ESF news: ESF-1

ESF-1

The 4th ESF has officially opened today with an antiracism concert on the Town Hall Square in the centre of Athens. People from all over Europe have started to arrive in Athens and register for the forum, which is located in the premises of the basketball stadium used during the 2004 Olympic Games. Many of the participants I have seen “migrating” to the ESF are youngsters who came with friends and sleeping bags. Friends of the Earth activists have not arrived yet, but we expect many of them t arrive tomorrow. They will participate in the activities of the forum (workshops, seminars, cultural events…) and will also help with FoEE’s stall, particularly, in collecting signatures for our big anti-nuclear campaign: One Million Europeans Against Nuclear Power: http://www.one-million.net
I have registered for my organization – Friends of the Earth Europe – and have started to set up our stall. I have met with friends from Ecologist Greens (the Greek green party) who have kindly receipted and transported our campaign material from their office in the centre of Athens to the ESF venue. I also met up with other fellow campaigners who also arrived earlier to avoid the expectable mess of the forum’s first day.
The full programme of this ESF is available online: http://athens.fse-esf.org/program-en

Tomorrow, Thursday 4th May, I will participate in an internal meeting of the Seattle to Brussels Network at 12:00h to prepare our activities at the ESF, and particularly our campaign assembly scheduled on Saturday morning. Then, at 14:30h, I will chair and speak at a workshop on WTO’s NAMA negotiations (non-agricultural market access).
More details about this workshop will be given in a next post.