ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS IN 2024 _These contents are also available online on this webpage [1]._ Dear readers, 2024 was a year of turbulence, conflict and war in many places of the world and as we end the year, we stand in solidarity with friends defending their lives and territories. In this context, we continue to assert that resistance must go hand-in-hand with building radical alternative so that we have pathways for systemic transformation. GTA continues to work in weaving a world of solidarity, care and conviviality with weavers, endorsers and like-minded individuals and organisations. [1] [1] The year 2024 was a very full one for the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. We continued to host our Assembly, webinars, and periodicals. We also released a report on Articulating Crises, as well as dedicated time to building a Toolkit for Weaving and facilitated Weaver dialogues. Face-to-face encounters included weaver exchange at the MASSA gathering in Indonesia in November; organising a gathering of the GTA Facilitation Team in Europe in June. These moments offered opportunity for deepening relationships and knowledge exchange. Additionally, we continued to promoting the work and ideas of the GTA globally including the presentation of the GTA at the World Social Forum in Nepal, the Local Futures event in Bristol and the Degrowth conference in Lund in June as well as participation in the Global Just Transition workshop in the UK in Feb and the WEALL meeting in Costa Rica to name a few. We feel the growing urgency for change and continue our work to deepen weaving of radical alternatives. As we end 2024, we acknowledge all those who have supported GTA and walked the path with us as well as invite new ideas and contributions as we look to 2025. WEBINARS WEBINAR ON THE GEOPOLITICS OF GREEN COLONIALISM: GLOBAL JUSTICE AND ECOSOCIAL TRANSITIONS | 26TH SEPTEMBER 2024 Join us to analyze the different facets of green colonialism and the commoditization of environmental politics, but also to explore the urgent need for global justice and ecosocial transitions, highlighting grassroots movements and alternative visions that challenge green colonialism and offer pathways toward a truly equitable and ecological futures. Access to details -> [2] DIALOGUES ON RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND AUTONOMY GTA is organising a series of 3 dialogue sessions among Indigenous peoples and other local communities that are practicing Radical Democracy, Autonomy, and Self-Determination. This is in preparation for a global gathering of such communities to be held in February 2025. The three regional dialogues, one a month, will focus on the Global South: Asia, Latin America and Africa. * Session #1: Voices from Asia [3] (17th November 2024) * Session #2: Voices from Latin America [4] (16th December 2024) Access to further details -> [5] CLIMATE CHANGE FICTION AND ITS POTENTIAL FOR TRANSFORMATION Climate change fiction has come to the fore in recent times as an offshoot of science/speculative fiction, as a way of coming to terms with the reality of global warming and climate change and the likely repercussions for vulnerable species and communities most likely to be affected in the near future. As extrapolations from current trends, such imaginative responses have offered a significant critique of techno-science and the dominant development paradigm and opened out conceptual alternatives and pathways to transformation. Kalpavriksh and Global Tapestry of Alternatives host a series of dialogues and conversations on themes relating to South Asia in particular, seeking to find the interface between fiction, academia and activism. * Climate Change Fiction: The South Asia Experience [6] * Antecedents to climate change fiction: Utopian and speculative narratives from South Asia [7] * Marine ecosystems and climate fiction from South Asia [8] * Climate Change Fiction: A Conversation with Amitav Ghosh [9] * The Future of Climate fiction from South Asia [10] Access to further details -> [11] MORE THAN HUMAN: CREATIVE EXPRESSIONS A series of online sessions on creative expressions featuring the more-than-human, this webinar series features people connecting to other species and the rest of nature in spiritual, artistic, and visceral ways. Focusing primarily on the voices from the global south, this series sees how writers, artists, researchers, activists are exploring these dimensions from a decolonial, indigenous, and justice perspective. We would further explore our themes of collectively examining the potential of such mediums in transforming the alienation some of us have from the rest of the earth, and of bringing back multiple aspects of being embedded within nature in our lives. * The River is Us: A Conversation with Alyen Foning [12] * Water as a Living Entity: A Conversation with Juana Vera Delgado [13] * Gifts from the Sentient Forest: A Conversation with Åsa Andersson Martti, Francis Joy and John C. Ryan [14] Access to further details -> [15] ACTIVITIES AND EVENTS BY THE GTA AND ITS WEAVERS WORLD SOCIAL FORUM 2024 - KATHMANDU, NEPAL 15/02/2024 - 19/02/2024 The GTA participated in the World Social Forum 2024, as co-organizer of two events, along with some Facilitation team members also taking part in various activities. Our Weaver Vikalp Sangam also co-organised two events. Access to further details -> [16] ENCOUNTER IN DEFENSE OF LIFE: WEAVING TERRITORIES OF CRIANZA MUTUA IN MEXICO WITH COLOMBIA | 23 TO 27 MAY 2024
From May 23 to 27 was held the meeting organized by Crianza Mutua Mexico, under the theme "Meeting in Defense of Life, weaving territories of the North, Central and Southeast". Collectives, groups, activists and academics seeking new paths for the care of life and the defense of territory will gather in a face-to-face meeting in Ejido Jalpa, Municipality of General Cepeda, Coahuila, as part of its annual Cabalgata del Agua Nuestra Hermana (Our Sister Water Ride). These processes, coming from different regions of Mexico and Colombia, will meet with the objective of sharing their daily lives, organizational experiences, popular education, resistance and struggle in defense of their land, water, soil, landscape, animals, plants and culture.
