The biggest, most diverse, exciting grassroots progressive conference ever held in the United States is about to start tomorrow. and no, it's not the YearlyKos. It's the first ever US Social Forum, an outgrowth of the amazing World Social Forums previously held in Brazil, Venezuela and Kenya that focuses on building alternatives to the current globalization, neoliberal order.
https://www.ussf2007.org/
What disturbs me, as someone who has worked in this movement for years now, is how completely divided the progressive movement is, embodied in the fact that most so-called "progressive" netroots activists and Kossacks seem to have no clue that the US Social Forum is even going on, despite the 10,000 activists expected to show up tomorrow in Atlanta. It is always amusing to see the netroots claim to represent the progressive movement or the "Real grassroots" when it remains mostly an overwhelmingly white, secular, upper middle class phenomenon.
At the US Social Forum, you will find tremendous diversity in the speakers, the forum subjects that is going to be lacking at YearlyKos. Panels have been set up focusing on prison industrial complex, black thought in environmentalism, farmworker justice and numerous panels focusing on rural issues and farmers. There will be folks from the Immokalee Workers, an amazing group of low-income minority, mostly Latino, Mayan Indian, Haitians workers who have managed to win a campaign against Taco Bell for fairer wages and are now targeting Burger King.
http://www.ciw-online.org/...
I doubt that many of these folks will be represented at YearlyKos. There will be family farmers from across the US, most of whom have never heard of a "blog" or have internet access, who will be there. there will be minority hip hop activists. these are the voices of our progressive movement that often are not heard in places like DailyKos and MyDD.
the forum will also host a lot of the same panels i'm sure will be discussed at YearlyKos, including the Iraq war, crimes of the Bush administration, universal health care, etc.
But in the end, my point is this: we all need each other. the farmworkers and farmers know that white progressives are on our side. the sad thing is, most of these groups never talk to each other, confined to their isolated bubbles. so these folks at the US Social Forum will discuss their movements with the same folks they've known, the bloggers will discuss their issues among their same narrow confines, when all of us need to be building a bigger movement together to fight the forces of right wing corporatism because ultimately, we all share the same values and our planet depends on it.
so as white progressives (deservedly) pat themselves on the back for their hard work at putting on YearlyKos, remember the voices of all who are not yet part of the "netroots" and who don't have a voice here and won't be represented on many of the panels and whose issues will not be on the agenda. And if any of you are near Atlanta, try to make it to the US Social Forum and start building those bridges.