Hub delegates learn, teach at Atlanta forum

Toussaint Losier

ATLANTA — Nearly 100,000 youths and social activists from across the world, including about 100 Bostonians participating in the Northeast Freedom Rides, converged in Atlanta last week to participate in the 2007 United States Social Forum.

Stopping in Providence, R.I., and Washington, D.C., along the way, the Boston caravan brought three busloads of activists to the forum, many of them high school students.

Battling temperatures over 100 degrees, local youth made their presence felt with creative chants that highlighted issues of police brutality, gun violence and political oppression.

“There were thousands of different issues represented, but all of us [are] fighting,” said Carlos Moreno of the Roxbury Environmental Empowerment Program (REEP). “It was powerful to see how different we are but how we can still come together as one.”

As they marched through the streets of Atlanta, activists also drew attention to the proposed privatization of the city’s only public hospital as well as service cuts to the MARTA public transportation system. By marching past these locations, local organizers sought to point out local examples of structural adjustment, an economic program that forces governments to cut funding for basic services and allow private companies to buy public utilities. The original march route had also included a protest at City Hall against the planned destruction of public housing, but city officials had rejected this plan.

Following the march, the social forum began with an opening ceremony and concert at the Atlanta Civic Center. The five-day forum brought together over 10,000 people from across the country under the banner: “Another World is Possible, Another U.S. is Necessary.”

In addition to being a political event, the forum gave activists a place to socialize, learn about each other’s issues, refine organizing skills and coordinate broader campaigns. The Atlanta gathering drew its inspiration from the World Social Forum, an international assembly that has been convening since 2001.

Thousands attending the social forum took part in panel discussions, documentary screenings and cultural performances. Forum participants, including some Boston-area activists, also hosted hundreds of workshops on a range of issues, including climate change, immigration reform, male supremacy and anti-war activism.

Last Thursday, Dorotea Manuela of the Boston May Day Coalition helped to lead “The Great American Boycott, Immigrant Rights and May Day 2007.” Her workshop focused on the need for the U.S. and other Western countries to ratify the 2003 United Nations Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

She explained that the U.S. government has refused to see people who come to this country as migrants protected by international law. Instead, they are described as immigrants, denying them needed legal protection. She also helped circulate a petition calling for an immediate end to raids and deportations by the Department of Homeland Security.

The following afternoon, Cheryl Lawrence, a tenant organizer with City Life/Vida Urbana, also helped to lead a workshop titled “Best Practices in the Struggle for the Right to the City.” Sharing a panel with other housing rights activists from across the country, she described how the Jamaica Plain-based organization fights gentrification by forcing landlords to collectively bargain with tenant associations on rents.

Though Lawrence had originally turned down the opportunity to attend the social forum, she left Atlanta with a renewed commitment to fight for the rights of all people.

“When you really begin to see and understand how oppression hurts individuals and hurts communities, I just think that you can’t tolerate it for anyone,” she said. “Black people can’t tolerate the oppression that Latinos suffer around immigration, and Latinos can’t tolerate the oppression that black people face … The queer person’s issue is the straight person’s issue. Women’s issues are men’s issues. We have to demand that everybody has a place at the table.”

Moreno, of REEP, was surprised to hear that while youth activists in San Francisco organize around similar issues of youth violence, they are more willing to use confrontational tactics when demanding change from City Hall.

“While we have been working with city councilors to show that youth need $8 million for summer jobs, they work outside the system to pressure the mayor to get the youth what they need,” he said.

Moreno was happy to see so many young people at the forum, but Mission Hill resident Rafael Feliciano was disappointed by the turnout. Though teens and young adults definitely constituted a significant portion of those at the social forum, Feliciano expected to see a stronger youth presence.

“I did get to learn about a lot of youth groups that are doing amazing work,” said Feliciano. “But with any sort of political change, I always think of youth as being in the forefront, so I expected to see more [at the social forum].”

An informal meeting on Saturday morning between longtime activists and young organizers, however, impressed both Moreno and Feliciano. In a circle of several dozen teens, former Black Panther Party leader Kathleen Cleaver, Young Lords Party founder Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez, and American Indian Movement member Ward Churchill spoke candidly with those several generations younger about their experiences as activists during the 1960s and ’70s.

“It was interesting to hear how in the ’60s young people were doing community work because it needed to get done, when it wasn’t a nine-to-five job,” said Moreno. “It used to be that it was cool to help your people. That is what I want to bring back with me to Boston.”

For Feliciano, “meeting these people that I read about and watch on documentaries … was amazing.”

“It was so ridiculous to hear them speak personally and it will be something that I will never forget,” he said. “But the most amazing part was speaking to people who are doing the important work all across the country but don’t get any attention. Those people are so beautiful because of how much they care about the people of this country.

“Seeing so many people [doing] the work that I do tells me that I’m not alone,” he continued. “And if there is a real revolution that I don’t have to be that scared, that there are other people behind me in a huge group.”

It was these kinds of informal conversations that most Boston-area activists found particularly rewarding.

Following her encounter with tenant leaders from other parts of the country, Mattapan’s Alice Shroud found significant similarities, regardless of geography.

“The struggle we have with the landlords to stop these big rent increases is not just in Boston, Atlanta or New York City. It’s all over,” she said. “Everyone is fighting for the same social justice.”

Conditions in the South, the poorest region of the country, figured prominently in multiple workshops and panel discussions. Indeed, Atlanta was designated the host site of the social forum because of its historical connection to the civil rights movement and other progressive movements.

Moreover, the city’s Southern location also drew a strong contingent from the Gulf Coast. Rosalyn Johnson of Mattapan appreciated the opportunity to speak one-on-one with people from New Orleans. Noting the serious problems of gentrification and displacement caused by Hurricane Katrina, Johnson said that in Boston, “we take a lot of things for granted.”

“We need to do some serious movement in regards to housing,” she said.