A Festival of Radical Energy

THE CULMINATION OF years of discussion and thousands of hours of planning, the 1st United States Social Forum brought together over 12,000 activists to sweltering Atlanta June 27-31 for a week of conferencing, networking and marching. With lead organizing initiated by nonprofits, especially Project South, with ties to the Grassroots Global Justice network, the USSF resulted from two years' work by a National Planning Committee (NPC) composed of several dozen nonprofits, left "thinktanks" and social movement organizations. Solidarity played the lead role in an ambitious workshop "Feminism: Gender, Race and Class" with nearly 15 co-sponsors including NOW, Black Radical Congress, Highlander and SisterSong. Coming out of this workshop, a continuations network is forming to continue the dialogue. We also built a session on "Youth Building a Stronger Labor Movement on Campus and in the Workplace" with United Students Against Sweatshops, Student Labor Action Project, Student Farmworker Alliance and AFSCME Local 3299; a workshop on military counterrecruitment; and a panel of speakers from Against the Current. International Socialist Review and Democratic Left on "The U.S. Working Class and Socialist Perspectives." (The presentations from that panel appear in this issue of ATC - ed.) The notion and structure of the Social Forum themselves do not allow for this deeper level of strategic discussion. The Forums are intentionally non-programmatic. This can be frustrating. We came away from the USSF with some new connections, cherished inspiration and new ideas for work to be done, but with the same unanswered question after attending the World Social Forum in 2005 - "Well, we've gathered all these forces and movements together. But what are we going to do?"