there is an annual WSF, the WSF process aims to facilitate long-lasting transnational networks.

Building on the Brazilian tradition of cross-sector organizing, various Brazilian NGOs, labor unions, and social movements constructed the Brazilian Organizing Committee (BOC). The BOC is an eclectic group that formed a broad network that appealed to a large range of politically active organizations and individuals. The BOC decided that Porto Alegre, Brazil, would serve as the home of the WSF because it embodied the idea that another world is not only possible but present. Porto Alegre was famous in left circles because of the Orçamento Participativo, or the Participatory Budget Process (OP), a radical democratic experiment, which began in Porto Alegre and has since spread across the world, in which citizens collectively decide how funds should be allocated. Moreover, a leftist Brazilian political party, Partido dos Trabalhadores, or the Workers' Party (PT), had been in power since the late 1980s in Porto Alegre. In fact, the PT government provided the resources and infrastructure necessary to realize the first WSF in Porto Alegre, in 2001. This forum was the culmination of years of struggle on the part of individual activists, activist-intellectuals, cultural workers, politicians, and others associated with the movement of movements, NGOs, political parties, and political, labor, and social organizations, much larger than the BOC and the first WSF itself.

The first WSF attracted more than 10,000 people. The following year, Porto Alegre was again home to the WSF and welcomed more than 55,000, and in 2003 the Porto Alegre WSF convened with roughly 75,000 participants. In 2004, the WSF moved to Mumbai, India. Various Indian NGOs and social movements joined the BOC, and the forum was held in January 2004 with more than 100,000 people. The fifth WSF returned to Porto Alegre and brought together 155,000 participants from 135 countries; more than 200,000 people joined the opening march. In 2006, rather than one large WSF in one site, there were various polycentric WSFs held around the world in order to strengthen local organizing and make the forum more accessible. The 2007 WSF will again be centralized, though in a new site, Nairobi, Kenya.

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