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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'>Dear Friends, <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'>You are warmly
invited to attend a gathering to plan our Western MA Social Forum. We need
your ideas and energy. Please join us at ARISE this Friday evening. We hope to
see you there!<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'>Susan, for the
planning committee<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 color=navy face="Comic Sans MS"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Comic Sans MS";color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=4 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:13.5pt;font-weight:bold'>What: Building a <st1:place w:st="on">W.
Mass.</st1:place> Social Forum - Potluck!<br>
When: Friday May 12, 5:30-8:00</span></font></b> <br>
<b><font size=4><span style='font-size:13.5pt;font-weight:bold'>Where: Arise
for Social Justice, <st1:address w:st="on"><st1:Street w:st="on">94 Rifle
Street</st1:Street>, <st1:City w:st="on">Springfield</st1:City></st1:address><br>
<br>
</span></font></b><font size=4><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>"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 <i><span
style='font-style:italic'>neoliberalism </span></i>(ie. 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.<br>
<br>
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. If you are interested in the idea of having a Social Forum in <st1:place
w:st="on">W. Massachusetts</st1:place> please join us.<br>
<br>
Background information follows about Social Forums and the WMA process to date.<br>
<br>
If you are interested in finding out more about the WSF in general, check out
the website: </span></font><a
href="http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu"
eudora=autourl><font size=4><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu</span></font></a><font
size=4><span style='font-size:13.5pt'>=</span></font><o:p></o:p></p>
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12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>For more information, contact:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Emily Kawano: 413.545.0743<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:PersonName w:st="on"><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>Susan Theberge</span></font></st1:PersonName>:
413.253.2161<o:p></o:p></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Carlos Fontes: 413.259.1762<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Jo Comerford: 413.695.6059<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><font size=4
face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:13.5pt'><br>
<br>
</span></font><b><span style='font-weight:bold'>******<br>
<br>
<st1:place w:st="on">WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS</st1:place> SOCIAL FORUM<br>
BACKGROUND INFORMATION<br>
<br>
WHAT IS A SOCIAL FORUM?<br>
<br>
</span></b>In 2001, the first World Social Forum (WSF) was held in <st1:place
w:st="on"><st1:City w:st="on">Porto Alegre</st1:City>, <st1:country-region
w:st="on">Brazil</st1:country-region></st1:place> and was attended by around
15,000 people from around the world. Every year the WSF has drawn together more
and more people. In 2005, around 155,000 people attended the WSF. <a
href="http://www.forumsocialmundial.org/" eudora=autourl>http://www.forumsocialmundial.org</a><br>
<br>
The World Social Forum has become the largest and most important gathering of
social movements in the world, united in their opposition to neoliberalism (for
definition, see below) and united in the belief that ‘Another World Is
Possible’ one grounded in social and economic justice and
sustainability.<br>
<br>
Social Forums are open spaces for learning, networking, discussion, exchange,
celebration, visioning, strategizing and mobilization. <br>
<br>
Social Forums are also a process of movement building, not just series of
meetings.<br>
<br>
Social Forums are meant to be independent of political parties, although
political parties have played an important role in supporting the social forum
process. <br>
<br>
For more details on the principles, see the WSF Charter of Principles below. <br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>WHY A <st1:place w:st="on">WESTERN MASS.</st1:place>
SOCIAL FORUM?<br>
<br>
</span></b>To link local struggles and organizing with the larger global
justice movement. To learn from and contribute to struggles around the world.<br>
<br>
To build a more powerful and unified movement for social and economic justice
and sustainability in <st1:place w:st="on">W. Mass.</st1:place> <br>
<br>
To advance discussion, debate, understanding, common interests and strategies
for change. <br>
<br>
To celebrate and create/experience a bit of our vision of the future through a
culture of solidarity. <br>
<br>
To build awareness and mobilization for the first U.S. Social Forum, June
27-July 1, 2007 in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Atlanta</st1:place></st1:City>.
