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Zoë Caron, Rosa Kouri and myself (all members of the Sierra Youth Coalition) booked Charles Lynch press conference room at the Centre Bloc Parliament Buildings on Friday, February 24th, 2006 from 12:00 – 12:30 pm. We gave a youth statement that voiced our concerns and requested for immediate government action on Kyoto targets.It was surprisingly easy to book the press conference room. Note to self do that more often!

Tim Anderson, a young Canadian, writes about his experience and perceptions at the World Social Forum:

“Here are some more observations from Venezuela and the 2006 World Social Forum (WSF), held in Caracas. I went to Caracas in December, during the National Assembly elections (en route to Cuba, where I was studying the health system and the HIV program) and again in late January, for the WSF. I went to a lot of WSF sessions, but really I was just as interested in what was going on in Venezuela, and in the growing links between it and the other left governments of Latin America.

There was indeed a lot of blurring of lines between the ‘project’ of the WSF (‘another world is possible’) and the project of the Chavez-led, socialist MVR (Movement of the Fifth Republic). This was the criticism of both the bourgeois opposition and the anarchists. For myself, I found the blurring rather natural, for a WSF held in Venezuela. If we are looking at ‘other’ worlds, ie. other than imperialism and neoliberalism, Venezuela represents the most interesting alternative in recent decades. Here is a popular socialist party which has come to government and has maintained power through elections, has wrested control of the country’s natural resources from the oligarchy and the MNCs, confronted the empire, given a major priority to education, health and housing programs for poor people, increased levels of participation, resisted a US backed coup and is still faced by an aggressive Bush regime. It also faces an hostile domestic and international corporate media, which accuses it of every crime under the sun.

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