FAL’s history - 1st FAL WORLD ASSEMBLY

Date: January 2001

Place: In the framework of the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre 2001

Theme: Local public management difficulties in the context of growing social inequalities.

Result: Charter of Porto Alegre. Awarenesss-raising and challenging local rulers to take up a political place and assume their role by implementing inclusion-oriented public policies aiming at democratizing wealth and power.

1st FAL CHARTER OF PORTO ALEGRE

All the way from Seattle to Porto Alegre was crowded with protests. Nevertheless, the different resistance and solidarity movements, with their diversity and pluralism, created, since the 1st World Social Forum, the conditions to go from the protest to the proposal and, since then, mobilize hearts and minds building an effective political action in favor of sustainable development, democracy and the rights of the citizens as basis for a fairer and more supportive world.

Governors and representatives of cities and regions met in the 1st Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion, within the framework of the 1st World Social Forum, who had previously made up proposals. They were developed regarding the serious problems related to social exclusion that neoliberal globalization creates within cities. Those proposals were consolidated in the “Porto Alegre Charter”.

Now, in this 2nd Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion, the hundreds of local authorities here gathered reinforce the role of the cities as political actors in the new global scene. At the same time, they adopt a positive position and favor the constitution of alternatives committed to another sort of globalization.

Yet, the effects of globalization affect in different ways as different are the countries. For instance, the peripheral countries without the same economic development, distribution of income and democratic systems as the central ones have more fragile and vulnerable civil societies, institutions and States.

For this reason, that globalization – with its hierarchies, the control of the financial markets and the subsequent inherent inequalities – is contributing even more to the lack of structure of the peripheral National States, hindering the auto-sustained development and majoring intensely the inequality inside these countries as well as among the latter and the developed ones.

In this context, the struggle for peace and against warlike logics becomes a responsibility for those who expect a democratic solidarity-based global order. Reversing present logics will only be achieved not only by reducing the military expenses and transforming the war industry but also by reforming the international institutions democratically. In doing so, it is expected to the extension and importance of the local power, to assist the demands of the least developed countries and to make the effective participation of the global civil society possible.

The increasing privatization of the public space reduces the capacity and the level of services provision on behalf of the State. The result is a society of violence, in which the power of organized crime is bigger than the power of the democratic order and victimizes the legitimacy of a weak State. Thus the peace demanded by the cities is not only a peace that comes true in the midst of foreign affairs, but one that has consequences in the towns and cities themselves.