European Social Forum: a report from Malmo

Last Sunday, the European Social Forum (ESF) came to a close in the city of Malmö, southern Sweden. Nearly 10,000 people from across Europe took part in hundreds of political and cultural events over four days, reports Wladek Flakin, from the independent youth organization REVOLUTION.

The highlight was a demonstration on Saturday with 15,000 participants where trade unions, environmental groups, autonomists, left parties and socialist youth organizations together called for "Power to the People!".

The ESF participants came primarily from Scandinavia. For example, 14-year-old Vilma came with two friends from "Ung Vänster", the Swedish Left Party’s youth organization. "We have spent the last few days painting banners, but we were also at the demonstration for immigrants' rights", she said about her personal highlights at the forum.
But activists from across Europe - from Spain to the Ukraine - and even from Latin America were also there. From Germany, dozens of people traveled in buses from the "Left Youth - Solidarity" and the trade union youth. Even from the Basque Country, over 20 young activists came, after spending 40 hours in two small buses. The ESF’ers stayed in gymnasiums and schools around the city, while the events took place in public buildings, rented ballrooms and a mosque.

The ESF is an opportunity for different movements to network internationally. Opponents of the U.S. Air Force base in Vicenza in Italy could meet up with opponents of the planned U.S. missile base in Poland. In a large gathering, they exchanged experiences and planned protests against the forthcoming 60th anniversary of NATO. Representatives of European students also had a special meeting to discuss a Europe-wide day of action against education cuts.

Special events
New for the ESF was a "Labor Youth Space": a church building in which the trade union youth from different countries organized their own workshops. "The point is to have the youth of the European trade unions network from below" said Joachim Heckel, a young activist of the German metalworkers' union from Nuremberg. "Here, we see that flexibility a huge problem for young workers across Europe. That is why we must think about organizing Europe-wide days of action."

At an event about the EU "terror lists", representatives of the revolutionary left from Turkey, the left-wing independence movement from the Basque country and anti-imperialist organizations from Denmark shared the podium. They explained how these "black lists" are used to repress left-wing parties and movements around the world. At the time of the forum, a huge wave of repression by the Spanish state against the Basque independence movement was in full-swing, in which several political parties were banned. Ulrik Kohl from the Danish group "Fighters and Lovers," which sells T-shirts with the logos of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Colombian guerrilla organisation FARC, had been condemned the day before for "supporting terrorism" – at the ESF, however, he announced he would continue the solidarity work.

Riot and chaos

Over the the weekend, the Swedish tabloid press headlined: "Krawall och Kaos!" or "Riot and Chaos!". This was referring to a "Reclaim the Streets" party which had gone through Malmö's city centre on Friday evening. The approximately 2,000 participants danced to hip-hop and techno - and because the Swedish autonomists seem somewhat more class struggle-oriented than their German counterparts, the whole party took place behind a banner with the slogan "Klass mot Klass" ("class again class").
Some people sprayed graffiti along the road and a window pane of the bank SEB was smashed - i.e. it was hardly the mass riot that the press had been warning about for days! The police, who were present, remained surprisingly reticent. "If they were to attack, then everything would get much, much worse" said an ESF organizer about the police tactics.

Outside the official ESF program, numerous actions by the anarchist-oriented "Action Network" took place. On Friday, for example, around 1,000 people gathered in front of the office of the energy corporation E.on to protest against climate change. The day before, a few hundred had demonstrated in front of the "foreigners' office" in Malmö to call for an end to deportations.

The ESF ended on Sunday with the Assembly of Social Movements that decided on a final declaration of the forum. A major mobilization for all ESFers will be the protests against the 60th Anniversary of NATO in April 2009. But the protests against the G8 summit in Sardinia in July 2009 or against the climate conference in Copenhagen in November 2009 also have a great significance. The venue and date of the next ESF has already been decided too: 2010 in Istanbul.

A preliminary balance-sheet
Overall, the forum was different from previous forums in Florence (2002), Paris (2003), London (2004) and Athens (2006). Malmö is the smallest city to ever host the ESF, and in light of this, the 15,000 participants at the demonstration represented a success. Since the venues were scattered throughout the city, it was difficult for an individual to get an overview of the forum – but the number given by the organizers of 10,000 registered participants would certainly be accurate.

The size of the 5th ESF was below expectations (20,000) as well as below the levels of previous ESFs (with the possible exception of the more or less disastrous 3rd ESF in London). This can be partly explained by external factors. For example, there were hardly any participants from Germany, given that there were almost 60,000 people at different demonstrations at the same time in Cologne, Berlin and Stuttgart. So the three buses from Germany were on average only half full.
But that's not enough to explain the ESF’s small size. The ESF is the great forum of "talking past" or "talking at" one another – the political diversity amongst the participants, from social democratic NGOs to environmentalist hippies to revolutionary Marxists makes it difficult to find a common denominator. But the functioning of the forum and especially the final assembly makes it completely impossible. The final declaration is not decided by a democratic vote, but rather presented by a more or less self-appointed preparation group and then rubber-stamped with "consensus". The text contains bullet points to satisfy nearly all of the participants, but no concrete mobilization plans. After years of noncommittal chatting, many are wondering what the use of the whole event is, and that is a good explanation for the almost constant decline in number of participants.

Given the shrunken size of the ESF, the anarchist counter-activities on the sidelines had a much greater weight than before. In past years, it was no more than splinter groups who organized, parallel to the ESF, small (and hard to find) "counter-forums". But this time, the "ESF Action Network" represented a serious competitor to the ESF. Simply because of high ticket prices (€40 or €20 for students), there were certainly more than 1000 young people from southern Sweden or the neighboring Copenhagen who came to the ESF, but not to the official seminars, only to the anarchistic actions on the all around.

Problems and potential
The vast majority of seminars were alienating for young people. It was not unusual for an event lasting two and a half hours to consist of two hours of speeches from the podium and half an hour of "discussion", whereby the latter consisted in reading out different communiqués. The demands in the flyer from REVOLUTION for independent youth structures at the ESF proved to be completely correct. It was positive that for the first time there was a "youth space" by the trade union youth, but this was occupied by up-and-coming functionaries and offered little opportunity for an independent organization.

The non-stop attacks on workers, migrants and young people in Europe, which are centralized by the EU, make a common, Europe-wide resistance more necessary than ever before. But the unofficial bureaucracy which dominates the ESF (which is in turn made up of various social-democratic and trade union bureaucracies) again and again prevents that the ESF from becoming a focus of such resistance. We greatly appreciate the networking that takes place at the ESF - after each meeting, activists from across Europe exchange their email addresses - but overall the ESF is and remains pretty aimless.

As far as we are concerned, we will participate at the ESF - the relatively larger revolutionary left in Turkey will certainly make the forum in Istanbul more exciting - but always emphasize that a revolutionary international organization is needed to turn the diffuse slogan "another world is possible" into a concrete, socialist reality.

 

Wed 24, September 2008 @ 11:45