European Social Forum inaccessible

Friday July 19, 2002 12:13

by Left/Trade Union Bureaucrat - SWP/GR

European Social Forum in Florence, November: organisers set limits on who can attend, who can speak, and favour established NGO's.

European Social Forum in Florence, November: organisers set limits on who can attend, who can speak, and favour established NGO's.

More details are available of the European Social Forum, Florence in November. The meeting is being indirectly funded by the Regional and City governments, the organisers are political parties and major NGO's - an open structure was never intended anyway.

To attend. you must declare allegiance to the Charter of the World Social Forum. No allegiance, no delegate status - you become an 'observer' without the right to speak. However, very few people will get to speak anyway.

RThe core of the ESF is the plenary sessions. All main speakers will be chosen in advance by the organisers, anyone else gets a maximum of 3 minutes speaking time but there are 200 people present so their chances are not good. Big international NGO's such as Amnesty will be given priority in choosing the main speakers.

There will be 50 seminars in the afternoon, run by organisations registered for the conference (again, their registration is conditional on support the ESF Charter). And again international NGO's such as ATTAC get priority,
in the allocation of seminar space. There will be smaller workshops, again only for registered organisations. All sessions, obviously, are subject to approval by the organisers.

It will therefore not be possible to organise any independent session at the ESF, at least not inside the conference centre where it is being held. It is a stage-managed affair, not an open forum as the propaganda suggests. More details at the website...

web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/esf....