New Reports from the World Social Forum-Nairobi [24-25 January, 2007]

[These are the latest reports from two folks from the agricultural US Midwest who are delegates at the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya. The reports are done quickly and show it, but that gives a real flavor of things so editing and rewriting is minimal. Online communication with Nairobi is shaky, but we can try to get them questions if readers submit them in the comments section.

Note: Additional material by the other delegate has been added to the first two reports from the Nairobi World Social forum, here and here. ]

24 January

I'm learning some, not a lot but something, about Africa.

One theme seems to be relatively constant among people we have talked with, both at the WSF and on the street in Nairobi. The governments do not serve the people. A Black bourgeoisie, or elite, replaced the white colonialists, and ran neo-colonial regimes, in every case. The only country/leader we have heard people talk about in a different way has been Kenneth Kuanda of Zambia. He addressed the Opening Ceremony of the World Social Forum, and in our delegation meeting that night, a North American questioned why--wasn't he neo-colonialist too? The African women present from Uganda and Kenya passionately explained that, to Africans, he had at least accomplished a stable government and that he allowed the government reins to be passed from himself to a predecessor by losing an election--two things they are very uncommon in Africa. Their view was that, without some level of stability and democracy, it is even more difficult to solve the bigger economic and social issues.

When I ask people "What happened to the liberation movements?" they say that "they turned into governments," and turned on the people. It appears that the percentage of the populations actually engaged in, or transformed by, the liberation movements was much smaller than I realized. There is a higher level of consciousness among the people of southern Africa, at least based on the people we met from South African and Mozambique as compared to the Kenyans and Ugandans. The Kenyans and Ugandans we are traveling with remind us of African-Americans in the pre-Civil Rights era South. They are self-effacing and subservient too much of the time, especially in relation to whites. We've actually discussed this with a couple of the Kenyan women, and they agree that there was no real cultural revolution among the grassroots people during the overthrow of colonialism, and that many, many vestiges of colonialist culture and practices have remained.

There is also, as among African Americans in the United States, a generation gap. One of the Kenyan activists in our delegation said that her parents were probably aware of Amilcar Cabral, but she and her siblings were not. Everyone in our delegation was impressed with the high percentage of youth that were involved in the WSF, especially from Africa, but also from around the world. I had a good conversation with two 20-year-olds, a woman and a man, from Nairobi, during the lead-up to the march and protest against EPAs, "EconomicPartnership Agreements" between African nations and the European Union. They were part of a large delegation of all kinds of people, including but not only young people, wearing red t-shirts proclaiming "Stop, Think, Resist (EPAs)!" Limited Internet access has prevented me from checking out their website, but I will do so later. These two young people said they were part of a youth organization called ACORD (the R and D stand for Research and Development). They seemed very knowledgeable about the neo-liberal trade regime, structural adjustment, debt, etc. The mission of their NGO is to educate young people on neo-liberalism, though I was unable to get a clear understanding of methods. They said they had 115 youth volunteers and 35 staff, with an office in a building in downtown Nairobi, in an area where I was told many government buildings are located. They seemed eager to learn about Amilcar Cabral and the liberation movements from the '60s when I talked with them about that, writing down his name, and exchanging e-mails with me so we could pursue the discussion further.

I focused on Cabral in conversations because his writing on nation-building in the context of countries created not by the Africans but by the European colonialists was important, years ago, in my own coming to agree that there is an African American nation, despite the dispersion and other problems related to the classic criteria for a nation. I believe these writings and experiences might still be very relevant to African movement builders, as well as to India and other similar places where there are large numbers of separate tribes or indigenous groups, different languages, etc., who have been forced together into a common socio-political state structure that now must be challenged and overthrown because it is supporting neocolonialism.

There did appear to be some effort during the WSF to highlight and teach revolutionary African thinkers. Tents were named Amilcar Cabral, Franz Fanon, etc, and there were workshops that I did not get to attend on Franz Fanon. I do not remember seeing mention of Nkrumah, though there may have been. As part of the overall positive effort to "gender the WSF," there were also tents and workshops about some African women revolutionaries that I do not know and did not get the chance to learn about, but should do so in the near future.

I believe I will learn a lot more, at least about Kenya and Uganda, during the second part of this trip.

