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--- newsletters:13:index [2024/04/02 02:10]
mugdha
+++ newsletters:13:index [2024/04/10 09:22] (current)
mugdha [Marine ecosystems and climate fiction from South Asia - Episode 3 | 06/04/2024]
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 # WEAVING ALTERNATIVES #13: A periodical of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives
-<div full_image banner></div><WRAP full_black>**Weaving periodical 13: On the Notion of Weaving**</WRAP>
+<div full_image banner></div><WRAP full_black>**On Weaving: Threading Realities and Possibilities**</WRAP>
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+The origins of the word ‘weaving’ comes from old English //wefan//, of Germanic origin, from an Indo-European root shared by Greek //huphē// ‘web’ and Sanskrit //ūrṇavābhi// ‘spider’, literally ‘wool-weaver’. In Spanish a closer word is //'tejer'//,  a noun used to express the connection of threads, but also of words, //"tejer la palabra"//: to weave the words, the meanings. Directly related with the latin word //‘texere’// (again we find connection with idea of ‘text’), and this with older Proto-Indo-European form of //‘teḱ’//, which is the source of many rich derivations such as //té-tḱ-ti// (“to create, produce, cut, hew”), //tḱ-éy-ti// (“to settle, live, dwell, cultivate”) and the Ancient Greek form of //τίκτω// (//tékhnē//, “craft”, the base of the English //‘technique’//). Therefore, it should come as no surprise that for many communities around the world, weaving is a source of identity, meaning, meaning-making and way of life. Many folklores, songs, myths revolve around weaving as if it holds the entire fabric of the community.
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+Within the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, weaving is thus both metaphorically and literally a crucial element. Weaving is what communities have been doing for the longest time, both in the loom and in our communities of human and more than human life. We use weaving as metaphor to articulate that there are many diverse threads existing & responding to the crises we face today. Weaving of these threads in all their diversity could lead us to a tapestry of alternatives. Weaving is a practice with the warp threads running the length piece and weft running horizontally, which speaks of a practice of interconnections. Each thread is valuable in its own right yet also contributing to building a larger project of life. Weaving is a counter-political (personal and collective) behaviour in respect to the current system which tends to both fragment us and requires conformity from us in order to dominate us in a better way.
-## Updates from the GTA
+Weaving is a practice of everyday life trying to build possibilities together. GTA is a network of networks and each of these networks in different parts of the planet are (re)creating, living, and dreaming, and at the same time, also documenting, identifying, connecting and weaving a tapestry of alternatives; hence we are the weavers, weaving together a global tapestry.
-### Upcoming Events
+Within the GTA, we define a ‘Weaver’ as a local, regional, or national network or organisation that connects or consists of multiple Alternatives on different themes/spheres, in an inter-sectorial way. Our current weavers- Vikalp Sangam- Alternatives Confluence, India; Crianza Mutua Mexico; Crianzas Mutuas Colombia; and Movement for Alternatives and Solidarity in Southeast Asia (MASSA) are weaving ways of dialogue, interconnection, collaboration and solidarity with other Weavers. In addition, there are several other organisations and networks who are weaving alternatives in their respective regions - some as our ‘Endorsers’, and some who are movements we are in solidarity with but not (yet) part of the GTA. We honour the action of weaving that is happening everywhere and which is more important than the names we give to different groups.
+The GTA weaving experience informs us that the macro-transformation does not happen from individual initiatives acting alone; large shifts become possible when a critical mass of movements for radical resistance and constructive alternatives is able to coalesce through horizontal networks. It is not about the replication of successful initiatives (or simply copying from one to another, which different contexts and territorial realities make inappropriate), nor is it about upscaling (since making one initiative bigger and bigger tends to lead to bureaucracy, lack of nimbleness, and the weakening of original values), but rather about outscaling. GTA through its activities aims to stimulate horizontal weaving of networks and platforms where they exist and also stimulate weaving where it doesn’t yet exist.
-#### Climate Fiction Webinar Series: Episode 3
+Hence, in different contexts people are weaving differently in ways that are locally appropriate. However these radical alternatives are grounded by common principles such as autonomy, self-determination, cultural democracy, cooperation, solidarity, peace, and respect for all life forms, among others that celebrate life. All the weavers of GTA emphasize visibilising grounded practices of communities, peoples, and networks who are resisting the oppressive systems by creating different ways of knowing, being and doing things. Another important element of praxis is creating the spaces of exchanges, learnings, cross-sectoral dialogues, and solidarity. In addition to nurturing such encounters, some of the weavers also focus on creating alternatives collectively among diverse groups of people. If we could look at the Alternative Tapestry, it would be filled with different colours, threads, textures and patterns but would be collectively threading a tapestry of possibilities, made stronger by each thread and more beautiful and richer than we could have dreamt individually.