Access to further details -> [17] NATIONAL VIKALP SANGAM: 10 YEARS OF THE VIKALP SANGAM PROCESS | 21 TO 23 NOVEMBER 2024 A national-level gathering of local communities, social movements, and NGOs working on environmental, social, economic, cultural and governance issues was held on 21-23 November, at Khamir, in Kachchh. Over 130 people including nearly 100 from outside Kachchh, participated. The occasion was the 10th anniversary of the national platform called 'Vikalp Sangam', which has brought together people working on solutions to hunger and malnutrition, water scarcity, gender and caste injustice, violation of basic human rights, weakening of democratic spaces, unemployment and loss of livelihoods, and other such issues that are causing suffering to hundreds of millions of people in India. The Sangam also featured cultural performances, exchange of gifts, hands-on teaching of pottery and weaving, collective painting. Participants also visited several field sites in Kachchh, to see first-hand the transformations that have been made possible by over a dozen organisations. They visited the LLDC museum of crafts, where also a film on alternatives, 'Churning the Earth', was screened. Access to further details -> [18] ASEAN CIVIL SOCIETY CONFERENCE/ ASEAN PEOPLES’ FORUM (A MASSA GATHERING) | 19 TO 21 SEPTEMBER
From September 19-21, 2024, members of MASSA were instrumental in hosting this year's ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ ASEAN Peoples' Forum in Dili, Timor Leste. The months of consultations, back and forth online meetings, and preparations on the ground has led to another successful year of gathering and interweaving among various civil society organizations across Southeast Asia. Despite taking place thousands of kilometers from the official ASEAN summit in Lao People's Democratic Republic, the Timorese civil society stood in solidarity with the Laos people in co-hosting the annual conference when they accepted the turnover from the Indonesian CSOs during last years' conference in Jakarta. As small as Timor Leste is compared to its neighboring countries, our conference was deeply welcomed by the Timorese people as displayed by the streamers and posters we've seen across Dili as we made our way to the Escola Secundaria Técnica Vocacional-Grupo de Tecnologia e Indústria, a humble venue and yet a crucial gathering point among people in solidarity.
Access to further details -> [19] REPORTS AND PERIODICALS REPORT: ARTICULATING CRISIS AND CREATING RADICAL ALTERNATIVES This report presents the experiences of a process of weaving the pluriverse, within the GTA. The report traces the history and experiences of the GTA process, drawing from in- depth reflections from the GTA facilitation team as well as contributions from Weavers and Endorsers to the process. This is grounded in community and activist articulations of what radical alternatives and a pluriverse are. The authors, as members of the GTA facilitation team, share the findings and process to bring the voices from the global south/ majority world together in both conceptualising the polycrisis and responding to it. Access to further details -> [20] PERIODICALS ON WEAVING: THREADING REALITIES AND POSSIBILITIES (PERIODICAL 13, APRIL 2024) Through this periodical, several contributions explored the idea of weaving conceptualised and practised by different members who constitute the GTA. The contributions to this periodical come from Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, and Europe. They are also in multiple forms including, poems, videos, reflective articles and analytical pieces. These contributions include our Weavers as well as Endorsers. Collectively we explore questions like what do we mean by weaving? What does it signify for us? What does it look like in everyday life? What do we mean to achieve? And what does a tapestry at both local, regional, and global levels look like? What are the challenges to weaving across scales? What could be the process of common envisioning among these radical processes that can transform the systems at local to global level? How does weaving deal with questions of plurality, hierarchies, and transnational solidarity? Access to further details -> [21] ON WEAVING ALTERNATIVES (PERIODICAL 14, SEPTEMBER 2024) Through the 14th periodical, we further explore the idea of weaving conceptualised and practised by different members who constitute the GTA. Ana Inés Heras explores what it is to weave alternatives in the times of political crises in Argentina, Mugdha Trifaley on the other hand explores the dimensions of weaving intergenerationally, and we have a beautiful poem 'Planting Seeds' reflecting on weaving by Tannur Ali. In addition, the periodical also has some wonderful updates from our weavers and endorsers. Access to further details -> [22] THE ENERGY ISSUE: FROM COLONIAL MODERNITY TO DECOLONISING ALTERNATIVES (PERIODICAL 15, DECEMBER 2024) For years, activists, land defenders, and grassroots struggles often overlooked energy as a critical point of contention, relegating it primarily to the domain of state policy and administration. Recently, some movements have begun to call for the recognition of energy as a human right, a process that is problematic, to say the least. This proposal risks resembling a call for "just colonialism" by encoding colonial structures within the framework of human rights. Is this the direction we want to pursue? Movements are justified in questioning this, as it is clearly not the intended goal; so, what is? The aim, we believe, is to open up discussions on energy's colonial origins and, from there, develop a new language that enables us to critically engage with energy itself. This periodical seeks to make the concept of energy "strange." Put differently, to truly understand the coloniality of energy, we must first open up the question of what energy is, how we approach it, and what its deeper implications are. Access to further details -> [23] Thank you for reading! Global Tapestry of Alternatives [email protected]_ To subscribe and get our updates, visit this link [24] -- Global Tapestry of Alternatives https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org --- To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to this address: global-tapestry-alternatives-observers-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net Links: ------ [1] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:updates2024 [2] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_green_colonialism [3] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:rd:01 [4] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:rd:02 [5] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:rd:index [6] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_... [7] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_... [8] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_... [9] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_... [10] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_... [11] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_climate_change_fiction_... [12] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_more_than_human_webinar... [13] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_more_than_human_webinar... [14] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_more_than_human_webinar... [15] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_more_than_human_webinar... [16] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:wsf2024 [17] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/events:2024_crianzasmutuasmx [18] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:14:weavers14#the_nation... [19] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:15:weavers15#massa [20] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/reports:articulating:index [21] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:13:index [22] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:14:index [23] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/newsletters:15:index [24] https://globaltapestryofalternatives.org/contact