“There is no alternative,” (TINA) said Margaret Thatcher of neo-liberal capitalism as led by the United States at least since the 1980s. And this system’s defenders still argue TINA. But this flies in the face of reality. Without waiting for governments, victims of neo-liberalism have themselves constructed many viable alternatives aiming at justice, sustainability, and popular sovereignty. And new majorities are directing governments to join this construction and the global justice movement. For another world is not only possible, it is now necessary . Amidst signs of a deep global economic crisis, the present system’s environmental and social unsustainability is clear. Failure to honestly ponder options invites disaster by mindless recycling of a toxic system. Another world needs inventing by us all – morally, economically, environmentally, politically, & culturally.
We aim for bi-lingual, publishable results of our joint work on suggested themes like:
1. Grasping the crisis: how capital pits working classes against each other; conflicting agricultural models & the rural crisis; the neo-liberal offensive today – economically, ecologically, politically; water & ecocide; new imperialism & war; recycling racism.
2. Women world-wide: women’s rights; migration of women; indigenous women; reproductive rights; women’s new economic activity; feminist ecology.
3. Goals & Alternatives: How is the people’s resistance redefining social and global justice, autonomy, and participatory democracy? New kinds of democratic socialism including “socialism for the 21 st century”; how to undo racism; gender democracy; una vida digna.
4. Strategies & Tools: occupy, resist, produce; regional economic unity; global justice movements; solidarity economy, recuperated factories, & co-ops; can pursuit of local economic autonomy be combined with electoral action?; North-South cross-border organizing; ambiguities of new technologies; Tobin tax & international legal reform; food sovereignty; the subsistence perspective; reclaiming the commons; distinguishing means that are unjust, unsustainable, & disrespectful of peoples’ sovereignty from those that are not.