-Accelerated anthropogenic climate change poses a serious existential threat to dwellers in the marine world, besides the fisherfolk and inhabitants of coastal areas. The melting of land ice in Antarctica and Greenland, leading to rise of ocean levels, besides the deleterious effects of acidification on marine ecosystems, may soon reach a tipping point if adequate mitigation is not undertaken soon.
+Given how central weaving is as a practice within the GTA, we are delighted to have weaving as the theme for this issue of the periodical. Through this periodical, several contributions explored the idea of weaving conceptualised and practised by different members who constitute the GTA. The contributions to this periodical come from Asia, Africa, North America, Latin America, and Europe. They are also in multiple forms including, poems, videos, reflective articles and analytical pieces. These contributions include our Weavers as well as Endorsers. Collectively we explore questions like what do we mean by weaving? What does it signify for us? What does it look like in everyday life? What do we mean to achieve? And what does a tapestry at both local, regional, and global levels look like? What are the challenges to weaving across scales? What could be the process of common envisioning among these radical processes that can transform the systems at local to global level? How does weaving deal with questions of plurality, hierarchies, and transnational solidarity?
-In this episode, writers and activists from South Asia will share their creative responses to this ongoing crisis, which may eventually lead to biosphere collapse if such trends are not reversed.
-**[[events:2024_climate_change_fiction_webinars:03|Access to details]]**
+As the editorial team, we had the wonderful opportunity to learn from reading and engaging with all of these pieces. This periodical has been put together with the collaborative efforts of Shrishtee Bajpai, Mugdha Trifaley, Franco Augusto, Vasna Ramasar and Xochitl Leyva Solano. We invite you to engage, reflect and dialogue on these essays.
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+## Updates from the GTA
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 There are a number of Working and Thematic groups emerging from the Assembly; including Toolkit for Weaving, Pluriversal Dictionary of Concepts, and Solidarity Economies. Some of these groups have already met, and some are planning to meet soon. Please contact the following people if you would like to participate:
-  * Ashish Kothari and Vera Kozak for Pluriversal Dictionary of Concepts
+  * [[ashishkothari@riseup.net|Ashish Kothari]] and [[verakozak@postgrowth.org|Vera Kozak]] for Pluriversal Dictionary of Concepts
-  * Shrishtee Bajpai and Madhuresh Kumar for Toolkit for Weaving
+  * [[shrishteebajpai@gmail.com|Shrishtee Bajpai]] and [[kmadhuresh@gmail.com|Madhuresh Kumar]] for Toolkit for Weaving
-  * Melanie Bush, Ryan Martinez and Suzan Joy for Solidarity Economies
+  * [[melanie.e.l.bush@gmail.com|Melanie Bush]], [[aniceto.ryanmartinez@gmail.com|Ryan Martinez]] and [[suzanjoy44@gmail.com|Suzan Joy]] for Solidarity Economies
-  * Madhuresh Kumar and Ashish Kothari for Radical Democracy
+  * [[kmadhuresh@gmail.com|Madhuresh Kumar]] and [[ashishkothari@riseup.net|Ashish Kothari]] for Radical Democracy
 Please do volunteer to co-facilitate any of the other groups as well!
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 ### Recent Events
+#### Marine ecosystems and climate fiction from South Asia - Episode 3 | 06/04/2024
+Accelerated anthropogenic climate change poses a serious existential threat to dwellers in the marine world, besides the fisherfolk and inhabitants of coastal areas. The melting of land ice in Antarctica and Greenland, leading to rise of ocean levels, besides the deleterious effects of acidification on marine ecosystems, may soon reach a tipping point if adequate mitigation is not undertaken soon.
+In this episode, writers and activists from South Asia shared their creative responses to this ongoing crisis, which may eventually lead to biosphere collapse if such trends are not reversed.
+**[[events:2024_climate_change_fiction_webinars:03|Access to details]]**
 #### Antecedents to climate change fiction: Utopian and speculative narratives from South Asia - Episode 2 | 28/02/2024
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 #### World Social Forum 2024 - Kathmandu, Nepal 15/02/2024 - 19/02/2024
-The GTA participated in the World Social Forum 2024, as co-organizer of two events, along with some Facilitation team members also taking part in various activities. Our Weaver Vikalp Sangam also co-organized two events.
+The GTA participated in the World Social Forum 2024, as co-organizer of two events, along with some Facilitation team members also taking part in various activities. Our Weaver Vikalp Sangam co-organized two events as well.
 GTA's two sessions on 'Radical Democracy and Autonomy' were aimed at first presenting existing practices of radical democracy, and followed up with principles of radical democracy emerging from ground experiences, along with exploring what can be done to spread, deepen, and strengthen radical democracy.