25 January

A few more highlights from the WSF:

Poor Kenyans continued to protest the cost of the WSF, and as they got inside, eventually for free, also the costs of the food. The main food tent just inside the main gate was run by a hotel corporation owned by the Kenyan Minister of the Interior, who had been a torturer during colonial rule and remains a significant repressive force. Costs of food and beverages were more than twice the norm for comparable offerings. By the morning of January 24, a large group overran this tent, "nationalized and socialized" it, turning the food over to poor people and children. The Peoples Parliament of Kenya held the Poor Peoples' Social Forum in a park in downtown Nairobi, and sent an eloquent spokesperson to the Social Movement Assembly to present their resolutions--a good platform against neo-liberalism. But you probably already know this from the more mainstream press, and we did not manage to learn where this assembly was being held and check it out.

The WSF 2007 leadership, speaking from the mikes during the Assembly of the Social Movements, spoke about how NGOs are frequently conduits of neo-liberalism from below. Samir Amin said we need to go on the offensive, not just resist in defense against imperialism. The Peoples' Settlement Network from the slums of Nairobi said the movement needs to place an end to corruption as a central plank in our platform.

The IVth Social Forum on Sexual Diversity met throughout this WSF, and many people, including the Kenyans who are part of our delegation, made much note of this movement, including the number of openly gay WSF participants, as expressing great possibilities for eventually challenging patriarchy and authoritarianism. Their official statement called on all social movements to struggle to decriminalize sexual conduct in all countries, and committed to organizing the LGBTQ communities to participate in future actions and activities of the WSF.

The Labor Assembly proclaimed "Workers need the social movements, the social movements need the workers!" They determined to create a permanent international network for a different international economy that would consist of both trade unions and social movements. The main players in this assembly were the Italian and French labor movements (at least some part of them), the Brazilian CUT, and also the NTUI from India. This movement would focus on both formal and informal workers, men and women, etc.

I do believe that the US Social Forum may offer a good opportunity for revolutionaries within US labor to organize significant activities bringing together, at a minimum, some of the unions with the workers' centers and other manifestations of organization among the 90% of workers who are not in unions. And possibly to make some inroads in the US on this whole idea that workers need the social movements and vice versa.

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Report from the World Social Forum-Nairobi [23 January, 2007]

[This is the second in what Fire on the Mountain hopes will be several reports from two folks from the agricultural US Midwest who are delegates at the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya. The first report is here. The reports are done quickly and show it, but that gives a real flavor of things, so I am not editing or rewriting them even though the folks there requested it. Online communication with Nairobi is shaky, but we can try to get them questions if readers submit them in the comments section.]

ADDTIONAL REPORTING [23 JANUARY, 2007]

Today was a good day, this morning we went to the La Via Compasina conference and heard farmers from all over the Global South speaking about the oppression that is happening to farmers everywhere. Person after person stood and spoke about the struggles that was happening in their communities, it sounded like the same struggles happening everywhere for women, small farmers and landless people. The agenda of the capitalist, coperations, some governmental agencies, the world bank, international monetary funds and the wto agenda is to smother the small farmers and instill the food system of the capitalist agenda, they will not leave any food security for any people the world except for the rich.

GGJ had a workshop where several speakers lifted up 5 types of work that is going on in the US, Project South, Southwest Workers Union, USAS, Malcom X, Southwest Organizing Project, I am sure their mission statements can be found on the web for details of their work. Then we broke up into small groups, I choose racism and S. went to Labor, I think. I immediately raised white skin privilege, even though the question was framed: Can we get rid of racism in a capitalism world system (or close to that)

ORIGINAL POST [23 JANUARY]

We understand that maybe 46,000 people initially registered for the WSF in Nairobi, but not all paid, so there may be closer to 40,000 in attendance? Some Kenyans have been protesting the cost that keeps out some of the poor the WSF is supposed to be all about. On the second day, one group of them got hooked up with some South Africans, who huddled with them, and then came out as a group, singing liberation songs, and walked right on through the gates, catching the police by surprise.

The Kenyan police presence throughout the WSF has been very weird. There have also been people inside the WSF protesting the cost of the food from the vendors inside. Reports, not confirmed in the local press, are that some people even got arrested for crashing the gates, or disrupting the food courts. The organizers of the WSF say they have to charge something to pay all the expenses because they had no government support and little private support, compared with previous WSFs.

There is definitely a "market" atmosphere here, with many of the NGOs selling items, as well as providing information, at their booths. Makes good fundraising sense, but the whole structure is just not as conducive to political learning and conversation as I had hoped.

There are LOTS of Africans here, at least a majority, maybe 2/3 or 3/4 of those present. And there are LOTS of workshops and booths where most of the Africans present are participating in programs organized by relatively prosperous NGOs. The ones I have seen tend to feature various African communities making cultural and informational presentations demonstrating their plight due to the rulers, the climatic conditions, the poverty, etc, etc, etc. Combined with general appeals for support, and in some cases promotion of campaigns against this or that intrusion of capital or for this or that reform.

