The World Social Forum, the Bolivarian Alternative, and Peace Studies

“Another World is Possible”

Stan Taylor

Social Science Department

September 14, 2006

The overall goal of my winter 2006 sabbatical was to lay the groundwork for establishing a cross-disciplinary Peace Studies program at Lane Community College. Toward this end my sabbatical work focused on two aspects of Peace Studies.  The first was at the level of global activism centered on issues of economic and military globalization embodied in the annual meeting of the World Social Forum.  The second examined Peace Studies programs at the undergraduate level in the United States and abroad. 

Sixth Annual World Social Forum

From January 24-28, 2006, I attended the 6th annual World Social Forum (WSF) http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu= in Caracas, Venezuela.  The Theme of the World Social Forum is “Another World is Possible.” The WSF is an open meeting place where groups, organizations, and movements of civil society opposed to neo-liberalism, militarization, and any form of imperialism, engage in building a planetary society centered on the humanity. Any nongovernmental organization or movement representative can propose presentations, panels, or workshops for the forum and a space and time will be scheduled for their activities. The WSF seeks alternative means to building a global society which respect universal human rights and those of all men and women of all nations and the environment, grounded in democratic international systems and institutions at the service of social justice, equality and the sovereignty of peoples.  I have attached the WSF Charter of Principles developed after the first World Social Forum in Porte Alegre, Brazil in 1999 for a more complete expression of the mission and purposes of the WSF.

The sixth World Social Forum in January 2006 was "polycentric" held in Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali, and in March 2006, in Karachi, Pakistan.  In Caracas, there were nine different sites with multiple venues located throughout the city where 75,000 participants attended events.  Presenters came from all continents of the world.  Most presentations were translated in to four languages – Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English – using UN style translators and head sets.  My primary activities at the WSF involved attending presentations, workshops, and panels and networking with people working on peace and justice issues. Events I attended include the following:

1) Opening March from Plaza Tres Gracias to Los Proceres ending with a big political and cultural event against War and Imperialism. Approximately 35,000 people from around the world marched together to affirm their commitment to creating a more just world.

2) Polycentric World Social Forum: WSF’s future and perspectives of the resistance to neoliberalism.

3) Imperialistic Strategies, Militarization and the Resistance of the people.

4) Tribunal on Terrorism: bringing terrorist to justice.  A tribunal by Latin Americans tortured at the hands of US backed governments, paramilitary death squads trained by the US at the School of the America’s, and the CIA.

5) The Global Women’s Strike: Invest in caring not killing.  (The Global Women’s Strike www.globalwomenstrike.net , a network of national coordination in 11 countries, campaigns for economic and social recognition for unwaged caring work, for society to invest in “caring not killing’, and the return of military budgets to the community, beginning with women as first caregivers.

6) Making the marginalized matter: Workshop on the rights of different peoples marginalized by the neo-liberal power structure –women, peasants, indigenous peoples, workers.

7) Threats to indigenous territories and peasant land, and the struggles for the right to land and territory.

8) Radical democracy: new challenges in the strengthening of civil society’s power.

9) Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign, USA Tent. Presentation by USA citizens on poverty in the USA. 

10) Iraq Veterans against the War, USA Tent.

11) Making links between the peoples of North and South.  (CRAM)

12) Hegemony, neoliberal governance and social movements

13) The battle of Hong Kong and Global Resistance to the WTO and free trade. (Lori Wallach and Walden Bello)

For those interested in attending the World Social Forum, the seventh World Social Forum will take place in Nairobi, Kenya in January 2007. In addition, a regional United States Social Forum http://www.ussf2007.org/home.html will be held in Atlanta June 27-July 1, 2007. The purpose of the USSF is to effectively and affirmatively articulate the values and strategies of progressive civil society in the United States. Those who build towards and participate in the USSF are no longer interested in simply stating what social justice movements “stand-against.” Rather we see ourselves as part of new movements that reach beyond national borders, that practice democracy at all levels, and that can articulate the world we want. The USSF provides a first major step towards such articulation by bringing together the new movements.

The Bolivarian Alternative

In Venezuela, it was impossible to ignore the Bolivarian Revolution led by the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.  Everyday workers were excited to talk about the government led people’s revolution in their country. Many carry pocket sized copies of the new constitution that went into effect in December 1999.  Chavez has adopted the vision of Simon Bolivar, the Caracas born 19th century General who defeated the Spanish, liberated half of South America, believed in redistributive social policies and a united South America.  These are all platforms Chavez has adopted in both his domestic and international policies. Domestically these policies include Bolivarian Circles that allow ordinary people to join citizen assemblies as a constitutional right which enable people to participate in governing along with their elected officials and Social Development Missions that provide a broad spectrum of innovative social programs that such as health care, education, food, housing, land reform, and job-training and micro-credit programs.  Government proceeds from Venezuela’s state-owned oil company fund these programs.  Internationally, Chavez is seeking to provide an alternative to the neoliberal Washington Consensus.  In Latin America Chavez is spearheading a new trading system called ALBA's - the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. ALBA is based on the principles of cooperation and solidarity rather than competition and seeks an integrated Latin America. Participating nations join together for the purposes of empowering their people, providing essential goods and services, and achieving real economic growth at the grassroots level. A key element is the exchange of goods and services outside the international banking and corporate trading system.

The parallel platforms of the World Social Forum and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela made Caracas a natural choice of location for the forum.  With only a few hundred North Americans in attendance, what was clear is that most people around the world have a different perspective on contemporary world events.  They view the United States as hegemonic, militaristic, and the greatest purveyor of terror and violence in the world.  They demand respect for alternative ways of life, respect for their land and territories, respect for their cultures, and are willing to fight to protect and build on these alternatives.

Lane Centre for Peace and Justice: Peace Studies

The second part of my project was to examine Peace Studies programs at the undergraduate level in the United States and abroad.  The intent is to research the key elements of Peace Studies programs with an eye to determining the feasibility of establishing a Peace Centre at Lane Community College.

I have researched on a variety of programs at institutions in the USA and abroad.  Currently there are a wide range of Peace Studies programs at the undergraduate level.  These range from programs such as Richland Community College (a Vanguard College like Lane) in Dallas, Texas, to Peace Studies Programs at four year colleges and universities like Notre Dame, Colgate, University of Idaho, University of New Mexico, and Georgetown University, to programs abroad in the University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica, and the Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace.

I have discovered a wide variety of Peace Studies programs, the elements included in the programs vary.  Program elements may include:

1. Cross-disciplinary academic programs.
2. Conflict resolution and mediation.
3. Internships focused on peace and social justice.
4. Peace through health.
5. Study abroad.

The College and University peace studies programs I have surveyed include the following schools (links provided):

• Institute for Peace, Richland College Peace Studies Program, Dallas County Community College District http://collegeapps.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.rlc.dcccd.edu/
• Centre for Peace Studies, McMaster University http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~peace/
• Peace, Justice and Conflict Studies, Goshen College http://www.goshen.edu/peace/Home
• Peace & Conflict Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder http://www.colorado.edu/peacestudies/
• Peace Studies Department, College of St. Benedict, St. Johns University http://www.csbsju.edu/peacestudies/
• Peace & Justice Programs, Xavier http://www.xu.edu/peace_justice/
• Peace Studies, University of Maine http://www.umaine.edu/peace/
• Program on Justice and Peace, Georgetown University http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/schwarzh/pjp/
• Peace Studies Program, Colgate University http://departments.colgate.edu/peacestudies/default.htm
• Peace Studies Program, University of Missouri http://web.missouri.edu/~peacewww/
• Peace Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Peace/
• Peace Studies, Florida Atlantic http://www.fau.edu/divdept/schmidt/peace/index.htm
• Peace Studies, University of New Mexico http://www.unm.edu/~peace/index.htm
• Martin Institute, A Centre for Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, University of Idaho http://martin.uidaho.edu/
• The Joan B. Kroch Institute for Peace Studies, university of Notre Dame http://www.nd.edu/%7Ekrocinst/
• Centre for Nonviolence and Peace Studies, University of Rhode Island http://www.uri.edu/nonviolence/
• Peace Studies, Clark University, Worcester, MA http://www.clarku.edu/departments/peacestudies/
• The Centre for Global Peace & Conflict Studies, University of California, Irvine http://www.socsci.uci.edu/gpacs/
• University for Peace, Costa Rica http://www.upeace.org/
• Peace and Conflict Studies, Conrad Grebel University, Waterloo, ON, Canada http://grebel.uwaterloo.ca/academic/undergrad/pacs/index.shtml
• Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Munster http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/
• PAWSS http://pawss.hampshire.edu/
• Peace Studies, Goucher College, Baltimore http://www.goucher.edu/x5966.xml
• Peace Studies, Manchester College http://www.manchester.edu/academics/departments/peace_studies/academic.html
• Peace and Conflict Studies Program, Swarthmore College http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/peace/
• Peace and Global Studies, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epags/
• Peace Studies, Bucknell http://www.bucknell.edu/Academics/Academic_Offices_Resources/Course_Catalog/Optional_Minors/Peace_Studies.html
• SOKA University in California http://www.soka.edu/
• Institute for conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University http://www.gmu.edu/departments/ICAR/
• Conflict resolution Studies, Menno University, Winnipeg  http://io.uwinnipeg.ca/~msc/acad_03_crs.htm
• Peace and Conflict Studies, Mount Saint Vincent College http://www.msvu.ca/pax/
• Department of Peace Studies, Bradford University http://www.bradford.ac.uk/acad/peace/
• Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies http://www.trudeaucentre.ca/

