The Opening March of the U.S. Social Forum

Police helicopters circled above the gathering crowd. A brass band of women and men dressed in red and black played Dixieland jazz. An affordable housing group from Miami shouted slogans in Spanish. Beautiful puppets—one in the shape of a dove—adorned the street in front of the state capitol. It was blazing hot here in Atlanta, but when the booming sound system began blasting Salt-n-Peppa’s “Push It,” the crowd didn’t seem to feel the heat and started stepping in tune. The opening march of the U.S. Social Forum had begun.

The U.S. Social Forum is an open space that allows different social movement organizations to come together and discuss how to combat neoliberal policies found here in the United States. The World Social Forum was first held in Porto Alegre Brazil in 2001. It acts a counterweight to the World Economic Forum, a place where politicians such as Tony Blair and companies such as Microsoft talk about economic issues. People in civil society decided it was time for social movement activists to get together and discuss an alternative set of economic policies.

There have been several World Social Forums since 2001. This is the first regional forum in the U.S. There are more than 100 workshops and events planned, revolving around six thematic areas: Katrina and its aftermath; U.S. imperialism, militarism, and prisons; gender and sexual liberation; workers in a globalized economy; migrant and immigrant rights; and indigenous voices.

Katrina looms large over the forum. One chant heard during the march was: “We saw what they did when the levees broke; it’s time to provoke.”

Marchers came from all over the country. (An environmental justice caravan traveled from Albuquerque to Atlanta, stopping at toxic sites along the way. Read about this caravan on Yes! magazine editor Sarah van Gelder’s blog: http://www.yesmagazine.org/svgblog/.)

The responses the marchers received from Atlanta residents varied from curiosity to bafflement. ("These crazy people are going to be here all week?") As the opening march turned on to Auburn street, construction workers, many of whom looked Latino, put down their tools at a condo job site and looked at the march with bemusement. What did they make of the rambunctious crowd dancing to the brass band? It was hard to say. But one black-haired man standing alone on a balcony shyly flashed the peace sign.