corimagua

Final statements from the 2001 & 2002 World Social Forum held in Porto Alegre, Brazil:

“We are women and men, farmers, workers, unemployed, professionals, students, blacks and indigenous peoples, coming from the South and from the North, committed to struggler for people’s rights, freedom, security, employment and education. We are fighting against the hegemony of finance, the destruction of our cultures, the monopolization of knowledge, mass media, and communications, the degradation of nature, and the destruction of the quality of life by multinational corporations and antidemocratic policies. Participative democratic experiences–like that of Porto Alegre–show us that a concrete alternative is possible. We reaffirm the supremacy of human, ecological and social rights over the demands of finance and investors.”

“In the face of continuing deterioration in the living conditions of people, we, social movements from all around the world, have come together in the tens of thousands at the second World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. We are here in spite of the attempts to break our solidarity. We come together again to continue our struggles against neoliberalism and war, to confirm the agreements of the last Forum and to reaffirm that another world is possible.

“We are a global solidarity movement, united in our determination to fight against the concentration of wealth, the proliferation of poverty and inequalities, and the destruction of our earth. We are living and constructing alternative systems, and using creative ways to promote them. We are building a large alliance from our struggles and resistance against a system based on sexism, racism and violence, which privileges the interests of capital and patriarchy over the needs and aspirations of people.

“The system produces a daily drama of women, children, and the elderly dying because of hunger, lack of health care and preventable diseases. Families are forced to leave their homes because of wars, the impact of ‘big development,’ landlessness and environmental disasters, unemployment, attacks on public services and the destruction of social solidarity. Both in the South and in the North, vibrant struggles and resistance to uphold the dignity of life are flourishing.”

“Our home planet is now dangerously near a ‘tipping point.’ Human-made greenhouse gases are near a level such that important climate changes may proceed mostly under the climate system’s own momentum. Impacts would include extermination of a large fraction of species on the planet, shifting of climatic zones due to an intensified hydrologic cycle with effects on freshwater availability and human health, and repeated worldwide coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level..

“Civilization  developed during the Holocene, a period of relatively tranquil climate now almost 12,000 years in duration. The planet has been warm enough to keep ice sheets off North America and Europe, but cool enough for ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica to be stable. Now, with rapid warming of 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past 30 years, global temperature is at its warmest level in the Holocene.

“This warming has brought us to the precipice of a great ‘tipping point.’ If we go over the edge, it will be a transition to ‘a different planet,’ an environment far outside the range that has been experienced by humanity. There will be no return within the lifetime of any generation that can be imagined, and the trip will exterminate a large fraction of species on the planet.

“The crystallizing scientific story reveals an imminent planetary emergency. We are at a planetary tipping point. We must move onto a new energy direction within a decade to have a good chance to avoid setting in motion unstoppable climate change with irreversible effects. 

“We live in a democracy and policies represent our collective will. We cannot blame others. If we allow the planet to pass tipping points…. it will be hard to explain our role to our children. We cannot claim…..that ‘we did not know.'”

-James Hansen

NASA Climate Scientist, 2007

The components of the natural world are myriad but they constitute a single living system. There is no escape from our interdependence with nature; we are woven into the closest relationship with the Earth, the sea, the air, the seasons, the animals and all the fruits of the Earth. What affects one affects all–we are part of a greater whole–the body of the planet. We must respect, preserve, and love its manifold expressions if we hope to survive.

-Bernard Campbell

Modern industrial civilization has developed within a certain system of convenient myths. The driving force of modern industrial civilization has been individual material gain, which is accepted as legitimate, even praiseworthy, on the grounds that private vices yield public benefits, in the classic formulation. Now, it has long been understood, very well, that a society that is based on this principle will destroy itself in time. It can only persist, with whatever suffering and injustice that it entails, as long as it is possible to pretend that the destructive forces that humans create are limited, that the world is an infinite resource, and that the world is an infinite garbage can. At this stage of history either one of two things is possible. Either the general population will take control of its own destiny and will concern itself with community interests, guided by values of solidarity, sympathy and concern for others, or alternatively there will be no destiny for anyone to control…In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured, they may well be essential to survival.

-Noam Chomsky

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

-David Foster Wallace, This is Water

Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. 

Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow.

Just walk beside me and be my friend.

-Albert Camus

“Do more than belong: participate. Do more than care: help. Do more than believe: practice. Do more than be fair: be kind. Do more than forgive: forget. Do more than dream: work.”

— William Arthur Ward