Al Kags Kicks Up a Storm Re WSF @ Kenya Talk

[Onyango Oloo]

kenya.rcbowen.com/talk/viewtopic.php?id=3364&p=1

[roughrider]

I am tempted to dismiss this view on the World Social Forum from one Al Kags as a gimmick - one of those attention seeking internet lurkers who derive perverse pleasure by flagging an important issue, event or personality and courting controversy (and attention) by making wild or alarming claims about it. Its one of those oddities of the internet and it’s probably a corruption of the old trick really…. crying Wolf! Wolf!

But this cannot be so – because I have googled Al Kags and found out that he not just an established internet persona but a real person who can be found easily on the streets of Nairobi, and more critically, one who styles himself as a journalist or at the very minimum, a media practitioner.

We must give him an earful.

Why would a journalist and a thinker of random thoughts, according to one of his blogs, not know much about the global social justice movement and the world social forum…. to the extent that he confesses:

‘ I don't know what this means. I have read and reread it several times and I find it difficult to identify with the words I am reading - probably because I don't understand its profoundness’

Read and reread it several times! Really? At least Mr. kags acknowledges what he cannot understand.

Well, I read the same passages that Mr. Kags does not comprehend and I can confirm that they are written in crisp English. And, at least according to media reports, over 100, 000 people also seem to have understood so clearly those passages that they have chosen to attend the WSF. More seriously though, is the WSF merely a talk shop that delivers nothing? What’s wrong with talking about issues anyway? Does talking about issues deliver? Is it not presumptuous and self-defeating for a blogger and journalist whose very pastime is ‘mere talk’ to disparage ‘talk shops’? Is the kettle calling the pot black?

Even more ridiculous is the attempt by Al Kags to dismiss a global movement in a few paragraphs. This is laughable.

I spent some years in classrooms talking and listening so much that I know and understand the power of talk and how it changes people’s lives. Talk about ideas, talk about people, movements, justice…. The WSF may not send troops to Darfur or feed starving Zimbabweans, but it may just explain why years of colonialism, neo-colonialism and multi-national strangulation have put Zimbabwe where it is today… and it might just show that ‘another world is possible’, aside from the unipolar unilateralism that produces the Darfur’s and Zimbabwe’s that trouble Mr Kags. I am also hoping that the WSF in Nairobi will help educate clueless journalists, like Mr. Kags, so that all year round they can begin to write, edit and inform opinion and action much more knowledgeably.

I am not particularly close to the WSF in Nairobi, but I have registered as a delegate and will attend a few sessions, at least. My aim is to meet and talk with some people, to exchange contacts, to get fresh ideas on what I can actually do on the ground to improve my lot and the welfare of those around me. Being a voter, i will just learn a few new 'social justice' things that I will be perusing manifestos for... oops! is that a deliverable? But mine is a perhaps a modest objective.

Others seek to achieve greater objectives: for instance, some will be selling mandazi and simsim (to delegates) to make a living; for few days perhaps they will be spared the unfair competition of monopoly multinationals (like coca cola) but they will learn a life’s lesson about why they are still poor.

I have no idea if Mr. Kags will ever read or if it will inspire him to conduct some basic reaserch before writing on subjects he does not comprehend; I have no idea if Mr. Kags will agree that pluralism of ideas is in fact a good thing; but I bet somebody will read my words who might quietly learn a thing or two.

Indeed, another world is possible.

Cheers

[kamalet]

Al Kags questioned what benefit will be derived byt he WSF and in the midst of his questioning, all seems lost and the main question he posed remained unanswered.

Like what has been achieved out of Karachi or anyother place the WSF has taken place. The people meet and talk....then what?

[roughrider]

kamalet said:

Al Kags questioned what benefit will be derived byt he WSF and in the midst of his questioning, all seems lost and the main question he posed remained unanswered.

Like what has been achieved out of Karachi or anyother place the WSF has taken place. The people meet and talk....then what?

I did not realize there was so much ignorance about the world social forum and its objectives. It is simply a meeting place for debate and discussion. That should be sufficient.

Kamale, I’ll have you know that I consider these queries about the WSF a red herring. They are neither here nor there because they attempt to denigrate; to mock and to criminalize debate and discussion.

The WSF is not the NSE where you go and buy shares; it is not a land buying company, it is not an investors meeting....or whatever.

It is:

“an open meeting place where groups and movements of civil society opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism, but engaged in building a planetary society centred on the human person, come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action.”

That’s it. That, in and of itself, is a noble, complete, immutable objective and outcome that any progressive well-meaning person cannot argue with…. or claim not to see. Those behind the WSF need not be pressured to aspire for more than this. Not by the Al Kags or Kamales of this World. For there is nothing greater than this object.

But perhaps we need not look too far to understand the ideological basis for such spurious queries; One senses a certain trepidation hiding behind the words of, for example, Al Kags – has the WSF unsettled him and his ilk? Paulo Freire in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed already anticipates reactions like this by the oppressed:

The oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom…[…]…To surmount the situation of oppression, people must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation, one which makes possible the pursuit of a fuller humanity…[…]…However, the oppressed, who have adapted to the structure of domination in which they are immersed, and have become resigned to it, are inhibited from waging the struggle for freedom so long as they feel incapable of running the risks it requires. Moreover, their struggle for freedom threatens not only the oppressor, but also their own oppressed comrades who are fearful of still greater repression. When they discover within themselves the yearning to be free, they perceive that this yearning can be transformed into reality only when the same yearning is aroused in their comrades. But while dominated by the fear of freedom they refuse to appeal to others, or to listen to the appeals of others, or even to the appeals of their own conscience. They prefer gregariousness to authentic comradeship; they prefer the security of conformity with their state of unfreedom to the creative communion produced by freedom and even the very pursuit of freedom.

From Chapter One Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The WSF begins by helping the oppressed to ‘critically recognize the causes of their oppression’. I am happy to have people just talk about things and even happier that they discuss what Joseph Stiglitz called ‘Globalization and its discontents’. It is from talking that people know, and in knowing they learn, and by learning they act, and, finally, through action comes change.

Again, lots of cheers all round.