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About the MWSF

The Midwest Social Forum (MWSF) is an annual gathering of grassroots organizations, community activists, workers, educators, students, artists, and others committed to making a better, more just world possible. The MWSF provides an open space for exchanging experiences and information, strengthening alliances and networks, and developing effective strategies for progressive social, economic, and political change.

The MWSF is committed to building a broad-based social movement across class, gender, race/ethnicity, generation, sexuality, ability, and geography. In pursuit of that goal, it seeks to embody a genuinely democratic process that assures the broadest representation possible.

The MWSF builds on both regional and global traditions and sources of inspiration. It has its origins in the Midwest Radical Scholars and Activists Conference, which was founded in 1983 by the Havens Center for the Study of Social Structure and Social Change and later renamed RadFest in the late 1990s. In 2003, the title Midwest Social Forum was added, inspired by the World Social Forum and the similar principles on which it was established, most importantly its commitment to diversity, democracy, and politically non-sectarian dialogue and debate (see WSF Charter of Principles here). Reflecting its growing identification and connection with the broader Social Forum movement, in September 2005, the MWSF organizing committee dropped the name RadFest from the title.

The evolution of the MWSF, however, goes deeper than its name. Each year, the Forum has increased in scope, scale, and diversity, and in 2006 made its most significant leap forward. Indeed, last July, nearly 1,000 community activists, students, educators, artists, and others committed to social justice movement building gathered in Milwaukee for MWSF 2006, taking part in four days of caucuses, workshops, panels, training sessions, and cultural events.

The growth and expansion of the MWSF is illustrative of the growing importance of the Social Forum movement more generally, which has spread to the regional, national, and even local level in many parts of the world. The World Social Forum (WSF) itself increased from 20,000 participants in 2001 to 155,000 in 2005. In 2006, a poly-centric WSF was held, with Forums held roughly simultaneously in Mali, Venezuela, and Pakistan. This year, the WSF convened in Nairobi, Kenya, and in late June, the first United States Social Forum will take place in Atlanta, Georgia.

For 2007, the MWSF helped to mobilize a Midwest contingent to the USSF.

Articles about past Midwest Social Forums

Marc Becker and Thomas Ponniah are members of the Network Institute for Global Democratization, which is a founding member of the International Organizing Council of the World Social Forum.

 

Links to other Social Forums

Past RadFest/Midwest Social Forum programs: