Following the short-lived emergence of Occupy, Quebec’s student movement and Idle No More, on August 21-24, hundreds from Toronto will join thousands of people from across Canada for a historic gathering of the Peoples Social Forum in Ottawa.
The Peoples Social Forum follows in the tradition of the World Social Forum (WSF) movement started in Porto Alegre, Brazil the birthplace of participatory budgeting.
Conceived as a counter-summit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the idea was that instead of protesting the economic summit of world leaders and CEOs, social movements should come together and form their own agenda for change.
The Ottawa gathering will bring together activists, students, unionists, Indigenous peoples, environmentalists, and thousands of ordinary individuals.
This will be the first Canada-wide Social Forum. And like the World Social Forum, its central organizing principle encourages participants to organize their own workshops and camps. Already, more than 500 workshops have been proposed, as well as a pow wow, an alternative media fair and dozens of arts and culture events.
Twenty-some “Movement Assemblies,” or mass meetings for strategic planning and arriving at common plans for action are also planned.
The local Toronto expansion committee is organizing buses for Torontonians to participate in this massive convergence.
Find out more here.
