Last European Social forum was a failure in terms of convergence. How can Europeans citizens and civil society organization can join their forces for a another Europe? Here are few ideas on how to improve the next european social forum.
Ten days ago, I was attending Firenze 10+10, the seventh European Social Forum. This event was held ten years after the first social forum in Europe in 2002, which gathered a massive participation and relative success. This year though, participation was much weaker, and conclusions of the meeting were highly deceptive.
As you can see by yourself, the final statement of the social forum is pretty much a call for protests and further common action against austerity and in favor of more social justice. When it comes to concrete demands though, the statement is pretty much vague:
Social organizations, social movements, trade unions and citizens working against austerity and debt, for natural and social commons, for social and labour rights, for democracy, global justice and peace, for gender issues and migrant rights have gathered in Florence 10+10.
We call for a European permanent mobilization to support the fights against the crisis and build a future for everyone in Europe and in the world. This mobilization will include both convergence and decentralizes actions.
Obviously, many people had a sad feeling of defeat when leaving the Fortezza da Basso on Sunday. And I must admit, I was one of them.
Having been participating to the small workshop for writing the final statement of the forum, which is supposed to create convergence of ideas and struggles, I can witness that reaching consensus among participants was very difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, the final text we achieved to write was merely a call for participating in the coming general strikes and other protests around Europe, without any specific claims or clear message to send to policymakers, except the usual one against austerity. “If Miss Lagarde were here, she would be laughing at us” even ironised Susan George during a workshop.
I think however, that we should learn from this disappointment. And take action for the future. As an italian trade-unionist claimed during the final event (see the video), we have to “accept our weakness”, and work harder in the future for achieving a real convergence of our struggle. Another activist also nailed it: “this failure is a matter of methodology”.
And thus here is my take on how to improve it.
Every consensus is a victory: let’s track them
The Social Forum process it is intended to find convergences and consensus on different “alliance spheres” (topics): democracy, labor rights, Austerity & Debt, Europe and the World, Natural and social Commons and many other topics (see the whole program on the picture). Of course, it would be hard to exclude any of this topics: all are important. Nevertheless, one problem with this method is that obviously no one can attend them all.
As a result, no one can really know what’s happening in the others workshops. On top of this, we rely on people to report on the content of the parallel discussions, which obviously is a process highly weakened by human biais: one would generally tend to favors his own ideas or just forget some key elements of the discussion.
And of course, it gets even worse when you multiply this process during three days. You end up with a pile of very unreliable reports, from which a small group of people are then asked to produce a final statement. I was told that in the past, one final statement produced was so controversial that this finally ended up in a scandal. In such circumstances, the most fair and logical option is not to make any specific statement at all, and to “content” ourselves to a vague call against austerity, along with a list of key protests. And this was the decision we took this year in Florence.
The good news is, this process is highly improvable. In fact, this is merely a problem of lack of information tools.
Every consensus is a victory. As such, every single consensus should be celebrated and tracked into an information system provided for the social forum (think of something similar to liquid feedback). This way, the whole community of participants would be acknowledged about the results of the others workshop, and may have their opinions about these results before they are officially reported later during the forum. People attending other workshop could for instance express their strong objections, and thus a sort of “consensus quality index” would be produced.
That way, people in charge of summarizing the convergence would be given reliable reports and could then elaborate with them without betraying the very essence of these key agreements.
The need for transversal workshops
Another key problem with social forums’ methodology is that everyone tend to attend workshops he is the most passionate about. This tends to isolate concerns, proposals, and participants. And again, from the perspective of someone in charge of drafting a final statement, this makes it hard to find a final consensus since one’s own opinion about a proposal would interfere with the consensus found by other people.
In order to tackle this, multidisciplinary discussions should be held on the key proposals agreed by every thematic groups. These group would then provide an opinion about the proposals, which would then validate or not these proposals, and thus contribute to the “consensus quality index”.
In order to avoid biases in the composition of these groups, sortition should be the basic rule. People would be chosen randomly among each alliance sphere, thus ensuring diversity among each of them.
Identifying the roots of our disagreements
Producing convergence is obviously very important, but another aspect should not be neglected: disagreements. We need to identify them better, thus leaving the possibility for people to discuss them and maybe finally find a common ground of understanding.
Take my strong disappointment about trade unions’ strategy and vision. I never had the opportunity to express this view during the social forum. Yet I know that I was not the only one to be frustrated about the development of the labour rights workshop. If only we had the opportunity to elaborate our disagreements, maybe the debate would have evolved in a more constructive way. Perhaps we could have asked the unionists’ opinions about basic income. it does not mean we would have found any consensus, but at least, everyone would be aware of the explanations of why it is so difficult to achieve convergence. Further workshops could then be dedicated to these matters.
As we all know, disagreements are very often due to misunderstandings. Overcoming disagreements requires more time for discussion and better communication tools.
Tags: Firenze 10+10, Social Forum, Trade Unions
Thank you for your analysis.
I was moderating the discussion where the final statement draft was elaborated. Probably you remember me.
I fully agree with you that the proposed convergence process failed. However I believe that it could be improved with a fully open and participatory consensus methodology. This consensus methodology still needs to be concreted; but I believe there is space for improvement and a lot of potential.
