need time to reflect sit back think and work out this shit: i was gobmsmacked at the people there and likewise the youth and olders comeing to act toghther: dialetics tells us so much about this world and those involved within this world: to every negative there is a poastive to every poastive there is an negative:

for now
the rum was nice
now i'm stoned
in love
mozaz

I would like to add my two cents:
while at the meeting there was one member who talked down a possible forum and was putting more emphasis on getting 500 people to go to the european social forum and the next G8. I would like to ask him, How is this going to stop the BNP?
How is this going to help the sheffield working class?
We will probably just end up with the same people going and no new faces.
I think if we angle it woward the local communities then we will have shown that we mean buisness and more people will come. Also others will have seen you can build a social forum from a meeting of 35 people. This will have a knock on effect with other cities in the UK building social forums, and when Spain, france, Germany, poland and the other eastern european countries have them the working class movement will be strong enough to regain control of their cities.
I would like to see not just social forums being built by the big cities but also the smaller towns and villages could benefit hugely from having a forum to discuss local concerns and issues.
Finally when we have built our social forum and George Bush and Blair declare war on Iran, Cuba, North korea or any other unsuspecting and defenceless country we will already have a means of organising resistance.
We have to be positive!!!!
peace

do not drink rum and then spend half the night up talking and smokeing black because the next day you play redhot chili peppers / feel shit but fine: what a meeting good vibe dispite one person and i simply had to walk out because i feel as a person he is allright just he had become a robot of his party not thinking for himselve etc: there was no agendas: there was lots of love: starnge for a meeting in sheffield: there is allways an undercurant of issues: here the bullshit was left at the door and i feel people was being just what thay are: seeing shit how thay see it: this can work but it will take time: trust is such a fucking hard thing to re-learn: but manchester leeds other citys have not done this over night it has taken years and there are issues as it would be: but damm we are only human: we are going to feel the pain of the people of iraq: some more than others: we are going to feel the pain of our communatys and there shit: we would not be who we are if we simply did not: i have a reel desire for this to work and move on our geting toghther from all night partys and getting fucked here we just talk more bullshit: if we free our minds from shit find other ways to work then we can start to be honest with each other: suport each other: call me a fucking hippy but love is the only way i feel we move forowrd: yet agine we are going to have to re-learn this: we can get along under the influance of drink / drugs can we get along not under the influance? you know how i feel about this shit and yes in time we need to work it out: but now we simply need to get a structure in place: come on swp give it time and i understand moveing on from where you are is hard but do let your fear fuck shit up: lets make this work: 35 people what an awsome number of people: see you at the next meeting: bring love yourself and a mate:

mozaz

My friends and I have started a news site to track Social Fora around the UK.

If you get anything off the ground, then be sure to let us know and we will do our best to publicise it to the other groups around the UK.

Also, as of next week, we will be offering a free web-hosting service to Social Forum groups. If you want to take advantage of this, leave a message on our boards or drop us a mail.

 http://samizdat.zapto.org

Peace,
Dan

Hi all,

I thought it was a great meeting, with a good mix of people from various walks, including Palestinians and Iraqis, and the ideas that people were coming out with were great. (Apart from mine, which bombed! I think 4 people spoke against it, you know who you are!)
ANd also it was quite a young crowd, mainly people who had just got involved off the anti-war movement and as such it did reflewct an organic growth out of the movement itself. If we had called a for a social forum in sheffield in july of 2002 we would no way have go half of the amount of people that we did, nor would it have been such a positive, forward thinking meeting either.

What I think is exciting is that a lot of people (in fact everyone) did not KNOW what a social forum was, we all had ideas and percpections, but no one could have drawn a map, and said 'this is it and this is how it will work.'

The prospect for a sheffield social forum looks positive indeed.

I think there is a danger of a false dichotomy developing between local and international issues. I agree with you ernest that a Social Forum needs to devote itself to local issues and draw in the local comunities to start taking action against the issues which concern them and have been neglected for so long.

I also think the European Social Forum (ESF) is important as well. I went to the last one in Florence and it was a fantastic experience. 60,000 overwhelmingly young people who wanted to discuss how we can change the world. Local social forums on their own will not be able to do that. "They" - the bosses etc are organised on an international basis (G8, IMF, WTO etc etc) if we are to stand any chance of defeating we need to do so as well. I personally think we need a new international do do that, but the ESF offers a great oppertunity for us to get together and discuss the way forward and build better and stronger links with our brothers and sisters across Europe and beyond.

If as well as fighting for local issues we can use getting people to the ESF as an internationalising force. We can actually show that people across Europe and the world are facing the same problems and fighting the same fights and that people are actually winning those fights and that we can learn from their tactics. It is also then possible to make the connections between cuts in services, privatisation, the attacks on asylum seekers, the war on Iraq. That all of these are products of capitalism and that it's not possible to fight them in isolation.

So for me it's not an either or situation, you can do both and they will actually strengthen each other

Good point well made, but i think we need to take this one step at a time. I would like some people from sheffield to go to the european social forum but i don't think that is what the sheffield one should be about. I think the first step should be local to prove we aint a talking shop.

Hopefully when all the major cities in europe and the world have social forums then local will be international and if another social forum is having trouble then we can mobilize ourselves to help them out, and visa versa. I think a key point is too see what we can do in the immediate area to gather support and concensus before we move to the larger area.
peace