Activist Forum Tirana: The Work on #DL18 Continues

Marking the first anniversary of the Activist Fora project, the Forum in Tirana had a somewhat different structure than its predecessors. The Forum in Tirana put a special focus on the future development of the #DL’18 platform – a platform which is produced and formulated by the activist community of Southeast Europe and looks at their political and socio-economic priorities and demands.

Amidst a large plethora of themes, four main clusters were identified for the #DL’18 platform: democracy, economy, social state and resources. The activists developed a first round of position papers that will fill each cluster, ranging from issues such as alternative economic models, cooperation between social movements and progressive political parties to the reclaiming of public spaces.

For the local inputs, we once again debated on the question of what the Left means, this time in the context of Albania. Tactics and strategies of local organisations such as Organizata Politike and the Hashtag Initiative were discussed as well. Panelists gave a historical overview of the development of the Left in Albania. A point which was made by both organisations highlighted that electoral politics in Albania are not based on party programmes, but only on “promises or threats” for either creating new jobs, or threatening existing ones.

Activists from the Hashtag Initiative presented their most recent protest movement, in which they opposed fracking in Zharrza, a small village 150km away from the capital Tirana. The representatives emphasised the efficiency of social media in the organization of protests, where they managed to mobilise over 200 people to march from Zharrza to Tirana to be accompanied by thousands of people along the way, thus turning virtual networking into real-life protest.

Once again, we were joined by our partners from European Alternatives who contributed with an episode of their Talk Real series, this time on the topic of nationalism in Southeast Europe. The episode can be found here.

The following step of the project is to hold a summer school in the Croatian coastal city of Rijeka in June 2017 to discuss the next steps for #DL’18, whereas the subsequent Forum will be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, at the end of August 2017.