the french presidential election is in a few weeks now and a number of the candidates made the trip to PA to publicize their recent interest for the anti-globalization thing. mostly because attac is now very big in france and is one of the coorganizers of the forum. they only have 30,000 members in france but seem to have a huge political influence especially in election times.
still you have to remember that even though only some north american ngo yuppies can make the trip, south american activists are the ones who could never take part to _any_ forum anywhere before porto alegre. same for the indian groups next time. since i live in japan, i'm willing to save a part of my 100,000 yen a month wage to make the trip to india. which will probably be less costly than a similar forum in nyc, where you could go but not i.
jc helary