Far too often we are forced to respond to day-to-day challenges – whether it's keeping a clinic or welfare office open, preventing an eviction, or protesting the latest US military adventure overseas. This summer we'll have a chance to step back and think strategically. We will be coming together with progressive activists from Boston and beyond, and focus on our own goals and our agenda for social change.

The Boston Social Forum is the chance for local activists to participate in a worldwide process that is giving us new tools to determine the fate of our communities. It will bring together two sets of issues that are often seen as separate: war and peace in other countries on the one hand, and social change and social justice in the U.S. on the other.

The reality is that the issues that come out of militarization and globalization in other nations – the degradation of the environment, IMF-imposed austerity measures in the Third World, rural people forced off of their land into massive slums to work in sweatshops, and U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, and military bases around the world– are directly tied to issues of social justice in the U.S.

We see the same trends are evident in the United States. Services from public schools to health care to garbage collection are being increasingly privatized. Family farms continue to fail as multinational corporations get huge government subsidies and hire poor immigrants. The effects of globalization are undermining the possibility of a progressive society in this country.

So, for Peace Action – and for all of the peace and justice movement – coming together to focus on our own goals and our agenda for social change is vital. It is the next step we need to take, to make sure that our movement looks like our country. There are unprecedented numbers of people of color, working-class people, and youth currently working for social justice. But we need more. We are bridging old divides of race and class, of young and old, and between the cities and suburbs.

We are creating neighborhood, city, and regional peace and justice institutions rooted in communities – and accessible to everyone who wants to work for grassroots social change. That work has already started in the Boston area, but there is much more that we need to do – and that will be one of our tasks this summer.

Just one year ago, we saw 10 million people marching in the world's cities – and we became what many have called "the other superpower." For us to make that potential a reality, events like the Boston Social Forum are a necessity.

Because come this July it will be the Boston Social Forum – rather than the Democratic National Convention – where you will find democracy this summer in Boston. This will be what democracy looks like.

Brian Corr started working as a progressive activist while at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1982, and has been in Boston since 1987. He is National Co-Chair of Peace Action, Clerk (Chair), American Friends Service Committee, New England Region, Treasurer of the Commonwealth Education Project, and President of the Fair Economy Action Fund.