My hope is that the Africans are developing some horizontal relationships, and that there are more revolutionaries here than just the handful of South Africans (and some other La Via Campesina-affiliated peasants from Mozambique) that I have met so far. But that's not clear.

La Via Campesina (LVC) launched an African front here yesterday in its global campaign for agrarian reform. It had already been launched Latin America, and will be launched in Asia later this year. Over 100 African peasants participated in this launch, maybe 12 of them spoke from the platform throughout the day, regarding the struggles for land reform on this continent.

There is a MAJOR women's rights component to the struggle for land reform and the agrarian struggle in Africa. For the most part, despite constitutions that may declare otherwise, under customary laws and actual practices, the men own the land and control the product, while the women do most of the work. So many of the African farmer activists are women, organizing and demanding women's rights as well as land rights.

I was able to make a small contribution when the facilitator of one session posed the question: How do we tie together all this issues and struggles? Imperialism and corporate control of agriculture? Dumping? Land reform? Credit? Women's rights? I weighed in more or less as follows:

They do call it MOTHER Earth, after all. There is a big connection in human history between the rise of patriarchy, private property (many peasants believe the land should be a common good), and the whole concept of man's domination over nature - that's mother nature, women. If we are to build a movement that successfully challenges imperialism, authoritarianism, and efforts to dominate nature in a way that is going to end the planet if we don't change it, then feminism must be one of the hearts of that movement. I truly believe there is a feminist cultural component that is essential to our movement.

And most of La Via Campesina's practices really have that, especially the Misticas, which come from the women and the peasant movements of Latin America. Every meeting is opened and closed with some sort of Mistica, this time with indigenous maize seeds from Chiapas. With a lighted candle standing in the seeds, representing the first light of humanity emanating from the continent Africa, the motherland of humanity. An Asian woman was handed a candle, it was lit from the mother candle, and she walked to the east. A European woman lit her candle from the mother candle and walked to the north. A Latina woman lit her candle and walked to the west. And they came back together in solidarity.

On the other hand, too many of the men with La Via Campesina, and myself as well until I realized what was happening, left the session for too much of the time that some of the women were presenting. Don't get me wrong. There were women in leadership roles the whole session, but a portion of the session focused solely on women's rights issues, and that's when too many of the men did leave.

We have been able to hook up several more Kenyan farmers, both women just getting into farming at the basic community level, as well as Kenyan coffee growers, who are meeting with LVC this morning as I write. LVC, hopefully including the Kenyan farmers and some of our delegation, are joining with Kenyans organized by Oxfam in a protest march to the European Commission headquarters here in Nairobi. We will be protesting the EPAs, Economic Partnership Agreements, which are European free trade deals with African countries. We'll join them and send more later.

The Grassroots Global Justice workshop "Yes, There Is a Movement in the Belly of the Beast" was good. Only a handful of non-US folks participated, but they included a revolutionary from South Africa that I had a short conversation with. He had been part of the ANC more many years, in exile, in the underground, etc., and was very disillusioned with the government's direction. He is now part of "the social movements" that are challenging the government. He himself is clearly a revolutionary socialist. I had hoped to have a more in-depth conversation after the workshop but that did not happen. They are challenging the SACP to break more with ANC but are not yet successful in that regard.

Grassroots Global Justice presentations were made by Jobs with Justice on labor, LIFF (Miami Workers Center) and Tenants & Workers United on economic justice, Asians for Environmental Justice out of Oakland on environmental justice, Project South and a young woman from Malcolm X Grassroots on racial justice, and youth from Southwest Organizing Project and from USAS. There were small group discussions and report backs on what the WSF means to our struggles. During those discussions, there were some challenges raised around the need for more direct revolutionary involvement in the process to counter the domination of the NGOs.

It's not enough to talk about another world being possible unless we also talk about what the world must be like in order to be sure it is a better world. And also, strategies to get there. Hopefully, the US Social Forum in Atlanta this June can have a little more of that. Grassroots Global Justice is inviting organizations and grassroots movements to join in the planning of the USSF by constituency/theme and by region. Hopefully, we can help strengthen the presence of the movements against patriarchy, including LGBTQ, and the rural/farm and food movements, as well as labor and oppressed nationalities.

UPDATE:

For more insight on the upcoming US Social Forum (Atlanta, June) check out Badili Jones article here.

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Report from the World Social Forum-Nairobi [21 January, 2007]

[This is an initial report from two folks from the agricultural US Midwest who are delegates attending the 2007 World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya. If they flag in reporting over the next few days, Fire on the Mountain will post some material they wrote on the plane from NYC to Nairobi with background on their participation.]

ADDITIONAL REPORTING [21 JANUARY]

Hello, this is A. sharing my experiences in Nairobi, Kenya and at the World Social Forum.

Yesterday was a bit confusing--we had a hard time finding the La Via Compasina tent and getting a program but finally we did. We ended up being really tired because of the walking around, but it was wonderful in another way seeing all the people from around the world and lots of Black participation. There were over 1200 workshops being presented on any given day, a little overwhelming of course. My strategy was to stick to food sovereignty, small farmer and landless related workshop, mostly go with the La Via Compasina program and to try anc peek in on Grassroots Global Justice, and the US Social Forum.

Ag missions held a workshop on 1/21 on strategies for food soveriengty , and it went really well. S gave an excellent presentation, outlining the history of National Family Farm Coalition and Missouri Rural Crisis Center, highlighting some of their victories and strategies.

I got my hair twisted by some young Kenyan friends I met here in Narobi, Diana Kamidi, Pemimah Adeyo, Abigael Kigasha and Monica Yhienma. Diana comes from a dairy farm family, and does varies things, including braiding hair to make money. I have collected their contact information for further communication. One of the young ladies had a degree in nutrition but she said her expertise was dairy farming, her parents owned a dairy farm so she was interested in what we were doing here and would like to come to the US to teach Swahili. I think I will invite them to the GGJ reception tonight.


ORIGINAL POST [21 JANUARY]

A short post.

There are not nearly as many people, or as much energy, as in previous WSFs. A very wide diversity of people, of course, but generally dominated by NGOs and various forms of reformist politics. The only socialism I've run across so far was the "Socialism from Below" group, a Trotskyist group that had some people here. I attended briefly a session on "Socialism in the 21st Century" in the Amilcar Cabral space. Given my significant appreciation of Cabral from back in my study days, I was very disappointed to hear nothing but very superficial talk about the working class, socialism, communism, what they are, the fact they to get there we need an international revolutionary organization, but NOTHING about how to get there. Mainly the Trotskyist group was represented. There were about 29 people there, and only two women, neither of whom spoke.

The delegation from La Via Campesina (LVC), however, is kickass. We finally found their tent and hooked up the Kenyan and Ugandan peasants who are part of our delegation with them. They immediately welcomed the Kenyan farmers into their Action Planning meeting (one of 3 units at work during the WSF), which they hoped to have a focus on Kenyan farmers. It was an interesting dynamic, in that the Kenyans are fairly isolated from farmers in the rest of Kenya, as well as from revolutionary, activist politics. The Kenyans did come forward with some ideas for an action, but tended to be cautious about what can we pull together by Friday, whereas the LVC activists are quite experienced in knowing how to reach out and make things happen even in new territory.

The Kenyans and Ugandans did return for the LVC delegation meeting at the end of the day today, though they had nothing to say, but it was a good sign they returned. LVC meetings are always translated into English, Spanish, and French, plus today, special translation to one person from Indonesia and another in an African dialect. The LVC delegation is about 30 people plus another 30, including our group of about 10, joined in the meeting. Farmers from several African countries, though previously no Kenyans. From Europe, especially France. From Latin America. From Indonesia and Nepal. From the US. The Brazilians brought in the Minister for Racial Equality from the Lula government who spoke about their 0f hunger policy and the new efforts at racial equality. Very impressive to see a woman Minister of Racial Equality speak, and then be thanked and acknowledged by the woman leader of LVC.

Two other short tidbits for now:

I ran into some people from, I believe it was, GWIU (General Workers Independent Union), or something like that, from South Africa. Their t-shirts proclaiming that democratic, worker-controlled unions make workers STRONG caused me to stop and talk with them. They had broken from COSATU some years back, but claim they are now 15,000 strong and in negotiations to rejoin COSATU. Anyone else know about them?

The Kenyan Government Workers union delegation talked with us for some time. One leader, in particular, talked about trying to run for parliament. He would represent the poorest slums in Africa, but said he had not yet been able to convince voters there that he, a worker, could represent them better than the incumbent who has never been poor and lives miles away in the rich man's zone in Nairobi. He said the people are overwhelmingly focused on "can you give me some money or some food", in one form or another, which he cannot do but the incumbent can do. Until people get at least two meals a day, it's hard to get them to vote using the brain rather than the stomach, he said. He hoped to eventually turn this around by working with young people to develop a generation that could use their brains.

Too tired to do more now.

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