GTA in the WSF 2021

In this page you will find the activities where GTA participated in the World Social Forum 2021, either as co-organizer or with the presence of some its core members. To see the full agenda and more information please visit the official WSF site.

GTA in the WSF 2021

23/1: Opening

Aperture panel

  • Participants: Yanis Varoufakis, Lula da Silva, Leila Khaled, Aminata Traore, Miriam Mirand, Ashish Kothari
  • Time: 14.00 (UTC)

English recording

GTA's introductory video

English recording

27/1: Parliament of World Citizenship

Discussion on a proposed global Parliament. Assuming an initial proposal from the International Convivialist, Multiconvergence enriched, deepened and reformulated the idea, including the networks in the discussion since the very beginning. The consensus reached so far is that the Parliament should have two chambers: a Council of Wisdom of the Peoples of the Earth and an Assembly of planetary citizens.

English recording

27/1: Deep South Roundtable: Global Dialogue on Solidarity and Mutual Aid

  • Time: 15:00 (UTC)
  • Speakers:Misty Skaggs , Gabriela Variela, Warren Tidwell, Majadi Baruti, Mabrouka M'Barek, Nonhle Mbuthuma
  • Facilitators: Zac Hyden & Ana Cecilia Dinerstein
  • Language(s) of the Activity: English

This global dialogue is among dispossessed and marginalized communities from Appalachia and Alabama within the crumbling US empire and community organizers, popular educators, and social activists from the Global South in Latin America and Africa. All participants will reflect on shared struggles and mutual aid. Our main questions will be 'What is solidarity? How to ensure mutual aid does not act as a bandaid to sustain capitalism, imperialism, coloniality, patriarchy, and other patterns of domination? Why is it necessary to incorporate anti-racist strategies? What does an alternative notion of solidarity look like?

English recording

28/1: Power and Democracy: Despair and Hope

In this session we propose to promote an open dialogue where we can critically address the issue of power and democracy from two different perspectives: [1] representative democracy within the framework of the Nation-State, its crisis of legitimacy and the co-optation by pro-capitalist perspectives and increasingly fascist tendencies; [2] the practices of radical democracy taking place in social movements, grassroots organizations and community processes, and frameworks of power for radical transformation emerging from these. We will seek to make visible the tensions and complementarities between local, national and global dimensions. Is it possible and/or desirable to influence state policies by focusing on experiences of radical democracy and direct democracy? What are the learnings emerging from the grassroots experiences to challenge the concentration of state power? What could be process of common envisioning among these radical processes that can transform the systems at local to global level? How do we combine resistances and alternatives to effectively challenge growing fascism? These and other questions will be explored in this dialogue by sharing of diverse experiences by the panelists who have been thinking about and practicing critical, counter-hegemonic, and reforming forms of democracy.

English recording

Spanish recording

Portuguese recording

Text transcription

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29/1: Climate, Ecology and Enviromental space

General Session "Climate Emergency and Species Extinction: Resist! Construct! Celebrate!"

  • Registration and more information: https://join.wsf2021.net/activities/3898
  • Time: 13.00 to 15.00 (UTC)
  • Co-Chairs: Arci Pasanen (Transition Network Sweden) & Franco Augusto (GTA)
  • Participants: Ariel Saleh , Lau Khin Chi , Soumya Dutta , Patrick Bond , Nnimmo Bassey , Blanca Chancosa

English recording

Spanish recording

Portuguese recording

French recording

Chinese recording

Session "Rural environmental struggles for system change"

  • Registration and more information: https://join.wsf2021.net/activities/4978
  • Time: 15.00 to 17.00 (UTC)
  • Co-chairs: Ellie Cijvat; FoE Sweden; nn Via Campesina
  • Participants: Thorsten Laxvik, Vasna Ramasar, Elizabeth Mpofu

English recording

30/1: Assemblies and more

Session "Zapatista visions, voices and practices"

In this roundtable, Zapatistas and their supporters will present the visions, trajectories and challenges of the Zapatistas in over three decades of indigenous organizing, caracole construction, and management of the commons. In particular, their current struggles in the face of the pandemic, extractivism, developmentalism, and divide and rule. The caracoles of good government are not just a form of government in building autonomy and self-reliance, with remarkable achievements in health, education, and livelihood, but the practice of different ways of life, of community relations, with different values and cosmologies, fostering hope for humanity.

  • Moderators: Gustavo Esteva
  • Speakers: Alejandra Jiménez, Mariana Mora, Claudia Yadira, Jorge Santiago, Gilberto López y Rivas, and David Barkin.

English recording

Assembly of global processes

In 2 sessions, 2.5 hours each, to accommodate people in various time zones:

Session 1 at 06.00 (UTC):

Session 2 at 14.00 (UTC):


Seven global intiatives have come together to initiate an Assembly of Global Processes. The organisations and their websites are:

Other editions

You can get information of GTA's participation in other editions of the WSF: