Tord Björk 08/07/03

The opinions in this paper are not the opinion of any organisation. I hope they are useful for those international cooperation partners interested in understanding the ESF process, and can be used constructively to improve cooperation between very different movements that all have to be respected in the common struggle against neolibealism, patriarchy, ecological destruction and imperialism.

The piece is long and thus only for people really interested.

Cessing ESF preparations 2008

The enlargement of European Social Forum towards the Nordic countries have changed some basic patterns of cooperation within the process both in practical and political terms. What might seem as a more reluctant and less political style from the Nordic Organising Committee when imposing its will at preparatory meetings and less of left rhetoric and more of uncommon activist organisations will not necessarily en in a less political ESF. But it will be different and maybe will hep in renewing ESF.

A main problem is the lack of activists generally in Sweden and in a small city as Malmö. This problem was aggravated by a conflict between organisations with an activist culture among solidarity, environmental, anti war, antiracist and other movements and political parties to the left on one hand and Attac and main stream trade unions and one main popular education organisation on the other hand in Sweden. This conflict has not occurred in Finland and Norway that also participate in NOC but have less practical responsibility. Now a balance between the two groups has developed which into better effectiveness. With more respect for the 11 working groups and some additional staff there might be capacity to solve most problems. At the time being the work develops in a better balance between the different tasks. Also political differences has now been solved in a better way than in he beginning of the preparations giving more room both for radical activist movements and reaching sympathisers of global justice that just want to come o listen to interesting discussions.

All activist organisations and let parties involved in the ESF-process have an understanding that the mainstream trade unions with their social democratic contacts are of vital importance and without them there would not have been a possibility to organise the event in Sweden or anywhere else in the Nordic countries. The key organisation has been the Transport workers union with their good connections to the mayor’s office in Malmö, as chair of the regional Skåne LO and a proponent of the ESF idea to other trade unions. It is Transport that created credibility for the project. They are known to be one of the most radical unions among the main stream but have to act in such a way that most of the other unions join, something they successfully and in the slow democratic manner of LO have done. It has been a steady process and proven to be trustworthy.

Transport and LO Skåne have not chosen representatives in the board who are well-experienced in broad international cooperation. In general LO is new in the ESF process. Instead they have leaned on what they have perceived as more well experienced Attac individuals and ABF, the Workers Educational Association a mass organisation dominated by social democrats but including also any leftist organisations and trade unions which has contact only in Malmö with 220 migrant organisations. One of the ABF key persons from the head office n Stockholm have explicitly stated the vision of ESF to be organised as a book fair, something that probably fits well also among the less radical main stream unions. The Attac individuals had a similar professional vision o ESF as an open space without any political conflicts. Those who claimed that it was necessary to address issues on the purpose of ESF and the political aspects of organising the event was seen as troublemakers while the majority of the involved organisations were totally new to the project and listened to what was perceived as the most experienced people involved in ESF and WSF.

His caused an open conflict in a different pattern from earlier ESF. There ere no social democratic party like in London that wanted to control the process in detail. On the contrary the more than 250 000 euro from Malmö was given without strings attached. Instead of a conflict between radical and les radical left or between what has been labelled horizontals and verticals he explicit conflict developed mainly between Friends of the Earth and Attac.

Both have similar social background and cooperated well in the U Summit protests in Gothenburg 2001 were FoE Sweden together with the trade union SAC had initiated a broad international network with 87 organisations that jointly organised a counter summit and demonstration. The newly established Attac came in late as a strong actor initiating among other things so called constructive dialogues between the movement, the Swedish government and EU. Later the local branch of Attac together with the local branch of FoE and the Transport workers union in Malmö launched a successful appeal for common welfare against privatisation that has turned into a national network and became one of the inspirations for further cooperation to promote hosting ESF in the Nordic countries. Another crucial factor was the strong attempts by Attac to discuss with LO common strategies at yearly summer meetings at Brunnsviks Folk High School which received support from think tanks related to the trade unions. The was perceived as a dialogue between old and new social movements which caught momentum also through many local social forums were Attac, ABF, solidarity organisations, trade unions, FoE and other organisations united their efforts. An interest in ESF and WSF developed and slowly the broad Swedish popular movement tradition started to organise. Folk High Schools linked to the environmental, peace and solidarity movement and the left party seen courses to WSF and finally ABF organised study circles all over the country resulting in the biggest Swedish delegation ever at WSF in Nairobi ht many hundreds of Swedish participants.

The main promoters of ES in the Nordic countries were Attac Sweden and a Social Rights Association in Denmark. Early 2007 a Swedish initiative committee was established, all of the active people came from Attac, some from trade unions and FoE. The Swedish initiative committee was well integrated in the local social forums including the regional Skåne social forums which had been organised many times with many thousands of participants. It saw itself as part of a Nordic committee and contacts were established between Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. An information text about ESF was issued claiming the importance of ESF as a unique meeting place for civil society and a place were initiatives as the demonstrations against the Iraq war and the campaign against Bolkentstein public service directive was launched. Furthermore the text argued that the reason why ESF now came to the Nordic countries was an interest in the Nordic welfare model and popular movement experiences. Slow and steady contacts were taken between Swedish organisations building trust between movements ad a study made to see if Malmö could practically host ESF. The other option was to organise ESF in Copenhagen. Here a Danish initiative committee had been organised faster with the Association for social rights as lading organisation but without support from Denmark’s Social Forum, KSF. A national DKSF was planned for end of September 2007 and caught much of the attention of activist organisations.

In June a Nordic meeting was held to decide were ESF should be placed. Sweden was willing to take the responsibility and demanded that a decision should be taken to enable the work to continue. All necessary contacts had been taken with the mayor in Malmö and other actors of importance, no clear commitments had been decided but there was rust in the initiative and that support would come. The Danish committee had chosen the opposite strategy. Instead of building from bottom up uniting activist organisations, social forum organisers and bigger organisations with sizeable professional staff the Danish Committee had started negotiations wit ministries. The goal was to have half the sum needed to make ESF decided in short time before committing oneself to place ESF in Copenhagen. There were no results yet in the negotiations but there was hope for results soon. The idea was to put the whole ESF in a professional conference center outside the city center and have professional staff to take care of the practical mattes so activists could go out in Copenhagen and do political action to reach the public. This was explicitly called to renew ESF by conquering the institutions. The Swedish participants at the meeting looked confused at each other, in Sweden activists do not mind to both organise practical meeting arrangements and go out on the streets, actually the secretary of the official Democracy report that issued 50 books on how to democratise the society stated that democracy in Sweden is created by building trust among each other when carrying chairs at meetings Participatory democracy was seen as an ideal. The Malmö proposal was completely the opposite of the Danish professional conference center. In Malmö the idea was to have ESF in many different localities within walking distance from the working class suburb of Rosengård to the old workers movement amusement park in the city center of Malmö.

A decision was postponed a Denmark refused to give Sweden the lead and was not willing to take the lead themselves either. Furthermore it became clear afterwards that the Association for social rights had kept the place of the Nordic meeting secret for Attac Denmark who was interested to participate. Attac Denmark is very active in DKSF and was reluctant to have ESF in Copenhagen if not the political purpose was clear. A bigger conflict was on the rise within Denmark and between the two initiative committees but did not erupt. The Danish ministry said not to fund ESF and the responsibility was now given to the Swedish Initiative committee to take the lead in July 2007.

ACT I

Summer, autumn and winter conflict on content and form

The task was now to initiate a host organisation and to motivate interest by stating why people should be interested in ESF in Malmö. On each of these aspects a conflict emerged, in the beginning as a conflict between FoE Sweden and members of Attac Sweden.

Concerning content the conflict started in the end of July when a new version of the information text about ESF was sent out from the official email address of the Swedish initiative committee. This new version excluded all references to ESF as a place to initiate action and the examples of the Iraq war demonstrations. All references to why ESF was going to take place in Malmö due to interest in Nordic politics and movements were also excluded. The earlier text with this more politically motivating content used by the initiative committee was suddenly whipped away without prior decision in the initiative committee and a new version anonymously written and sent from the official address controlled by people from Attac was now a fact.

Friends of the Earth reacted against this change but the immediate practical tasks were so many that there were no time to solve the conflict directly. Instead a conflict on the content developed further both concerning information on ESF and how to formulate thematic areas for the program. It was not resolved until the European programme meeting in February changed the proposals made by the Nordic Organizing Committee program group dominated by the thinking of Attac and for information in May after that both the information working group with activists and the information function among the staff had stopped working and a major conflict between the board and the working groups was settled in a compromise.

The people from Attac who had been very active in the international work had together with a key person in ABF with implicit support from the trade unions promoted an idea that ESF should not be predefined. It was presented as democratic visions of an open space were the participants themselves bottom-up through a webpage they define the content of ESF. Thus it
was wrong to state anything about the content in advance except for the WSF declaration that was the basis for ESF according to Attac. Many initiatives had emerged out of ESF, to handpick just two like the Iraq war demonstrations and the campaign against the public service directive was to predefine certain issues as more important than others and that was not democratic. To state something on why ESF was placed in the Nordic countries by saying there was an interest for the Nordic welfare model and movements was equally a problem predefining welfare and movements as more important
than other issues.

Any criticism against this political idea of an open space lacking any predefinition or motive for being placed in the Nordic countries was attacked as being ways to politicise the process, a way for leftists to start quarrelling and split. That it was the non-leftist environmental organisation FoE that protested was ignored, instead it was a common picture of quarrelling among small leftist organisations that was presented as a risk to the ESF-process. There were only two choices, either for open space or for making social forums into decision-making bodies like some leftists wanted internationally. These leftists were a danger to WSF as an open space and anyone criticising the visions of people from Attac and ABF was perceived as political troublemakers causing the process to be diverted from a neutral organising of an open space into a political battle ground.

This vision of an open not predefined space claiming inspiration from Chico Whitaker who inspired and took part in initiating WSF had many admirers when the organizing committee should be established at a Nordic meeting in Gothenburg in the beginning of September. Here the book fair was launched as a model for ESF by the invited key note speaker from ABF, no one except FoE Sweden seemed to disagree. Furthermore the working group set up by the Swedish initiative committee in mid July on popular education with the aim to collect material on the Nordic welfare model and popular movement experiences to help promoting knowledge in the process on these issues previously announced as an important motivation for having ESF in the Öresund region was dismissed. Even the representative from the Left Students Unions agreed to the idea that NOC should totally avoid any predefinition and be a neutral provider of an open space. FoE Sweden who had initiated the working group gave up.

The ideologues behind the Swedish open not predefined space had a vision that besides NOC a network or different networks of organisations should be established were the political motivation and mobilisation for ESF should be organised. FoE argued that this was a dream as there were no resources for such a broad separate network for all movements involved without any other policies common interest than to organise events at ESF. Furthermore, NOC had the responsibility to inform about all the ESF preparations including political content of importance both from previous ESF and what might come up as central in the preparations for ESF 2008. People in common are interested in what issues will be discussed at ESF, not much how it is organised. It was also necessary to see that also all practical issues as choice of venue, of funders etc. had a political dimension necessary to address openly. This position gained no support.

Open space, popular movement cooperation or denouncing ESF?

In Sweden four political attitudes developed among the movements towards ESF.  The large majority was new to the process and overwhelmed by the practical immediate tasks and to start planning for their seminars, maybe thinking of cooperating with their most likeminded cooperation partners.

ABF and Attac and less explicit the large main stream trade unions worked according to the open not predefined open space strategy. They became facilitators of the board, got in charge as coordinators of the politically crucial working groups as mobilisation and the programme group and had soon one Attac member as employed half time for information. To ABF a joint popular education effort was of no interest as their immense national organisation already was on the way to start study circles all over the country with their own material on WSF and ESF using the successful model for mobilising to WSF in Nairobi from Sweden. The trade unions were a bit afraid of an ESF with too much leftist rhetoric’s as main stream union members in Sweden are not used to this. At a meeting with most trade unions in Sweden the cooperation developed slow and very well, a main topic for the trade unions were protecting workers rights.

The whole Attac-ABF idea was to have a horizontal not predefined process professionally administrated were all participants could submit their proposals for activities through a webpage and merge from bottom up. In this vision at first there should be no themes at all, only after proposals had been made themes should emerge. Attac influenced the program working group with this vision and the result was a political denial of any words in the NOC program working group proposal that stated that the theme was against something or had content related to struggle. All themes should be what were claimed neutral. FoE Sweden who only had a marginal position in the program group together with other activist groups putting their main energy into more practical work protested in vain. In the board a representative from the Left student union in the last minute put up a counterproposal stating many against and struggle the wording of the themes, e.g. the failure of neoliberalism and economic alternatives instead of only economic alternatives. FoE Sweden had a position in the board discussion somewhere between promoting some so called neutral wordings but also have wordings in the themes that were more mobilising stating against war and not only for
peace. This in between position was ignored and the left students somewhat rhetoric proposals strongly rejected.

