Dear IC comrades,

Unfortunately, we have no conditions of sending a delegate from CUT Brasil to the IC meeting in Parma.

However, that does not mean that we are not very mobilized for the WSF process and Nairobi. We are together with other Brazilian organizations looking for conditions to bring a large delegation of our country and of our organization to the World Social Forum in Kenya.
We are also dialoguing with other trade union organizations and social movements of various countries in order to organize activities during the WSF event.

As contribution for the IC meeting, in this message, I would like to comment 02 things:

1) About the methodology

I understand that the proposed “fourth day” is an advance in the way that is interesting for the WSF process.

What is missing only is adjusting the proposal in order to allow organizations and movements that wish to undertake also GENERAL meetings / plenaries / assemblies (that is, NOT LIMITED to one of those 9 areas around which the forum will be organized) IN THE FOURTH DAY (maybe on the second shift).

2) About the architecture and the WSF future

[Our comprehension is that in Parma we will “start” this discussion and that we will “finish” it in Nairobi IC meeting. In CUT we will deep it in a national meeting to be held next November. I would like only to suggest some ideas, taking advantage of the “Subsidy” [“inputs”], sent by the comrades from the Methodology commission, which raises some issues:

i) A proposal should interlink clearly the levels “world”, “regional or continental”, “national” and “thematic or by sector”. I do not believe that this is solved in the proposal sent (see below).

ii) It is increasing the perception that today there is no not anymore conditions (political and material ones) to continue with “world” events every year (or organized in a world scale, that end up being “global”, as the three polycentric events of 2006).

There is a disproportion between the effort (political, organizational, and financial) in the “WSF event” in relation with the actions of movements and campaigns. As the “WSF event” is not a end in itself, it is necessary to “re-balance” the relation among those components of the process.
The proposal for 2008 (forums arisen from the 09 aims/areas of WSF in Nairobi), as it is expressed in “Subsidy”/ “Inputs” document, can mean to re-edit the problem of 2006.

Exactly because of that, it can also mean a conflict with the “continental / regional processes (forums)”.

iii) It seemed very interesting to us the proposal made by comrades from Italy and of other countries of a WSF “global action day”.

Even if the limits of the proposal are not yet defined, the idea of innovating and making a “world WSF” radically different (accomplishing the idea of “thinking globally, while acting locally (but interlinked globally)”, could be a great step forward for the next “world” WSF (which in this way would happen in “everywhere”, not only in a specific place).

CONTRARY to what it thought sometimes, this is much more difficult than creating a national organizing committee in a country and, from the IC, following the organizational preparatives of a global WSF event. In order to arrive to that “moment”, it is necessary a lot of time and efforts of preparation, construction, dialogue etc.

Well, these are some of the ideas for the debate. Warm hugs for all!

Gustavo Codas

CUT Brazil