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From January to August 2012, three EYES members - Diana from Romania, Sergi from Spain, and Max from Germany - will be in Rio de Janeiro. Their mission: help preparing the People's Summit for Social and Ecological Justice, to be held in June 2012. They will also do training and networking in view of the "European Youth Forum of Alternatives (EYFA)", that EYES will organize in 2013 (infos coming soon). During a preparatory seminar in Paris in January, they met Gus Massiah to talk about the alterglobalization movement.

 

History does not begin with the past, but with the present. Starting from the here and now, people imagine alternatives to be realized in the future. To get there, they try to understand how they came to the present situation in the first place, by looking back to the past.

 

With this statement Gus Massiah introduced the morning session of Friday, 6th of January 2012. Gus was president of CRID (Centre de Recherche et d'Information, a French platform federating 52 organizations from all over the world) for 10 years and vice-president of ATTAC France. Now he represents CRID at the International Council of the World Social Forum.

 

First Gus outlined the last three historic periods of capitalism: the war period of structural crisis 1914-1945; industrial capitalism 1946-1980; and financial capitalism (neoliberalism) 1981-today. For Gus, modern history has always been a struggle between this dominant, periodic logics of capitalism and counter-forces. The major counter-force today is the alterglobalization movement. Before, this worldwide movement was called antiglobalization movement. This means that nowadays, the movement is no longer exclusively about resisting neoliberal capitalism, but changing it and searching for alternatives. But how has this global movement emerged? Gus identifies three phases:

 

1. In the 70's and 80's, the global social movements struggled mainly against the recolonization that Western governments tried to impose on their former colonies

2. In the 90's the struggles focused on the new phenomena of precarization that populations in the North experienced

3. The years 2000-2010 have been the years of the emergence of a world social movement, mainly through the World, Regional, and Local Social Fora

 

The WSF enabled the different movements to articulate the different battles they were fighting and to create convergences and links between them. The particular feature of the alterglobalization movement nowadays is its emphasis on diversity – the WSF federates not only movements fighting for socio-economic rights or the cancellation of debt, but also feminist movements, human right activists, indigenous populations, peasants, and of course green movements.

 

The strategy of the movement can be described by four elements:

 

1. creative resistance to neoliberalism

2. pressurizing public policy to find solutions, such as the access to rights

3. doing counter-expertise and counter-information to ensure more pluralism and break the hegemonic discourse

4. implementing non-capitalist alternatives on the ground, democratically and grassroots-driven

 

For Gus one of the greatest strategic challenges to the alterglobalization movement remains the articulation of temporalities of action. Indeed the movements are face with the trade-off between the necessity of urgent action and long-term transformation, the one often coming at the expense of the other.

 

So today, what is at stake for the alterglobalization movement? For Gus, the current struggle centers on the world crisis. According to Gus the current crisis cannot be reduced to a financial one, it has to be understood in myriad was. The crisis is simultaneously socio-economic, ideological, geopolitical, and ecological. The socio-economic aspect of the crisis manifests itself in the financial crisis; an unprecedented level of social injustice; economic inequality and poverty; and with the Arab spring a crisis of corruption and authoritarianism, which manifests itself in never-seen-before claims for liberty and democracy. Second, the crisis is a ideological, in the sense that the Western value system centered around notions such as progress, science, rationality and individualism is torn by inner contradictions and problems unseen before. The geopolitical aspect of the crisis manifests itself in the decline of the hegemony the West enjoyed since the end of the Cold War. Finally the current crisis is ecological. Fernand Braudel said back in 1992 (the same year sustainable development was put on the table of international negotiations at the UN Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro) that for time in world history, the world system entered in contradiction with the ecological planetary system.

 

According to Gus, there are three political answers to the ecological crisis nowadays:

 

1. that human flourishing for everybody cannot be assured with just one Earth. Therefore inequalities and poverty have to accepted

2. that science and technology will help solve the problems, by ensuring green growth

3. that green growth will not work as long as our ways of production and consumption are not revised. A structural change of capitalism is needed

 

Coming back to the three phases of the emergence of alterglobalization, Gus laid out the hypothesis that we could be currently, with 2011, entering a fourth phase of alterglobalization with the Arab spring revolutions. But in what ways do the Arab spring revolutions enlighten our situation?

