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This page is still in draft form, but anyone wanting to contribute to this effort is welcome at the meetings. Email for details. -- TedErnst |
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The Chicago Social Forum will take place on Jan 31 / Feb 1, 2004. These pages are to help organize the event. Some the the organizing may take place in open space, but Notes or Proceedings or Minutes will be posted here in some format no matter what. Please feel free to contribute comments on any of these documents. All are welcome! Next organizing meeting is Tues Sept 9th, 2003 at 6:30 p.m. at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition at 930 East 50th Steet at Drexel. This page is just getting started, but anyone wanting to contribute to this effort is welcome to work here or at the meetings. -- TedErnst Here are the [WorldSocialForum:CharterOfPrinciples] and /CharterOfPrinciples |
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[World Social Forum] website (Jan 04 in India) |
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* /MeetingMinutes23Jul03 * /MeetingNotes06Aug03 * /MeetingNotes09Sep03 From: Mary Zerkel [praxisafsc@igc.org] Wed 08/27/2003 2:33 PM hi folks, i've got a draft of a brochure ready, just having trouble converting it to PDF (hopefully by the end of the week) meanwhile, i've pared down jerry's excellent text and the WSF principles a little bit and submit it below for comments -- please send comments asap so that i can get everyone a brochure to start outreach What is a Social Forum? * An open meeting place that brings together a wide-variety of people from a wide variety of struggles’ for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, and interlinking for effective action! We are inspired by the highly successful World Social Forum, which has been held for three years in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This movement of movements has helped to develop global actions such as the international march against the war on February 15th, 2003 as well as spawning local and regional social forums all over the world. * A convergence of different communities including labor, students, people of color, women, immigrantís rights groups, community organizations, cultural organizations, artists, activists and many others. Our first Chicago Social Forum is currently scheduled to take place the weekend of Jan 31st and February 1st, 2004. We encourage you to help us make this gathering of peoples like no other event in Chicago, drawing together the broadest, most diverse array of communities possible. * A process of dialogue in which all these various communities can come together and explore common ground and common struggle. Building the event itself is only one part of this ongoing dialogue. Of particular importance to the social forum process is the linking of local struggles with global concerns and creating a space for a plurality of voices in envisioning ways to overcome barriers on both the local and the global level. Your voice is an integral part of the mosaic that makes up the Chicago community and we encourage you to share with us your own perspective. We hope you will join us not only to build this unique event but also to be part of the process of building a vision of another Chicago. Highlights from the World Social Forum Charter of Principles The Chicago Social Forum is based upon and has agreed to abide by the Charter Principles that guide the World Social Forum. For the complete text of the Charter see http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br * The World Social Forum (WSF)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 people that are opposed to corporate globalization and economic and political structures that harm poor and working people and the environment. * The WSF process is a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives to the current structures we oppose. * The WSF is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension. * The alternatives proposed at the WSF stand in opposition to a process of globalization commanded by the large multinational corporations and by the governments and international institutions at the service of those corporations’ interests. Instead, the WSF alternatives respect universal human rights, social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples. * The WSF will always be open to pluralism and to the diversity of activities as well as the diversity of genders, ethnicities, cultures, generations and physical capacities, providing they abide by this Charter of Principles. Neither party representations nor military organizations shall participate in the Forum. * The WSF is a process that encourages its participant organizations and movements to situate their actions for change, both locally and globally, as issues of planetary citizenship. |
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Here is my (JerryMead?) proposed intro text for our brochure to proceed the WSF Charter of Prinicipals. What do you think. Please post your comments to the list... |
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Here is my (JerryMead?) proposed intro text for our brochure to precede the WSF Charter of Principles. What do you think? Please post your comments to the list... |
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The remainder of this brochure contains the World Social Forum Charter of Principals established at the First World Social Forum in Brazil in 2001. This document is the basis of what we are trying to build here in Chicago and we highly encourage you to read it. |
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The remainder of this brochure contains the World Social Forum Charter of Principals established at the First World Social Forum in Brazil in 2001. This document is the basis of what we are trying to build here in Chicago and we highly encourage you to read it. |
-----Original Message----- Notes from Chicago Social Forum Meeting 7/23 We discussed the charter principles of the World Social Forum (as summarized by Hari) and decided that we agreed with them. We then moved on to a discussion of how to proceed as a group and when to hold various events. * We decided to hold the Chicago Social Forum event on January 31st and Feb. 1st of 2004. We will look into having a pre-event that would be a satellite link with the WSF in India. * We talked about having meetings leading up to this event that will bring people together around certain subjects for dialogue. These meetings might be hosted by various groups at different locations around the city to help make contact with different communities. In these meetings we will follow a basic format of one hour of dialogue around a theme or question followed by a business meeting to organize the CSF -- people who come to the first part of the meeting are welcomed to stay and participate or they can leave if they want. * Jerry and Mary are going to work on a brochure that describes the CSF and includes some of the WSF charter principles, that can be used for outreach. September Event How do global forces affect your local community? How does your work