Friends,
Having started with our essay on the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA), and having read the stimulating responses to Paul’s two questions, it’s time for us to put some further thoughts into the cauldron. These are based on our experiences, but also partly spurred on by the discussion on this list. Some participants will recognize their key ideas below, but pl. excuse us for not naming anyone (for fear of leaving out someone inadvertently!).
On the first question, we agree with many who have stressed the following substantive aspects in any global citizens’ movement: challenging and transforming the currently dominant structures and relations rather than remaining at superficial responses, recognizing and building on grounded, place-based movements and the agency of their catalysts, focusing on life/earth-centred, feminist, anti-colonial, care-giving approaches, the need to go beyond current liberal (and nation-statist) forms of democracy towards deep/direct/radical decision-making processes, the potential of ethics-based education and of spiritual pathways untrapped by religious dogma, the power of open localization and self-reliance. We recognize also the need to respect the diversity of radical initiatives but also to identify and build on common values that could tie them together (solidarity, radical equality, convivialism, cooperation, interdependence, reciprocity, care, love, and more named in the first essay). All these transformations are already underway in thousands of initiatives, and more are coming up in the spirit of ‘outscaling’ (learning from each other, adopting for local contexts, and networking for scale) rather than upscaling or replication.
Beyond these substantive bases, there are crucial process issues, many already flagged: the need to actively link currently fragmented, siloed and dispersed initiatives by locating and enhancing the intersections, finding common threads and evolving coherence or holism of visions and practice amongst the enormous diversity of terms and concepts across cultures and geographies; expressing and acting out solidarity with each other; building slowly rather than rushing things through, constantly adapting along the way; providing a central position to excluded global South[1] voices.
The GTA was initiated with these points very much in mind and heart, though it has a very long way to go, and every possibility of straying unless attentive to course corrections whenever necessary. We won’t repeat what we have already said in the opening essay (which, we realise from the language of several responses, only some appear to have read). But we’d like to emphasise that unlike those alliance-building exercises some people have referred to as suffering from a global North-centrism, the GTA has from the beginning been led from and by the global South. At its first ever physical assembly in August in Kenya[2], the overwhelming majority of the 65 participants from about 25 countries were from Indigenous Peoples or other local communities, civil society organisations, academies and other institutions, from the global South. The current four ‘weavers’ (explained in the opening essay) are also thus located, though there is active consideration now of adding some from the global North, recognizing the contributions all radical forces can make wherever they are based. The current set of 75+ ‘endorsers’ (also explained earlier), and the ‘core team’ that holds the process together, are similarly spread; the global North does not dominate this process.
GTA’s expanding constituency is also an attempt to bridge gaps amongst diverse movements, themes, cultures and geographies. We want to enable alternative initiatives on education, health, livelihoods, conservation, justice, rights, ethical and spiritual transformation, technology, power, peace and much else to converse with (including constructively challenge) each other, and build common actions. There is also the recognition that in everything we do, we need to bring in spiritual or ethical relationships with the rest of nature, recognising its own agency. And we want to encourage collective dreaming, while remaining firmly rooted in grounded reality.
Like any other such platform, the GTA needs all the inputs and wisdom it can get from multiple movements. It needs more participation of worker/labour and migrant organisations, open-source technology groups, people’s media spaces, peace/disarmament/denuclearisation movements, and others that many have pointed to. It needs stronger connections with global resistance movements that are confronting the military-industrial-authoritarian complex. And it would like to do this without claiming any kind of ‘umbrella’ status; as it has done with 7 other global processes in Adelante, it respects the unique and equal status of such movements. As already indicated, for instance, it would like to engage meaningfully in the WSF’s new Social Assembly process, and in turn seek its inputs to the GTA. Many of those participating in this dialogue including GTI are already involved with the GTA, and we sincerely invite others representing regional or global movements, to consider relating in some form with our various activities.
In this, we’d like to emphasise some central principles. The GTA seeks partnership with all movements that challenge centralized, top-down, dominantly heirarchic global structures, as these are antithetical to the principles of democracy and equality. It does not believe in a single ‘universal’ solution or a single ‘global citizens’ movement’, but rather a pluriverse of approaches and movements linked through common values and objectives, expressed in a multitude of languages. It seeks to build coherence in worldviews and approaches from the ground-up (e.g. see the Manifesto of Adelante mentioned in the original essay, or the evolving document on alternatives of the GTA weavers)[3], respecting multiple frameworks of transformation, rather than a pre-determined global manifesto or agenda (especially one emanating from the global North). It stresses the agency and legitimacy of grounded struggles, and the need for global processes to be rooted in these struggles, rather than ‘floating up in the air’ or falling prey to the kind of ‘NGOisation’ that displaces grounded voices. It characterises as false, the binary between ‘practitioners’ on the ground and ‘theoreticians’ or ‘intellectuals’ in academic or activist spaces, or the former in the global South and the latter in the global North, for there is much wisdom, theory, and conceptual brilliance (ancient and new) from communities practicing radical alternatives. It hopes to foreground the voices of youth and marginalised genders and sexualities. All this also means a slow, trust-building process, necessary if one has to bridge (while respecting and celebrating) the enormous diversity of languages, cultures, cosmologies we all come from.
On to the second question. Following up from the point above regarding the false binary between practitioners and theoreticians, we would also like to stress the continuity between ‘ideas’ and ‘action’, especially if the ideas themselves are based on lived experience. In this sense, the stimulating discussions that GTI generates, have the potential to contribute to transformative actions (and possibly already have done so). But, to be frank, we think that it is time to reverse several hundred years of colonialism, and enable thought-actions from the global South to take the lead. In so far as GTI has emerged from, and remains largely located in the global North, our inclination would be to see its role as an ally of such agency. It can do so by continuing its role as catalysing dialogue and discussions, mapping transformative initiatives (such as what it did for this discussion, and, supporting other such initiatives such as the mapping of alternative networks that GTA is doing), documenting and analysing movements, and offering a platform for dialogues between formal academia (defined broadly) and the organic intellectual-practitioners of grounded initiatives. It can also focus much more on transformations needed in the global North itself, challenging the military-industrial-commercial-trade complex and the hegemonic role of centralized currencies, seeking peace and denuclearisation, doing advocacy with multilateral and bilateral agencies of ‘international cooperation’ (mostly a disguise for continued colonialism), and showing how consumerist lifestyles can be transformed. All of this can contribute to global citizens’ movements.
Ashish Kothari and Shrishtee Bajpai
Members of facilitation team, Global Tapestry of Alternatives
[1] Defined here as those marginalised, exploited or excluded by the dominant system including in the geographic North/West; conversely, the global North are those currently in power in this system or elites and the rich that significantly benefit from it, including in the geographic South/East.