This is the result for a collaborative process to identify common elements that facilitate the process of weaving/interconnecting the GTA's Weavers, contributed by Vikalp Sangam, Crianza Mutua Colombia, Crianza Mutua Mexico and future Weavers of this ongoing process.
Since 2022, one of the main goals for the GTAGlobal Tapestry of Alternatives has been to strengthen and support the work of Weavers at the local level. Achieving clearer common definitions revealed to be a very important piece in the creation of the tapestry , the collaborative documentation and mapping of AlternativesAre activities and initiatives, concepts, worldviews, or action proposals by collectives, groups, organizations, communities, or social movements challenging and replacing the dominant system that perpetuates inequality, exploitation, and unsustainabiity. In the GTA we focus primarily on what we call "radical or transformative alternatives", which we define as initiatives that are attempting to break with the dominant system and take paths towards direct and radical forms of political and economic democracy, localised self-reliance, social justice and equity, cultural and knowledge diversity, and ecological resilience. Their locus is neither the State nor the capitalist economy. They are advancing in the process of dismantling most forms of hierarchies, assuming the principles of sufficiency, autonomy, non-violence, justice and equality, solidarity, and the caring of life and the Earth. They do this in an integral way, not limited to a single aspect of life. Although such initiatives may have some kind of link with capitalist markets and the State, they prioritize their autonomy to avoid significant dependency on them and tend to reduce, as much as possible, any relationship with them..
At the same time, in the near future the GTA aims to incorporate new Weavers by identifying existing regional networks and promoting the creation of new ones. In this sense, the collective exercise to identify these common criteria is a very important one.
Vikalp Sangam, Crianza Mutua Colombia and Crianza Mutua Mexico, our current Weavers, share some assumptions about the current situation and a radical critique of patriarchy, capitalism, racism, colonialism, the nation-state domination and anthropocentrism that destroy the weave of life. These assumptions and critiques nourished the creation of the GTA and determined the shape of the criteria to identify and weave “alternatives”.
These are our common criteria to identify Alternatives and connect them by the weavers: