Thousands to Meet in Montreal for World Social Forum
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- Published on Tuesday, 02 August 2016 22:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1288 .... August 3, 2016
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Thousands to Meet in Montreal for World Social Forum
Pierre Beaudet
Thousands of people from over 95 countries are expected to gather in Montreal on August 9-14 for a social movement summit called the World Social Forum (WSF). Participants will spend a week attending a great variety of workshops, lectures and cultural events -- more than 1200 in total. Famed author Naomi Klein will be giving two talks that are sure to be among the highlights of this unique event, which is designed to allow social activists and scholars to grapple with a host of economic, social, environmental and cultural questions facing the contemporary world. And Klein is just one of a raft of influential speakers who will be engaging audiences at the WSF. The... Forum will unfold throughout downtown Montreal at UQAM, Concordia and McGill as well as in many parks and other venues outside the universities.
An annual event that usually takes place in the developing world, the WSF is being held in Montreal following a decision made at last year's event in Tunis to bring the Forum north, to a city which has been the site of striking social and political creativity over the last decade, with such movements as Quebec's Maple Spring in 2012.
The WSF originated in 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, as a response to policies designed to accelerate globalization, a process seen by corporate leaders and governments as well as powerful institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF as the recipe for prosperity. NGOs and social movements from Brazil and from abroad gathered to examine the impact of globalization on the lives of working people and the poor and discuss how to alter globalization to redress the fundamental problems of inequality, environmental degradation and lack of democracy.