By mistake the NOC proposal for themes was not sent out before the EPA meeting in Istanbul early December. Here it was totally rejected, a European program group was set up and in February themes could be decided in a balanced way including wordings in some themes on what the seminars oppose and even include struggle in the main title.

During the autumn the conflict concerning the general information about ESF issued by NOC was also evolving. More and more activists from organisations with Left party or left students now joined the process and the information working group. ABF made a proposal for the general information with an inclusive introduction and exclusion of explicitly stating ESF as a space to take political action, nor mention such cases. The information group made a proposal with a less inclusive introduction and stating ESF as a place to take political action and not only for discussing. This conflict continued until end of November when finally texts presenting ESF as a place for both popular education and taking initiative for effective political action could be presented officially by NOC. But the conflict concerning the content and the organisation of the information work continued.

FoE Sweden developed a popular movement cooperation strategy to contribute to the ESF-process. To FoE the political motivation was the most important. For environmental movement cooperation there already exists a number of spaces for international cooperation. Before environmental organisation had been involved in ESF but mainly as organisers of specific seminars and not in a very coordinated manner. FoE Sweden saw ESF as a place to connect to many different popular movements by putting cooperation for political demands and campaigning at the center of the ESF preparations for the environmental and like-minded popular movements. To FoE Sweden ESF was a compromise between those that wanted to organises lectures and discussions with the audience without commitments to follow-up political action and those movements that had political collective change as their main motivation. Both are needed. The open not predefined space strategy opened for positive solutions as if it was followed it was made possible to link like-minded organisations and movements to each other instead of developing a large ESF bureaucracy for organising main parts of the programme. It was also an obstacle as it defined the political task of hosting and organising the information of the process as something that should only allow for the vision of presenting methods and not content.

FoE Sweden thus presented an idea of starting a political campaign during the preparatory process which could be followed up after ESF during 2009 as WSF was going to be held in Amazonia, the Swedish EU presidency during the autumn and the Climate Summit was held in Copenhagen in December. The proposed demands included for common welfare, against privatisation, for peace against war and occupation, for food sovereignty and fair trade, for sustainable urban planning and land use, against climate change. Such an alliance between activist organisations could be a platform for cooperation also on activities at ESF, not only concerning assemblies, seminars and workshops but also politically motivating information material and united efforts to take care of foreign guests and enable political cooperation during ESF.

Only one organisation in Sweden responded positively, Nordbruk, a Via Campesina branch of the international peasant organisation. This organisation is very small, lacks an office and the political work are carried out voluntarily by small farmers with very little economic support. By many other NGOs and leftist organisations they are considered as uninteresting. To FoE Sweden it is the opposite, peasants are considered as the main ally on many environmental issues. Nordbruk also have a strong position on global justice issues with no problem of opposing war and occupation, defending common welfare and similar questions. Attac, trade unions or any other organisation in the left spectrum of politics were not interested in the popular movement cooperation strategy. The leftist organisations were busy with their own preparations and considers often environmental and peasant organisations as being single issue movements with members that later can develop a more coherent left anticapitalist and socialist or communist ideology and thus become political. They cannot per
definition be multi-issue movements with a non-leftist ideology

FoE Sweden had already with Finnish solidarity and environmental organisations a very well-established cooperation on a wide range of cooperation and campaigning methods in relation to the social forum process but also in general on global popular movement cooperation. The Finnish organisation often has few activists but practical minded activists are often closely related to intellectuals and very broad organisation with contact to major parts of the Finnish population. The Finnish organisations also are well connected to popular movements in the third world and the only organisations in the Nordic countries that are continuously engaged in the International council of WSF since the beginning. There were also contacts in Danish movements interested in political motivation for the ESF. FoE had also god connections to many loosely organised activist networks against climate change, on urban conflicts and since the Gothenburg EU-Summit protests.

Steadily popular movement cooperation started with Nordbruk and FoE Sweden as key cooperation partners. It focused on campaigning and organising ESF seminars of common concern as being against monoculture, on land use and other agricultural and environmental issues as a main part in quantity terms. But equally important was a broader general global justice agenda challenging the unholy alliances between reformist and revolutionary leftist ideology that hitherto had dominated ESF.

The idea was to bring to ESF strong rural and indigenous movements that had been marginal or even put outside the forum process although they were essential to the global justice movement. Since many years FoE Sweden had publically criticized the social forum process for excluding the Zapatistas and thus splitting the global justice movement. Now preparations for inviting the Zapatistas to ESF started and finally a delegate was sent to Chiapas to invite them with the support of 30 Latin American solidarity groups in Denmark, Sweden and Finland and FoE and Via Campesina Sweden. Simultaneously preparations started to invite radical civil disobedience movements from the third world as the Narmada movement in India and Indigenous movements capable of taking power in countries like Bolivia and Ecuador as well as the global leadership of Via Campesina and Friends of the Earth. As the Swedish branches of these global organisation had no money the Finnish organisation Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam linked to popular movements in India and WSF started fund-raising for most of the third world speakers needed and Latin American groups started to fund participation of Indians from Americas. There seemed to be practical problems with the participation of the Zapatistas but with the other movements the preparations continued well.

FoE Denmark, Finland and Sweden made a joint letter to all sister organisations, FoE Europe and FoE International. This strategy was chosen as FoE Europe had been somewhat reluctant to ESF. So it was good to start from bottom up. The Young FoE Europe reacted positively as did some other FoE groups and some campaigners within FoEE. The strong linkage with Via Campesina in Sweden proved to be a key to success as this was especially well received by FoEI. Cooperation with Via Campesina is seen as a strategy of global importance but the cooperation lacked somewhat in countries in Europe. Soon young peasants took initiatives to organise a youth camp and young environmentalists as well which became a joint Via Campesina and Young FoEE project and a number of joint seminars were starting to be prepared with Via Campesina who also at the European level have small resources and FoEE and FOEI with more resources. In Sweden the popular movement cooperation and campaign idea gained some wider interest in the beginning of 2008 from groups like Latin American groups, Anti Racist Academy, Popular movement against EU and the Anti war network.

Within the official process FoE Sweden did put its main energy into enlargement bringing in new political and cultural groups, cooperating with Central. Eastern Europe and practical issues making it possible to arrange ESF and support CEE to participate. Thus FoE representatives became coordinators of the group coordinating all working groups and active mainly in the working groups for fund-raising, culture and contacts with Europe and the World. The three working groups were all coordinated by people from the Left or FoE which worked well. This was a political choice as it was regarded as important to take practical responsibility to create trust among other popular movements and that the priorities decided by EPA of mobilising CEE countries and new groups was very much in line with the political priorities of the FoE Sweden popular movement cooperation strategy.

