This Global Tapestry Of Alternatives is building across all continents, a step-by-step “network of networks”
[Graphics from GTA]
Some weeks on the Daily Alternative, the structures of the future just fall into our lap. We are glad to have found The Global Tapestry of Alternatives. From their own introduction:
…There is an increasing emergence and visibility of an immense variety of radical alternatives to the dominant regime, contesting its roots in capitalist, patriarchal, racist, statist, and anthropocentric forces.
These range from initiatives with a specific focus like sustainable and holistic agriculture; community led water/energy/food sovereignty; solidarity and sharing economies; worker control of production facilities; resource/knowledge commons; and inter-ethnic peace and harmony…
…to more holistic or rounded transformations such as those being attempted by the Zapatista in Chiapas and the Kurds in Rojava. Alternatives also include the revival of ancient traditions and the emergence of new worldviews that re-establish humanity’s place within nature, as a basis for human dignity and equality.
The Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA) is an initiative seeking to create solidarity networks and strategic alliances amongst all these alternatives on local, regional and global levels.
It locates itself in or helps initiate interactions among alternatives. It operates through varied and light structures, defined in each space, that are horizontal, democratic, inclusive and non-centralized, using diverse local languages and other ways of communicating.
The initiative has no central structure or control mechanisms. It spreads step by step as an ever-expanding, complex set of tapestries, woven together by already existing communal or collective webs, building on already existing and new alternatives to dominant regimes.
It promotes or joins regional, national and global encounters, when the conditions allow for them, as well as close and synergistic linkages with existing organizations, like the World Social Forum.
A Global Tapestry of Alternatives is about creating spaces of collaboration and exchange, in order to learn about and from each other, critically but constructively challenge each other, offer active solidarity to each other whenever needed, interweave the initiatives in common actions, and give them visibility to inspire other people to create their own initiatives.
It could facilitate people seeking transformative change going further along existing paths or forging new ones that strengthen alternatives wherever they are, hopefully eventually converging into a critical mass of alternative ways, supporting the conditions for the radical systemic changes we need.
Ambitious! The GTA has an impressive list of institutional and individual endorsees, with a wide global reach. They are also building a cadre of “weavers”. These organisations pull the “network of networks” together, with “the autonomy, self-determination and identity of each Weaver a central aspect of the process” They are currently:
In this article from Resilience in Feb 2022, announcing their progress in the early stages, they further define their purpose
Along with processes of resistance, across the world there are tens of thousands of attempts to construct alternative realities, either through sustaining things from the past which are still relevant, equitable, and just, or creating new ones — especially from within industrial systems or the so-called ‘developed’ systems of the world.
The Global Tapestry of Alternatives is a network that was seeded through experiences of networks of alternatives in India, Mexico, and Colombia. After several conversations and endorsements of movements across the world, GTA was officially launched in 2019 as a horizontal process of weaving with non-hierarchical ways of functioning.
We observe their busy schedule for 2023 and 2024, extend the hand of support, and wish them well.