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Interview for the Southwestgerman Broadcast SWR, de Stuttgart, Germany, 12 01 2021

The first WSF took place 2001 in Porto Alegre. It was a very new global movement. How did it come about all?

Who had the idea of creating a World Social Social Forum was Oded Grajew, a Brazilian businessman very concerned with Brazilian social problems and with the construction of democracy in Brazil. He was in France in January and saw how the World Economic Forum in Davos was in all newspapers “proclaiming that the neoliberal economy would solve all our social problems”.

He wrote recently an article about this. In this article he says he thought, then: “why not create a World Social Forum that would privilege social conditions, would show that there are alternatives, that another model of economy and society is possible”. “This Forum would bring together those who believe in this idea, to articulate themselves, to reduce their fragmentation, to form alliances and partnerships to gain power and political strength to make their proposals viable, to make the transformations”. And the thought also “that it this WSF would be accomplished at the same time as the WEF in Davos to show that we need and have choices to make.

1.      And why in Porto Alegre and not for example in Brasilia?

I was also in France at that moment. He phoned to me asking my opinion about his idea. I said to him evidently that it was a marvelous idea. Then I proposed to him to present his idea also to the Director of Le Monde Diplomatique, an important international monthly publication that would be very important in the diffusion of that new Forum. I knew him when he went to Brazil in his action against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), and I had already a meeting scheduled with him about an article I had written for his publication.

He considered also marvelous Oded’s idea and said that the WSF should be in Brazil (at that moment the pace was not decided) and perhaps in Porto Alegre, an important regional capital whose government was experiencing a process of participatory budgeting, already known in the world. This experience could be for many organizations a second attraction to come to the Forum.  

Oded and myself had also good relations with the State Governor and with the Porto Alegre Mayor, whose support to organize the Forum would be important. They would also well understand the type of support we would ask, considering the WSF was not a governmental event but an autonomous civil society event.

2.      Why did you get involved with the founding of WSF?

As I said already, I was involved from the very beginning, as the first Oded’s friend to whom he presented his idea - after having received the support of his wife…

When he returned to Brazil some weeks later he invited 8 very diversified organizations to discuss with us his proposal. This meeting was in his office, as President of an organisation acting with companies assuming their social responsibility. From then on I was integrated, representing my organisation – the Brazilian Commission on Justice and Peace - in the group of people having decided to realize the first WSF in January 2001.

3.      What memories do you have on the first meeting?

The first WSF was surprising for all of us.

The place for this WSF was the Porto Alegre Catholic University campus. Considering the number of participants coming usually to Davos - in average 2.000 people - we had made arrangements with the university for 2,000 to 2,500 participants, but 15 days earlier we had already 20,000 enrolments, from all over the world. We could not also imagine that the following editions of the WSF would have a growing participation, till 150.000 participants in 2005 and in 2009. And those coming in 2001 had planned nearly 1.000 activities, self-organized autonomously by them, as a principle adopted from them on in all WSF. Fortunately, the university was on holidays, and it was possible to rearrange quickly the spaces for these activities, as well as the translation systems at least for those in big rooms.

But the most important memory for me was the atmosphere of joy and happiness all over the campus during the WSF five days. It seemed that everybody was very happy to meet so many different people from all over the world, all thinking that another world is possible. And many were meeting old friends again, after many years of separation and lack of perspectives.

4.      What interesting encounters/experiences have you had/made during the last 20 years?

For me personally it was a privilege and an exceptional experience. As I have participated of all the WSF realized during these years, having even collaborated, as WSF International Council member, of the organisation of many. I knew many wonderful people, other cultures, other problems, other experiences, other ways to solve problems and to open new perspectives. I participated also of all the WSF International Council meetings, realized in all continents, obliging me to understand and discuss along 20 years the principles we followed to build the WSF.

Through these contacts as well as through the questions discussed in the Forums, I had also the possibility or learning and understanding better the economic, political, environmental and social challenges the Humanity is facing, and the different perspectives that can direct human beings. In our lives we all live a permanent and long learning process that never ends. I am not so young – next year l will be ninety years old – and I don’t know for how much time I will participate of the WSF process. But I hope I will be able still to participate of many WSF, finding my way to contribute to its realization.

5.      What is the political significance of the WSF?  Has the WSF been able to make a difference? The global situation now seems to be even worth than at the beginning in Porto Allegre…

We have to say that effectively that at the same time technological progress made life easier for a many in developed and underdeveloped countries, global situation now is far worse than in 2001 in many aspects: the social inequality has grown very much, we have now very serious environmental threats leading even to the extinction of human beings, democracy is in danger in many countries with the fascism reappearing.

What is happening now is the result of more than two centuries of consolidation of the logics and of the culture of capitalism, centred in business to accumulate money, in the exploitation of other people and of other countries, in the corruption, in the predation of nature to feed an increasingly large production machine at the service of a world market for consumption and waste. All this driven by individualistic and selfish competition among all and by the struggle for power inside the nations and among nations. This logics and culture arrived to dominate all the world, penetrating even in countries having experimented a different project of society, and conquering hearts and minds everywhere. 

So, we have to say also that we never expected - it would be too naïve - that the WSF would be able to prevent, alone, or even do reduce significantly the damaging consequences of this historic development. This is a task for generations, involving progressive political parties, open-minded governments, social movements, churches, democratic institutions.

The WSF would be also very pretentious if intending to replace existing political actors that were not able till now to do this authentic turnaround. The only thing the WSF could intend to do was to help the emergence of a new political actor in this humanity struggle: the multifaceted and enormous civil society, with its millions of citizens, organized or not but present in all corners of the world, till then only manipulated by parties or governments or used as cannon fodder by the military.

We thought also that the WSF could create conditions to shape a new political culture, to overcome the divisions and the competition inside the civil society people and organisations, helping them to build their union. In this perspective, WSF did very much all along its 20 years, unfolding different types of Social Forums all over the world, at regional, national or local levels or as thematic ones. And many new campaigns, struggles and new civil society networks against the capitalist domination emerged from these Forums, towards and other possible world.

Perhaps this process began too late. That is what we have to regret.

6.      There are different views on the orientation  and tasks of the WSF. What is your opinion on the development of WSF? How should the WSF look like in 20 years?

It is impossible to say how the WSF will look like in 20 years. It can even disappear as a specific tool in the political struggle, if prevails, among those who facilitate the WSF realisation, the option to see it as a political actor itself, and no more as a tool at the service of the building of the civil society as political actor. In this case, autonomous or inside the civil society, il will compete with other political actors.

This option was present during all the WSF life but was never adopted. After 20 years of WSF it became more present now in the discussions, centring it in the WSF Charter of Principles and in options historically adopted in the WSF, as the horizontality and the non-directivity in the organization of the Forums and the method of deciding by consensus and not by majority of votes in the WSF Council. But I think that if it is adopted it will be perhaps restricted to the WSF at the world level. It depends more directly of the WSF International Council, which composition and functions were never sufficiently discussed and defined and consequently no clear proposals were presented.

It is in this Council that the discussions about the WSF nature take place, not at the level of the WSF participants nor at the level of the process of creation of other Social Forums as tools. This process will probably continue its expansion as a Humanity common, without owners – which corresponds to my wishes.

The only risk is that the WSF Council do not try to became the owner of the common, destroying it and reducing still more the WSF potentialities to help the building of a new world.

Chico Whitaker, 12 01 2021