Resisting War on Mother Earth, Reclaiming Our Home
The joint theme group Resisting War on Mother Earth, Reclaiming Our Home; and Nonviolent Community Struggles was a success. These groups combined for the second half of the triennial, to discuss deep intersections between militarism, imperialism and ecological destruction. Participants outlined the range of solutions, to uncover real and politically feasible solutions. We also assessed the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of this moment. On the fourth day, participants created the broad strokes of a strategy for mass action, connecting local work grounded in communities with international action. We aspire to create this work as a 'climate satyagraha,' and participants described a two-layered strategy of resisting the militarized violence of Mother Earth's attackers, while also building functional local alternatives, institutions, and self-governance.
Over 30 people overall attended the sessions over the 4 day period, from about 12-15 countries. More than 20 people signed up to create a WRI working group to continue the work of organizing a Climate Satyagraha. The general purpose of this working group is to advance work, analysis & action at the intersections uncovered in the theme group; as a structure to support ongoing work between triennials; and to support members/organizations connecting with each other on climate justice/satyagraha work that might not be under the WRI banner. We are currently compiling the notes from the theme group discussion and will be sending those out shortly.
We have created a listserv for the group to further discussions started in Cape Town, and move toward creating concrete plans. Ecosocialist Horizons, one of the participating organizations, is reworking the Climate Satyagraha and Ujamaa call to discussion to integrate input received at the conference and theme group. There was a lot of interest in contributing to this process.
Some participants suggested creating a blog for this group where people can share their actions and thoughts, and will be working out a blog name or theme. We are continuing to seek input about how to move forward mass climate satyagraha while we clarify what such a WRI working group could accomplish.
This document emerged from an invitation to discussion put forward by Ecosocialist Horizons at the first PanAfrican conference on nonviolence in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2014, where delegates and representatives from 34 African countries and over 50 countries from every continent helped give birth to the PanAfrican Network for Nonviolence and Peacebuilding. Refined and revised by participants around the world, this document is a dramatic calling for massive non-violent action in defense of life on Earth. From the birthplace of humanity and the continent which stands to lose the most to climate catastrophe, we must join together in a movement to remake the world.
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