The Social Forum was born in this city in the south of Brazil where was played an innovative experience of popular mobilization and organization at a moment when Brazil and several Latin American countries were living a real democratic transition. The WSF has allowed the transmission of these experiences and of multiple pedagogies in the framework of a multi-voices debate, allowding young people, women, peasants, indigenous, and to other popular strata traditionally marginalized to speak and explore the unreleased trails of alterglobalism. Today, 15 years later, progress is observed, but also the dead spots of this vast social movement, when the neoliberal power devices are reorganizing and militarizing. The Forum should revitalize.

Pierre Beaudet