Francisco “Chico”
Whitaker is a
Brazilian activist
and has had a lot
of experience in
organising groups
for the creation of
a just world. He is
a founder of the
World Social Forum
and has worked
alongside Paulo Freire
and Bishop Helder
Camara. He toured
Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and New Zealand last
year, and gave an interview to Common Theology.
His mission was to make the World Social Forum
known in Australasia. Tens of thousands of people
have attended the annual forum in the six years
since its foundation.
Chico Whitaker’s lectures were concerned
with three questions:—
•What would a just world look like?
•Was it necessary to change the world? If so...
•Was there enough time to do so?
“Everything is interconnected. Things that
happen in Brazil can have repercussions in
Australia. Things that happen in Australia could
have repercussions in China and vice versa — for
instance moving a car-manufacturing factory to
China means unemployment in Australia.
“Integration of the workforce is built in the
interests of capitalism — not in the interests of
human beings, but in the interests of profit. So all
decisions are made in the interests of capital and
not in the interests of people problem solving.
“Brazil has 170 million people, on a land surface
about the same as Australia. This population can
be divided into two parts. A small percentage of
people who live well, even by Australian standards,
and the rest who live in poverty.
“Rich people have to drive in bulletproof cars,
and have electrified fences around their houses.
After ten o’clock you cannot walk on the streets.
So, something is wrong in this country. Two thirds
of this country lives in poverty.
“Similarly, the United States dominates world
markets and protectionism. But terrorism is bringing
insecurity to all parts of the world.
“Each year, the ‘owners’ of the world — the
capital, the big multi-national directors, the people
from the most important countries — meet in
Switzerland, at Davos, for the World Economic
Forum. This forum is centred on the economic
issues of the world. They go there to discuss how to
continue economic domination, and how to solve
the problems of opposition to this. The assumption
is that there is no other solution — that we must
live with the domination of capital interests.
“The first opposition demonstrated against this
kind of domination was in Seattle against the
World Trade Organisation. People from all over the
world went there, and they got a result.
“To show the Davos summit, especially, that there
is an authority not centred in the economic, but
in the unity of social issues, the first World Social
Forum was held in Porto Alegre, Brazil in January
2001. We were expecting 2000 people — 10,000
came.
“We began this process to show people that it
is possible to change things. We said we must not
only protest, we must also have solutions. We must
meet not to tell others what to do, but to show
each other what we are trying to do. Eventually
you will find that you have big collectives dealing
with the same issues.
“In 2002, 50,000 thousand people came to the
World Social Forum. The third one 100,000 people
came. The fourth one we held in India, Mombai
with 130,000, and the fifth in Brazil had 150,000
people.
This year in January delegates from 140 countries
met in Caracas, Venezuela, for one of three sessions. The next phase of the 2006 meeting takes
place in March, in Karachi, Pakistan.
The World Social Forum has developed worldwide,
not working in the traditional method of
doing politics to take authority, but through people
acting, proposing new ways of doing things on the
basis that everybody is important
“They know that it is necessary, they know that it
is urgent. But is it possible? And is there sufficient
time?”
The approach of everybody learning from
each other is the foundation of the World Social
Forum.
“We say that it is a space — not a movement, or
direction, with leaders. A space where everybody is
equal. Even if I have more knowledge than you, we
always have something to learn from each other. If
we get together we can co-operate and not compete.
We can do it better.
“It is the opposite of the competition and pyramid
building of our economy and politics and our
organisations, even the unions.
“I have been making contacts with the unions in
Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. We are trying to
show the unions that they must be with the rest of
society, in fact they must be more democratic. The
Brazilian unions are represented on our committee,
but even they have big problems with vertical
relationships.
“We put the dates of the World Social Forum on
the same date as the Davos summit purposely, for
us choose which side we were on.
“I am very optimistic about the evolution of
the social process in Australia. There have been
several social forums in Australia already, but the
problem is that they are organised by only one or
few groups. They must diversify the organisation.
Once a political party, or even a church, captures
the forum it is finished.
“The global capitalistic system knows that we are
trying to change values, so when I talk about our
operation — when I talk about different types of
money, for instance — we are trying to do something
different from the present system. Inside the
system there are many entrepreneurs that know
already that this is a foolish thing — to be continually
focused on the market.
“One of the founders of the World Social Forum
was an entrepreneur. He was always a member of
the organisation of the forum. He is also president
of an institute in Brazil — an institution that works
with enterprises about the social responsibility of
enterprises.
“We must move from profit motive in enterprise
to social motive in enterprise. This is happening
already in some parts of the world. The social
economy not only accumulates profit to use for the
individual, but accumulates profit to enlarge the
offering of products and possibilities for people.
“The biggest question for me is whether there is
enough time.
“We have a very important methodology commission
— because we must organise forums
to make sure that they remain open space. The
Charter of Principles is our essential guide. For
instance we make sure that our events are selforganised
as much as possible — not organised by
us from above, but organised by the participants.
“Each organisation finances itself. We find a place.
We prepare. We must have money to prepare the
halls and the rooms and the translations. Everybody
pays their own ticket. So money is only needed for
the infrastructure.
“We have money from many organisations that
are linked to this process. Oxfam, for instance, or
even local governments that want to help — we
can accept their money. “Mainly these organisations
help Third World countries, or are organisations
linked to the World Council of Churches.
They offer without conditions — we say always,
“Please, no conditions”.
“Now we have the expansion commission. We
must go everywhere, quickly [speaking about the
World Social Forum]. We must change minds
quickly, because, if not, the world is headed for
destruction. As quickly as possible, we must build
this new social force.
“It is power — it is not taking political power,
but it is building a collective power with coresponsibility.
Everybody is subject and everybody
is co-responsible.”
Accountability is always a problem for people’s
organisations, but Chico Whitaker believes that
people must discover for themselves that they are
happier without wanting to dominate.
“They will find that they are happier if they
serve in this process. In religious language we call it
conversion. If we see that love is better than hating
people — better for us, for each one of us — we
live more happily. When we are covetous we begin
to enter into another type of logic. Capitalism is a
system of the profi t logic, a system of the individualistic
logic.
“Faith motivated this forum, but we are ecumenical,
and last year we had eleven spaces. One
was all about the spirituality of religions.”
The World Social Forum is not shaping up as a third
world versus fi rst world organisation. Chico Whitaker is
fi rm that it is not against, it is for. Even inside the fi rst world
there are third world situations.
Naturally, economic interests try to discredit the
forum. “Especially through the media, they try to
say that we are not serious people. That we are
wanting to destroy things. Even when they speak
about our meeting, they don’t say that we are trying
to understand things, learn with each other. They
say that we are doing a festival — like Woodstock
— that there is no commitment.
“They try to destroy one of the most important
ideas of the forum — the idea of not having a fi nal
document. Our forums do not have a fi nal document
because really, fi nal documents are the worst
thing. You discuss for hours the fi nal document
— to introduce a comma, to introduce a phrase
that we think must be there. We have not one fi nal
document, but hundreds of final documents.”
www.worldsocialforum.org.bz