The resistance is growing - and for the first time truly unified. A unity found in justice, dignity and empowerment of the masses. With new technologies bypassing barriers of space, time and economy, a wave of global struggles have found common cause in the global village. From the U.K. to the U.S. to Palestine to Mexico to India to Venezuela to Zambia, mass movements are engaging against the repression enforced by the monetary demands of elite institutions. People irrespective of national identity and economic status are united in fighting inequality, corruption, media distortion, unethical corporations, environmental devastation, neo-liberal economics, native repression, cultural destruction and the root causes of poverty, war and ill health.
The ESF
Attending the European Social Forum in October 2004 it was apparent the potential this movement had. Tens of thousands of people from across Europe listened to an array of high profile speakers talking on a variety of political, social and environmental issues. Hundreds of stalls distributed stacks of information on a range of different causes. Unfortunately the passion and enthusiasm wasn't backed up by direction or organisation. The third European Social Forum, a movement still in its infancy and accelerating rapidly, is in danger of alienating its key and future audience - the digital native bred on a diet of popular culture. An embrace of the populist mentality indoctrinated in this generation is essential in counteracting the corporate agendas benefiting from these very techniques. Any format that aspires to provoke political or social change must now engage in the culture of television and new technology, gloss and saturation.
The future
The monotonous, overcrowded and disorderly lectures, activist table stands and artwork need to be replaced by multi-screen presentations, high pace graphics and interactive games; live video link ups, celebrity and spectacle. The prospect of a well organised event exchanging information, ideas and progressive theories through interactive, hi-tech and exciting mediums would give the movement a dynamic that could truly inspire the social changes it requires.
« return.