Organize the South

The weekend of June 16-18 was a historic moment for the US. The Southeast Social Forum was held in Durham, NC, and about 500 people from around the South and the country came together. The social forum was a conference of those struggling against corporate globalization. That last sentence shows some issues with the event, but not enough to say the weekend was anything but wonderful.

The US Social Forum website (www.ussf2007.org) states, “The US Social Forum is more than a conference, more than a networking bonanza, more than a reaction to war and repression – The USSF is the next most important step in our struggle.” The Southeast Social Forum was, in my opinion, a conference. It was a great conference, but it was a conference. I don’t understand what it would mean for it to be more than that. The website also says, “The USSF will provide spaces to build relationships, learn from each other’s experiences, share our analysis of the problems our communities face, and begin to vision and strategize how to reclaim our world.” The Southeast Social Forum did that, at least for me. I met people I hadn’t seen in 10+ years. I had a great opportunity to talk to people engaging in a wide range of struggle. Because of the forum I’m thinking about organizing, particularly the Racial Justice Campaign (www.stopoperationmethmerchant.org) in new ways. This isn’t more than a conference, it’s what a good conference is suppose to do.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have never been to a social forum before. I didn’t go to Brazil, India, Kenya, or Venezuela. I wasn’t really interested in attending either. It seemed like a lot of money to go to a conference that looked like it was about space for Global South organizers to come together. I did go to the first national weekend planning meeting of the US Social Forum in Atlanta last year. I was skeptical, and still am, of the social forum process given how little experience US citizens have in democratic process. At the end of the weekend I pulled out of the planning process, given the workload with launching a new organization I didn’t think it was wise to spread myself out. While I was excited to attend the Southeast Social Forum, and will be attending the US Social Forum, I won’t be working on it.

The format for the Southeast forum was typical conference. Plenary in the morning, workshops, lunch, plenary, workshop, plenary, dinner, plenary, party. It’s a tried and true format that has it’s strengths and weaknesses. One strength I found was that I could skip out on a plenary and spend that time talking to folks outside. I have a very difficult time sitting still for most plenary sessions. After working at Project South (www.projectsouth.org), I just don’t have it in me to be talked at for more than 10 minutes. I have to get up.

There were an amazing number of workshops. The first session on Saturday had 18 not including the spontaneous sessions. This was repeated again on Saturday and on Sunday. The Racial Justice Campaign did a workshop on Saturday with 6 people. Not a big turnout at all, but it was a great space for conversation since 2 of the folks were from Georgia and the others do racial justice work. I was thrilled with the result.

By far the most talked about dynamic all weekend was building an alliance between Black and Latino communities. I estimate about 40-50% of the attendees were Black, about 30% Latino, 20% white (maybe 30%), and 10% everyone else but mostly South Asian. Given the mass mobilizations in the last couple of months this makes sense. However, there seemed to be more to this than just a response. Folks in North Carolina have been organizing around Black/Brown alliance in a serious way since the late 1990s. Black Workers for Justice and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee have a long, successful history of intercultural organizing. Other groups like The Miami Workers Center (www.miamiworkerscenter.org) and the Tenant and Workers Organizing Committee were also present and sharing the challenges and opportunities they have faced in doing this type of organizing. While I was present at many of these discussions, I didn’t learn about any new principles that would provide a magic bullet. Rather, the conversations were more about honestly stating what the problems were and are, and why overcoming those problems is so crucial. Frankly, I think not pretending we have answers is a mark of a good conference.