Chico Whitaker

Whitaker (2014)

Francisco Whitaker Ferreira (* 1931 ), called Chico Whitaker , is a Brazilian activist . He is one of the founders of the World Social Forum in Brazil and is a member of the preliminary committee of the International Organization for a Participatory Society .

Life

Chico Whitaker began his social engagement in the 1950s as a student of architecture and a member of the Juventude Universitária Católica , the student movement of Catholic Action . After the establishment of the military dictatorship in Brazil, with the coup of 1964, and at the end of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, he began working with liberation theologians and educators such as Bishop Hélder Câmara and Paulo Freire ; he was also influenced by Leonardo Boff . Because of the tightening of the military dictatorship in Brazil in the late 1960s, he went into exile in France and there came into contact with the headquarters of the International Catholic Youth in Paris. He became project leader for the Catholic Committee against Famine and for Development .

Chico Whitaker was executive director of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference (CNBB) in the 1980s ; at the same time he worked as a consultant for the Archdiocese of São Paulo . In 1988 he was elected to the city parliament of São Paulo for the Workers' Party (PT) . In 2006 he left the PT. He is a member of the Brazilian Organizing Committee and the International Council of the World Social Forum, which he co-founded as an alternative to the World Economic Forum . Whitaker is also a council member of the World Future Council and served on the WikiLeaks Advisory Board .

Think

The German liberation theologian Dorothee Sölle assigns him to the mystics in her book Mystik und Resistance . With regard to the World Social Forum, he advocates an open space philosophy: The event should be as comprehensive as possible, concrete political results are secondary. Even only partial agreement of the participants could be a basis for a coordinated approach.

Award

In 2006, Whitaker was one of the winners of the Right Livelihood Award .

Works (selection)

• The World Social Forum. Open space for another world. Translated from the Portuguese by Elsmarie Pape. VSA, Hamburg 2007.

literature

• Chico Whitaker Ferreira , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 06/2007 from February 10, 2007, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

Commons : Chico Whitaker  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Chico Whitaker in the catalog of the German National Library
• procurando entender - Whitakers Blog (Portuguese)
• Portrait at rightlivelihoodaward.org (English)
• Councilor World Future Council (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ International Organization for a Participatory Society - Provisional Committee , accessed April 8, 2012.
2. ↑ See http://www.iycs-jeci.org/
3. ↑ Archived website: Wikileaks: Advisory Board. Archived from the original on March 27, 2008 ; Retrieved January 9, 2011 . 
4. ↑ Mysticism and Resistance at Dorothee Sölle and Francesco Whitaker  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  Sent on January 4, 2009, 7:30 am in: Evangelical Perspectives.