November 2003 Archive 

On the streets AND on the doorsteps Politically, more and more people today are drawing the conclusion that protest is not enough. The time has come to provide genuine, proactive alternatives.

What now for Stop the War? On a busy Saturday afternoon in September in the small town of Carmarthen, West Wales, Dyfed Powys police were alerted to a suspicious looking package in a shop doorway. They quickly called in the bomb squad, who evacuated a part of the town centre for four hours to carry out a controlled explosion.

All eyes on Paris "The sheer volume of people gave me a sense of a growing European movement," says Unison shop steward Lee Turner of the first European Social Forum (ESF) last year. Participating in this new Europe-wide movement for social justice had brought him a powerful sense of a new common identity.

Can we make a people’s Europe? The social model pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, is celebrated as a template for participatory non-sectarian politics and as a means of disseminating new forms of anti-capitalist thinking and organization. As social movements from across the continent prepare for the European equivalent in Paris, Red Pepper assess the possible highlights and long-term legacy of the event as well as the experience of localized social forums in Italy and the UK.

The Politics of Bob Dylan The protest songs for which Bob Dylan is most famous were written in a 20-month burst in the early 1960s. Within a year Dylan had turned his back on them – not in renunciation of politics, argues Mike Marqusee, but to pursue a deeper kind of radicalism