citizen diplomacy

By Carlos Arenas
WCCN Executive Director

Between June 6 and 9, 2006, the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, hosted the first Midwest Social Forum (MWSF), a regional gathering of social activists committed to finding the way to make its slogan a reality: “Another World is Possible”.

The MWSF was inspired by the successful example of the World Social Forum (WSF) gatherings, first organized in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in 2001 by a very broad coalition of progressive social movements and activists from Latin America and elsewhere. Originally the WSF was conceived as an alternative event to the World Economic Forum, the elitist meeting of the heads of state from the wealthiest countries and CEOs of multinational corporations held every year in the Swiss city of Davos. Since the beginning, the WSF has been very successful, growing from 3,000 participants in 2001 to 100,000 in 2005. As a result, the WSF philosophy and format has been adopted and reproduced worldwide. The slogan, “Another World is Possible” has turned out to be a very powerful idea that has mobilized millions of people around the globe that share the belief that it is both necessary and possible to comprehensively change things worldwide.