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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>"Another World Is
Possible." This is the slogan of the World Social Forum. Since its first
meeting <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Brazil</st1:place></st1:country-region>, in
2001, the World Social Forum has become the largest gathering of
social movements in the world. The Social Forum is united in
its opposition to <em><i><font face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>neoliberalism </span></font></i></em>(i.e.
the dominant economic model that of free market, free trade, minimal
government, privatization, deregulation) and imperialism, and in their
commitment to building 'another world,' grounded in sustainability and social
justice. </span></font><font face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:
"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='text-indent:.5in'><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'> </span></font><font
face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>There have been
numerous regional social forums throughout the world, including one in <st1:City
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Boston</st1:place></st1:City> in 2004. </span></font><font
color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";
color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>We would like to invite you to come to an
open meeting to explore the idea of holding a <font color=navy><span
style='color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:2.0in;text-indent:.5in'><st1:place w:st="on"><st1:City
w:st="on"><strong><b><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'>Western</span></font></b></strong></st1:City><strong><b><font
color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";
color:navy'> <st1:State w:st="on">Mass.</st1:State></span></font></b></strong></st1:place><strong><b><font
color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";
color:navy'> Social Forum.</span></font></b></strong><font color=navy
face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy;font-weight:
bold'>When: Sunday March 12, 4:00-6:00</span></font></b><font color=navy
face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy;font-weight:
bold'>Where: 2nd Floor conference Room, (look for signs), Potpourri Mall</span></font></b><font
color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS";
color:navy'> <b><span style='font-weight:bold'>(across from Stop & Shop), <st1:address
w:st="on"><st1:Street w:st="on">King St.</st1:Street>, <st1:City w:st="on">Northampton</st1:City></st1:address></span></b><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>If you are interested, please read over the
WSF Charter of Principles copied<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>below. This will give you a good sense of
the points of unity, purpose, and<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>the process of the social forums.<span
class=apple-converted-space> </span><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>In solidarity,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span class=apple-converted-space><font size=3
face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'> </span></font></span><font
face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Emily Kawano (Center
for Popular Economics), Jo Comerford (Western Mass<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>AFSC) and <st1:PersonName w:st="on">Susan
Theberge</st1:PersonName> (SAGE)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>If you are interested, please read
over the WSF Charter of Principles copied below. This will give you a good
sense of the points of unity, purpose, and the process of the social
forums. </span></font><font face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>If you are interested in finding out more
about the WSF in general, check out the website: <a
href="http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu">http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu</a>=</span></font><font
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>Charter of Principles<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p><span class=noticiadata><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>08.06.2002</span></font></span><font
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<span class=noticiatitulo>World Social Forum Charter of Principles</span><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS"'>The committee of Brazilian
organizations that conceived of, and organized, the first World Social
Forum, held in Porto Alegre from January 25th to 30th, 2001, after
evaluating the results of that Forum and the expectations it raised,
consider it necessary and legitimate to draw up a Charter of Principles to
guide the continued pursuit of that initiative. While the principles
contained in this Charter - to be respected by all those who wish to take
part in the process and to organize new editions of the World Social Forum -
are a consolidation of the decisions that presided over the holding of the
Porto Alegre Forum and ensured its success, they extend the reach of those
decisions and define orientations that flow from their logic.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>1.</span></b> 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 Humanity and between it and the Earth.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>2.</span></b> The World Social Forum at <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Porto Alegre</st1:City></st1:place> was an
event localized in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed
at <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Porto Alegre</st1:place></st1:City>
that "another world is possible", it becomes a permanent process
of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events
supporting it.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>3.</span></b> The World Social Forum is a
world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have
an international dimension.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>4.</span></b> The alternatives proposed
at the World Social Forum 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, with the complicity of national governments. They are designed
to ensure that globalization in solidarity will prevail as a new stage in
world history. This will respect universal human rights, and those of all
citizens - men and women - of all nations and the environment and will rest
on democratic international systems and institutions at the service of
social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>5.</span></b> The World Social Forum
brings together and interlinks only organizations and movements of civil
society from all the countries in the world, but intends neither to be a
body representing world civil society.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>6.</span></b> The meetings of the World
Social Forum do not deliberate on behalf of the World Social Forum as a
body. No-one, therefore, will be authorized, on behalf of any of the
editions of the Forum, to express positions claiming to be those of all its
participants. The participants in the Forum shall not be called on to take
decisions as a body, whether by vote or acclamation, on declarations or
proposals for action that would commit all, or the majority, of them and
that propose to be taken as establishing positions of the Forum as a body.
It thus does not constitute a locus of power to be disputed by the participants
in its meetings, nor does it intend to constitute the only option for
interrelation and action by the organizations and movements that
participate in it.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>7.</span></b> Nonetheless, organizations
or groups of organizations that participate in the Forums meetings must be
assured the right, during such meetings, to deliberate on declarations or
actions they may decide on, whether singly or in coordination with other
participants. The World Social Forum undertakes to circulate such decisions
widely by the means at its disposal, without directing, hierarchizing,
censuring or restricting them, but as deliberations of the organizations or
groups of organizations that made the decisions.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>8.</span></b> The World Social Forum is a
plural, diversified, non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party
context that, in a decentralized fashion, interrelates organizations and
movements engaged in concrete action at levels from the local to the
international to built another world.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>9.</span></b> The World Social Forum will
always be a forum open to pluralism and to the diversity of activities and
ways of engaging of the organizations and movements that decide to
participate in it, 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. Government leaders and members of
legislatures who accept the commitments of this Charter may be invited to
participate in a personal capacity.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>10.</span></b> The World Social Forum is
opposed to all totalitarian and reductionist views of economy, development
and history and to the use of violence as a means of social control by the
State. It upholds respect for Human Rights, the practices of real
democracy, participatory democracy, peaceful relations, in equality and
solidarity, among people, ethnicities, genders and peoples, and condemns
all forms of domination and all subjection of one person by another.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>11.</span></b> As a forum for debate, the
World Social Forum is a movement of ideas that prompts reflection, and the
transparent circulation of the results of that reflection, on the
mechanisms and instruments of domination by capital, on means and actions
to resist and overcome that domination, and on the alternatives proposed to
solve the problems of exclusion and social inequality that the process of
capitalist globalization with its racist, sexist and environmentally
destructive dimensions is creating internationally and within countries.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>12.</span></b> As a framework for the
exchange of experiences, the World Social Forum encourages understanding
and mutual recognition among its participant organizations and movements,
and places special value on the exchange among them, particularly on all
that society is building to centre economic activity and political action
on meeting the needs of people and respecting nature, in the present and
for future generations.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>13.</span></b> As a context for
interrelations, the World Social Forum seeks to strengthen and create new
national and international links among organizations and movements of
society, that - in both public and private life - will increase the
capacity for non-violent social resistance to the process of dehumanization
the world is undergoing and to the violence used by the State, and
reinforce the humanizing measures being taken by the action of these
movements and organizations.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>14.</span></b> The World Social Forum is
a process that encourages its participant organizations and movements to
situate their actions, from the local level to the national level and
seeking active participation in international contexts, as issues of
planetary citizenship, and to introduce onto the global agenda the
change-inducing practices that they are experimenting in building a new
world in solidarity.<br>
<br>
<i><span style='font-style:italic'>Approved and adopted in São Paulo, on
April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the World Social Forum
Organi<font color=navy><span style='color:navy'>z</span></font>ing
Committee, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum International
Council on June 10, 2001. </span></i><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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