The Anti-Davos, Anti-Capitalist Forum Bringing Thousands to Tunis

Image via the Forum Social Mondial 2015's Facebook page.

Over 70,000 anti-capitalists from all over the world are expected to descend on the capital of Tunisia this week for the 10th annual World Social Forum, where they will devise strategies for fomenting a populist revolution and distributing the wealth equally (probably). The conference was concieved as a rejoinder to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, an annual neoliberal gathering of people who like to make money at the expense of other people who have no money.

Over 5,000 groups and organizations from 150 countries will arrive and participate in five day’s worth of workshops, lectures, exhibitions, performances, and film screenings, all geared toward an audience interested in finding solutions for global economic injustice. The forum will be inaugurated with a solidarity march to honor the victims of last week’s Bardo museum attack in which 21 people were killed.

In the Guardian, Adriano Campolina, the CEO of ActionAid, a developmental NGO committed to ending global poverty, writes that although they have won some successes, they still have some way to go. Issues like climate change and gender inequality have been brought to the forefront of the global political consciousness by current events.

“At this year’s meeting, there is a stronger sense than ever that what once were viewed as different causes are now seen by frontline activists as one common cause,” he wrote. “Global efforts to end poverty and marginalisation, advance women’s rights, defend the environment, protect human rights, and promote fair and dignified employment are all being undermined as a consequence of the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.”

In the wake of the European financial crisis, left-wing parties all over the EU are benefitting from increasing popularity and support. Across Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Greece, Spain and even across the Atlantic in Montreal, tens of thousands of people are rising up in protest against neoliberal financial organizations like the IMF and the World Bank. The World Social Forum hopes to find an answer to these growing and wide-scale grievances—one that falls outside the tried-and-failed slate of solutions provided by capitalism.