The smaller trade union SAC and some anarchist groups developed a fourth strategy. Especially SAC in Malmö looked upon ESF as a project created by Main stream trade unions and Attac to set up a new social democratic reformist project against the interest of revolutionary forces. In the preparations for the Summit-protests in Gothenburg 2001 the local and national SAC had been main cooperation partners together with FoE Sweden to initiate a broad popular movement campaign and demonstration. After the Gothenburg experience with riots and activists put in total 50 years in prison there were many splits. Especially within and between leftist organisations. Some anarchists who had been active in the Global Justice movement wanted both engagement within ESF and a separate anticapitalist action gathering, others wanted only to oppose. The outcome of this strategy has been fairly little so far, at least what has been visible politically. But it has caused great concerns among the police.

Many smaller left parties and groups have not been very active at the general level in the ESF process. They have submitted some own proposals for seminars and are active in the demonstration working group.  In general the radical left in Sweden is not very active at the moment. SAC turned their interest away from general politics after Gothenburg and started partially with some success to reorganise its trade union work, and other important tasks. Struggle against racism, Nazism and the populist Swedish democrats now close to get into parliament in the opinion polls with 4 per cent takes most of the energy. Radical activism is now also developing linked more to the radical anti-war and pacifist movement against producers of weapons and cars and airports to protest climate change. These radical activist movements are much involved in the ESF-process together with their international cooperation partners.

Horizontal open space professionalism vs. democratic activism

The other conflict among Swedish organisations in NOC that developed early was also expressed most explicitly between Attac and FoE Sweden on organisational issues. FoE wanted an organisation model combining both stability and flexibility giving motivated influence to both organisation with many formal resources in terms of nation wide organisation and fund-raising capacity with major donors as well as activist organisations. This was at a meeting in Malmö called by the Swedish Initiative Committee to discuss organisation made into a proposal for a formal organisation with a board elected early in the process at an annual general meeting to create stability responsible for economy, staff and European contacts and working groups elected by membership meetings responsible for carrying out the work within delegated principles. In this way stability could be established early before many organisations had had the time to be members of the Nordic Organizing Committee but new organisations could influence the process by appointing new members in workings groups at regular membership meetings later on. The model was apart from the appointment of working groups a normal popular movement democracy model were the staff are excluded from having voting rights in the board or other democratic fora in the organisation as they have informal strong influence anyway.

Central people in Attac did not participate in the meeting in Malmö but met in Gothenburg. They presented another idea of a professional project organisation. A project coordinator should together with other professional staff be responsible for the work in a coordination group having executive power reporting to a board. Professional coordinators should be responsible for each working group. All the professional staff should also be members of the board. Mobilisation and the content of the forum should be completely separate from the NOC and instead organised in a separate network. If organisations wanted to be active in political work they should choose to become members of the network, if they wanted to become involve in what was presented as practical matters they should choose to become active in NOC.

As both activist organisations and trade unions in Sweden are alien to an idea that staff should have democratic rights in the steering bodies of an organisation the proposal for professionals having voting rights was rejected. A final compromise was done mainly according to the principles decided in Malmö. But many influential organisations continued to be worried about that the organisation was not only classical democratic centralistic with a board in charge of all the work. That working groups could make decisions that could make it impossible for the board to be democratically responsible to next regular AGM to be held after ESF was of great concern.

FoE Sweden was worried about the slow speed in the organisation process. What had saved the process in August was many new activists from the Left party and youth organisations that started to take responsibility. But the core of the organisation was slow to set in motion. FoE initiated an election committee for the NOC board and a balance of activists and large organisations was agreed upon with Attac in a key position. The hope was that Attac after a while should have more understanding of the activist movement’s opinions and act as a bridge towards the main stream trade unions. A board also with representatives from Denmark, Finland and Norway was elected according to the balance proposed. In the board the Kvarnby Folk High School in Malmö connected to the Left Party, the anti-war network and FoE had a strong position as activist organisations. Kvarnby was represented by a leading regional Left party politician, FoE Sweden by the chair living in Malmö and the Anti-war network by a person that also were member of the national board of the Left party. The Left students representative became soon inactive and the representative from the antiracist movement had practical problems to be involved living far away. The board thus had Attac as key organisation with two members from trade unions, ABF and the European feminist initiative as supporters. The trade unions, ABF and Kvarnby had the advantage of that their representatives could use some of their professionally paid time for the board work. There were problems in structuring the board work in such a way that representatives from Denmark and Finland as well as activist organisations became integrated. A problem that was aggravated when the representative from the anti-war network became hired on part time for fund-raising in the staff on 25 percent and thus could not be part of the board anymore. One person from Attac was hired on half time for the information work and one for visa and interpretations on 25 per cent. The interest for the working groups was low and mainly FoE and Kvarnby took the responsibility to coordinate the 11 working groups, Kvarnby also had a key position as NOC treasurer.

In the working groups three models emerged. One was to treat the work as normal democratic procedure in popular movements, mainly by informal consensus and if necessary by formal majority decisions according to the mandate given by the organisation. The Contact group for Europe and the World as well as many other groups worked well according to this model. The other models were groups were there was strong political conflict, mainly the information group. It was dominated by activist organisations with a board political attitude to the work while Attac and ABF also had quite
different opinions than the majority. But this working group started well establishing many subgroups and beginning its task producing a rudimentary webpage, poster, and different proposals for a leaflet as well as preparations for a media center, a press group, documentation etc. Two groups worked according to the idea of the horizontal open space professionalism, the program group and the Nordic mobilisation group. In the program group the idea of neutralism became dominant and caused some problems as many anyway wanted to discuss content. Many were interested in content and saw the program group as a possibility for discussing their issues which caused some prolonged debates with little results. After that the European program group was established the internal problems within the NOC program group aggregated as the anti-political ideology of the group had made the purpose of the group unclear and that the hierarchy within the group became stronger. The European Contact groups solved the problem differently. It stated that on the formal level NOC and the group had nothing to do with the organising of the program but informally the Contact group should do everything to give service to those groups prioritised by EPA in the enlargement process to enable them to influence the program by connecting them to possible cooperation partners in advance, during and after the merging process.

