The Other Democratic Convention

Correction to article:  This was not the first Social Forum in the USA.  One was held in NYC in 2003, I believe.  I attended.

Posted by Carol Novack on Aug 4, 2004 at 7:05 AM

Nice piece! Thanks. However, I will again stress that over 20 percent of attendees at the BSF were people of color—and a near majority of BSF organizers were people of color.

This was no minor achievement for such a huge multiracial event, and virtually every significant progressive organization of color in the Boston area was represented at the BSF. While SEIU’s participation was significant in many ways, they were not primariliy responsible for the good turnout of people of color.

They did, however, have a lot to do with the significant white working class turnout to the BSF. Remember, just because there’s white folks, doesn’t mean they’re all middle class.

Also, the BSF was indeed the first social forum in the U.S. that was officially part of the World Social Forum process, was organized by closely following the methodology of the World Social Forum, and that had anything like the size and scope of other social fora held around the globe since 2001. Various events in the U.S. in the last couple of years have called themselves social fora in kind of an ad hoc way, but the were generally indistinguishable from typical progressive conferences over the last 30 years, and they did not get directly connected to the WSF process.

Posted by Jason Pramas on Aug 6, 2004 at 4:55 PM