Oh, Mallory

Opening Event
March 26, 2010 from 5 - 7 pm CDT
Main Street Cafe, St. Francis
event runs through May 1st

At the first of this year, I let for Dakar, Senegal in western Africa to help prepare for the 9th World Social Forum. For four weeks, me and my colleagues worked together with dozens of international volunteers to prepare for the arrival of 70,000 participants from around the globe for the week-long event, held February 6 - 11, 2011. The Main Street Cafe will be hosting a month-long photography exhibition in my hometown of Saint Francis, Kansas, featuring images from the events of the social forum and the neighborhood Liberte VI, where I lived during my trip.

My international organizing work is on behalf of May First/People Link, which is a progressive Internet provider based in Brooklyn, New York. Our organization operates under many principles of shared communication to solve global problems and empower communities around the world. Some of the activities that fulfill our organization's mission includes helping with the technology needs of the World Social Forum, as well as many other national and international events and campaigns.

The World Social Forum began in 2001 in Porto Allegre, Brazil as an alternative space to the World Economic Forum (WEF), which is held each year in Davos, Switzerland. Where the WEF is an exclusive summit on globalization attended by heads of state and CEOs, the World Social Forum was conceived to be exactly the opposite: a completely open summit that focused on alternatives to a global economy based on communities rather than money. I began working with the World Social Forum in 2009, when it was held in Belem, Brazil.

Dakar, Senegal was the venue of the most recent social forum. Senegal is a former French colony, located on the Western coast of Africa. Dakar is the capitol city with music, fashion, and arts heavily appreciated and supported by its government and citizens. The government of Senegal is a stable democracy making it a respected leader in its region of Africa. The social forum was held at Cheikh Anta Diop University, an impressive institution with over 60,000 students. My photographs were intended to capture the feeling of of Dakar, especially through scenes of everyday life as well as the one-time convergence of the World Social Forum.

I've used photography to capture my experience and bring it home. The images show tens of thousands of people joining together in creating an alternative, better world. They also show scenes of a busy yet serene, metropolitan yet unpretentious city. In addition to scenes from Dakar and the World Social Forum, some photographs feature Goree Island, an historical island famous for its museums dedicated to telling the story of the slave trade. The exhibit only includes 20 photographs from over 150 that are available to view on my website. Any of these photographs are for sale in the range of $30 - 60 for 11"x16" prints unframed. Also, high-resolution images are available for use under the Creative Commons Share-and-share-alike License. Any orders or inquiries can be made by email to mallory@mayfirst.org.