The tenth edition of the World Social Forum started on Monday in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil, with critics to the capitalism and the economic neo-liberalism.
In the first day of the event, the organizers discussed the advances made in the 10 years of the Forum and the challenges ahead. They also emphasized the role of the Forum as a space for discussions on how to achieve a more socially fair world.
Oded Grajew, one of the forum's organizers, said that the several sectors of the society must act together in order to achieve more fairness
and that people must know how to act in order to accomplish that goal.
"We must change habits which are deep-rooted inside us," said Grajew.
"We must change the way we treat our fellow humans."
To Joao Pedro Stedile, one of the main leaders of Brazil's Landless Workers Movement (MST), even though the neo-liberalism was weakened with the international financial crisis, it still dominates the world and needs to be
fought.
"We remain under a total dominance of the capital, we need to defeat it," he said.
According to the representative of the European Social Forum, Raffaella Bollini, the Forum must increase the discussions with the civil society and the social organizations in order to break from the predominance of the
capital.
The World Social Forum is held annually and defines itself as an open meeting space where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to the neo-liberalism can debate and formulate
proposals to achieve a more socially fair society.
The Forum is usually held in the same time as the World Economic Forum, which takes place in Davos, Switzerland, in order to demonstrate the
conflicting views of the two groups on globalization and the economy.