STOP MAI

MEDIA RELEASE -for immediate release, 3 February, 2002 Authorised by the STOP-MAI Campaign Coalition (WA) Website http://members.iinet.net.au/~jenks/fair.html Affiliated with the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network (AFTInet) and with the World Social Forum (WSF)

 

World citizens insist on a saner new world
at enormous anti-globalism conference

The New York meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) has been dwarfed by the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil, a massive conference of delegates from around the world, voicing demands and proposals for global change.

3,500 non-government organisations (NGOs) and civil society groups have flocked to Brazil from every corner of the planet, with 19,000 pre-registered representatives, far surpassing the 12,000 limit set by the organising committee.

In all, some 50,000 people are attending the WSF's 24 conferences and 800 seminars and workshops, as well as several thousand more at parallel forums organised for specific groups, like filmmakers, environmentalists, local officials, parliamentarians and even children.

The Forum is the second annual gathering to be mounted by the movement which was spawned by massive protests against the institutions of neo-liberalism, the stalled Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the WEF Davos Forum.

It has assembled for nine days (28 Jan to 5 Feb) to develop the theme 'A better world is possible'. A keynote speaker, Noam Chomsky, said "The ["free trade"] system is one of "corporate mercantilism," with decisions over social, economic, and political life increasingly in the hands of unaccountable private concentrations of power, which are "the tools and tyrants of government. . ."

Information on the Forum is available at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br and the Independent Media Center http://www.indymedia.org

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PHONE CONTACTS: Brian Jenkins +61 8 9528 1864; Dion Giles 0411 745 538