| Jan 27 2008 |
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| Burning Snow in Montreal |
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Susan Alexander
MONTREAL, 26 Jan (IPS/TerraViva) - "The Snow is on Fire" was the rallying cry in Montreal, Quebec, with the slogan brought to life by a troupe of fire dancers who led an anti-globalisation parade along the city's main shopping street, St Catherine's.
Chants against capitalism didn't seem to deter the shoppers but the lively, colourful parade attracted a lot of attention from the Saturday crowds.
Co-ordinated by 'Alternatives', a Montreal-based solidarity organisation that has championed the World Social Forum in Quebec, the rally and parade brought together a coalition of social movements, community, environmental, student, women, union and minority organisations.
Despite the winter sunshine and the antics of the fire-eating dancers it was still a cold Canadian afternoon and the speeches at the start of the parade were kept mercifully short.
Greenpeace was well represented by young activists with banners and placards questioning Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's environmental record "Harper or the planet?", and his ties to US President George Bush.
The strong local feminist tradition was in evidence with a female drumming band leading a series of chants. Banners recalled the Women's World Marches of recent years, a global movement that was born in Quebec.
War and peace was the other theme much in evidence. A group from the World Conference of Religions for Peace looked forward to commemorating India´s founding father Mahatma Gandhi on the 60th anniversary of his death, while placards derided army recruitment in schools and criticised a just-released report recommending that Canadian troops extend their mandate in Afghanistan.
Even the US Presidential campaign got in on the parade with a small but colourful "Ron Paul for President" group touting the Texas congressman's "more libertarian than Republican" credentials. Paul, a Republican who voted against the Iraq War, would take on the military-industrial complex, his supporters stressed.
Less incongruous was the visible presence of Canada's social democratic New Democratic Party, that has been working hard to increase its standing in French-speaking Quebec.
As darkness fell and the parade came to a planned pause at the seedier end of St Catherine's Street it transformed itself into a "Reclaim the Streets" march with speakers addressing issues of local poverty and homelessness. Marchers were invited to celebrate through the evening with a community meal and a festival of resistance in a local arts centre.
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terraviva radio |
In cooperation with Amarc  |
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q&a |
 'Militarism and Paranoia will strike WSF'
"In future many activists will be prevented from travelling to other countries by being denied entry visas, because a new kind of criminalisation of social protest is under way," says Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos. |
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 Taking stands is vital for the WSF
The WSF as an "open space" idea can either be implemented in a liberal direction or in a committed, progressive direction, says Walden Bello, Executive Director of Focus on the Global South. |
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 Davos has lost its arrogance
The WSF didn’t produce the progressive wave in Latin America by itself; nevertheless, it would be difficult to imagine it without (the presence of) the WSF, says Cândido Grzybowski, director of iBase (Brazil) and member of the WSF's International Committee. |
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 We Now Need Accomplishments
"We will need legs of a marathon runner to lay the foundation of true democracy", says Anuradha Mittal, social activist and Head of the Oakland Institute in California. |
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news from the WSF |
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voices |
 Native Peoples and the World Social Forum
For the indigenous peoples, the Forum provide a platform for the traditional knowledge and diverse characteristics of each region, as people raise their voices in support of justice and rights, writes T. Marcos Terena (Brazil),member of the Xané indigenous group and president of the ITC Inter-tribal Committee |
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 Labour Still has to Catch Up with the WSF
Whilst new union strategies, new labour movements, and even new spaces for a new kind of international labour struggle are developing, labour does not yet have the impact on the WSF that is necessary, writes Peter Waterman, a longtime commentator on labour and social movement internationalism. |
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 A vibrating US Social Forum
Over 15 planned actions are currently confirmed across the United States. The seeds of many of these actions have grown in the soil that was fertilized in Atlanta last June, when the first-ever US Social Forum was held, writes journalist Norman Stockwell from Madison, Wisconsin |
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 The Forum at the Crossroads
By Walden Bello, Executive Director of Focus on the Global South, professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines |
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