Our world is not for sale...

An organizing meeting took place this afternoon in downtown Cancun for the Our World is Not For Sale coalition of groups. It was inspiring.

A few of the people at the Our World is Not For Sale meeting today in Cancun. They were asked their reasons for coming to the meeting.

Anuradha Mittal, Food First, USA. "To ensure that the voice of people is heard, in this forum that normally excludes farmers, indigenous people and the landless."

Karl Flecker, Polaris Institute, Canada "To join with thousands of other people and thousands of communities to say no to corporate rule and the WTO."

Meenakshi Raman, Third World Network/Friends of the Earth, Malaysia "To lobby as much as possible to make sure no further damage takes place."

Walden Bello, Focus on the Global South, Phillipines "This is the most important meeting of all for civil society to coordinate, and achieve some sort of consensus on coordination."

In a downtown Cancun hotel this afternoon, about a hundred representatives from organizations all around the world had the first organizing meeting to decide how to work together over the next week.

The OWINFS network is made up of activists and groups from around the world working to make the global trading system more accountable, sustainable and socially just.

This WTO meeting in Cancun is a momentous one for civil society groups, as the last WTO meeting in Doha, Qatar, could not be attended by many NGOs because of the repressiveness of the host country. This meeting is different, with better attendance by a wide range civil society groups and a realization that creating alliances between groups is necessary if we are to affect the outcome of the meeting.

One of the founding principles of the meeting was that different groups can agree to disagree on the specifics of what they want from the WTO - what we cannot afford to do is continue working in isolation. This meeting was called to strengthen links between organizations, and it is off to a good start.