In Florence Hani Shukrallah joins a million others to demonstrate against America's war on Iraq "It is 1933 and Hitler is in power." It is with just such a sense of urgency and alarm, argued Samir Amin, chairman of the World Forum for Alternatives (WFA), that the increasingly militaristic character of capitalist globalisation must be viewed. Amin's ominous reference to Hitler's accession to power in Germany in January 1933 was made during a meeting of some two dozen people, members of the Executive Council of the WFA, held on the sidelines of the European Social Forum (ESF), which on Sunday concluded nearly a week of intense activity. The sense of dread engendered by the US administration's apparent attachment to "perpetual war" was not confined to that one small meeting at the 17th- century Hotel Porta Rossa. In over 350 formal meetings, conferences, seminars, workshops and cultural activities (held at the 16th-century Da Basso Fortress -- which served as the main site for ESF activities -- and in dozens of other locations throughout the magnificent Renaissance city), America's prospective war in Iraq loomed large, underlining the most abhorrent aspect of an increasingly dehumanised and corporate- dominated world. "War is the inhuman face of neo- liberalism in crisis, of American hegemony in crisis," said Georgio Riolo, a member of the Associacione Culturale Punto Rosso, one of the many Italian groups jointly hosting and organising the forum. It all came together on Saturday. The first all-European demonstration against Washington's planned war on Iraq was scheduled to start at 3pm; it began before noon. The sheer weight of numbers at the march's starting point made it impossible to keep to the timetable. The floodgates had opened, and a seemingly endless stream of humanity poured through. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them coming from highly diverse causes and concerns: trade unionists, environmentalists, gay rights and Catholic activists, feminists, members of peasant and peace groups, took part in the march. Practically every age group was represented on the march, from the very old to the very young, in push chairs or carried on parents' shoulders. Some demonstrators brought their dogs along. Overwhelmingly, however, it was young people, people in their teens and early twenties, who comprised the great bulk of protestors. Looking as diverse and as familiar as the young men and women one might see on a European street any day of the week, the anti- capitalist, anti-war demonstrators in Florence were recognisable by the Palestinian kuffiyas worn around their necks, and various-sized red flags held above their heads. "I was amazed," commented 86-year- old Ahmed Bin Bella, the leader of Algeria's anti-colonial struggle and its first president. Bin Bella, who, along with Samir Amin and Palestine's Mustafa Barghouti, took part in a large conference on militarism and war, attended by more than 5,000 ESF participants, was particularly impressed by the demonstrators' youth. "Most of them were under 20; this is a great force, a universal force," he told the Weekly. Confounding the predictions of Italy's right-wing political parties and media, the march was totally peaceful, lasting for some six hours, without a single incident. This, Bin Bella felt, reflected the growing political and cultural awareness of the anti-capitalist movement. "Florence is the museum of the world," he said, "and the demonstrators' behaviour reflected a high level of culture. It was a great day." Italian police estimated the number of demonstrators at over half a million. Organisers are convinced the real figure was closer to one million. It was, in any case, "the largest ever demonstration against war", Punto Rosso's Riolo told the Weekly, describing it as "a major cultural and political turning point in the history of the anti-capitalist movement". Arguably, the mere notion of an "anti-capitalist movement" might itself prove to be a historic turning point. In the World Social Forum (held in January for the past two years in the Brazilian city of Porte Alegre) of which the ESF is a regional derivation, the immensely wide variety of groups, concerns and interests represented seems to indicate that, whatever its future, there is a new social, cultural and political force coming into being on the world stage. And it is both universal (participants from 150 countries took part in Florence's ESF) and profoundly democratic. The fact that some 300 organisations took part in organising and hosting the ESF underlines the latter. There is, at the very least, nothing here reminiscent of the various communist or socialist internationals, of the past or, indeed, the present. In an outline of its principles the ESF echoes the Charter of Principles of the WSF by asserting that the Florence meeting is "not a conference and it is not a movement congress... but a common public space for dialogue and discussion". In the Charter of Principles, the WSF is self-defined as "an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among Mankind and between it and the Earth". In the words of Punto Russo's Riolo "it is no longer a question of organised versus not organised, working class versus non-working class, communist versus non-communist. Young people are looking for a better world, a more just and more democratic world. It is a new ethic." Ultimately, the one fundamental thread that seemed to bring together the thousands gathered in Florence last week was the conviction that "another world is possible."
