The World Social Forum (WSF) is an annual meeting held by members of the alternative globalization movement to coordinate world campaigns, share and refine organizing strategies, and inform each other about movements from around the world and around many different issues.
The first WSF was organized by the French Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC) and the Brazilian Worker's Party (PT). It was held from January 25 to January 30, 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, one of the PT's strongholds. 12,000 people attended from around the world.
The second WSF, also held in Porto Alegre from January 31th to February 5th, 2002, had over 12,000 official delegates representing people from 123 countries, 60,000 attendees, 652 workshops, and 27 talks. One famous speaker was United States dissident Noam Chomsky.
The third WSF was again held in Porto Alegre, in January 2003. There were many parallel workshops, including, for example:
- the Life After Capitalism workshop, which proposed focussed discussion on non-communist, non-capitalist, participative possibilities for different aspects of social, political, economic, communication structures [1].
- European Social Forum held in Florence in November 2002 (following this, 1,000,000 people marched in the streets of Florence to oppose the plan of the Bush II regime of the USA to use violent methods to change the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq).
- The second European Social Forum held in Paris in November 2003.
- Asian Social Forum held from 2 to 6 January 2003 in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India
- European Education Forum to be held from 18 to 20 September 2003 in Berlin, Germany [1]
