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Transformation

ManiFiesta 2022 Ends With A Call To Change The World As We Want It

September 21, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
The ManiFiesta 2022 festival, organized at the Wellington racetrack in the Belgian city of Ostend from September 17-18, concluded with a resolve to mobilize for alternatives for the future. The 12th edition of ManiFiesta was organized by the Solidarity magazine and Medicine For the People (MPLP). Over 14,000 people participated. Around 160 events including political discussions, speeches, debates, book fairs, exhibitions, a food festival, and 35 concerts were organized as part of the festival. Raoul Hedebouw, president of the Workers Party of Belgium (PTB/PVDA), Bolivian Vice-President David Choquehuanca, Chris Mitchell from the Enough is Enough movement in the UK, Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, Holocaust survivor Simon Gronowski, British economist Grace Blakeley, author and PTB leader Peter Mertens...

Exploring Alternative Schools In Southeast Asia

September 6, 2022 Ananeza P. Aban, Resilience. , , ,
Marginalized communities and their ability to organize themselves towards a common goal would attest that even amid multiple crises, they can cultivate notable practices that produce and reproduce transformative pedagogies, especially for the young generation of learners. These four (4) cases from Southeast Asia provide a material foundation for dynamic learning processes that amplify the central role of communities in developing emancipatory pedagogies attuned to their situation, context, culture, histories, and capacities. Their ground-based undertakings dare to challenge the mainstream educational paradigm extremely influenced by market and capital.

Live With Our Eyes Open Without Allowing Ourselves To Be Defeated

July 17, 2022 Joan Benach, Socialist Project. , , ,
It is July 20, 1969. The Apollo 11 manned space mission lands on our Moon, and a few hours later, Neil Armstrong takes his first steps on the lunar surface, filling the world with amazement and admiration. With this accomplishment emerges the deep emotion of feeling an intimate union with an Earth that impels us to love and protect it, the home of all the humans we have known and, in all probability, will know. Four years earlier, Aleksei Leonov, the Russian astronaut, made the first spacewalk in history, expressing that the Earth is “our home, small, blue and touchingly lonely,” a point lost in the enveloping cosmic darkness. The preparation, realization, and subsequent follow-up of the first trip to the Moon was a long, expensive, and difficult process, full of achievements, but also many difficulties.

In Chile, We Have The Opportunity To Build An Economy To Overcome Fear

July 12, 2022 Gabriela Cabaña, Post Growth Perspectives. , , ,
Following the election of a progressive government in Chile earlier this year, the country has been debating a new constitution written under revolutionary conditions: by a convention with gender equality, representation of Indigenous peoples, and with many members from environmental justice movements. As the draft is finalized ahead of a referendum in September, social media across the country has been awash with ‘explainer’ posts and videos in favor of the new texts — and debunking misinformation telling people that their pensions will be expropriated, for example. Most of the pro-constitution posts boil down to a single line: no one is going to take your home away from you. The presence of such worries among the population can tell us a lot about political and economic change: When the time comes to transform revolutionary aspirations into legal infrastructure, we are touched at our core fears: what do we, the people of Chile, have to lose in this process of transformation?

We Are The Economy

June 28, 2022 Amanda Janoo, Post Growth Institute. , ,
I recently moved back to the United States after over a decade abroad. It’s been an interesting re-acclimation which I believe some people call ‘reverse culture shock’. There is so much about this country, my home, that is comfortable and familiar. A shared language, sense of humor, and customs allow me to flow through this society with ease. However, the thing that has stood out more than anything is that nearly everyone I meet seems to be struggling with some form of anxiety or depression. What’s even more jarring is that they all seem to feel like it’s their fault — telling themselves they just need to work harder, meditate, or exercise more to emerge from this crushing darkness. But if everyone is feeling this way, then clearly there must be something bigger at play.

People’s Summit For Democracy Ends With A Bold Plan For The Future

June 14, 2022 People's Dispatch. , , ,
The organizers of the People’s Summit for Democracy were determined to close out the summit with a lasting impression on the last day, June 10. The People’s Summit was organized in opposition to the Summit of the Americas that was organized by the US-influenced Organization of American States (OAS) and hosted by the US in Los Angeles. The Summit of the Americas has historically been a place for the US to dictate a political agenda to the Latin American countries. The Summit of the Americas has been plagued by difficulties since May 10, when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) announced that he would boycott the Summit in protest against the exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua from the Summit. Following AMLO’s boycott, a host of Latin American leaders announced their own boycotts of the Summit.

Why Resistance Matters: Resistance And Regeneration

March 28, 2022 Transitionus. , , ,
The growing movement for regeneration offers a much needed reframe of how to fully show up in our humanity at this critical moment in our planet’s history. We need to move beyond incremental change and a narrowed fixation on reducing our carbon footprint. We cannot treat social injustices and ecological crises as separate, unrelated phenomena. Nor can we surrender to despair and distraction, or waste time on projects that make us feel good but lack deeper impact. The task at hand—our great calling—is to simultaneously regenerate our ecosystems AND integrate the design of new social and economic systems that can truly center and support life. At a foundational level, this ambitious project of regeneration requires us to RESIST or stop destruction, repair harm, and reimagine our world, our communities, and the systems upon which we depend.

Arming Scientists And Society For The Climate Crisis

March 20, 2022 W. T. Whitney, Counter Punch. , , ,
Three scientists associated with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are discouraged. New Zealanders Bruce C. Glavovic and Timothy F. Smith and Australian Iain White criticize governments for not doing enough about climate change. They are calling upon fellow IPCC scientists to no longer conduct research on climate change. “More scientific reports, another set of charts,” Glavovic exclaims; “I mean, seriously, what difference is that going to make?” Hundreds of IPCC scientists provide the United Nations periodically with reports on adverse impacts of climate change. The most recent report, issued in February, details rising seas, terrible droughts, atypical weather events, thawing permafrost, dying forests, and massive displacement of populations.

Furtherfield: The Power Of Art And Play In Imagining New Worlds

March 6, 2022 David Bollier. , , ,
Here's a fanciful but almost-real scenario: the bees, squirrels, geese, bugs, trees, and other species of your local park have decided that they've had enough of human aggression and abuse. They're not going to take it anymore, and rise up and demand equal rights with humans. Through a series of interspecies assemblies, a treaty is negotiated to ensure that every living being in the local ecosystem can flourish. This scenario is a "live action role-playing" (LARP) game devised by Furtherfield, a London-based arts collective as part of its stewardship of part of the Victorian-era Finsbury Park. Over the next three years, Furtherfield is inviting humans to don masks and play the roles of each of seven species in negotiating "The Treaty of Finsbury Park 2025" -- the name of the project.

A Program For A Future Society That We Will Build In The Present

January 14, 2022 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
In October 2021, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released a report that received barely any attention: the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2021, notably subtitled Unmasking disparities by ethnicity, caste, and gender. ‘Multidimensional poverty’ is a much more precise measurement of poverty than the international poverty line of $1.90 per day. It looks at ten indicators divided along three axes: health (nutrition, child mortality), education (years of schooling, school attendance), and standard of living (cooking fuel, sanitation, drinking water, electricity, housing, assets). The team studied multidimensional poverty across 109 countries, looking at the living conditions of 5.9 billion people.

Building Collective Power Within Our Organizations

December 29, 2021 Jen Disla, Organizing Upgrade. , , ,
As we imagine an alternative society, we should think about how we will create something more collective, something where all people have a voice. Most of us come from a tradition where a select few make large impactful decisions for social justice organizations. Organizations have practices that at times feel inadequate and inaccessible for all. How do we move more towards a democratic collective process? These questions come to mind as many movement organizations are wrestling with creating collective democratic power internally. How can processes be more transparent in the organization—and how do we balance that with some need for confidentiality? How do we balance legal obligations/liabilities and honesty?

World Gathering Of Peoples For Our Mother Earth

November 1, 2021 Justine Teba, The Red Nation. , , ,
The climate crisis is one of the gravest global threats that we face in the defense of life, which places our own existence and of our Mother Earth’s at risk. The current anthropocentric model, which places human beings above nature and other living beings, has produced the current climate crisis and it is modifying the vital cycles of Mother Earth, causing the collapse of many ecosystems, the extinction of species, the change of ways of life of hundreds of millions of people all over the world, expanding hunger and poverty in the world and an increasing climate migration. We express the urgency of building a new civilizing horizon based on Living Well cosmo-biocentric vision where human beings live in harmony with all living beings of our Mother Earth and the need to put forward a new civilizing horizon that defends the community of life and the coexisting in harmony with nature.

Beyond COVID: The Essential Building Blocks Of A Just World

April 4, 2021 Graham Peebles, Nation of Change. , , ,
We are living through extraordinary times. Even pre-COVID they were strange, unprecedented in a variety of ways; now more so, crazy in many ways. Among the madness, contradictions and movements for and of change, the detritus of human society is somehow being raised from the shadows into the light of public awareness, apparently impossible to conceal or deny. As well as providing a stage for social goodness and acts of community kindness, the pandemic has functioned as a mirror to a range of social horrors and abuses, failed structures, inept politicians and corrupt methodologies. Nothing new, nothing previously unknown; old issues rooted in divisive attitudes, broken systemic practices and organized methods of conditioning and control made loud. 

The Future Of Pandemic Solidarity

October 25, 2020 Colectiva Sembrar, Red Pepper. , , ,
In their recent book Pandemic Solidarity, Colectiva Sembrar (Sowing Seeds Collective) collected first-hand experiences from around the world of people creating their own narratives of solidarity and mutual aid in our time of global crisis. Red Pepper interviewed members of the collective – carla bergman (she doesn’t capitalise her name), Seyma Ozdemir, Nancy Piñeiro, Emre Sahin and Marina Sitrin – to discuss what unites these diverse experiences, what can be learned, and where they might fit into a broader project of systemic change.

How Unions Can Lay The Ground For The Next Upsurge

October 18, 2020 Mark Meinster, Labor Notes. , , ,
As shown by authors like Dan Clawson in his 2003 book The Next Upsurge, unions tend to grow in spurts, as part of working-class uprisings that pose a deep challenge to the powers that be. The upsurges in the private sector from 1934 to 1939, when the CIO organized industry-wide, with sitdowns when necessary, and the AFL tried to catch up, and in the public sector from 1962 to 1972, when a wave of illegal strikes established the right to bargain, were rooted in militant worker action. The system began to lose legitimacy and workers got a sense of their collective power. Similar dynamics played out during the 1897-1904 upsurge in the U.S.
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