The World Social Forum has developed into perhaps the most visible, dynamic, and coherent gathering of what is sometimes termed the "anti-"or "alter-globalization" movement, sometimes also referred to as the "movement for global justice and solidarity." The Forum goes under the slogan, "Another World Is Possible"and is described in its Charter of Principles as "an open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debates of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences and interlinking for effective action, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a planetary society directed towards fruitful relationships among humankind and between it and the Earth." Founded by several prominent civil society groups primarily in Brazil and France, the WSF has been marked by an annual gathering that has been timed to correspond with the World Economic Forum in Davos, which is a forum where a relatively few very powerful individuals (heads of state, important government officials and influential corporate CEOs and officers) meet to discuss how best to manage or steer the global economy. By deliberate contrast, the WSF, which has typically been held in Porto Alegre Brazil, though in 2004 it traveled to Mumbai India for the first time ( rumor has it that it will travel to somewhere in Africa in 2007) consists of social movement activists, academics, artists, and an inclusive assortment of civil society groups, bills itself as "a reinvention of democracy" and "globalization from below." The first meeting in 1999, which drew roughly 10,000 participants, was relatively narrowly focused as an anti-Davos protest. As it has evolved, however, the WSF has differentiated itself from the other anti-WTO, anti-World Bank/IMF, anti-G8 protests, by becoming a much more self-generative, reflective, analytical space, and it has experienced dramatic growth. Estimates are that there may be as many as 150,000 participants at the 2005 annual meeting in Porto Alegre. The Forum combines a number of keynote addresses by prominent intellectuals (as an aside, one of the more surreal moments of my life was to sit in a jam-packed soccer stadium of 30,000 people who were raucously cheering, singing, dancing, doing the wave for Noam Chomsky and Arundhati Roy. There are pictures of this event in the WSF III pages linked above), several thousand self-organized panels from various social movements, academics, etc, music, poetry, art installations, massive demonstrations, youth camps, constant dialogue and interaction. It is a riot of activity, interaction, dissent, solidarity, hope, joy, logistical confusion, and contradictions piled into the course of a few intense days. As you can imagine the affective, experiential pulls of collectivity, coupled with moments of impasse and alienation are difficult to describe and yet represent both a potent energizing aspect of the WSF, and a pressing intellectual and political problem for analysis. Moreover, the WSF is somewhat difficult to describe, not only because one person could necessarily only witness a tiny sliver of the activities at any one WSF gaterhing, but also because of the Charter's insistence that the WSF is not reducible to its annual international meeting. Rather the WSF is articulated as both a process and a space. Numerous regional social forums take place throughout the year, so it is understood as an ongoing set of actions at local, national, regional, and planetary scales. What is more, the Charter makes it clear that the WSF is not a representational body; it is not an agent, and no one can speak on behalf of the WSF as a body, nor can the WSF express any positions or call for any actions as a body; it's only official document is its Charter of Principles.
For more information about the WSF, see its official Websites:
World Social Forum Brazil
World Social Forum India
There are some good video clips at the Voices From Mumbai site.
The WSF Library of Alternatives has an excellent collection of essays.
Z-Net's Life after Capitalism section includes a number of essays written for or about the WSF.
See also a list of "anti-" or "alter-" globalization resources that I set up for my ENG 680 Bandung at 50 graduate seminar