Additional Peace Studies resources that I have surveyed include the following sites:

• Peace Studies Programs http://www.quietspaces.com/peacestudies.html
• World Social Forum       http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/index.php?cd_language=2&id_menu=
• Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace http://www.peace.ca/index.htm
• Peace and Justice Studies Association http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/links.php
• Hague Appeal for Peace http://www.haguepeace.org/
• A PORTRAIT OF UNIVERSITY PEACE STUDIES IN NORTH AMERICA http://www.gmu.edu/academic/ijps/vol3_1/Harris.htm
• Peace Studies http://people.unt.edu/~jy0021/peace%20studies.htm
• BCA Academic Programs http://www.bcanet.org/programs/
• International Peace Research Institute, Oslo http://www.prio.no/
• SIPRI http://www.sipri.org/
• Peace Education Commission http://www.uwm.edu/Dept/Peace/pec.html
• Peace & Justice Studies Association http://www.peacejusticestudies.org/
• Intelligent Futures http://www.intelligentfuture.org/ Strike for Peace http://www.strikeforpeace.org/index.html
• The Center for War and peace Studies http://www.cwps.org/
• Association for Conflict Resolution http://www.acrnet.org/
• Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace http://www.peace.ca/
• Ploughshares http://www.ploughshares.ca/
• Transcend http://www.transcend.org/

Remaining Work

Given the budget realities at Lane Community College, the Lane Center for Peace and Justice should start by reformulating and redirecting existing resources at the college.  Academically a survey of existing course offerings related to peace and justice is a necessary first step.  Once completed these classes could form the basis of a cross disciplinary AAOT degree with an emphasis in Peace Studies.  This program should include Cooperative Education and Service Learning as part of the offerings.  The survey would also reveal potential holes in Lane’s curriculum related to peace studies and thus provide the basis for long term unit plans to broaden Lane’s offerings.  This project should be faculty-led project, perhaps through the Strategic Learning Initiative.

A second immediate step is the establishment a college organization with the ability to respond to contemporary issues of peace and justice by organizing educational events (e.g. speakers, performances, and teach-ins). My recommendation is that this organization be open to all employees at LCC. It might be called “Lane Faculty and Staff for Peace and Justice.” 

There are many more iterations that could be taken in the future to deepen Lane Community College’s commitment as a College to a Lane Center for Peace and Justice.  These could include surveying social justice organizations in Lane County regarding their specific educational need and the development of conflict transformation resources as a means to the end of creating peacemakers.

In the meantime, I believe we already have the resources at Lane Community College to take the first steps toward creating a viable Center for Peace and Justice that includes a cross disciplinary Peace Studies program and the organization of Lane Faculty and Staff for Peace and Justice.  Given the current state of the world, we should begin now.

World Social Forum Charter of Principles “Another World is Possible”

 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 Humankind and between it and the Earth.

2. The World Social Forum at Porto Alegre was an event localized in time and place. From now on, in the certainty proclaimed at Porto Alegre that "another world is possible", it becomes a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives, which cannot be reduced to the events supporting it.

3. The World Social Forum is a world process. All the meetings that are held as part of this process have an international dimension.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1. 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.