ESF contribution to the discussion at the Paris meeting

The third European Social Forum has shown the necessity of a change in the organizing formula and process of the forum itself. After Paris-Saint Denis, the European global-movement entered into a new phase. We have to report, on one side, the still positive presence of the constitutive elements of its "birth act" - the crisis of the consensus on the war and liberal politics, the tendency towards the coordination of initiatives on an European scale, criticism of the political representation of social struggles – but also, on the other side, that we did not reflect enough on the social composition of the movement and on the motivations of practice.

In Florence , and partially in Paris/Saint Denis, the movement represented itself as it was, it was a snapshot of the existing. A reach set of aspirations, experiences, differences, crossed by the will to cover new ways for social transformation, in an attempt to anticipate the future. The difficulties met in London and in the several meetings of the European Preparatory Assembly have been determined only partially by the "specificity" of the national organizing committees. In fact, the relationship between the Forum and the national and European social dynamics has entered into a tension. It is no longer sufficient to locate a "public space" in which the different sensibilities, networks, associations, committees and so on, could meet each other and discuss about the possible alternatives to the present world. The "social issue" is moving contradictorily towards the discovery of converging points between a material condition and moments of common initiatives which could be able to make a step ahead with respect to the modalities that we have known in the past.

Even if the Forum's "formula" and the thematic axis which characterize it is still significant, the building process is also important, and the interlace between these two aspects has become crucial. It is necessary to reconsider, during the Forum, the relationship between plenaries/seminars/thematic assemblies/social movements assembly, assigning a greater relief to the moments of aggregation and constitution of European networks around the different initiatives; it is also crucial the way in which the thematic merging process is qualified. The process which brought to the call for a second day of action of the migrants' movement - subscribed by tens of actors involved in their struggles, who met inside but also outside the ESF, in the autonomous spaces - is the best example of the way in which it should be possible to build up a political process on a European scale not only merging "similar issues", but around the assumption of common political contents and passwords.

The ESF has to preserve the aspect of the popular University without reducing itself to this. The centrality of seminars and thematic assemblies (i.e. war, precariety, migrants, common goods) should be posed also inside the meetings of the European Preparatory Assembly. Not reproducing there a little Forum, but deepening every time the contents - not only the organizing aspect - of single issues. Enlargement and inclusion are not only democratic tendencies - although necessary - but they also depend from the attitude to connect different political spaces and social times, trying to exceed the simple merging process. Social movements are strange animals, whose destiny is to spring up again without dying.

Tavolo Migranti dei Social Forum Italiani; Act Up-Paris, France; Amplitude-no one is illegal, Germany