III Local Authorities Forum for Social Inclusion of Porto Alegre In January 2000, the I International Social Forum took place in Porto Alegre, congregating leaders, intelectuals and institutions from all over the word who are engaged in discussing alternatives for the solitary neoliberalist speech. Parallel to that meeting, the I Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion was also held. The event gathered nearly 180 mayors and representatives of cities of Europe, Latin America and Africa with the purpose of discussing the difficulties of the municipal public administration in a scenario of increasing disparities and social exclusion. The basic assumption of the meeting of local authorities is that cities have become important agents in the globalization process. More than that, they are agents that together with the society they can build and develop alternatives of public administration. The Forum of Local Authorities for Social Inclusion presented a challenge for local governors from all over the world to fulfil their specific duties in exercising public policies which are inclusive and democratic towards respect to richness distribution. Even with the limitations of local power in the struggle against the misery caused by misguided macroeconomic policies, the local administrators assembled wrote the letter of Porto Alegre, where they state that "... The cities are important instruments to stop the social exclusion processes, to develop inclusion policies and provide answers to problems that hamper citizenship. They are a decisive landmark to promote and consolidate process of participative democracy and public control over the State, breeding citizenship solidary consciousness... " . In the II Local Authorities Forum for Social Inclusion, in January 2002, hundreds of mayors and representatives of local authorities, meeting in Porto Alegre, strengthened the role of the cities as political subjects in the new world-wide scenery, and at the same time they took an active position to defend the construction of alternatives compromised with another kind of globalization, human and solidary. The II Local Authorities Forum for Social Inclusion created a Network Of Cities for Social Inclusion, in the mark of the constitution of a new world-wide organization of cities, fruit of the process of fusion between Unites Towns Organization (UTO) and International Union of Local Authorities (IULA). This network will adopt a flexible organization to allow working in favor of the objectives expressed in the Letter of Porto Alegre. In its third edition, the Local Authorities Forum for Social Inclusion, which will take place in January 2003, the 21st and 22nd , again within the scope of the International Social Forum, in Porto Alegre, it will have to incorporate in the program of local authorities the exigency of democracy in the institutions and in the international relations. Besides, it reaffirm the compromise with an organized and strengthened world-wide civil society and with local authorities articulated in networks and acting politically in the international scenery. The combination of these two subjects in the world-wide scenery - local authorities and social movements - allow to fight against the almost absolute domination of the markets and imperialist nations making real the hope of construing a world more democratic, more solidary and human. That is why, it seems fundamental that the Cities Network for Social Inclusion, building by us, could act in a linked and propositive way in the international affairs scenery, with a platform of democratic radicalization, struggling for peace, social justice, a sustainable development and for human rights, and could be able of preparing common strategies for the crucial international themes. João Verle Porto Alegre Mayor