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Detailed biography
 Chico
Whitaker (Francisco Whitaker Ferreira, Brazil) is
a leading international social activist and one of the founding
figures of the World Social Forum (WSF).
He has also been active in the Workers Party (Partido
dos Trabalhadores or PT) in Brazil and has even held
elected office as Councillor. Currently, he is a member of
the Executive Secretariat of the Brazilian Justice and Peace
Commission (CBJP), which
is an organisation working on human rights issues.
He began his involvement in social action in the 1950s as
an architecture student and member of the JUC (Young Catholic
University Students) movement. At the end of 1965, just as
the Second Vatican Council was drawing to a close, he began
to work with Bishop Helder Camara and Paulo Freire. He went
into exile in France in the late 1960s during Brazil's military
dictatorship. During this period he became director of projects
for the Catholic development NGO, CCFD
– Catholic Committee against Famine and for Development.
For Francisco 'Chico' Whitaker, as one of the architects
of the WSF's 'open space' philosophy, the need for a political
outcome from each meeting of the forum is secondary to the
need to make it as inclusive as possible. There is no need
for a single agreed political line to emerge, he argues, since
the WSF is a celebration of hundreds of diverse struggles
in every part of the world, an occasion for bonding, mutual
reinforcement and renewal. Identities of interest between
its diverse participants need not be total. Even partial identities
can provide powerful bases for concerted action.
This is Chico's first tour of Australia and New Zealand.
He will also visit Bangkok as part of the New Pentecost program.
Schedule ...
Interview for New Pentecost Forum: From Vatican II to the
World Social Forum
An interview with Francisco “Chico” Whitaker,
co-founder and 'architect' of the World Social forum
by Stefan Gigacz for New Pentecost Forum
Le Guichet, Paris, 4 April 2005
Available soon...
Media information packs:
High resolution photos:
Web resources
Chico Whitaker, ‘WSF: What is it really about?’
OECD Observer, April 2005
http://www.oecdobserver.org/news/fullstory.php/aid/1565/The_World_Social_Forum.html
Chico Whitaker, ‘WSF – Origins and Aims’
http://www.kairoscanada.org/e/resources/wsf/wsfOrigin.asp
Interview with Oded Grajew
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/ogwsf_int.html
General
Justice and Peace Commission of the Brazilian Catholic Bishops'
Conference
http://www.cbjp.org.br
World Social Forum
http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br
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