For a participatory ESF

 

The organisers of the fifth World Social Forum have adopted a new methodology for organising the programme, which has involved participating organisations more fully in the construction of the forum from the outset. The greater focus on self-organised events is also intended to facilitate new networks and common actions amongst the participants of the forum.

This shift towards a more ‘bottom up' decision-making process was initiated by proposals worked on by the WSF International Council, which met in Peruggia , Italy from 7-10 April 2004. It makes sense therefore, to summarise the thinking behind this very important shift in the development of the WSF process. The Proposals of the Content and Methodology Commission of the IC are based on the following aims for the WSF:

To encourage the dialogue that takes place at Forums to lead to/strengthen action.

1. To ensure that Forums practice in their own organisation what they preach in the Charter, in particular participatory democracy, respect for plurality and diversity and a refusal of hierarchy.
2. To avoid the Forums becoming simply an annual event and to put concerted energy into creating a process that strengthens struggles and the development of alternatives in a cumulative way.
3. To ensure that the Forum process becomes more useful in promoting the density and dynamism of the relationships and networks resisting and creating alternatives to neo-liberalism.
4. To ensure that the Forum develops a systematic collective memory
5. To find ways of ensuring that the Forum treats divergencies as a source of strength and enrichment so that it does not simply represent moments of convergence on particularly struggles but enables a process of testing of different ideas in a process of continuing debate.

With these and other concerns in mind, the Content and Methodology Commission proposed ways in which the WSF can radically democratise its decision making practice through working with direct forms of democracy in determining the themes and activity of the WSF.

Obviously applying this to the ESF needs work. But this process could be very important to both unifying and Europeanising the organisation of the ESF and ensuring it reaches out to the widest range of networks and movements across Europe and internationally.

A key tool in this direct democracy is an electronic consultation process, though we need to find ways of ensuring that people who do not have easy access to the web are not excluded. People would register their proposed activities using keywords, spelling out their objectives and indicating how they can be contacted.

This active registration process (which needs to be encouraged by many different non-electronic means, public meetings, local forums etc) would be the basis of:

•  dialogue and interaction among actors to find ways of co-operating in joint seminars and other activities.

•  clustering the keywords to identify the most widely shared themes.

The electronic consultation would need to be wide in the sense of achieving the widest support possible, in social, political, cultural and geographical terms. It would need to be open in the sense that all proposals – as long as they are within the terms of the Charter – are legitimate as contributions to the themes and activity of the Forum. It would need to be active in the sense of based on proposals stimulating organisations, movements, campaigns and coalitions to participate in the process.

It is a process which needs committed facilitation from an international working group accountable to the Organising Committee of the Forum.

It would mean a radical break from the idea that the Organising Committee decides the themes and organises the mergers of seminars. The Organising Committee becomes primarily responsible for a process of facilitation, only taking a final decision on the basis of the outcome of this consultation process.

Hilary Wainwright