Its most clear expression did the horizontal open space professional model get in the mobilisation group. Here its key proponent was elected coordinator in July. Nothing happened until the first meeting to establish NOC took place in Gothenburg early September. Here according to the standard procedure in professional popular education but also many popular movements in Sweden a group discussion was organised were everyone was asked to contribute their ideas to the mobilisation plan. Contrary to movement procedure but maybe on line with professional popular education methods then a second round was organised on a similar mobilisation issue, and so on. The group was never asked to agree upon what was most important, nor coming into the position of starting to share responsibilities. The horizontal dialogue was supposed to be summarised afterwards by the professional popular educator into a plan to be agreed upon by a working group. At next EPA meeting the same procedure was repeated. The working group itself were the popular educator from ABF had been in charge since July was never called until three months later in October. At this telephone meeting some immediate business was attended to but afterwards no one in the presumable large group wanted to respond to the calls of the coordinator anymore. A physical meeting was cancelled and the coordinator stated in November that there was a crisis in the mobilisation that needed to be solved by more professional staff.

Half or more of the coordinators in the working groups or more and many among the activists doing practical work came from the Left party or their sister organisations due to the fact that Malmö is a city with working class traditions and that activist organisations often have Leftists as key organisers with the capacity needed in organising ESF.  These Left party activists had no common position coming from very different organisations and from a party with a wide spectrum of ideas although they had a tendency of coming into opposition towards Attac and ABF visions. This caused delays and frustration. At the same time FoE Sweden representative in the board sensed that it was very hard to get any respect for the needs of the working groups in the board and activist movement ideas. The conflicts caused the Kvarnby and the Attac member in the board to propose that the board should take all strategic decisions and a conflict resolution mechanism be put in place. FoE Sweden rejected strongly internally to the board and the coordinators of the working groups on this proposal. A criticism against the way Attac and ABF had delayed the work and how impossible the idea was that every other group than the board should start to discuss first if their decision might be strategic and if so send it to the board and then if it is not strategic make the decision and start working. The letter caused strong reactions from Attac and ABF people but nobody else and the coordination group voted in consensus according to the proposal of FoE Sweden to reject the strategy part but say yes to a conflict resolution mechanisms. The board excepted the revised proposal from the coordination group.

After this settling of some problems and the rejection of the NOC theme proposal at EPA in Istanbul things started to seem to go in the right direction. In December a working weekend and membership meeting was held to coordinate all the working groups with some 50 participants. All the staff was sick or for other reasons not there but for a short visit. But the working groups were able to coordinate themselves well anyway and new people started to be active. In January the first big grant came and by February an office placed at Kvarnby could be staffed by four full time persons including one more from Attac in the staff apart from the three already employed. Activist movements started to cooperate among themselves to prepare events at ESF, from the national office at ABF in Stockholm study circles were organised all over the country to mobilise to ESF, the mobilisation group in Malmö continued to work well and at the Global Day of Action activities were organised not only in Malmö. Gothenburg, Stockholm and Uppsala but also by SAC and FoE in Falun were a pro-Palestinian Green party veteran was invited speaker at Dalarna Social Forum. Localities was inspected, meetings with police and other authorities arranged and a cultural program being organised. The European Contact Group organised mobilisation tours to Chechia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Italy, Spain and Portugal. 50 000 euro out of the first money granted was put into the Solidarity fund.  The capacity of both NOC staff and working groups gradually expanded and it seemed as it should be possible to continue the needed further expansion to take care of organising ESF.

ACT II

The spring implosion

There were some problems. The last newsletter sent out by the staff was in November and email addresses were not collected to send information to. All the time the responsible staff person seemed to be devoted to the program work. It was hard to get regular information out and thus make it easy for interested organisations to follow the process and mobilise. The European contact group started to cooperate with the information group to plan make mass mailings on a broad range of issues from the need of mobilising translators, support the solidarity fund and to start mobilising issues not addressed in other material mostly focused on the program.

There were also the problems with many inactive people in the board. This problem was addressed by the board at a membership meeting and an extra AGM was settled by the end of April to enable new active persons to become members of the board. The two remaining activist organisation members from Kvarnby and FoE had also the feeling that they were delegated tasks but then that the majority in the board did not approve of their work as was the case when a new person from Attac was employed at the office in January contrary to their proposal after they had made the interviews and prepared the employment. There were also never any agreement in the group appointed by the board on how to manage the staff, the persons with most daily contacts from Kvarnby and FoE had different opinion from the person from Transport living in Stockholm and thus the responsibility for information was never clarified which caused problems both within the staff and for the working groups.

What finally caused an implosion in NOC when the organisation needed to expand was a controversy on budget principles and how to organise the web work. Since early January the staff person responsible for information had propagated and made investigations why NOC needed to fund the openesf.net web page and also seen a need to take away the handling of the program registration from the Swedish voluntary technical web group to someone that should be employed for the two tasks. There were tensions between the technical web group and the staff member, both seeing that the other as delaying the work. The board had given the information group the task to make a study on how to solve the problem. There had been delays both from the voluntary web group responsible for the content, the technical web group and the staff member. But the conclusion was that the problems could be solved and that the technical web group was competent enough to solve the problems in time ahead.

The board decided differently against the will of both the information group and the treasurer. They saw web program registration as crucial to the process and did not trust the technical web group or information group to solve the problem in time as there had been delays earlier. They also meant that it was necessary to support the openesf.net webpage and hire a full time expert to develop the web site further until September, a person in Greece who also could handle the program registration formula at the cost of 15 000 euro. The problem was not only that for the coordination of the
information work but also that the decision was contrary to the principles that in practice had been guiding the work so far which was that no decision regarding allocation of money was taken if not the money were at hand. The 15 000 euro was outside of the budget and there were no money, a principle that the treasurer had seen as important for maintaining economic disciple in NOC.

The result was that the technical web group resigned as they had not been consulted on the issue of how the organisation registration that now should be handled from Greece could be integrated with all the other registrations also linked to organisations regarding stalls, accommodation etc. that should continue to be the responsibility of the Swedish technical web group. The coordinator of the information group also resigned and the information group disappeared or was fragmented into its parts. Many of its tasks have not yet been re-established. Then also the treasurer resigned as he did not see that he could be responsible anymore when the board voted against the principle of not using money that yet were not guaranteed.

What severely aggravated the situation was that the staff member from Attac in a letter to the board argued that a Left party trio was blocking the process not being interested in the program preparations and thus uninterested in solving the web problem. She accused in general others of politicising and making conflicts out of something that easily could get a constructive solution. The Left party trio accused to block the program process was in practice the treasurer, the coordinator of the information group and the person in the staff responsible for fund-raising. As the Left party had low opinion polls under what was needed to get into parliament and the accrued persons in question did not want to have public conflict the elected persons chose to resign without explaining politically why while the staff member stayed. Also other left party activists chose to resign or become passive. As the left party and its sister organisations provided half of the well-experienced activists to run the practical work there was a severe crisis.

