European Alternatives Activist Agenda
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This is the first of a series of newsletters with information on all ongoing activities from our local groups in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Bologna, and a peak on what’s coming up.

European Alternatives was started with the ambition of bringing together people who want to create a better Europe for a better world. We are delighted that more and more people are bringing their energy, ideas and hard work to the organisation.

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We have started a campaign for the European Parliament to insist that it has the dominant role in deciding the policies of the Union.

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It is time for the EU to move away from its inegalitarian policies towards the countries of the South. We must restructure a profoundly unjust global system.

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Poverty must increasingly be understood as a problem of democracy as well as equality. Social exclusion means political exclusion

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Transnational parties in Europe

A candidate for the next presidency of the European Commission in 2014 supported by all European socialists? That’s what the PES promised in Prague, beginning of December, during its annual Congress. But the latest European campaign underlined how difficult it is for European parties to find a consensus on this topic. Listen to audio-interviews with MEPs.

The Edu-Factory Machine: Transnational Politics and Translational Institutions

Edu-Factory is a collective of about 500 militants, students and researchers which proposed the project of a global autonomous university, a process of conflict against the hierarchisation and mechanisms of the market-based education system.

Be network my friend

In the context of changing forms of power and control the network is a fertile ground for the rediscovery of autonomous actions and reinvention of political subjectivity.

POLIS 21 travels through Athens, Belgrade to Zagreb

Polis 21 focuses on Public Space and the boundaries of the new city. European Alternatives has brought the project to London, Athens, Belgrade and is travelling to Zagreb – provoking public debate of urban exclusion and proposing transnational solutions.

Between Centre and Periphery: The Labyrinth of Contemporary Migrations

Sandro Mezzadra discusses the categories of centre and periphery, of north and south, which are increasingly unable to photograph contemporary economic, political, and cultural inderdependence. The transnational experience of contemporary migrations points to the necessity of a new interpretative paradigm.

Membership and Its Politics

The growth of anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe is renationalizing membership politics. But the outsider has the potential to expand the formal rights of citizens. By Saskia Sassen.

Is the end of the masculine domination in Europe approaching?

The masculine domination is the title of a book by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu published in 1998, in which he describes how discrimination is perpetuated in society. It is also a sentence you can currently read in capital letters in the streets of Paris printed on top of a cinema advertisement poster that displays women hands knitting red and pink woollen male genitals.

Where now for European Social Democracy? The Good Society Debate

European social democracy needs a fresh start. In the wake of the most severe economic crisis in decades social Europe Journal in association with Soundings Journal and supported by Compass and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung are organising a pan-European online debate. For the next six weeks, contributors from all over Europe will publish their views on the “Good Society” on this website.

Interview with Nancy Fraser

Nancy Fraser is a celebrated critical theorist and a feminist. Europa asks her about the transnationalisation of the public sphere, radical justice and the crisis and pulling feminism back from neoliberalism.

‘Flopenhagen’: We must go beyond European weakness

The European rhetoric has flown very high at Copenhagen, promising up to 30 per cent of emission cuts by 2020 and millions in funds for adaptation policies and technological innovation in poor countries. Now that an agreement has not been found, will Europe be able to still lead the way and pass from word to fact? Is trade sanctions for polluting goods a solution? Or will we continue hiding behind our weaknesses?

Back to the BASIC: climate change, global governance and emerging powers

The global summit on climate change in Copenhagen was not just an international conference on the world’s precarious environment. It was a catalyst of tensions, rivalries and reciprocal accusations, which gave momentum to a renewed synergy between Brazil, South Africa and India in association with China, the so-called BASIC group.

Social services in time of recession: What can the EU do to ensure their continued provision?

Over the last 18 months the EU has seen many growing pressures on its social services provision. The unemployment rate in the EU has been rising steadily since April 2008. What can the EU do?Jean Lambert, Green MEP  for London, is one of two UK Green representatives in the European Parliament.

Practicing Dialectic: Chto Delat and Method

The artistic collective ‘What is to be done?’ (Chto Delat in Russian) is based in St Petersburg. Dmitry Vilensk, member of the collective, muses on the method of the group as a form of dialectic, and as a form of artistic and political engagement.

The Anti-Sites in the new city

Arnaud Elfort and Guillaume Schaller from the Survival Group have photographed these spaces that have been built to exclude in the new city. European Alternatives went to ask them about their initiative.

The post-national polis

We need new collective symbols for the construction of new ways of being together, finally divorced from ethnic or national representation. Some thoughts about post-national polis with the opportunity of the Polis 21 event in Athens, Belgrade and Zagreb.