The European Social Forum (ESF) was much needed in Europe. Given the seemingly apparent decline of the Anti-globalisation quasi-movement in the mainstream media post 9/11, this was a telling moment as to the current watershed. I believe the event was a sucess (is a sucess?), purely on the basis of numbers (60,000 attendees) and variety of representative interests. Whilst the facilities within the Fortezza de Basso were well manicured, it's worth bearing in mind that these were partly funded by the Rifondazione Communista (RC), a national far-left group which sits in the Italian Parliament with 6% of the national vote. This led to questions of political wrangling, as were on display at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Port Alegre (by presidential hopefuls) and resulted in various fringe events, who practised a "foot in-foot out" style policy. The most prominent of these was Ur@ction HUB organised by People's Global Action (PGA), who, for me, were the ®eal ESF... I only discovered there work on the third day of the forum and was delighted by the sheer elegance of their set-up; Pirate TV; media-empowerment workshops; Radio broadcasting; discussion spaces... everything that by and large the main organisers of the ESF failed to connect with and thus lost out on. This returns of course to the involvement of statist-political groups and their interests - when you have a party-you send the invites?
My hope now, is that everyone who attended, will start to feedback off one another and start developing a ®eal alternative to the reactionary follow the carrot mentality that has in some ways forged the anti-capitalist conciousness. This is what the ESF/WSF is about, isn't it?

The Anti-War march passed off, unsurprisingly, without any of the alleged violence as scaremongered by the government and mainstream media outlets. The usual conflicting head counts were estimating between 500,000 to 1,000,000, nonetheless the fact that people were comng together to protest is the main point in hand and a very clear and definite message was sent to the civil servants of the war machine. The march started earlier than expected due to sheer volume of numbers on the streets, the organisers were overwhelmed by the response. The march route was lined by local well-wishers and homeowners hung messages of support and anti-war banners from balconies, these were duely applauded upon by the marchers. The spirit of the day was more like a carnival, with various bands and DJ's playing from the back of flatbeds and the obligatory samba orchestra reminding everyone why drums were invented. The march route culminated in a "music concert" with various Italian euro-pop style artists lending their support, however bland that may have been to some tastes. I felt this was a bit of a let down, given the UN ultimatum on Iraq, perhaps something a little more pertinent would have been a better tonic; with a bit more talking perhaps a lot more @ction would be achieved...