Our ECON community has a collective and deep commitment to protecting our democracies, increasing democratic participation and supporting pluralistic democracies that respect and recognize diversity within society. We dream of our democracies being spaces where multiple views, ideas, and interests coexist, and these different perspectives are seen as a strength rather than a weakness. However while we build towards this, across Europe and the world we see areas where nationalism, authoritarianism and populist far right governments, campaigns, and agendas are on the rise. In Europe, the recent European elections and general elections this year have shown an increase in popularist far right as well as rising authoritarian regimes to crack down on our core freedoms of speech and protest, undermining democratic values and the communities our members organise with.

This event will explore the organising practices that we as a community have developed to meet this crisis.. We will aim to understand how to build power with communities through these organising and convening broad coalitions, building trust, increasing democracy and people power so that we can fight for our democratic rights from our municipalities all the way to national and international structures of power.

SPEAKERS

Maros Chmelik, CKO, Slovakia

Mónika Bálint, CKA, Hungary

TBC, Diaspora Alliance, Germany and UK

Camille Marronnier, Organisez Vous, France