U.S. Social Forum – A Marcher’s Diary

ATLANTA - The first U.S. Social Forum began on June 27 with the music of War…the California musical group War, that is. As soul classics like “Summer,” “Spill the Wine,” and the very apropos “Why Can’t We be Friends?” boomed on speakers at the rally in Renaissance Park, old school anti-Apartheid and civil rights activists of the analog age joined new school anti-globalization and human rights activists of the digital age by doing the dancing, marching, strategizing and eating that define the creative chaos that is the Foro process.

Many of us marched not far from the home, church (Ebenezer Baptist Church) and neighborhood where MLK lived, loved and first learned about segregation and Jim Crow. As we marched through the historic heart of black Atlanta, there were clear signs --“mixed income” housing construction on Auburn Street, demolition of public housing, eviction notices, “For Sale” signs on historically black homes -- that, soon, the new housing segregation may leave “Sweet Auburn” with no poor black people except for those in the museums promoted by the brochures we picked up in the hotels we slept in nearby.

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