<a href="http://www.ussf2007.org/home.html" eudora=autourl>http://www.ussf2007.org/home.html</a><br>
<br>
The WSF has inspired many regional and thematic social forums throughout the
world, from Europe to Africa, Asia, Africa and Pan-America, to more localized
social forums such as <st1:City w:st="on">Boston</st1:City> and <st1:State
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">New York</st1:place></st1:State>.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>WHAT DOES A SOCIAL FORUM LOOK LIKE?<br>
<br>
</span></b>A combination of talks, roundtables, workshops and cultural events. <br>
<br>
Most of these are self-organized by the organizations or individuals
facilitating the event. Some events, such as the plenary events (attended by
everyone), are organized by a program committee. <br>
<br>
A rich mix of social and cultural exchange. Social Forum participants describe
the experience as inspiring, rejuvenating, exhilarating, re-affirming,
eye-opening.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>WHERE ARE WE IN THE ORGANIZING PROCESS?<br>
<br>
</span></b>We are in the very early stages of the process of building a Western
Mass. Social Forum. Groups involved so far include: W. Mass Indymedia,
AFSC, Arise for Social Justice, Casa Latina, Sage, Jobs with Justice, Center
for Popular Economics, Interfaith Coalition, GROW, Military Recruitment
Education Network, and the Youth Program of Community Action. <br>
<br>
After three meetings in which we discussed the concept of the Social Forum and
various strategies to move the process forward, we decided that we needed to
reach out to the various areas of the <st1:place w:st="on">Western Mass.</st1:place><br>
<br>
We are also open to the participation from groups with whom we may have a
natural geographic affinity that might come from <st1:City w:st="on">Brattleboro</st1:City>
or even <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Hartford</st1:place></st1:City>.
But our focus is <st1:place w:st="on">W. Mass.</st1:place> <br>
<br>
At our next meeting/picnic on May 12, we would like to have representatives
from these different areas at the table so that we can start discussing the
theme, strategies and next steps in the organization. Our idea is connect with
organizations in each region that would than organize themselves in that region
and send some people to be part of the Organizing Steering Committee for the
Forum.<br>
<br>
We are currently thinking about early spring 2007. Exact date and venue to be
decided. It may seem too far away to think about, but we should take this as an
opportunity for movement building, not simply as planning an event. <br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>WHAT IS NEOLIBERALISM?<br>
<br>
</span></b>Neoliberalism is the economic model that currently rules the
capitalist world. It emerged in the 1980s with Reagan and continued to be
promoted through the <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Clinton</st1:place></st1:City>,
Bush I and Bush II administrations. Put crudely, its slogan would be,
“markets good, state bad.” <br>
<br>
Neoliberals argue that when markets are ‘free’ from meddling by the
state it’s good for business, which is good for the economy and good for
the people. So neoliberal policies aim to ‘liberate’ markets by
removing controls on trade, corporate investment and international finance. <br>
<br>
At the same time neoliberals want to roll back the state, resulting in weaker
environmental or worker safety regulations, privatization of schools and water
services, and cutbacks in social welfare programs.<br>
<br>
Neoliberals have been waging a war on the public good our public
institutions, our environment, our social solidarity, our sense that we should
take care of one another. More and more, markets rule our lives and everything
is valued in terms of price and profit. <br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Major players<br>
<br>
</span></b>The <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">U.S.</st1:place></st1:country-region>
is at the forefront in the push for neoliberalism. Major players also include
other industrialized nations and international institutions such as the IMF
(International Monetary Fund), the World Bank and the WTO (World Trade
Organization). These governments and institutions are heavily influenced by
global corporations who are interested in shaping policies and institutions to
maximize their profits.<br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Winners and Losers<br>
<br>
</span></b>Neoliberalism is marked by growing inequality, as wealth, labor and
resources from the majority of the world’s peoples are transferred to
global corporations and the super-rich. On a global level, the 2003 Human
Development Report found that 54 countries experienced a fall in income over
the last ten years. At the same time, between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the
Top 200 corporations grew by 362.4%. In 2003, total sales of Wal-Mart, BP
(formerly British Petroleum), and ExxonMobil was greater than the combined
economies of the world’s poorest 118 countries, with total population of
over 800 million people. There is a dangerous trend of concentration of
corporate power in many key industries: media, healthcare, energy,
agribusiness, retailers, and so on. <br>
<br>
“Free” trade agreements have led to loss of livelihoods for small
producers who can’t compete with transnational corporations or
agribusiness. Throughout the world, states engage in a ‘race to the
bottom’ as they compete for foreign investment by promising low wages,
low taxes, no unions, weak regulations, and subsidies. <br>
<br>
The constant attack on the state has led to: lower taxes which have mostly
benefited the rich; cutbacks in social programs; privatization of schools,
social services, and water; and weaker environmental and consumer protection. <br>
<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>WORLD SOCIAL FORUM CHARTER OF PRINCIPLES<br>
<br>
</span></b>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>
1. 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 Humanking and
between it and the Earth.<br>
<br>
2. The World Social Forum at <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Porto
Alegre</st1:place></st1:City> 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>
3. 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>
4. 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>
5. 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>
6. 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 paarticipants 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>
7. 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>
8. 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>
9. 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>
10. 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>
11. 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>
12. 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>
13. 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>
14. 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>
Approved and adopted in <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">São Paulo</st1:place></st1:City>,
on April 9, 2001, by the organizations that make up the World Social Forum
Organizating Committee, approved with modifications by the World Social Forum
International Council on June 10, 2001.<br>
<br>
<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
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