Global Anti-Austerity Forum
Before diving into this text, we recommend watching a short movie, as an artistic, embodied interpretation of the ideas that follow.
This platform aims to unite struggles from around the world against austerity and its systemic causes. We want the government to provide the conditions necessary for life: decent, well-paid jobs without exploitation; universal public education and healthcare; and public housing for all.
The Global Anti-Austerity Forum is a space where organizations and individuals can learn how austerity manifests in different countries and how people are fighting back. In addition to raising awareness of these issues, the platform will serve as an interactive space where joint statements or manifestos can be developed and released.
The platform contributes to the creation of a collective political subject that fights against austerity at the local and global levels. In this sense, the platform is a tool for political education. It provides resources and inspiration to motivate people to fight for conditions in which people’s lives and the health of the planet matter more than capital accumulation.
Features
It is a global, interactive platform that maps anti-austerity resistance from the past and present. It helps people connect, organize, and act together.
It makes global resistance visible. It shows that these efforts are not isolated sparks, but part of a connected struggle against austerity, inequality, and exploitation.
It reminds people that they’re not alone.
Get inspiration, tools, and strategies for your own actions.
Description of how it works:
– Live Map of Resistance / Resistance Seed Bank
A real-time, crowdsourced map showing acts of resistance, strikes, protests, and grassroots struggles around the world. Each dot represents a story. Move around the map and click to learn who is behind an act of resistance, why it began, how it unfolded, and what impact it made.
It will pull out information/ scrapping information from various online recources, such as:
- media (mainstream (such as BBC), alternative ones)
- screaping social platforms (tik tok, instagram, fb)
- wikipedia and other crowdsourced
- scientific publication
- petition platforms
- people can upload acts of resistances as well
The acts of resistance will be categoriesed in 3 main categories:
- Peoples’ alternatives – self organised, filling in austerity gaps/ people helping each other
- Peoples’ direct action – protests, performances and other artistic creations (songs, artwork), digital resistance (example: code for RO; trash heros (digital map in BG in relation to waste problem)
- Peoples’ advocacy – legal cases won, union work; library of research on the major historical changes/transformation
Find movements by cause, time/date, region, topic/issue or type of action: e.g. rent strikes, student protests, labour unions, climate resistance.
Historical Timeline
Toggle between past and present to explore how resistance movements have evolved. Trace connections between events, movements, and outcomes over time, building a living archive of solidarity.
Interactive Organizing Tools
Add your own actions to the map (anonymously or openly) with text, photos, videos, or audio. Invite others to join, collaborate on shared manifestos, or exchange strategies for collective organising. Sign up anonymously to see people near you on the map who are interested in getting involved. Get in touch and start your own movement of resistance or join existing groups.
Resource Library
Access a growing collection of guides, toolkits, and analyses on community organising, mutual aid, and resistance strategies, all open-source and contributed by activists worldwide.
Find movements by cause, region, or type of action: e.g. rent strikes, student protests, labour unions, climate resistance.
Who it’s for:
Activists who want to share, document, or amplify their struggles.
People who want to act but don’t yet know how or where to start.
Researchers, journalists, and artists exploring the patterns and networks of resistance.
Reflections
This platform is not a solution, but rather an answer to a world marked by struggle, destruction, and division. There is no final resolution that can bring lasting freedom and peace. The Global Anti-Austerity Forum is an ongoing project that requires constant revision and reimagining. It is a process of building a united audience and connecting contributors and collectives.
In its current prototype, we focus on a specific target group to translate our vision into action. The platform is designed for individuals who wish to take action and require ideas and communities to do so. The working class is often excluded not because of disinterest but because systemic pressures make it difficult for them to reflect on the broader struggles they face. They are everyday activists whose efforts deserve recognition. Currently, the platform mainly reaches privileged people who have the time and access to engage with such spaces, which risks reinforcing hierarchies within resistance and solidarity movements.
We acknowledge these limitations and aim to expand participation opportunities for working-class individuals, Indigenous communities, and racialized minorities. This platform does not strive for perfection; it is defined by constant rethinking and remains a space for reflection, critique, and change.
Hope, resistance, and community are essential to sustainable activism. This platform exists to nurture hope, educate, and inspire activists and groups facing the rise of oppressive powers and narratives while uniting them. While it will not change the world on its own, it can strengthen multidimensional resistance. All social struggles are connected, and highlighting these connections can be a powerful act.
The ‘Defunding Life’ workshop was facilitated by Alexandra Ștefănescu and Jose Miguel Calatayud. Particpants were: Andrei Bulearcă, Monisha Martins, Stefania Matache, Nassim Mehran, Oana Mondoc, Hannah Rose, Veronika Petrova, Salman Siddiqui, Andreas Stein, Enikő Vincze.
This project was conceived at the Pluriverse of Peace conference by BG | berlinergazette.de.
All text and images: Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0.