Now that the first ever US Social Forum has ended, the broad social justice movement needs to look critically at the event and what it means for the work we do in the future. The next USSF is only 2 1/2 years away. Hopefully a process can begin that will address the faults of this forum and manifest creative solutions in the next.

Update: The audio from the “Future of the Forum” workshop is online at the USSF2007 site, and many of the issues I write about here were discussed. Give it a listen below

An Amazing Success
The organizers and the workshop and event planners need to all be congratulated for putting together an amazing week of social justice. The logistics for an event of this magnitude are just overwhelming. The vast majority of the events at the forum ran smoothly and on time and, as all of the participants know too well, the sheer scope of the offerings at this forum was staggering.

I say this now, up front, because all of the criticism that follows is intended to be constructive and not to detract from the organizing work done by the organizers and event planners.

“There could have been better food”: Gripes and complaints
I’ll get to the structural/philosophical issues below. This is a short list of things that could have been different (or even could have been done) that deal with the physical experience of the forum participants.

Transportation was an issue. The Atlanta Marta system is fine, but the organizers should have arranged for some specific USSF shuttles from the downtown core area out to the outlying event locations. Although I have heard from others that event attendance at the Five Points events and out toward the 7 Stages area was fine, there are a lot of people who did not go to these places because of the distance, the cost, and the time. Having not been a part of the planning group, I do not know if this was looked into. If Marta was not willing to offer some specialized shuttle service, other means could have been arranged. I know that I would not have had a problem with adding a few dollars onto my registration fee to cover the cost of a shuttle service that forum-goers could just jump onto and get to the outlying areas.

The People’s Movement Assembly should not have been preceded by a plenary session. I will discuss the events at the People’s Movement Assembly below. This is a critique of the scheduling of the final day (Sunday). By putting a plenary session in front of the resolution presentation, the event was drawn out to be much longer than it should have been. Many people had to leave before it was concluded (myself included) and did not get to here all of the amazing resolutions and initiatives put together during the forum. The plenary session itself was excellent, and this is not meant as a critique of the panelists. At the next forum, the resolutions could perhaps be turned in on Saturday and presented to the group that evening. On Sunday (or whatever the last day of the forum will be) a plenary could be held discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the forum and rallying people for upcoming events. Also, if time ran short of presenting the resolutions the night before, there could be time included on Sunday to finish up that presentation. This would help alleviate the problems encountered at this forum’s resolution presentation session.

Where were the computers? There is a deeper problem to tackle regarding media access, but for the general forum-goer who is not there specifically to do media work but needs to use a computer to communicate with people back home who they may be there representing, computers were not to be found. There should have been computer stations at all the major forum locations: the Westin, the Marriott, the Civic Center, etc that were open for use by forum-goers.

Finally (for me anyway, I’m sure others have more), the food options were terrible. I fully support having small local businesses at the forum, but the food vendors along Pine Street were price gouging. A plate of Jerk Chicken, rice and one plantain (and, seriously, who only eats one plantain at a time…) cost $10. That is exactly half the cost of a walk-in registration for the entire social forum. Many people traveled long distances at great cost. Where was Food Not Bombs? Where were faith groups offering free or reduced food? The best food I had at the entire forum was found on Friday in the indigenous people’s tent when a group from Central America had beans, rice, and beef roast available for a donation. There was no set price and many people gave them $5, a reasonable price for a plate piled up with home-made food from our brothers and sisters from down south. There were not enough options for vegetarians or vegans either. Food justice is a major issue here and around the world and the USSF did not manifest that struggle in its food options. This must be addressed in the future. The food cost illustrates well the complaint from an activist with the poor people’s contingent from the Sunday assembly when she said that the voice of the poor had been marginalized at this forum.

