INTRODUCTION

In January of 2003, the novelist Arundhati Roy spoke at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “Remember this,” she said, “we be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” This book is an insistent claim that Roy is right. The movements to bring about another world are already in motion. Some are large, others small. Some are intense bursts, others are quietly simmering. They are gathering in places like Seattle, Cancun, Davos, Doha, Goteborg, and Genoa to demand a more democratic and socially just global economy. They are organizing massive street protests all around the world to decry the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They are coming together each year at the World Social Forum to share analysis and strategy. In India, the Save the Narmada movement is resisting the construction of dams along the Narmada River, opposing the displacement of poor and tribal people, and working to preserve ecosystems. In Brazil, the Landless Workers Movement is helping dismantle the country’s massively unequal distribution of land. In Chiapas, the Zapatista movement struggles to maintain native peoples’ control over their land and resources in the face of neoliberal assaults. In 2006 across the United States a “national day of action for immigration justice” served notice that undocumented immigrants are a political force that will not be silent as the country debates its immigration policy. And it is not only another world that is possible, but another city too. In Los Angeles, low-income, immigrant, and non-white bus riders are demanding, and achieving, affordable, clean, and dignifi ed transportation. In the favelas of Brazil, movements claiming a right to the city have helped bring about a national law that challenges the hegemony

of property rights by assigning equal importance to the social use value of urban land. In Vancouver, a remarkable movement among intravenous drug users has helped achieve a safe injection site that greatly reduces their risk of overdose and disease. And as we will see, in Seattle a movement that includes environmentalists, native peoples, neighborhood residents, justice activists, and small businesses has fought to democratize a Superfund cleanup on the city’s badly polluted main river. The list goes on.