An Invitation to Dialogue and Convergence

As we continue our national conversation responding to the deep economic, environmental, and social crises that people around the United States and the world are experiencing, we invite you to come together in your community to reflect on and provide feedback on the following questions that will shape the organizing of the next US Social Forum. We want to hear from you!

During the weekend of March 8-10, members of the US Social Forum's National Planning Committee, along with other leaders from grassroots movements around the U.S., will meet in Philadelphia to discuss the road to the next US Social Forum. We will be monitoring responses to this invitation throughout the weekend and beyond, bringing your ideas into the organizing process.

Click here for a more detailed organizing kit.

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1. Our country and world are seeing major disruptions from climate change, financial collapse, unemployment, and related problems. Political leaders have been unable or unwilling to respond to these challenges in ways that address the needs of people and communities. What does this deep crisis of our political and economic system mean for our work for a better world? What does it mean that capitalism as a system is in deep crisis and transition? What does it mean for our work, our struggle?

2. The World Social Forum and US Social Forum are meant as tools to help movements come together across different issues and locales. How can we make the social forum more effective at helping groups overcome local and issue-based divisions so we can build our collective power to advance social change? How can the social forum process be a tool to support our work and unite our struggles into a powerful force with shared vision and shared political purpose for social change?

3. Given the urgency of the crises we face and the opportunities to come together in the social forums, how should we adapt the work we are doing locally to build unity across different sectors and movements? What new strategies do we need to avoid further suffering and disruption in our communities? Are there ways we can organize in advance of the next US Social Forum to build our local and national movements for justice? What does this mean for how we work together - in our communities, in our work, in our struggles?

4. How can the organizers of the US Social Forum structure the process so that we can more readily use it to strengthen our local capacities to better people's lives and advance our shared goals? How does the USSF strengthen local capacity to improve social conditions and social struggle?

5. How can we adopt or adapt the Peoples Movement Assembly (PMA) methodology for outreach, organizing and popular political education of consciousness, vision and strategy (CVS) and tactics - for advancing the social forum process and the road to the next US Social Forum?

6. For a long time, our movements have called on people to "fight back," to wage a defensive struggle. But we're realizing that the political system we face has neither the capacity nor the will to respond to our demands. We need to take a new approach that is more pro-active. What needs to change to move us from defensive to offensive strategies? How would this affect our day to day work? How might we re-think our short term and long-term goals and how to connect them? What does it mean for our movement to go from defensive struggles to the offensive? What would this look like day to day, connecting short term goals with long term goals and visions?

7. Discussions about the US and World Social Forum have suggested that we need a "social forum of a new type." This is in recognition of the fact that our communities lack the resources to travel to distant forums at the same time as every day brings ever more urgent crises to our communities. How might we re-think the way we organize the US social forum to enable more participation from those most impacted by economic crisis and social exclusion? How might we improve it as a tool for building networks of mutual support and collaboration as we try to build our collective power to make a better world?

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