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    Sabina Leonelli – Forming civic consciousness: A participant’s view on the European Social Forum

    From the atmosphere of celebration in Florence to the relative inertia in Athens, Sabina Leonelli traces the decline of local participation in European Social Forum meetings.


    Upon traveling home from the First European Social Forum in November 2003, I started to reflect on my enthusiasm for what had just happened in Florence. What was it that made that meeting such an exceptional event? No doubt, it was the first initiative of this kind in Europe and much anxiety had surrounded its preparation, especially given the hostile media campaign fuelled by the Berlusconi government at the time. Enthusiasm had much to do with relief and astonishment at seeing how well, despite the organisational problems and the programme coming together at the last very moment, the event had been functioning. Yet, I reasoned, there were at least three substantial reasons for rejoicing that such a network was finally established in Europe. The first is the possibility of celebration. Activists working within the many different local realities spread across Europe have the possibility to come together and take courage and inspiration from like-minded people working on similar issues. As widely noted in the case of the World Social Forum, the feelings of solidarity and the energy gathered at such international meetings are not to be underestimated, especially given that local activism often involves solitary battles in hostile – or, worse, indifferent – contexts. The ESF functions as home to all its participants, irrespectively of race, ideology or gender: the energy, the joy, the music surrounding the event allow activists to find each other, acknowledge and value each other’s work, find motivation and hope for their future engagement.


    Above all, activists can share their common commitment to social justice, while at the same time beholding the (oh so many!) different forms taken by that commitment in specific contexts. And in fact, the ESF offers much more than the chance to celebrate activist engagement: it allows activists working in different countries to meet, compare their experiences and the realities in which they operate, come up with new ideas and approaches applicable both at the local level and at the institutional, international one. In short, the ESF allows taking effective resolutions: for instance, by establishing new, often transnational, networks, so as to enhance the visibility of individual projects and trigger a political response. The ESF Workshops are a particularly good instrument for doing this, as they allow individuals to work in small groups towards initiating, expanding or reviving practical initiatives. As witnessed in Athens 2006, these meetings should be treated as the core activity within the ESF: there is nothing more important, for the activists sent by their organisation (often at high costs) in order to participate to the ESF, than to have a space for lengthy discussions about their work and deliberations about how to act in the future. Local activists should use the ESF as an occasion to improve their understanding of their situation, ask for advice and possibly come up with concrete decisions about how to carry out, improve or modify their daily work. This is not as obvious as it may seem: as seen in Paris and London, the celebratory dimension of the ESF tends to prevaricate its function as a platform for resolutions. This is mostly due to uncertainty as to how to proceed: what kinds of decisions and projects can help the activist community in the long run? What should the relation be between social movements across Europe and between European movements and activism in other parts of the world? How to combine work on local realities with activism at the international level?


    The European Social Forum as an educational tool


    The crucial importance of these latter issues has been widely acknowledged and is sure to take centre stage in Athens as well as within this issue of ‘Re-public’. Here I therefore want to call attention to a third dimension of ESF activities, which I think is being neglected despite representing a very important service that the ESF could provide to activism at both the local and the international level. This is the function of the ESF as an educational tool for its participants as well as for the city and nation hosting the event. In Italy, the first ESF had enormous visibility. The city of Florence itself opened up completely to the Forum, by offering accommodation, participating en masse to the proceedings and shutting down entirely on the day of the final demonstration. Special train services were instituted for visitors throughout the country: and while many newspapers documented the event more as a cause of potential civil unrest than as an interesting happening, there were no media in the whole country that did not cover the preparation, development and conclusion of the forum. This, I think, is in itself an important result: all citizens were informed of the possibility to participate to the forum, go to sessions and learn about different realities, thoughts, ways to participate in civil society. Many people who did not previously engage in local activism came to the meetings. Most of them went home with a much broader perspective on the state of the world and on their rights and powers as citizens and human beings. Some of them even got involved: partially as a consequence of the engagement in the preparation of the meeting, and its successful conclusion, Italy now possesses hundreds of local forums, created in most large cities and several villages to bring together people wishing for social justice within their local reality.


    Decline of local involvement


    Rather than growing, this third dimension of the ESF has been in steady decline since Florence. In Paris, London and Athens even citizens of the host cities were unaware of the ESF, not to mention the French, English and Greek public: almost no mainstream media covered the development of the ESF, which meant that few of the inhabitants knew about it and, as a result, there was little participation from people who were not already heavily involved in the organisation of the event. The risk is to transform the ESF experience in a meeting of ‘experts’ with in-depth knowledge and experience in activism and social engagement, thus transforming an open forum into a closed, ‘in-crowd’ setting. There are various causes for this problem. One has to do with (in my opinion) bad choices of location for the ESF: choosing a capital, especially in nations such as France, England and Greece where most events take place there, means losing visibility and local support, as the ESF is assimilated by the city as yet another ‘big event’ among the scores hosted every year. Relying heavily on governmental funding has also some drawbacks, as it makes for a more organised, but less participated and grassroots, event. Most importantly, the importance of communicating and sharing experience with people not normally engaged in activism seems to be systematically undervalued by ESF participants. Of course the ESF is primarily a meeting of ‘experts’: after all, it is primarily an occasion for activists to come together and exchange their experiences and thoughts on how to engage in civil society. However, there should be no strict boundaries between people who are involved in social movements and people who are not directly active in that sphere, but are still self-conscious and active members of civil society with a wish to develop their political and social awareness. The ESF is and must remain an instrument for the formation of civic consciousness. Participative democracy needs to inclusive, not simply designating what is labeled as ‘social activism’.


    Let us remind ourselves of the first Principle declared in the Charter proposed by the WSF and endorsed by the ESF: ‘the World Social Forum is an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Mankind and between it and the Earth’. What I want to emphasise here is the first part of this statement: the social forum is an open meeting place where people come together not only to discuss how to act against neoliberalism, but also what it means to be opposed to neoliberalism. My hope for the future of social forums around the world is that, besides strengthening activists’ own commitment towards social justice and the efficiency with which they operate, these events act as platforms for exchanges between local activism and the rest of civil society (including institutions and the press). The success of the project started in Porto Alegre – a project that still feels like a dream come true to many of its participants, no matter how confused they are about how to carry it on – is due also to the openness, receptivity and enthusiasm displayed by Brazilians to the opportunities of information, exchange and education brought about by this event. Encouraging, rather than dismissing, this reflexive and didactic function should constitute a priority also for the next edition of the ESF.


    Further links


    European Social Forum: debating the challenges for its future


    Social Forums as Pedagogical Space


    Special issue: recent articles, social movements
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