By Executive Director Ethel Long-Scott

One of the world's most aggressive attempts to combat poverty and social injustice gathers this summer in Detroit, one of the U.S. cities most devastated by the economic and social crises that affect so many U.S. areas, including the Bay Area.

The U.S. Social Forum, June 22 - 26 in Detroit, brings together an anticipated 20,000 leaders, critical thinkers, academics and members of civil society organizations from around the world, searching for ways to fight the problems brought to their people by global capitalism, and expressed as corporate growth and domination,discrimination, and the blatant disregard for human rights.  Ever since the first World Social Forum in 2001 in Brazil, the gathering has brought together concerned communities from around the world that face similar forms of persecution, injustice, and hardships.

Detroit's statistics may sound worse than the Bay Area's overall, but the picture looks the same to those most affected.  The rate of Detroit's unemployment and underemployment is about 30 percent   These struggles hit those most in need - about 55 percent of children in the city live in poverty. Michigan also ranks sixth in home foreclosure rates.² Last September 50,000 people poured into the Cobo Hall convention center looking for housing assistance.  As jobs continue to leave Detroit, so do its citizens. Detroit's population this year is expected be less than half of what it once was.  Entire neighborhoods are becoming ghost towns of empty homes, pollution, and poverty.

These numbers are reflected right here in California and the Bay Area. Nearly 1 in 4 California residents lacked health insurance for part or all of 2009, that is roughly 8.2 million people³. California also has the third highest rate of official unemployment at 12.6% and the fourth highest rate of home foreclosures at 12.4%, even worse than Michigan. When we look closer in particular locations, the numbers are even worse. Cities like Richmond, Hayward, and Oakland have unemployment and poverty rates well above the state and national average.

Minorities and young persons are disproportionally affected.⁴ Unemployment for people between the ages of 16 to 24 has been upwards of 18%, with underemployment for those under 25 at a shocking 31.9%. Again, the numbers are higher for African-American and Latino teens, many trying to work to sustain their families. Latino and African-American teens between ages 16 and 19 are unemployed at a rate of 30 and 40 percent respectively. Since the recession began, young American's have lost well over 2.5 million jobs.

These numbers explain why World Social Forum organizers say that although individual experiences are unique, "there is a strategic need to unite the struggles of oppressed communities and peoples within the United States (particularly Black, Latino, Asian/ Pacific-Islander and Indigenous communities) to the struggles of oppressed nations in the Third World."

One of the reasons is that young people, particularly minorities, tend to be less educated than larger work force. Yet budget cuts in California continue to rip the possibility of public education to shreds. College tuition has increased dramatically, a full 30% at all UC and State universities, effectively locking out a massive portion of individuals out of higher education. Meanwhile, a huge number of students are graduating or dropping out of college, saddled with thousands of dollars of debt. Injustice perpetuates itself. Young individuals living in poverty in the Bay Area have a hard time attaining higher education, if they do, they are burdened with crippling debt, at which point they join the troubled labor force that overwhelmingly leaves them without health benefits. For many, it is not a good time to be young in the Bay Area.

Yet the spirit of resistance and passion against injustice is alive and strong. On March 4th earlier this year, thousands of students rallied together and marched in protest to the budget cuts and increased tuition fees. Their rallying cry? In Oakland, young people of all ages shouted in the streets "No cuts! No fees! Education should be free!" At UC Berkeley, students took direct action and held sit-ins all across the university, effectively seizing control of a campus building to draw attention to the cause. They joined their action with concerned parents, teachers, and community members decrying the cuts to public education that will lay-off  thousands of teachers, crowd classroom from kindergarten through high school, abolish after school programs, and set state’s education status back even further.

Similarly, a group UC Berkeley students disgusted by the recent anti-immigration law passed in Arizona held a hunger striker, drawing attention to this piece of racist legislation. Organizations like Hip Hop Congress and Youth Speaks capitalize on the arts and the creativity of youth to forge relationships with young activists in the Bay Area and strengthen youth leadership roles. A coalition of activists, young and old, are not taking injustice sitting down. California and the Bay Area in particular is alive with a passion for change, a passion that must be represented at the US Social Forum in Detroit.

Allies in Detroit are creating their own solutions as well. Citizens are taking back homes and designing clever ways to rebuild the city. "There are now eight hundred community gardens on abandoned lots, peace zones for public safety, green retrofitting of empty houses, new open source media projects and an exploding hip hop and poetry scene."⁵ Like here in the Bay Area, community activism and youth activism, is alive and strong.

We cannot do our work alone. In a globalized world, where our problems are inexorably tied together, where large corporations run rampant over our human rights, we have no other option than to organize together. The US Social Forum embodies this spirit of convergence.  It creates a space of equality for the voiceless to be heard, from indigenous communities, to undocumented workers, to an assortment of mothers, brothers, sisters, and young activists of all kinds. It is an opportunity for those across the nation, the students protesting the collapsing public education system, the young unemployed struggling help their family survive, the teen artists fighting for change with hip hop, poetry, and spoken word, the homeless and poverty stricken, to rally in the thousands and develop real world solutions.

(Jorge Albor, Web Coordinator for the Women's Economic Agenda Project, assisted with this article.)

¹ http://www.detnews.com/article/20100518/METRO01/5180421/Bing-expects-Detroit-population-to-drop-below-850-000
² http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/gapmap/index.htm
³ http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/16/business/la-fi-uninsured16-2010mar16
⁴ http://weap.org/events-2/events.htm
⁵ http://www.alternet.org/economy/146577/green_detroit:_why_the_city_is_ground_zero_for_the_sustainability_movement?page=enti

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