MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

President Rousseff to address protestors of anti-Davos Economic Forum

The World Social Forum is taking place in Porto Alegre

Thousands of trade unionists, students and activists for indigenous and environmental causes gathered Tuesday in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to kick off debate in the anti-capitalist World Social Forum.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has confirmed she will address the forum on Thursday, which is to include representatives of Spain's Indignados, Chilean student protestors, the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring are to attend the Porto Alegre gathering.

The annual event was created in Brazil in 2001 as a protest against the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, which opens this week in Davos, Switzerland - but only for elite business leaders and top political figures.

The forum gathers under the motto 'Another World Is Possible,' which pursues alternatives to so-called 'economic neo-liberalism' - the name given to economic practice that focuses on private enterprise, open markets, liberal trade and globalization.

Demonstrators shouted anti-capitalist slogans and against inequality.

They also targeted the destruction of the environment, with specific criticism of Brazilian government plans to build the massive Belo Monte hydro-electric plant in the Amazonian region and of the country's new Forest Code which is being debated in Congress.

Demonstrators also slammed the eviction of poor people from areas where Brazilian authorities want to host the Brazil 2014 football World Cup and the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics.

'It is a social cleansing process, a clean-up of cities, a process of urban make-up to host tourists,' said Thiago Hoshino, a member of the Popular World Cup Committee.

The forum has as its theme this year 'Capitalist Crisis - Social and Environmental Justice,' in preparation for the Peoples' Summit to be held in parallel to the UN Rio+20 Earth Summit in June.