-**[[.:wsf2024|Access to details]]**
+**[[events:wsf2024|Access to details]]**
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-Sutej Hugu recently translated an Indigenous poem by my old friend Elder Bukun. It is written in the Isbukun dialect of Bunun language spoken by about 20,000 people who live in central to southern mountainous areas of Taiwan. It presents the diversity and vitality of custodians for territories of life around this planet who have gone through all the historical and contemporary discrimination, marginalisation and destruction to survive and revive. //ayoy!//
+Sutej Hugu recently translated an Indigenous poem by his old friend Elder Bukun. It is written in the Isbukun dialect of Bunun language spoken by about 20,000 people who live in central to southern mountainous areas of Taiwan. It presents the diversity and vitality of custodians for territories of life around this planet who have gone through all the historical and contemporary discrimination, marginalisation and destruction to survive and revive. //ayoy!//
 **[[.:On Weaving|Keep reading ->]]**
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+## Weaving struggles, grief and hope: A letter from South Africa to Gaza
+**By Vasna Ramasar**
+Weaving a tapestry of alternatives is the hope-filled work of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. But often we see and know each other first through our struggles, our pain and trauma. In this short piece, I want to reflect on this weaving from pain and in particularly, how we live through the genocide in Gaza. As I write this at the end of March 2024, every night and every morning I go onto my social media and bear witness to the atrocities happening to the people of Palestine. Privately run corporate media has shown itself to be a biased source of news. And there is something authentic and raw to shed my tears looking into the faces and hearing the voices of civilians trapped in Gaza.
+**[[.:Weaving struggles|Keep reading ->]]**
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-## Tucked away in Memory
+## The Arropamientos: Memories, Denunciations and Hopes in a Weaving in Movement
-**By Deissy Perilla Daza**
+**By Deissy Perilla and Virgelina Chará**
-description to come
+The “Union de Costureros” and “Asomujer y Trabajo” (Unio are citizen initiatives aligned with the understanding of the fabric from the Global Tapestry of Alternatives, that is to say; they are networks that facilitate processes and access to local knowledge. These initiatives also understand weaving as a way of engaging with ideas, facilitating collaboration and initiating processes of co-writing, learning and dialogue. Both processes seek to be part of a broader network of solidarity and strategic alliances, such as the one proposed by the GTA to create alternatives to capitalism and dominant regimes that for decades have created social inequality and environmental destruction.
 **[[.:Tucked away|Keep reading ->]]**
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 **By Marco Andrade**
-A few years ago, I was in Mexico, surrounded by people from each of the continents on Earth, from all age ranges and very different ancestral lineages. One particular night during this planetary gathering, we had decided to share some of the typical food from our countries of origin and we were talking spontaneously; some of us in front of the fire, and others in smaller groups. From the vastest to the smallest I could perceive connections “weaving” in the midst of seemingly everyday interactions.
+A few years ago, I was in Mexico, surrounded by people from each of the continents on Earth, from all age ranges and very different ancestral lineages...  I had the opportunity to interview and talk with many of the participants. Obviously each one answered my questions in a different way and had its own particular richness… however, at the same time, they had deep similarities and very similar DNA; as if millions of years ago our molecules had belonged and orbited harmoniously in a particular constellation of stars, and despite the fact that our terrestrial origin was very distant, in the depths of us the same essence lived within us. At least that's what I felt that night, looking up at the starry sky and easily seeing the Milky Way vividly above us.
 **[[.:Weaving ReExistence|Keep reading ->]]**
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 **By Ana Cecilia Dinerstein**
-Weaving is a timeless and worldwide practice usually connected to the sensuous world of free human association. In Ingapirca, Ecuador, the Andean Community of El Cisne, women engage with the ancestral practice of weaving to revive and strengthen ancestors’ knowledge and connect, share, and sit together, chatting and storytelling for the children. Like any other free gathering around a manual activity, these are moments of unspeakable peace, freedom, and joy, moments when the world's troubles seem to stop at the door and cannot interrupt the experience of love and connection. Weaving also appears recurrently in mythological descriptions of the empowered female healer and the wisdom of the goddess: Greek goddess Athena and Laima Dalia in Lithuanian myths were both weavers of the threads of life, while Maori goddess Hine-te-iwaiwa gave people the art of weaving. More recently, it has been weaving associated with a path towards (our) liberation.
+Weaving is a timeless and worldwide practice usually connected to the sensuous world of free human association... Like any other free gathering around a manual activity, these are moments of unspeakable peace, freedom, and joy, moments when the world's troubles seem to stop at the door and cannot interrupt the experience of love and connection...
-In the Global Tapestry of Alternatives (GTA), we mobilize the term weaving -a beautiful metaphor, to designate how individuals, movements, communities, and collectives (including the GTA) connect, interact, and build something together toward alternative forms of human and nonhuman life on the planet.
