2008 Americas Social Forum

Just got news of the 3rd annual Social Forum of the Americas to be held at the University of San Carlos, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, from October 7 to 12, 2008. Previously held in Quito, Ecuador in 2006, and Atlanta, GA in 2007, the Americas Social Forum is an outgrowth of the World Social Forum. From the website:

The 3rd ASF will take place on a continent which is facing a two-pronged challenge today: to broaden and consolidate the move toward change that has opened up in the last few years, and to resist the ongoing forms of domination that are striving to persist and to extend their reach, while seeking to recover lost ground so as to impede this transformative stream.

The 3rd Forum will allow peoples from across the continent to come together in this region, which has lived through heroic struggles throughout its past and recent history, so as to demonstrate solidarity, and to better understand the alternatives that have arisen here in the face of war, destruction, fear, and the perverse legacy of forms of violence displaying the most ferocious examples of militarized neoliberalism, including femicide.

The 3rd ASF will embrace the range of struggles, proposals, and experiences that have been strengthened, renewed or emerging over this rich period of common searching that has been taking place across the continent. It will stimulate stronger interconnections and aim to create more effective spaces for self-guided construction of shared platforms for emancipation.

The 3rd ASF will take place in Guatemala with the collaboration of social movements, indigenous peoples, academic groups and a range of committed sectors from this country and from across Mesoamerica. At the same time the presence of groups from across the continent will further stimulate and enrich these alliances. Overcoming geopolitical divides, peoples of the continent are moving toward an ever more shared identity between South and North, and between the different regions of the Americas. The struggles are growing closer and stronger in solidarity, as peoples who are confronting capitalism, imperialism and patriarchy.

For this edition of the Forum, six main themes have been defined that seek to reflect the specific nature of the hemispheric agenda and that will also help to group together the topics that will be dealt with by the different initiatives that come together in the ASF:

1. Scope and Challenges of the Changes in the Hemisphere: Post-Neoliberalism, Socialism(s), Civilizational Changes

2. Peoples in Resistance to Neoliberalism and Imperial Domination.

3. Defending quality of life in the face of predatory capitalism

4. Diversities and Equality: challenges for achieving them

5. The ideological dispute: communication, culture, knowledge and education.

6. Original, Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples and Nationalities: “Good living” and its keys for the future