The first to react to the crisis was the European contact group. There had been severe problems already when the Nordic mobilisation group never became active, something the European contact group tried to solve by having one of its members in the its working committee from the Left Students union to try to vitalise the contacts on the email list and initiate some mobilisation efforts in Sweden. Now when also the information group had been fragmented and the responsible person in the staff did not help in the information efforts necessary for mobilisation there were a crisis for the mobilisation both in Sweden and internationally. The European Contact group informed its closest cooperation partners and started a set of initiatives to get a better balance between the different task of NOC were now the task of mobilisation, fund-raising, translation and other issues had been marginalised and the interest of the program process had been made the only task having status with needs overruling the needs of most other tasks. Among the initiatives was to suggest that fund-raising and mobilisation became a point on the agenda of the European program group meeting in the end of April in Malmö, to give support to CEE participants to be able to come to the Malmö meeting and EPA in Kiev and to continue to demand that someone in the staff needed to help with making mass mailings from the official email address to support mobilisation and a broad range of needs.

FoE Sweden also reacted as the only Swedish activist organisation now left in the board. The immediate concern was to stop more Left party activists to leave or becoming passive. Another was to create more respect for the working groups. A letter was addressed to Attac Sweden, and also sent to the facilitator of the NOC board, Attac Denmark, Finland and Norway to inform about the graveness of the situation, ask for immediate discussions between FoE and Attac and the need to stop groundless accusations against political parties from NOC staff members from Attac. On a mobilisation tour
to Finland mainly to coordinate environmental and solidarity movements’ efforts for ESF and participate in Finnish Social Forum preparatory meeting the conflict was also addressed with Attac, FoE and some other key organisations in Finland. Attac Sweden did not answer in many weeks. After a month a meeting was arranged with persons from the national leadership of Attac Sweden and FoE. It then became clear that the representatives from Attac Sweden in the board and the central work never had reported back and was not asked to do it, to Attac Sweden. What had been received was only
pleasant news in spite of the severe conflicts that had occurred since July. FoE was also informed that Attac was a horizontal organisation in such a way that the persons active at the national level in the ESF process were as independent from Attac Sweden as the local groups of Attac who have a completely independent status from the national organisation. Independent local groups are standard within activist organisations as FoE but that also working groups representing a national organisation like Attac was equally independent was new to everyone else. Thus it was not an organisation who had participated in the preparatory process in the key position since the beginning but some individuals lacking the continuous backing and democratic control from an organisation. Attac promised to be better informed in the future of what their representative ion the board did, the staff members from
Attac had they nothing to do with.

FoE Sweden also made a motion to the extra AGM to promote some principles for the work in the future including better balance in the preparatory process and better respect for the working groups. Also the key trade union Transport was approached and a meeting took place with the vice chairman and their NOC board representative. Transport had chosen to give some more money to solve the immediate NOC economical crisis. A dialogue took place but no deeper understanding of each other points. The interest FoE had in getting agreement between the key organisations before the extra AGM on a better coordination of the staff, coordination group and board to open up the possibility for mobilising interest from activist organisations to strengthen the board received no positive response. As chair of the election committee a member of FoE Sweden had the responsibility to get new active members in the board.

The culture working group also started a rebellion among the working groups. A tendency occurred that people in the staff or board took issues that was the responsibility of a working group and went directly to the board when they sensed resistance to the proposal from the working group out of lack experience or using their privileged position. This caused all working groups to react and a letter proposed by the culture group to the board demanding more respect was signed by all coordinators of working group including one from Attac and Transport.

The core of NOC deteriorated further. The staff was in heavy conflict with each other. The new organising of the website proved to be delayed. The deadline for submitting proposals for the program was postponed a month. Much content on the old web site did not come up again and is still not up three months later including that there is no link to the official fse.esf.org web site as before. By mid April only two members in the board participated at a board meeting out of 15 members and at the coordinating group meeting 5 out of 17 members participated, in both cases with FoE as half or almost half of the participants. Work continued in the working groups and subgroups. Mobilisation tours went to Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia and Bosnia. But the momentum was going down rather than up at a time in need of expansion.  In the middle of NOC there was an implosion.

Meanwhile FoE, Via Campesina and Latin American Groups in Sweden and like minded organisations in Finland started their political campaign by jointly attaching the Finnish Swedish forest corporation Stora Enso which promotes monoculture and the violent evictions of Via Campesina activists from plantation land in Southern Brasil. This was done on 17th of April, the global action day for peasants in three cities in small scale but with good results in the press. The cooperation between the Swedish and Finnish solidarity, environmental and peasant movement and their international cooperation partners developed further in the preparations for ESF.

ACT III

Modus vivendi

The extra AGM took place at the same time as the European program meeting in the end of April. After the meeting decided against the will of some trade unions to start with the questions on principles raised by FoE Sweden a constructive debate took place. Some smaller changes were made in the principles for further work presented by FoE Sweden and the letter from the working groups excepted by all.

When there had been no interest from neither the dominant organisation in NOC nor other activist organisations to strengthen the board ABF in Stockholm made a great effort in finding more persons including the vice chairman from Left Youth from a fraction interested in cooperating with LO and negative towards cooperation with smaller leftist groups and trade unions. This proved to be a good solution. All Swedish activist organisations left the board with FoE to leave as the last and instead a new treasurer from Transport and people from another trade union and social democratic youth filled the ranks.

The hope was that the new situation would make responsibilities more clear. Activist organisations did not want anymore to be delegated tasks and then ruled against but saw it as necessary that the majority that had chosen a course against the will of working groups and economic principles creating trust and stability now had the full responsibility for their decisions. With a more clear division of responsibilities and better understanding of each other tasks maybe a more effective work could develop.