 

First of all, the revolutions reveal the degree to which the political systems in the region are oligarchic. Second, the revolutions reveal the dissatisfaction of poplations with the lack of (work) opportunities. The young generation enjoy an unprecedented level of education but not the opportunities that need to come with that. Finally, the social upheavals reveal to what extent dictators in the region serve the interest of Western governments: they guarantee access to raw materials; they guarantee military treatise; they act to contain islamism; and they guarantee the availability of brains to the West (brain drain). Therefore, the Arab spring movements can be said to be anti-imperialist in nature.

 

 

Max Rademacher

more infos on the People's Summit for Social and Ecological Justice: http://rio20.net/en/

The concept of a youth organization is always a challenge both to its members and the outsiders, because it includes the idea of responsibility and assertiveness. Members- the actors are in charge to follow the basic script build on which the organization develops ‘on stage’ through out strong and viable arguments, and the outsiders- the spectators are responsible to take an attitude as a consequence to what they hear and see. It always exists a follow- up that comes from some concrete actions and that lead to another direction based on a work in progress main idea. Such actions are taking place in different parts from where each of us come, actions that have a role in answering questions about what is happening locally as well as forming a conceptual wide view upon different topics that concern youth in the society.

 

Such a ‘wide spreading info’ action took place on the 7^th of December 2011, during ‘Virgil Madgearu Economic College- Open Gates Days’, on the topic ‘Partnership with NGO’s’. On that day, I enhanced to the youngsters of the college the 2011 major event- The International Project- EYES Winter Camp Ploiesti- Responsible Consumption’.

 

The event was described in Power Point presentation, with extra explanations pointing out the activity through out main ideas and pictures.

 

The presentation consisted of:

-          What YPSSI/EYES means, the activity domain, purposes and objectives

-          The idea of work in progress inside the YPSSI/EYES Platform, by mentioning and describing the   Summer Camp – August 2011- that led to the latest event- Winter Camp Ploiesti- November 2011

 
-          Pointing out and describing the partnership with Virgil Madgearu Economic College which participated with high- school students and their coordinator teacher during our Street Action (important part from our agenda) on the 27^th of November 2011 inside a central Mall

 
-          During the presentation, the youngsters and their coordinator had a speech about their implication in the street action, their opinions and impressions about the event

 

-          At the end of the presentation, I asked the students (9^th and 10^th grade) to actively participate on the session by answering to 5 essential questions related to the environmental issue in the contemporary world, as well as youth social implication and the issues that directly concern their future

       

I thought about these 5 questions taking into account:

 

- 9th and 10th high- school degree

 

- high- school profile (Economics)

 

- self- knowledge about the local youth activity (from this high- school) and their general profile
- the families and environment they are coming from (in general)

 

 

The questions are (I asked them to answer briefly in 2 sentences/1 phrase):

1. Is voluntary work beneficial in any way?

2. Have you responsible consumed lately? On what occasion?

3. How can you become environmentally friendly ?

4. How do you see a youth run society?

5. What is a 'green job' in your opinion?

 

 

My aim for implying the youngsters was in fact part of our inside EYES campaign, by gathering youth points of view on different topics and realize a statistics interpretation on this special category that represents future society and the base with and through out which EYES is developing its activity.

 

During the presentation participated 50 high- school youngsters and a number of teachers that proved interest for the European topics and for the contemporary methods that we can apply in running a better society. Some teachers and students were either directly involved in such projects, or interested in getting involved in the future.

 

The presentation was a successful one, because those who were present remained impressed by the initiative of the project’s coordinators and organizers, especially pointing out the involvement in such event during The European Year of Volunteering 2011, a fact that offers it much importance- an example of social involvement and steady attitude.

 

 

Ana Nedelcu (Romania)