In my opinion the main problem was the lack of transparency regarding the convergence process. There were convergence sessions Friday afternoon, but after the official ones there were others behind close doors that decide the text that was presented in the Saturday’s morning plenary. A text that was fully rejected by the participants and forced a new convergence process in Saturday afternoon. The one we both participated.
At that last minute process it became clear that it was not possible to reach consensus about all the issues discussed. However there was sense of urgency of reaching a consensus about common mobilization.
In relation to this I believe that a concrete action is much more effective that a well formulated list of demands. To whom are we going to demand? To the politicians? To the EU? We already know that they do not listen at all. Just look at the Greece or Spanish cases. Hundreds of thousands on the streets demanding changes and they only receive violent repression.
The final statement called for European mobilization against the EU. This is not something irrelevant. With a successful mobilization against the EU you are automatically demanding to the EU to change their policies, but not only that, you are showing your strength and capacity of mobilization. You are creating a counter-power.
I agree with you that Firenze would have had more impact with a final statement including deeper analysis. For future events I would try to start all the process focusing in this line, reaching minimum consensus about certain topics, such us, what are we facing in Europe? what do we propose as alternative? who is the enemy? which actions we will carry out to defeat it?
Open questions would allow meaningful discussions. Through an open and participatory process and consensus methodology we would elaborate answers and proposals with an unparalleled collective intelligence component.
Congratulations for you blog.
Cheers,
Sol
oh yes, I do remember you 🙂 Glad to have you here !
I’m also a big fan of consensus methods, which i did not mention because i focused more on the macro level of the process. But you are right: this should be a core rule for further social forums.
Also agreed on transparency, which is also the advantage of having an online tool that would report what has been agreed or not.
As for the final output of Firenze 10+10, I’m probably on the pessimistic side on that one because I am very impatient person… Eager to move forward and beat this absurd system… Not just pretending we will…
Thank you for providing your feedback here !
Best wishes
PS: I really like the approach you are suggesting. So here are my answers :
What are we facing in Europe?
The failure of the monetary system? The failure of the EU construction without common social welfare. The failure of representative “democracy”.
What do we propose as alternative?
A pathways towards direct democracy and emancipatory new welfare system. To change the political system towards sortition, so that we (re)introduce normal people into parliaments, and thus have a more direct and truly representative political system. To improve this, we need to provide everyone an unconditional basic income so that not only we abolish poverty, but we also encourage people to dedicate themselves to what they are best working on, providing them the possibility to say NO to unfair poor jobs and indecent working conditions. And thus recognizing the non-market economy as a core element of the economic value of society and enable enhanced participation of the civil society in the decision-making processes.
who is the enemy?
The guys that have the power, but most of all our fellow citizens who are still believing in the tenets of the old system, and what they are told on TV. The good news is, this is not irreversible.
which actions we will carry out to defeat it?
We need a coalition movement between every stakeholder for claiming loudly these few but powerful proposals. Organize popular education, protests, do lobbying inside the institutions, provide tools for citizens to take action at the local and european level, empower local groups, experimentations, and provide financial resources to bigger projects (documentaries, events, etc).
Hello again, thank you for your proposals.
I very much like the concept of Sortition. I think they did a similar thing to re-write the Island constitution.
I would like to share with you a deep analysis about Firenze 10+10 TNI has just released http://www.tni.org/article/firenze-10-10-and-changing-character-power?context=71170
It includes links to several interviews we made, with special attention to the new social movements.
I hope you like it, any comment is welcomed!
[…] The tensions over the correct strategy forward became exposed during the final assembly on Sunday, 11 November. Key participants of convergence groups had worked tirelessly over the previous days on a joint text summarising the discussions and developing a concrete plan for action. In the final meeting, however, this document had been vetoed. Instead of a final text, a more general call for mobilisation was presented to the assembly. This led to an angry response by a representative of the Italian trade union COBAS. The call for mobilisation was weak, he stated, and this in a situation, when left forces should focus on the impending general strikes in Europe on 14 November. The goal had been to develop an overall document with a focus on a few concrete actions. This had not been achieved. Other speakers joined in and demanded a stronger text, in which the decisions reached at Firenze 10+10 were listed. The meeting would have to be considered a failure, if joint decisions could not be taken. Others, however, pointed out that a show of unity was most important in view of the crisis and a common text better than a text supported only by some (see alsoFirenze 10+10: Learning from defeat). […]
[…] 10+10: Learning from defeat (20 nov 2012) by Stanislas Jourdan http://boilingfrogs.info/2012/11/20/lessons-from-firenze-1010/blocked, but can be viewed here: […]
[…] 10+10: Learning from defeat (20 nov 2012) by Stanislas Jourdan http://boilingfrogs.info/2012/11/20/lessons-from-firenze-1010/ blocked, but can be viewed here: […]
[…] 10+10: Learning from defeat (20 nov 2012) by Stanislas Jourdan http://boilingfrogs.info/2012/11/20/lessons-from-firenze-1010/ blocked, but can be viewed here: […]
[…] in view of the crisis and a common text better than a text supported only by some (see also Firenze 10+10: Learning from defeat). A fragmented and weak European Left When assessing the strength of the European Left, it is […]