… And the Democratic Exchange Forum is underway:

Hussain Kabani opened the the day, welcoming everyone to the Democratic Exchange Forum:

Mia Norgberg, a democracy activist from Malmö, welcomed participants to her home town and gave them a quick introduction to Malmö:

Hanna Gedin
A deputy mayor of Malmö responsible for equality and gender issues and a member of the Left Party, spoke about her home town and the challenges it faces to maintain equality in the current economic and political climate in Sweden. Her talk will be available soon.

Dushan, a14-year old Romani youth from Malmö performed, some of his spoken-word pieces to raise some issues for the subsequent discussion:

Jehan alfarra, a Gaza native, spoke movingly of life under occupation, about trying to live a normal life but “resisting normalization of the situation.” Because physical freedom is so constrained, she says, many people turn to the Internet for self-expression and commerce. It feels like “all of Gaza is on Twitter,” she joked. “Everybody has a blog,” and Facebook is popular too. Offline, “there is so much going on in Gaza that the world isn’t paying attention to,” from cake bakes to startup conferences.

Finally, the organizers, coordinators and debate leaders introduced themselves. Everybody is now ready to go for the coming four days.