Two years ago, some eight thousand activists gathered in the quiet Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to express an alternate viewpoint, originating from the South, to the World Economic Forum being held in the Swiss mountain resort of Davos. They optimistically called the event the “World Social Forum.”

A year later, with the anti-globalization movement in full swing, some 50,000 people from all over the world descended on Porto Alegre to repeat the event. This year, the number has doubled again — more than 100,000 people were present to hear newly-elected Brazilian president Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva call the World Social Forum the “most important political event of the year.”

Lula was not exaggerating. The World Social Forum has displaced Davos from the front pages of this week’s world press. Brazilian cabinet ministers, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and everyone who is anyone in the world of international co-operation are present. An estimated three thousand journalists are jostling for space in the converted parking lot of the PUC, Porto Alegre’s university.

For Porto Alegre, the event is both an economic blessing — an estimated $26 million (U.S.) will be spent by participant and visitors — and a logistical nightmare. Over the course of the four-day event, diverse organizations are hosting more than three thousand workshops and cultural events, in addition to the main conference.

The event has overflowed the university and taken over every large venue the city has to offer, including improvised spaces in the historic waterfront warehouse district. Thirty-two brand new buses have been allocated to shuttling delegates back and forth between sites; a traffic jam of taxis is available for those on expense accounts or rushing to make a presentation.

Hotels are packed; a tent city has sprung up in the city’s main park; and, at all hours, ragged queues mark the entrances to the city’s restaurants.

The intense summer sun alternates with torrential downpours which temporarily relieve the heat, giving the event the feeling, as one Canadian delegate put it, of “a Canadian folk festival for activists.”

In three years, the WSF has moved from being a protest that created space for political debate into an attempt to organize the new global civil society. But the very success and size of the event threatens to frustrate the intent. The amorphousness and chaotic interconnectedness of the global movement is both its charm and its limitation.

This year, the official focus of the WSF is strategic — how to build the global struggle while remaining a “network of networks;” how to become even more inclusive and democratic while remaining effective; how to improve relationships between different segments of the movement: political parties and civil society; the “old institutions” and the “new movements;” the North and the South. And while the discussion in these workshops is (mostly) polite and forward-looking, there are strong disagreements just below the surface.

The example of the three-day World Parliamentary Forum, which started the day before the WSF.s official opening, is probably indicative. Delegates were able to achieve consensus on the Middle East (no to the war against Iraq; yes to Israel leaving Palestine), on international trade negotiations (no to GATS, TRIPS and FTAA; yes to the Tobin Tax), and various international issues (a negotiated peace in Colombia, support for Bolivian peasants, end the Cuban trade embargo, self-determination in the Sahel). But when confronted with the question of how to reconcile political parties and social movements, they could do no better than state that the debate is important and that the discussion during the forum “is offered as an element in that debate.”

At WSF sessions, deep suspicion has been expressed over the potential of traditional governments to effect real change.

Speaking at a Saturday afternoon session on “new dimensions of the democratic state,” U.S. anti-poverty activist, political essayist and social critic Barbara Ehrenreich suggested that the left, at least in her country, may need to rethink its historic strategy of calling on the government to provide more services. Despite right-wing rhetoric, she said, “the government is not getting smaller; only social programs are getting smaller. But the law enforcement, military and policing sector has continued to expand.”

“Morally we have no choice but to oppose a government which not only threatens the world but also its own women and children.”

Italian peace activist Lisa Clark expressed her sense of betrayal by the political left in her country. “There was a total cop-out of the political left,” she said. “We finally managed to elect a left-wing government and that government led the country into war with Kosovo [in 1999].”

However, she said, the solution is not to abandon politics but rather to affirm it in its positive sense, as popular control rather than economic control. “We must put politics back in charge of the world.”

The Council of Canadians’ Maude Barlow, speaking yesterday evening at a different panel, also expressed caution about trusting governments. “It is heartening to be here [in Brazil] in the first year that Lula is president,” she said, “but it is disheartening to know that the Brazilian finance minister is willing to consider privatizing this country’s water.”

Long-time anti-globalization activist Susan George, speaking on the same panel, said that it would be a mistake for the WSF movement to attempt to turn itself into a political party in any country. It is necessary to work to elect progressive governments, she said, but it is also necessary to maintain an active civil society to keep those governments honest.