Blogging the ESF

The past weekend has been a blur of ideas, discussion, debate, thought, creativity and action which I'm still too tired to say much of any use about. The European Social Forum attracted activists from across Europe and beyond, a fact particularly visible on the closing demonstration which opposed the ongoing occupation of Iraq.

I attended a wealth of meetings covering a wide range of issues: global warming, Israel-Palestine, disability rights, the death penalty, democracy in the European Union and probably more. I made a point of not going to meetings about issues like the war in Iraq which I have been heavily involved in previously and consider myself fairly knowledgeable about, focusing instead on things I was interested in, but less informed about. Even the Israel-Palestine meeting I went to was concerned less with the occupation itself, but with ways which Israelis and Jews has supported Palestinian efforts to end it.

I intend to write more about my experiences over the coming days, although I am too tired at the moment. I'm likely to be quite busy as I try and catch up with work, so it'll probably take me a while to deal with even a fraction of what I saw, but try and bear with me (and hopefully Dan who also went and surely has much of interest to write). In the meantime you might want to check out this post from my other blog, which touches on one meeting I went to and its relationship with what's happening in the real world and also suggests action which you can take to actually try and improve things.