1. With more than 130,000 registered participants and roughly 2.500 events, nobody can really overlook WSF activities. The official declarations may sound more radical than previous ones – but this doesn't necessarily reflect growing radicalism of the movements as a whole. But – for us - official declarations never were and still aren’t the main reason for evaluating the WSF. Furthermore it was our third time at a Brazilian WSF; we participated twice in Porto Alegre in 2003 and 2005, and now again in 2009. Each time we have participated it has been quite different - even with the starting point of accommodation. In 2003 we arrived late – and accepted an offer of empty rooms at the „I don't know how much stars“hotel in which DGB (German trade union federation) had it's headquarter; far away from people. In 2005, living in Brazil, we went by bus to Porto Alegre and slept on the floor of a public school – in the midst of hundreds of people from all over Brazil, from nearby Uruguay and Argentina. And then this time we were in a church unit with a lot of rank and file unionists from Brazil and some of the few African participants (Senegal, Kenya). Each time it was quite a different WSF. It was still quite a good space for networking depending on if you have some political content to network.
2. Just some short points about our (three of us) general impressions: Firstly the heavy presence of the Amazonian peoples and their struggles. This was planned and we got the impression that for them it worked well -as it seemed to be for some other important movements, but not for the labour movement, dominated by conservative unionism (social democratic or sometimes leftwing). Secondly there was a lot of fucking control. We had never seen this before. Without your expensive registration card it was difficult to attend (even if we met a lot of younger local people who „climbed the walls“). There was no real popular event for the locals and, behind the volunteers who controlled the entrances, there was even the bloody PM present. Instead of the former WSF discussions about participation of governments, there was a real omnipresence of PT currents and so, of course, the Brazilian government. There was no comment about commerce there and this became the norm. But it just leaves the question: does anybody really believe that another world is possible with the Friedrich Ebert Foundation's heavy influence?
3. The “World of Labour” tent, with all but two Brazilian union federations –because of the new Brazilian union law (that, frankly speaking, increases financial resources) there is an ever growing number of federations – it seemed to us was a center of impotence. They – with the CUT at the forefront –presented themselves as a real part of ITUC, or, as German top representatives would say „in favour of a humanized market economy“...So the main discussions there, were about the balance of Lula-Government and the coming 2010 presidential elections – the first ones without Lula. We can't criticize Lula for not introducing socialism: neither did he promise it in the PT campaign, nor did the big majority of his voters want it. But criticism does have to be directed at basic steps: foreign debt (paid back with severe social cuts), land reform (nothing substantial) and democratic measures (for example dissolving the Military Police – not even mentioned). But, of course, introducing „Bolsa Familia“ meant something like a guaranteed basic income, helped a lot of people - and guaranteed his reelection. The Government supporting CUT, however, lost the role of being the pole of social protest and movement a long time ago and is mainly representative of a certain faction of society, industrial workers. It has already become weak at the level of time-contracts and sub-contracted workers; it does nothing about the informal sector and so on and on. All this could be seen or heard at the WSF tent.
4.Our workshop on Friday, 30th at 8.30 am was attended by about 55 persons– mainly Brazilians; the few Europeans, as usual, did not have enough patience to wait for one hour and go to another site to attend it, after we found our original classroom closed and neither a key nor the talent to open the doors. Argentina, Venezuela and Mexico were other countries represented. It became clear that it was not the prominent speakers – a coordinator of the continental services union federation UNI, a former president of CUT and a humble speaker from LabourNet Germany, but the topic that attracted a relatively good number of participants: „Democratization instead of privatization“, the flyer (based on our paper that we had also in Portuguese, which they want to publish) that our organizing partners produced (the FISENGE, CUT's federation of engineers unions and the Peoples Brigades, which have their origin in young people’s squatters organizations) made it quite clear, that it was our aim to discuss another type of struggle against privatization, or better: a distinct current within the movement against privatization . When privatization means less democracy, more precarious working conditions and the basic needs of the human being dependent on money, the alternative can not be to leave things as they are, or were. At least the reactions of the participants – many of them inviting LabourNet to do a speakers tour in the weeks following the WSF (thus we cancelled planned holidays) - show a certain proof of interest. In contrast to the CUT positions ours, combining self-empowerment to represent workers and the population in the direction of public enterprises, institutions etc, and with a clearly different meaning of decent work - meaning both, working conditions and quality services – found a lot of support. Even what we wanted to discuss, if it would be of any sense to organize a small network with the orientation of democratic self-empowerment, for the progressive wing of the engineers unions and for the peoples brigades was not a topic. They simply wanted to discuss how to do and what to do with it. People from the solidarity economy, who also joined our discussions, provided example of some concrete steps: where occupations of 400 or 500 families are ongoing, they have built up some tile manufacturing, exchanging their products with MST Cooperatives and their cultivations, and building an alliance with workers and engineers from power plants, which are being privatized now.
5. So we have real partners in Brazil, Mali's Cocidirail have declared interest in participating and we’ve had a series of discussions with activists from other countries. Together with some German groups, two or three countries may already be a starting point for a small network. And we discussed a lot about how to make such a network useful for everybody. I think that this is a general result for future work at such events like the WSF: Do not restrict yourself to just discussing possibilities. Discuss concrete political steps or programmes.
Proofread by Rachel.
Footnote:
1) Bolsa Familia
This is something like a guaranteed basic income, that the government of president Lula’s Workers Party (PT) introduced: For each child who goes to school the family receives about 150 Reais which is approximately 50 Euros (~USD70). The basic salary is on 450 Reais and there are a lot of families with no (formal) income but several children (in this generation far less than before) - so this was basic for the election victories of PT by the poor (not exactly the industrial workers, they are more middle class).
2) Cocidirail
Cocidirail is a citizens committee, organized by the labour union of the railway people with the political aim to "re-statize railway under peoples’ control" - one of our strongest partners in our transnational activities around "democratize instead of privatize".