-**[[.:Weaving: A radical activist method|Keep reading ->]]**
+**[[.:Weaving A radical activist method|Keep reading ->]]**
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 **By Shrishtee Bajpai**
-//The body is woven fine and imbued in essence Ram (divine’s name) The body itself is given a metaphor of fabric. A lotus flower with eight petals made the spinning wheel loaded with five elements (to make the thread). It takes 9 months to make (the covering), (but) the foolish soiled it straight away. When my covering was made, and came home,it was given to a master-painter. He painted the colours such that, (he) made it completely red.//
+...the movement of Warp and Weft in weaving is used as a metaphor for the process of growing in the womb for 9 months. And then, when the fabric is woven, is a form of a human body it is imbued in the colour red which is a colour of divinity...
+Sant Kabir used weaving, his occupation along with thousands others in his community and elsewhere, as a metaphor. It was used very often to speak of spiritual, political, and social issues. The working class in India, including weavers, craftsmen, cobblers, ironsmiths (often from marginalised and oppressed castes) related to this democratisation of knowledge. Local communities who didn’t have access to elite knowledge spaces articulated their worldviews through their everyday occupations. Their expression of meaning of life was not based on any abstractism; rather, it was woven in everyday practice and learning. Several of these communities have led counter spiritual, political and social movements in India over the ages.
-These verses are from Sant Kabir, a 13th century Indian mystic poet and saint who hundreds of years ago questioned organised forms of religions, their internal injustices of caste, hierarchies, fundamentalism, absolutism, was a weaver by practice. In this verse above, Kabir gives the human body a metaphor of fabric that has been woven fine and imbued in divine’s name. Again, the movement of Warp and Weft in weaving is used as a metaphor for the process of growing in the womb for 9 months. And then, when the fabric is woven, is a form of a human body it is imbued in the colour red which is a colour of divinity.
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 **By Crianzas Mutuas Colombia**
-The process of weaving in Crianzas Mutuas began in 2017, and has been going on for six years now. This time has brought us very valuable learnings. The process has gone through different phases (which are not always progressive) and in each of them we have been able to identify challenges and valuable tools to establish a warp that we hope will be long-lasting. During this time, we have strengthened ties between processes located in three different territories or bioregions: 1) The Geographic Valley of the Cauca Region; 2) Kumanday (Manizales); and 3) the Black Line-Sierra Nevada of Gonawindua (Santa Marta).
+The process of weaving in Crianzas Mutuas began in 2017, and has been going on for six years now. This time has brought us very valuable learnings... During this time, we have strengthened ties between processes located in three different territories or bioregions: 1) The Geographic Valley of the Cauca Region; 2) Kumanday (Manizales); and 3) the Black Line-Sierra Nevada of Gonawindua (Santa Marta).
-The creation of Crianzas Mutuas Colombia was preceded by other weavings that had been developing since 2009. In Colombia, weaving has been an alternative for the defense of life, and there have been weavers before Crianzas Mutuas. Tapestries are not the result of an academic or activist project, but the result of webs //(entramados)// nourished by women, artivists, collectives, peoples and academics.
+... In Colombia, weaving has been an alternative for the defense of life, and there have been weavers before Crianzas Mutuas. Tapestries are not the result of an academic or activist project, but the result of webs //(entramados)// nourished by women, artivists, collectives, peoples and academics.
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 **By Carlos Tornel**
-The notion of weaving is the essence of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives. Ivan Illich used the analogy of a persian rug to highlight its relevance. If one looks at this rug from the front, there are many patterns and interconnected colors and threads throughout it. The patterns intersect and form a beautiful tapestry. If looked at from the other side, the tapestry is obscured by a single color and/or pattern, one that appears overimposed on the diversity of colors, patterns and combinations. The metaphor is used to exemplify two things: first, that the ‘era of development’ (1949-) is the latest imposition of a series of colonial ways of seeing, being and knowing the world that has lasted over 500 years, starting with the European invasion of the American continent. We now live on the backside of the rug, and we were made as subjects, convinced that there is only one way forward (that of industrialization and technological progress and growth), and that there is no alternative. Secondly, those patterns and colors obscured by the mono-logic of development remain on the other side, a process that, as the civilizatory crisis advances, has revealed some of the other words on the back that now become visible.
+...Weaving enables a radical pedagogy between worlds. It creates conditions under which a dialogue between those that have been //othered// by the hegemonic view of the world is possible thusly. First, weaving goes beyond a mere dialogue of knowledges as it places practice and lived experience at the center: only through sharing the world (i.e. not just knowledge or the //logos//) can the possibility of a dialogue become possible. Secondly, weaving can also encompass a plurality of political horizons and possibilities. Bringing the matter of size into the debate, weaving places direct democracy, autonomy and dignity as the basis of political organization, a project built from the ground-up, from a collective defense of the territory...

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WEAVING ALTERNATIVES #13: A periodical of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives

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