US Social Forum 2007

The Bill Sutherland Institute for Africa Advocates is an important project of the AFSC's work around Africa. The Institute, which took place at the Africa Tent at the first-ever US Social Forum, is a training event designed to improve activists, advocates and educators abilites to change U.S. policies towards Africa.

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By Jordan Garcia, Immigrant Rights Organizer, AFSC in Denver, CO


I started out this morning at the US Social Forum in Atlanta by volunteering to work security. I helped 
people find the registration area and answered a lot of questions. For not 
being from Atlanta, I had to figure out this area pretty quick. It was 
incredibly interesting to get a chance to talk to people and find out where 
they were from and the type of work they were doing in their communities. 
And it kept my mind of the heat and humidity!


Then I attended the Black and Brown Unity work shop with the Third World 
Coalition Members of the AFSC. I found the alliances built in the room 
exceptional and felt like I gained a deeper understanding of some of the 
nuances of the issues affecting African American and Latino Folks.

Next I attended a workshop put on by an organization named Smart Meme . 
They shortened their full-day workshop down into two hours and still spoke 
incredibly articulately about messaging and the importance of story telling 
in our work. We discussed the role of the dominant culture’s story and the 
power analysis that can become a part of any campaign’s strategy. We 
discussed the ways a good story is at the heart of any compelling campaign and 
the necessary components of those stories.

The presenters used elements of 
popular education to make the workshop interactive and each activity gave 
me ideas and made me think deeper. There wasn't a dull moment and I don't 
think it was a coincidence that all the presenters and members of the 
organization were young people.

I left feeling like there was so much I 
could bring back to my work with Coloradans For Immigrant Rights. Some of 
the activities I feel I could recreate for our members to further inform the 
messaging and effectiveness of the stories we use to move people to a more 
compassionate place with regard to immigrant rights.

While staffing the AFSC table this evening, I got to catch up with Marge 
Taniwaki, also from Denver, and spend time discussing how we can bring back 
the skills and energy we're privy to here at the USSF. Then we were able 
to tag team inviting folks from all over the world over to our table to 
encourage them to take some of our literature home with them. The No Human 
Being Is Illegal bumper stickers were of particular interest. 
Now I'm off to a party for the Ruckus Society and even more events put on by 
MondoHomo, a queer arts collective here in Atlanta!

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by Sam Diener, Co-Editor, Peacework Magazine

The best organizing method I saw at the march was a fan (a largeish popsicle stick glued to piece of cardboard about 15 cm on a side). The fans read, “Fan the flames of Media Justice” and were being distributed quite successfully by the Media Action Grassroots Network (the folks I met distributing them were with YES! Magazine) . It wasn’t very hot this morning, but became hot this afternoon, and I saw activists up and down the length of the march fanning ourselves with this cool organizing idea.

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Impressions of the March to Open the US Social Forum 2007

by Sam Diener, Co-Editor of Peacework Magazine

I just ducked into a café. The march is fairly large, larger than I expected. I’d give a quick impressionistic estimate of between 5000-1000 people, and is quite wonderfully racially diverse, with a large contingent of indigenous people up front, many large multi-racial and African-American contingents, lots of anglos (but not the overwhelming majority that we find in most putatively multi-racial demos) and large Latino contingents. There are certainly quite a few Asian-American activists, but I didn’t see any Asian-American contingents per se.

The chanting bilingually (It seems that bilingual English-Spanish activists have concluded, to all evidence quite rightly, that anglo activists can only learn one Spanish chant, so there are endless repetitions of, “El Pueblo, Unido, el mas sera vencido. (The People, United, Will Never be Defeated.) I think it’s probably long past time for those of us who are Anglo activists to learn some additional Spanish chants.

Activists are highligihting a range of issues, as is expected from the USSF crowd, with ending the war the most predominant, but large groups focusing on health care (especially as we passed the perpetually threatened Grady Hospital, the one public hospital remaining in the Atlanta metro-region.), immigration justice, and housing as a human right.

I understand the organizers (many kudos to them) worked hard to get the permit for this action. My one concern about the route is that there were very few people out on the streets to see us. We did pass one construction site where the predominanty latino workers cheered us enthusiastically as we passed.

On the personal level, I was pleased to see War Resisters League activist Jim Haber theree. I was very glad to run into ex-AFSC CT staffperson Kasha Ho, who is now working at a 6-month campaign position at the Rainforest Action Network on an effort to counter depredations by agribusiness industries (such as the Palm Oil debacle in Indonesia).

I also enjoyed meeting a local Atlanta activist who works in a bakery and has been practicing war tax resistance without much contact with the war tax resistance community. He was glad to know there is such a thing as War Resisters League’s A Guide to War Tax Resistance and the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund.