February 15, 2003
Awakened Woman's Circle is working for peace
Jose Bove at the march in POA
In Porto Alegre, She is on Her Way
Part 8 - You can hear her breathing
by Stephanie Hiller
The closing day of the forum was simply magnificent. There is no other word for it, and not enough words to describe the power of the people standing and sitting packed skin against skin in the huge Gigantinho, awaiting the talk by Noam Chomsky.
It wasn't just Chomsky. It was the Bolivian campesinos announcing victory.
It was the Palestinian and Israeli delegations sharing their grief at the slaughter the previous day of 25 Palestinians in their homes in Gaza. They read their combined statement saying, effectively: we could make peace.
Then we heard the strains of John Lennon's wonderful song, "Imagine," broadcast through the loud speakers.
I cannot tell you, words cannot describe, how it felt to be there, literally melting in the heat, bodies so close we inhaled each other's breath, loving each other so much, so universally and with such intensity that tears streamed from my eyes. Isn't this the vision? Isn't it this what people have worked for for hundreds of years, and certainly in recent memory: For civil rights. For freedom. For an end to war. For a world of justice. For a life of shared plenty.
Here are the verses:
Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...Imagine there's no country
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will be as one.Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
That world was all around me that afternoon in Porto Alegre. Looking up at the surrounding stadium (I had a spot on the floor) I saw thousands and thousands of people bowing, arms stretched forward, in salutation, wave upon wave, round upon round.
Then Noam Chomsky spoke.
Here is a man little known in mainstream America who started his career as a linguist, describing the universal patterns in the structure of languages as a web of relationships. His school of linguistic analysis shook up the philosophy establishment, because it implied that the language was the philosophy. The school of thought which emerged from his work contributed to the spate of deconstructionist and postmodern thinking that has pervaded the academic study of colonialism, racism, gender, and diversity for the past thirty years.
But Chomsky went on to undertake a study of politics, and he has become revered by the left for his penetrating analysis of the international political debate. His speech at the Forum was comprehensive and scholarly. Though he himself appeared to have very strong feelings about what lies ahead for the world, his presentation focused on the facts to describe trends in a world moving inexorably toward war. While optimistic that the global justice movement would triumph in the end, Chomsky, like Ali and George, saw a long hard struggle ahead. Chomsky's total indictment of empire was received with hearty applause from the enthusiastic audience. [Read his entire speech]
Then we heard Arundhati Roy.
Here is a young woman from Kerala, India, who interrupted a stunning literary career to take up the fight of the people of the Narmada Valley to stop the dams that propose to flush them out of their homes like so many insects in a torrential flood, either to drown, or flee to the teeming cities, where they were likely to starve. She donated the $40,000 she received from the Booker Prize for her novel, The God of Small Things, to this cause, and has since dedicated her writing and speaking to opposing fundamentalism, globalization and war.
Her enunciation of the English language is perfectly clear.
Crisply as if crunching on small fried fish, she called them "ludicrous," these masters of war who would take us all down in their fight over oil.Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, a murderer (whose worst excesses were supported by the governments of the United States and Great Britain). There's no doubt that Iraqis would be better off without him.
But, then, the whole world would be better off without a certain Mr. Bush. In fact, he is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein….
What can we do?…
We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.
When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank you." We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
After this stunning finale, the crowd swept ecstatically out of the stadium and into the streets to march along the park to the outdoor amphitheater Lula had filled just days before, to rally against the war. And with that finale, the World Social Forum 2003 came to its close.
MORE: Afterword