connect to the work of other local communities around the world? Tasks: This meeting will be hosted by Ted at the Chicago Humanists space, where those who have already been involved in the Chicago Social Forum process will come together. In this meeting we will take at look at Open Space Technology and report back on our outreach calls, and hopefully take a look at a draft brochure. -----Original Message----- Recently I heard about the World Social Forums that have been in Porto Alegre Brazil the past few years. I'm not totally clear on the concept yet, but it seems that it simply opening a space for people from all over the world to come together and share their own work and make connections (the idea is to oppose neo-liberalism and support universal human rights, etc). Anyone can propose a workshop, seminar, forum, whatever, during the week-long event and as long as it gets in on time, the organizers set the time and place and each thing happens. I've heard there were 1700 workshops at the last one (100,000 participants total). Anyway, there's a group that's been organizing for a Chicago Social Forum in some form since January. Until tonight they hadn't picked a date and didn't seem to have even choosen how they (the planning group or whatever) wanted to operate. I suggested we simply pick a date and then convene OST meetings how ever often we think is necessary between now and the event so that we'd be living in CSF space (presumably getting bigger and bigger if people liked the idea) up until the big "event" and then we could simply continue afterwards if we wanted to. One person in the group talked about experiencing open space and seeing it be VERY powerful when the group in question has passion (or some such word) like his church congregation doing their yearly planning, but how it doesn't work if the group doesn't care enough about the issue and it just falls apart. Pretty good explanation, no? Anyway, I didn't push it and the group was too scared to really go that direction, but they did like the concept of living in the type of environment we're trying to create. When we came to the end and they were setting up meeting dates and topics they decided to make a big recruiting push for a big early sepember meeting with a theme of connecting local to global (not open space, I'm afraid), but also decided waiting until then for another meeting might prove a momentum-killer. A suggestion was floated to not invite new people, but to have "just us" for the next one. I stepped in at this point to suggest OST again as it doesn't take any planning time and people would get a chance to see how they like it. The group accepted and off we go! It seems the "big event" will happen in January. I'll keep you posted.
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[World Social Forum] website (Jan 04 in India) |
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Humanize the Earth! http://www.chicagohumanist.org http://www.tedernst.com |
Next organizing meeting is Tues Sept 9th, 2003 at 6:30 p.m. at Rainbow/PUSH Coalition at 930 East 50th Steet at Drexel.
This page is just getting started, but anyone wanting to contribute to this effort is welcome to work here or at the meetings. -- TedErnst
Here are the [WorldSocialForum:CharterOfPrinciples] and /CharterOfPrinciples
hi folks, i've got a draft of a brochure ready, just having trouble converting it to PDF (hopefully by the end of the week) meanwhile, i've pared down jerry's excellent text and the WSF principles a little bit and submit it below for comments -- please send comments asap so that i can get everyone a brochure to start outreach
What is a Social Forum?
We hope you will join us not only to build this unique event but also to be part of the process of building a vision of another Chicago.
Highlights from the World Social Forum Charter of Principles
The Chicago Social Forum is based upon and has agreed to abide by the Charter Principles that guide the World Social Forum. For the complete text of the Charter see http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br
When you look around your community what do you see: job loss, a lack of affordable housing, a public education system in crisis, cuts in public transportation, a growing prison industrial complex, privatization of public services, union busting, racism, anti-immigrant bashing, serious attacks on civil liberties, cuts in social services, militarism, environmental degradation, pollution, alienation and other problems? Join those of us who believe that.
Another Chicago is Possible!
A Call for Participation:
Become part of the process of seeking and building alternatives to the struggles in our community & help to develop The Chicago Social Forum.
What is a Social Forum? An open meeting place 'that brings together a wide-variety of people from a wide variety of struggles' for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, and interlinking for effective action! We are inspired by the highly successful World Social Forum, which has been held for three years in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This movement of movements has helped to develop global actions such as the international march against the war on February 15th, 2003 as well as spawning local and regional social forums all over the world.
A Social Forum is an event, a convergence of different communities including labor, students, people of color, women, immigrant's rights groups, community organizations, cultural organizations, artists, activists and many others. Our first Social Forum is currently scheduled to take place the weekend of Jan 31st and February 1st, 2004. We encourage you to help us make this gathering of peoples like no other event in Chicago, drawing together the broadest, most diverse array of communities possible.
But a Social Forum is more than one event. It is also a process. A process of dialogue in which all these various communities can come together and explore common ground and common struggle. Building the event itself is only one part of this ongoing dialogue. As stated in the World Social Forum Charter of Principals The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that "another world is possible", it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it. We build the Social Forum in Chicago with that same spirit. Of particular importance to the social forum process is the linking of local struggles with global concerns and creating a space for a plurality of voices in envisioning ways to overcome barriers on both the local and the global level. Your voice is an integral part of the mosaic that makes up the Chicago community and we encourage you to share with us your own perspective.
We hope you will join us not only to build this unique event but also to be part of the process of building a vision of another Chicago.
The remainder of this brochure contains the World Social Forum Charter of Principals established at the First World Social Forum in Brazil in 2001. This document is the basis of what we are trying to build here in Chicago and we highly encourage you to read it.
More information about the World Social Forum and other regional forums can be found at the following websites: