On January 30, 2021, seven international networks held a two-part session to discuss their perspectives and global initiatives and, more importantly, their plans for collective and solidarity action in the future. Initially, the idea came from Ashish Kothari of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA). We took advantage of the fact that the World Social Forum was organizing a week of virtual meetings in the last week of January 2021.

The grouping was made possible because all of us have been involved in various initiatives to confront the current multiple global crises, while at the same time trying to build people-centric alternatives.

On this basis, we thought it would be important to know each other and eventually explore possible synergies, based on the apparent commonality between us and, additionally, on differences that we thought would be interesting to discuss in a friendly atmosphere.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• We talk with people, we listen: what do they want? What can we do? We are always looking to find crucial paths on the long term, outside of the colonial mindset. We learn to take decisions together. We focus on process. We have our ideas but work on how we decide and hear one another. We want to be he human with one another.
• We are careful, everyone must participate in the decisions. Then at the end, one person takes responsibility. it is not perfect, but good enough.
• We tried to avoid depression or even conspiracy theories.
• We know how to hit pause, collect ourselves, ground together. We accept that we cannot find THE solution. We sometimes unlearn (from our mistakes) and we sometimes learn (from our success).
• We have many social and political experiences that hit the wall. We accept the crisis, look at ourselves. Can we fight back? Our answers are always multidimensional. We avoid being ‘Specialists’ (like in the capitalist, hetero-normative, racist, predatory thinking). We need to tackle many layers of domination at the same time.
• The structures of domination run deep. People are oppressed not only by violence (coercion) but also by being impregnate with the dominant ideas, thinking that the crisis is the consequence of scarcity. On the contrary, the world is plenty of everything, including land. We can tale care of ourselves, truss, serve each other.
• We need to transform the tensions we are living with and turn them into creative, recognising the destructive power of colonialism and the creative power of community.
• We believe in the power and wisdom of nature and in building of land-based and land- oriented initiatives, aiming at generating a society in which decision-making, resource- exchange and communication have relationship and wellbeing at the core.
• Resistance movements sometimes tend to reproduce problems of regimes than we have defeated.
• We are faced with system promoting greenwashing, with superficial or false solutions (“renewable energy” for example). They appear to be eco friendly and inclusive. We need to expose false solutions that aim at maintaining the status quo.
• Native communities must participate. Indigenous rights are now recognized, but recognition is rarely translated into action. Rights are not executed.
• We were unable to seize the opportunity for change in the global financial crisis because we were not ready to push for a global transformation.
• Our political systems perpetuate a system of domination that sacrifices people and planet to personal and corporate greed. Underlying this is a deep, historic, cultural trauma that affects all of us, from the most to the least powerful.
• In the Latin American experience, when we try to create an alternative, we are compelled to continuing resisting! It is not possible to open space to articulate an alternative if we do not resist police brutality, eviction, cooptation.

Opportunities

• Scale-up expose, oppose, propose transitional projects with a long term (Gramscian) perspective.
• Speak from the heart, speak the truth. Listen from the heart, care and attention, not thinking about what you are going to respond. Feel love and connection. Build together.
• Be present, go to the flow, do not take notes. Being here is important.
• On institutionalizing the networks of networks, do not reproduce the same hierarchy. Go slow based on trust and listening one to another.
• Get back to what was done originally in indigenous communities. Begin with land, grassroots, plant the seeds in our school. Develop cognitive skills.
• Struggles to reform not to reinforce system. Combat disempowering people. Create an atmosphere of mutual respect. Imagine radical reforms that could lead to revolution.
• Think critically about tools, transcend linguistic divides. Build crisis committee, defensive movements that can confront local instances of repression. Build on deep trust of conversations (like in our Assembly) and expand collective tool kits.
• Think together articulated training processes, from the local and the global. It must be part of a permanent process.