The beauty of the Forum is that each and every person had their own personal encounter with "it", but we were also all in a collective space that emitted a productive sense of solidarity, unity, progressive voice and vision that I've never experienced in my life. The feeling that we CAN do this. Another world IS possible. And there are a LOT of us working to get to it.
The Children's Social Forum was my main reason for going (and bringing my 6-year-old daughter) to the 2007 US Social Forum. This wasn't just childcare---a room set off to the side ... isolated from the goings-on of the larger group. No, this promised to be a forum for kids to explore the issues that we grown-ups were talking about.
My favorite workshops were part of the gender/sexuality track. Folks ... were on point, their workshops were packed, and there was a real sense of movement in those spaces. Several hundred people wanted to further our discussions around moving beyond the non-profit industrial complex.
I went to the USSF to find out what it was about and participate in as many water workshops as possible. The most amazing part was all the shoes on the mall from people who had died in 2006-7. That really stuck with me.
I’ll never forget the US Social Forum 2007 in Atlanta. It brought in several countries across the globe, and it will be amazing to see it again when I attend the USSF in June, 2010. The senior population in Michigan is suffering because of poor housing, transportation, health, and education.
One workshop really sticks in my head. It was by the Welfare Queens. They are amazing. They tell their stories in a way that will get anyone’s attention and keep it. They taught me to tell my story in a new, more powerful way. I plan to teach the teens I work with, here in West Virginia, how to tell their stories. Because telling your story is one of the steps in the revolution. And the teens of today will be the ones leading the revolution of tomorrow.