More than five years of worldwide gatherings of people and organizations who oppose neoliberalism have provided an experience leading to the creation of a new collective awareness. The social forums - world, thematic, continental, or national - and the Assembly of Social Movements have been the principal architects of this conscience. Meeting in Bamako on January 18, 2006, on the eve of the opening of the Polycentric World Social Forum, the participants of this day devoted to the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference expressed the need to define alternative development goals, to reach a balance in societies, to abolish exploitation by class, gender, race and caste, and to mark the road to a new balance of powers between North and South.
The Bamako Appeal aims at contributing to the emergence of a new popular and historical subject, and at consolidating the achievement of these meetings. It seeks to advance the principle of the right to an equitable existence for everyone; to affirm a collective life of peace, justice and diversity; and to promote the means to reach these goals at the local level and for all of humanity.
In order for a historical subject come into existence - one that is diverse, multipolar and people-based - it is necessary to define and promote alternatives that can rally social and political forces. The goal is a radical transformation of the capitalist system. The destruction of the planet and of millions of human beings, the individualist and consumerist culture that underlies and feeds this system, along with its imposition by imperialist powers are no longer tolerable, since what is at stake is the existence of humanity itself. Alternatives to the wastefulness and destructiveness of capitalism draw their strength from a long tradition of popular resistance that also embraces all of the small steps forward indispensable to the daily life of the victims of the system.
The Bamako Appeal, built around the broad themes discussed in subcommittees, expresses the commitment to:
(i) build an internationalism joining the peoples of the South and the North who suffer the ravages engendered by the dictatorship of financial markets and by the uncontrolled global deployment of the transnational firms;
(ii) build the solidarity of the peoples of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas facing challenges of development in the 21st century;
(iii) build a political, economic, and cultural consensus that is an alternative to militarized and neoliberal globalization and to the hegemony of the United States and its allies.
