- Porto Alegre: a symbol
of hope
The world forum in Porto Alegre has been an important event and has opened new directions. It has shown not only the vitality and capacity of associations to fight against the liberal globalization and the market economy but also the necessity to get organized and to develop a possible alternative.
We are now aware of the devastating effect on people of a market economy without regulation and frontier. The capitalism of a free-market is a perverted system that does not care much about the people. Nature, life, human rights, freedom, love, culture, health cannot be treated as goods. Many people cannot stand to live anymore in such a world in preparation. It is intolerable that the new leaders of the world impose their decisions to the whole population of the world.
How can we accept that half of this population (3 billions of individuals) could live with 2 US dollars per day? In spite of the increase of wealth, poverty is not yet declining. Inequalities are increasing. This shameful separation between rich and poor, a true plague affecting humanity, continues to grow.
During the forum of Porto Alegre, it was asked for the cancellation of the debt of the third-world countries, the installation of a tax on financial transactions, the ban of tax havens, and the transformation of the IMF and WTO.
This forum was mainly the opportunity for people from the South to ask for social justice. Porto Alegre is a symbol of hope for a renewed world based on other values than money and capital assets. 
- It has demonstrated the formidable ambition of so many men and women, mostly young ones, to "appropriate" their own future, as it is so nicely said.
