Questions asked by Ole von Uexkull on September 22, 2006

(free to use, no copyright)

 
Q: You have worked your entire life for the democratisation of Brazil. Are you hopeful about the situation today?

A: We have lived, in last century in Brazil, two long periods of dictatorship: from 1930 to 1945 and from 1964 to 1980. Each time, when we have again a period of democracy, we must re-learn how it functions. Many distortions remain, and people take a good bit of time to believe in the possibility of solving our problems through the democratic institutions. And we have a lot of problems to solve. Our country is champion in social inequality. And democratisation is not only guaranteeing political rights, elections, etc, but especially the right for all to live with dignity. Nearly half of the Brazilians are still half-citizens: the Constitution guarantees to them all these rights but they don’t even know they have these rights...
Democratisation is really a long process. In between new problems appear, like now, for example, with a big corrosion in the credibility of the parliament because of corruption scandals. I am nevertheless hopeful because we are progressing. Slowly, but progressing. If political parties are in crisis, civil society begins to emerge as a political actor with more autonomy. We have very much to do, but there are much more people than we can imagine wanting to change things. If we arrive to define strategic objectives of change, we will go more quickly.

Q: You quit the workers’ party (PT) earlier this year. Why?

A: This is also a long history. When I returned from exile in 1981 the PT was starting to get organised. With people having many dreams. It was really a new type of party, in its way of functioning and in its composition. It attracted effectively the poor of the country, giving them the opportunity to play a political role in the fight for equality and justice. The respect of ethical principles was also essential in its practice, in a country where corruption is nearly endemic and enters everywhere. But as the party entered in the electoral process and began to conquer positions in the administration, pragmatism – all means are good – to conquer the power became dominant inside the party. I saw this tendency arriving already ten or fifteen years ago, when I was elected councillor in São Paulo. As the party won the Presidency of the Republic, these distortions exploded, changing it entirely. It became only one more party among the others. Many of us – nearly half of its members – decided to work in the re-foundation of the party. Myself, as I had always worked with popular participation and civil society organising, I thought I could be more useful in this type of work, outside any party.

Q: You were in Paris with Oded Grajew when he conceived the idea of the World Social Forum in January 2000. What did it take to make this idea come real?

A: Returning to Brazil, we presented the idea to others, coming from various types of work in society. A group of us – from eight different organisations – decided to face the challenge. We deepened the idea of Oded, that we considered brilliant, and from then on we had no more time to stop or to think about what to do. The first Forum was a big surprise also for us. We were expecting 2,500 participants and they were 20,000. We then wrote our Charter of Principles, based on the reasons we identified for this success. From then on, there were still less possibilities to stop. The WSF was a real political invention. And it is now a global process that brings hope to more and more people.

Q: The slogan of the World Social Forum is „Another world is possible“. - How does this world look like?

A: Very frequently people ask us this question. I always say to those who ask the question: you know it. The “other” world we would work to build is the utopia of all human beings: peace, justice, dignity of life for all, cooperation and not competition as rule of life, solidarity as main value, no kind of oppression, respect of diversity, no more wars and violence between human beings, respect of the nature to protect our planet and thinking of future generations, etc, etc.

Q: What about the impact of the World Social Forum? Isn’t it just a big fair with little concrete outcomes?

A: The first big impact is the perspective of hope the Forum opened, encouraging people to rise up to work for a new world. A second impact is in the action of those who come to Social Forums. All those who come – at the world level as well as at the regional, national and local levels – are already working for this or are being invited to do it. When they return home after having experienced the openness and horizontality of the event – when it functions according to our Charter of Principles – they continue their work enriched with the experiences of others they have got to know during the Forum, the exchanges they have experienced, the convergences they have discovered with the struggles of others, the articulations they were able to build to initiate new actions to change the world.
All this makes people feel happy – like in the joyful fairs – also because they discover that it is possible to do politics without having to fight for power, and build a type of unity based on friendship, solidarity and cooperation. As in good networks, not depending on orders coming from above, as in the traditional pyramidal and disciplined political organisations. In this sense many new initiatives in the struggle against neo-liberalism and the domination of money were born in the Forums, and they already have concrete results. But the deepest impact of the Forum will appear in many more years, as its process expands all over the world, rooting itself in all countries and continents, through the regional, national and local forums that are already multiplying everywhere.

Q: What is your aspiration for the future of the World Social Forum?

A: My aspiration is this multiplication of Forums all over the world, creating the conditions to overcome the frustrations we had in the attempts to change the logics of economic, social and political life in the XX century. My aspiration it that the Forum becomes really a door opened to hope in a new century free of all types of domination and oppression, for the happiness of mankind.