Several thousand people will be descending on Ottawa from August 21-24. They won’t be storming Parliament to topple the Harper government, but working together to build an opposition on the streets and in the workplace to take on the enormous political, environmental and economic problems plaguing the country and being carried out by a craven economic and political elite.
The Peoples’ Social Forum will be hosting dozens and dozens of workshops, panels and assemblies put on by dozens of activist organizations across the country.
Here is Roger Rashi, coordinator of the PSF, explaining the vision of the Social Forum:
RankandFile.ca’s editors will be there reporting on the Peoples’ Social Forum from the perspective of labour and work issues. We will also be hosting a workshop on labour reporting as activism. We will focus on basic labour journalism skills such as mapping your hometown or sector, interviewing workers and union officials, and writing an effective article. We’ll also be discussing the bigger ideas underpinning labour reporting and how we can renew it.
Attendees of the PSF can also look forward to a special print edition of RankandFile.ca.
Building beyond the Peoples’ Social Forum
PSF organizers and many participants want the Peoples’ Social Forum to develop actions and strategies that can go beyond the event itself. In other words, the hard, long-term and careful work of organizing where we live and work will come after the PSF. Here are two recent articles that express these ideas:
The Peoples’ Social Forum
by David P. Ball, Briarpatch Magazine
From the Peoples’ Social Forum to an Organized Left
by David Bush