It became the case with the Attac representative in the board who totally accepted the new situation and now promoted the ideas of mass mailings which FoE Sweden and the European contact group long had wished should take place. A letter was sent to some 4 000 addresses with broad information on what was of interest for the mobilisation, programme and other practical matters even including a PS informing about the important peace demonstration at the first ESF in Florence and supporting the accused peace demonstrators that organised this demonstration sentenced to 91 years prison in Italy in January this year for an earlier peace demonstration in Florence. The board member from the left Youth became the effective coordinator of the Mobilisation group for Sweden and a regular newsletter in Swedish started to be issued. The web page was and still is a great obstacle from the point of view of mobilisation but there is now an understanding and will to give a much better balance also addressing those that are not organising seminars at ESF but want to participate. A tour was already planned in Sweden from the South to the North as well as a tour to reach festivals during the summer, both now well managed with good results. The fund-raiser in the staff initiated a mobilisation newspaper printed in 120 000 copies paid in full by advertising organisations and distributed all over the country. The mobilisation of translators was taking off and soon more than 100 persons willing from the Nordic countries had announced their interest. After a visit from Babels volunteer translator network the board decided to put 85 000 extra euro in the budget for the translation in addition to the 100 000 euro that already was included. Otherwise many things were down sized to suit a tight economic situation.

The many delays in the program process and with the decisions on the Solidarity fund continued. The board accepted the will of the European contact group to use some money for the CEE participation at the European program meeting in Malmö but did not decide on the proposal from the contact group to also support CEE participation at EPA in Kiev in advance.  Then the European contact group made the decision themselves as it did not change any budgets and the principle to support CEE participation from the solidarity fund also in the preparatory process already was approved by the board with their decision to support it in the case of the Malmö meeting. This caused the board to overrule the decision by the contact group. The group defended its decision taken in consultation with its CEE cooperation partners. The coordinator of the group gave the board an ultimatum that if they did not change their decision he would resign. Then the board accepted the decision by the European contact group and support was given to 30 CEE participants to come to Kiev in addition to extra money given by Western participants which allowed for even more support to more CEE participants.

Weakened but more united the NOC delegation could come to Kiev. The Swedish activist organisations had an as important role as the NOC board and staff and this has continued to be so in the ESF preparations.

Overwhelmed by the task of the merging process and the beginning of the vacation season in Sweden a balance in the preparatory process is now better respected. Three new people have been employed all active in working groups, one half time and two 25 percent time for logistics, visa and culture. The
European Contact group has somewhat exhausted itself after re-establishing the mobilisation group for Sweden and taking many conflicts to get information work organised and support strong CEE participation in the preparatory process. There is still no English newsletter and there are also other things not working. But in general all tasks are now considered and the working mood a lot better.

In the merging process some leftists were afraid that large mainstream trade unions and organisations close to them could dominate the outcome. This has proven to be wrong. The dream of a neutral horizontal work has here come true. It has not been very professional and there have been unnecessary delays but the outcome has not been dominance by resourceful Swedish organisations like the trade unions or ABF. In general the merging process has been less dominated by the hosting organisations and more organised at the European level with some influence also from CEE countries. Many Nordic organisations have had great problems in understanding the practicalities and the strategy for surviving the merging the way one wants, a task especially problematic and impossible to many as the vacations has started. The organisations that are easiest to influence the merging process are organisations with well established international contact networks like Attac and FoE.

The strategy chosen by FoE Sweden to avoid the program group and focus upon mobilising new groups and the practical part of the work within NOC and political campaigning with like minded organisations outside the official process have proved to be successful to influence the merging process. With this strategy linking strongly politically to cooperation partners links have been built that has been very useful in the merging. Regular phone conferences with FoE groups in Europe have united the efforts and made a strong linkage to Via Campesina possible. The theme 2 on environmental and agriculture has according to the coordinator of the program group been the most successful in merging the proposed activities. Late FoE Sweden was asked to do their share in the NOC responsibility for the merging groups. Reluctantly at the time of the Kiev meeting this was accepted but on other themes than theme 2 who already was in good NOC hands from Denmark. Thus a further FoE insight in merging was gained.

Finally FoE Sweden and its Swedish and Finnish cooperation partners not only had in mind of organising agricultural and environmental activities but also to challenge the content of main debates on the role and future of the global justice movement and strategies for social change at ESF. The idea to have radical movements outside the social forum process to discuss the role of the global justice movement together with some that were inside and having movement leaders in the panel rather than left intellectuals commenting the movement seemed as very different from other proposals that
stated that it was the organisations within the WSF process that should discuss the future of the movement. But instead of confrontation between the mains stream of ESF and WSF organisations and the environmental, rural, anticapitalist and indigenous movements a merger took place with acceptance of all the proposed radical movement speakers with one additional person from the WSF secretariat responsible for enlargement. Other broad initiatives to have popular movement speakers to discuss with each others and the participants of a seminar have received similar good response from the global leadership of FoE and Via Campesina to ABF in Sweden. So has the idea to have indigenous people as facilitators of the inauguration and in all the main seminars proposed by FoE Europe inspired by the Finnish Swedish alliance and in line with the EPA decision to promote new groups to participate. From Finland an activist sailing ship promoting fair trade will come to ESF and the activist camp for peasants. Environmentalists, peace activists and trade union delegations are also well on their way to make ESF in Malmö a place were movement activists meet.

In general it is impossible to survey the merging process at the moment accept for the themes were the environmental movement is especially active as theme 2 and theme 10 on general transversal issues.  There are still many problems ahead until the program must be decided in Brussels on 12th ofJuly. But in general it seems as the volunteer merging was far more in the preparatory process before Athens when only 700 out of 800 proposals merged voluntarily.

The European preparatory process

In the beginning at EPA in Stockholm both Eastern and Western Europeans were impressed by a Nordic mood of organising the process with less long talks and participatory means and Solidarity fund efforts. But the less politically open leadership also caused confusion and at EPA in Istanbul a rejection of the theme proposal. It was even stated in a report from the group discussions held at EPA for the first time in Istanbul that NOC should report its internal conflicts more openly, a request that never was answered. With some radical movements that have left ESF and the left both in Western and Eastern Europe in a defensive state of transition and fragmentation old customs among the key organisers of the ESF process have prevailed. There has been much interest in controlling the program process and very little in mobilisation apart from movements in many CEE countries. Eastern Europeans have welcomed the strong efforts to support CEE participation in the preparatory process. Radical anti-repression movements have been surprised at so many activists charged for crimes against terrorist laws, sabotage against air traffic and insulting a racist have been chosen by NOC to be speakers at the inauguration, demonstration and ESF party. French delegates at EPA chose the opposite position and wanted to postpone the decisions on speakers to next European program meeting thus reducing the importance of EPA and placing European program meetings inWestern Europe as the central decision point for more and more tasks in the process. Also the demonstration demands were postponed to the program meeting.

While the NOC political internal disputes to a large extent have been settled and agreement have been reached to the interest for all groups concerned parts of groups in Europe seems to not know how to estimate the situation. To Nordic activist organisations the interest shown in Kiev in using ESF for starting campaigning in the year 2009 have caused some reluctance to Western Europeans that seemed mainly interested in organising seminars to be diminished. That there seems to be little interest in cooperating with the strong EU-critical movements in the Nordic countries in the merging process is still an obstacle. While the Italian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Russian and Turkish movements seems to  come to an agreement with the Nordic movements, some French and German movements have more problems.

With too few activists in the working groups, a board lacking well experienced people in international broad cooperation and cooperation partners in some other countries suspicious of the lack of political will among the organisers and a growing task ahead one could see the possibilities as rather problematic. But what has happened is also that those activist organisations and movements most willing to cooperate with other movements and across borders are those who get most influence as the commitment to open space is true.

The conflict in Sweden has not been the normal between reformist and radical left within the process nor between horizontals and verticals or advocates of open space and those promoting changing social forums more into a decision making body. Instead it has been between a non-leftist activist organisation and the leftist Attac. It has been between the in economic and political issues more vertically democratic environmental organisation with horizontal activism whenever needed in struggles against corporate projects and the state and professional organisers of horizontal popular education. It has been activist organisations that have been most clearly demanding stability and clear principles for how the NOC should work and take democratic decisions while the more professionally project oriented organisations have claimed that they promote horizontal relationships. This while they in practice believed in professional leadership and thus behind the horizontal rhetoric’s were quite vertical. There was no room in Sweden for activist organisations to establish a fraction in the process demanding more horizontal methods, mainly because it was seen as more interesting to have a equal democratic power position in the process rather than being in opposition as self proclaimed horizontals, a term like grass root often used by professional organisations and political parties to talk to people and have them stay at the grassroots level while the professionals and leaders talking about horizontal relationships and grassroots remains having the central positions.

In the dominating debate between promoters of open space and those wanting a more decision-making body FoE Sweden reduced both concepts as useless dichotomy. FoE Sweden fully agreed upon that open space idea that neither NOC nor EPA should organise any activities in the programme except for inauguration, demonstration culture and the like. All seminars and workshops should be the result of what the participants organised themselves. What FoE rejected was that NOC or EPA had no informal right and duty to take political action to promote a use of the ESF as a tool for popular movements to organise campaigning and take action. The task of informing about ESF was a political task which had to be addressed as such, not a task of presenting a self evident neutral vision of an open space”unique” for”civil society” previous without history and without any content that could be presented to motivate people to come except for a global declaration once established for all times. The inclusiveness and openness was in itself enough and to add anything else would cause political conflict while being neutral was seen as an unquestionable position with no political content. FoE Sweden saw this introvert language as useless for telling people in common why they should come to ESF in Malmö. Together with many other organisations ESF was seen simply as a place where discussions and solidarity was organised by popular movements from many countries and those organisations that wanted to support that. During ESF of course like minded organisations could set up assemblies, seminars or workshops as decision-making bodies in practice including both political parties and liberation movements into the calculation when making the decisions. ESF can also be used as a decision-making body already so well expressed when a small meeting at ESF in Florence decided to launch the global anti Iraq war demonstrations held in 2003.  ESF should be a place both for such decision-making activist movements and for participants that do not want to be part of decisions on political action or be the legitimation of resolutions in the name of all participants at ESF. Thus ESF is both a place for decision-making bodies for popular movements that in their own name wants to take collective action together with others and an open space to anyone vaguely or strongly sympathising with the WSF platform critical towards neoliberalism and imperialism.

The sincere attempts by Attac and ABF to take the open space concept sincerely might be useful to the global social forum process. The concept have then been put to its limits and the strength and limitations has than become clear. Open space lacking any commitment to democratic will to take collective action becomes a tool for professionals to split the movement into service providers of a book fair and individual consumer of politics, between radicals and reformists. At the bottom of the concept is a neoliberal form of politics in opposition to the state centric forms of earlier models for global cooperation as World Youth festivals or ILO. Social forums as an open space with all its positive aspects of not demanding of every participant a common agenda and thus remaining open to different groups of people also at its bottom have competition between different resourceful actors as a key form. Without a concept that explicitly promotes ways to collectively during the forum create political action and culture social forums becomes a market ruled by capacity to compete. Organisations with resources in terms of international contacts, money or a well coordinated party in the back ground or intellectuals with an established name on the market for consumption of politics can easily get a disproportional part of attention.

Into this competitive market form radical groups opposing the ESF by establishing parallel activities fits perfect. They help the resourceful actors within the official process to claim that ESF is an attractive democratic process creating wide interest of different kinds without that they have to be confronted with demands of taking part in collective change of society together with radical groups. They also help to split the movement according to market principles into the selling of images of radicals worthy of attention due to their confrontational form and reformists due to their willingness to be part of the system while uniting political substance is marginalised. With the implosion of the NOC
preparatory process during the spring with its consequences showing the theoretical, practical and professional incompetence among the promoters of open space an experience has been done that will have consequences for the future.

So does the fact that the best wishes of the promoters of open space also have had good consequences. By taking the open space concept and believe in horizontal methods sincerely half hearted routines within ESF has been challenged and weaknesses been made more open. It has given the chance for both working class organisations as LO with more than 70 percent of the labour force unionised and smaller peasant and environmental organisations to be part of the process on equal levels and challenging the previous leftist dominance with concept of popular education or popular movement cooperation. The different front organisations for competing left parties and NGO professionals organising seminars together with other professionals at other NGOs on the civil society market within the ESF process have been challenged.

It will not solve a main social problem for the social forum process, that of the marginalisation of high educated activists or NGO professionals. Here the US social forum is a lot better example. But it may help on the war to make the social forum process a bit more inclusive. There will also be a model of how to solve political conflicts in an organising committee with the help of democratic rules and routines for statues and meetings rather than less transparent informal decision making procedures.

Easiest to adopt to the new realities have so far been the environmental, peasant, third world solidarity and partly peace and indigenous movements. The Swedish left have many more people active in the process but have had less international contacts but say that they start to learn. Eastern Europeans are also actively learning how to get influence. Italian and Finnish movements who are well connected to each other and internationally seem to easily adjust to the new situation and the Western NGOs. In the rest of Western European movements there seems to be some confusion. Hopefully the Nordic way of influencing the preparatory process can result in a more European Social Forum less dominated by the host countries and a Social Forum with a more wide spread participation and creating cooperation between different movements on more equal level. The many youth activiinitiatives from different movements, action-oriented interests and stronger integration of CEE countries in the preparatory process are hopeful sign that can bring a needed renewal to the ESF process.