If you have read anything about the World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya, including in these pages, most of what you have read has been critical and even negative. I have a different perspective.

It’s true that poor people from around Nairobi protested their exclusion from the Forum by an entrance fee of 500 Kenyan shillings, much too much for a low income person to afford. Even when poor activists gathered around the gates, they were excluded.

So they marched into a press conference with a brilliant young woman spokesperson, drew the attention of the world press that was there and got the gates open. When’s the last time you participated in a protest that achieved victory in a few hours? The result was that a lacklustre Forum blossomed into a full blown, energetic, World Social Forum with much more diversity and many more poor participants than we have ever seen in Latin America.

Such protests are nothing new at the Social Forum. In fact, they are the normal state of affairs. In 2002 in Porte Alegre, women’s issues were practically absent from the agenda, especially abortion, a difficult issue for the left in Catholic-dominated Brazil. Women with big lip masks, saying “speak up against fundamentalisms,” marched through the site, did guerrilla theatre and thoroughly enchanted delegates and, one presumes, organizers since women’s issues and women made their way into the formal events of the forum thereafter.

This year the big lips were still around but this time they were celebrating in an awesome women’s rally that combined dancing, short speeches and sisterhood across nations, race and continents. There were probably more workshops on women’s issues than any other issue including one that said, “Denying women’s reproductive rights, is genocide.”

Women were the lead speakers at the opening ceremonies and at every major event. And I have no doubt that after the protests of Nairobi, poor people will play a much bigger role in organizing the next World Social Forum, probably in two years, than they ever have before.

There were a lot of problems at the Nairobi Social Forum. Some of them were related to African realities and some of them to the usual problem of inexperienced people organizing such a massive event. For one thing, this was the first Social Forum without any state support. But if my experience is any example, the Forum was a huge success and will help to transform the place of Africa in the global social movements.

This was my first visit to Africa. Iâe(TM)ve been pretty well everywhere else in the world either for politics or pleasure but never Africa. And I realized, as did quite a number of my comrades, that the stereotypes I had about Africa relating to starving children and skeletal AIDS victims were smashed to smithereens by the Social Forum. Even those of us who fight for social justice are reduced to charity when it comes to most of Africa. The needs are great, no doubt.

But I met some incredible young activists there who are organizing in the slums with a creativity, confidence and energy I have rarely seen. There is the People’s Parliament, the group that busted into the press conference to demand open access to the Forum. Wangui Mbatia, the spokesperson of the group who emerged as a kind of movement superstar from her powerful, articulate presentations spoke eloquently to the final meeting of social movements attended by well over 1,000 people.

She talked about the importance of having the opportunity to meet the good people from around the world and then critiqued the exclusion of the poor but ended with a series of recommendations from the poor people’s social forum that they held in the slums that were not only about ending poverty in Africa but also included lots of solidarity with struggles around the world. She and others insisted that poor people’s groups have to be involved from the beginning.

Wangi and her group had the opportunity to meet poor people’s groups that were there from India, from South Africa and from Europe that they would never have met otherwise. I have little doubt that something important will emerge from that.

In an evening meeting organized by the Transnational Institute, led by my friend and co-thinker Hilary Wainwright, I met two astonishing teenage men, Kevin Ovita and Stanley Kai who were leading a political group called Wasani, which is Swahili for “artists in the hood.” Wasani organizes among young people in the slums surrounding Nairobi. Not only do they write hip hop songs to educate young people about the various forms of oppression, including violence against women, and use political graffiti to do the same but they are also organizing young people to run for city council. They too got a chance to connect with the global social movements that up to now they have known only through their music.

And I met Beatrice, a human rights organizer who is a friend of a friend. She learned about the World March of Women for the first time at the Social Forum and has full intentions of organizing a Kenyan group to participate in their activities. She had her own criticisms of the Kenyan organizing committee so she just pitched right in and without dampening her concerns helped them to better welcome delegates at the airport. She and her co-workers counted and there were 30,000 foreigners arriving by plane.

Beatrice is just one of thousands of Kenyans and others who were there from Uganda and Tanzania who had their first contact with activists working on similar issues around the world. The “NGOssification” of the progressive communities around the world is far more advanced in Africa and it is, I am sure, rare for African social movement leaders to meet other activists who are not drawing down big pay cheques for their activism.

There was a huge church presence which made me quite uncomfortable, especially after a conversation I had with two women slum dwellers who had come to the Forum with a church group. They explained to me that their biggest problem is that no one ever asks them what they need. What about the priest, I asked. Can’t he advocate for you? “Oh no,” they responded. “We can’t ask him. We need him too much.” Then they proceeded to tell me that they were praying for a better life and asked me to pray with them. Nevertheless, they did feel a little more hope after attending the Forum.

One of the most moving experiences of the Forum for me was a large event on memory. There, leaders of the Mau Mau movement, one of the first national liberation struggles, spoke about their experiences. The Mau Mau won a huge victory against a savage British colonial regime but never took power. The comprador class took power so the Kenyan people have never really had the chance to decide what they want for their country and their people.

As a result these leaders of the liberation of Africa from colonialism remain little known even in their own country but their pride and humility was so deeply moving I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house. The French interpreter next to me could not stop from crying. “I owe everything to these people,” he explained. “All the opportunities that I have is due to them and I have never been able to see them before.”

Last but not least, the World Social Forum in Nairobi also put racism solidly on the agenda — not so much from the Kenyans as from the Black Brazilians. After four years of the World Social Forum being held in Brazil, where half the population is Black, it took the forum in Nairobi to put the issue of racism squarely on the agenda.

A Black woman from Brazil said it most eloquently. “I came to the Social Forum to make sure that the position of the Forum includes the fight against racism. We can’t fight for social justice without fighting against racism. A new world order has to repair the damage that has been done not only to Black people in Africa but for people of African origin around the world.”

Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick

Judy Rebick is one of Canada’s best-known feminists. She was the founding publisher of rabble.ca , wrote our advice column auntie.com and was co-host of one of our first podcasts called Reel Women....