Structural issues
These problems get to the heart of both the USSF and the broader social justice movement in the United States. Some of these issues came to the surface on Sunday at the People’s Movement Assembly. This indicates a major problem within the structure of the USSF: the organization did not have adequate feedback channels and was not adaptable enough to make changes when deficiencies and mistakes were made known. At the same time, there is a tendency among the Left in the US to expect every event to incorporate every social justice issue, rhetoric, and perspective equally and fairly. It is clear that the USSF organizers attempted to do this, but human nature makes this an impossibility. No major event will adequately include everything that it should. The hurt feelings and emotion expressed on Sunday came about due to a lack of flexibility on the part of the organization to address overlooked or ignored issues when brought to its attention.

There was no mechanism to interact with the organizers to address these overlooked problems. There should have been a session every day of the forum where representatives from the organizers were available to answer questions and hear feedback from forum-goers and event planners. Lacking this, those of us who stayed Sunday for the People’s Movement Assembly received the negative emotions from participants who felt that their voices and issues had been marginalized all week. The forum seemed to depend too heavily on technology in place of human contact. This had the effect of drawing a distinction between the organizers and the participants, a false dichotomy if ever there was one.

The media center access problem was ridiculous. The Indymedia network was born out of the Seattle protests, yet at the USSF the media center was down a service stairwell in a tucked away corner of the civic center. Access to it required a media pass in addition to the general USSF pass. This created, from the very beginning of the USSF, a hierarchy of privilege with some people with some people wearing two tags and seeming to be more “important”. Further, the access to this “media center” (although this name implies a central location which it was certainly not), was difficult for people with disabilities or elders, two groups that are looking to the social justice movement in this country for redress to historical discrimination.

The media center should have been on the main floor of the civic center by the auditorium. The area that had been used the first day for registration should have been the area for radio and video media as it was somewhat isolated from the main traffic flow to the auditorium while still being close to the main action areas and easily accessible. Media creation tools should have been available to anyone who wanted to use them at any point during the forum. At last check, the “media server” set-up by the USSF technology organizers had only a handful of audio and video material uploaded to it. This is a real travesty and it was a direct result of the USSF organizers not making access to technology a priority for the forum. All of the tabling done in the civic center could have been accommodated on the plaza outside in tents, making that space, arguably the most valuable real estate at the forum, available for cooperative organizing and media work. There are no two ways about it, this was a large lost opportunity caused by poor vision. [Update: Go here for a description of the "media center" problems.]

Reflecting the Social Justice Movement in the US
The USSF was a great achievement, but it’s faults reflect the state of the social justice movement in the US all too well. Many of us have a difficult time acknowledging the embedded superiority complexes we have and how they affect our work and our relationships.

There is little doubt that had the general forum-goer been asked prior to the People’s Movement Assembly if the indigenous community had been marginalized at this forum, they would have said “no.” The act of removing the microphone from an indigenous brother from the Andes occurred simply because he had gone over the allotted time for resolution presenters. However, for the indigenous community it represented the marginalization they had been experiencing all week. This points to an ugly truth that the social justice movement in the US has not properly dealt with: white superiority and it’s accompanying imperialism are far more ingrained in us than we want to believe. Often times, our white brothers and sisters do not even realize they are marginalizing other people’s voices.

When the brother from the Andes said people at the forum often told him his clothes were beautiful, he understood that they were only seeing the image they have of native peoples and not the man who was wearing the clothes. During Jon Stewart’s infamous appearance on the CNN program “Crossfire”, right-wing pundit Tucker Carlson said he though Stewart was there to be funny to which Stewart replied: “No, I’m not your monkey.” The brother from the Andes had been made to feel like the USSF’s indigenous “monkey” and that is unacceptable.

This broad movement has got to look inside and identify the euro-centric superiority that continues to exist. At the same time, we need to ask our comrades in the struggle to recognize that we are struggling to throw off this ingrained belief system and that it will be a difficult thing and a long process. It is unfortunate that these issues only surfaced on the final day, but this was the failure of the USSF to have an adequate feedback mechanism during the forum.

Constructing a new self-identity for those of us who exist as part of the oppressor-class is, perhaps, the most critical struggle we have to face in the years ahead.

Audio from the “Future of the Forum” workshop

Also, see Steve Sherman’s great article on the forum here.