In 1933 Diego Rivera (1886-1957), completed his Detroit Industry fresco cycle. The abundant, controversial work, considered one the twentieth century’s outstanding achievements of monumental art, covers the four walls of the Garden Court in the Detroit Institute of Art. The murals illustrate the dignity of the worker in relation to the history of technology - from its origins in agriculture to the factory floor of a Ford auto plant. The most intriguing aspect of the murals lies hidden within the outline of a gigantic stamping press on the South Wall: the press intimates a resemblance to the Aztec deity Coatlicue - the goddess of creation and destruction. Through the image Rivera suggests that in the 1930s the deity revealed herself, in all
of her contradictions, as technology. The murals present us with the latter’s dual nature - factories and smokestacks, passenger planes and war planes, vaccines and poison gas - implying that technical progress always offers us the choice between self-immolation or an increase in human flourishing. The obvious question that the Detroit Industry fresco cycle poses to us is what would the eminent artist design if asked to do a contemporary version of the murals? How would he depict the tragedy and possibility of a city and country – with a heroic history of activism – that has been steadily crippled by a generation of neoliberal economic policies?

This January, the World Social Forum celebrated its 10 years of activity. For a review of these 10 years, a review was organized in Porto Alegre reflecting on what has changed during these last 10 years.

Atlanta, Georgia - With civil society gearing up for the 2010 World Social Forum, and later this summer, the 2010 U.S. Social Forum in Detroit, Michigan, activists here say new alliances created at the first USSF in 2007 are going strong.