The "New Left" Summer School Rijeka

The goal of the summer school was to establish a framing process for the #DL18 platform. Over the course of the conference, activists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Kosovo discussed the first two rounds of position papers resulting from discussions at previous activist fora.

#DL18 serves as a collection of positions that are channeled in protests throughout the region. Therefore #DL18 is structured along four main clusters. These have been set up by activists as: democracy, economy, social state and resources.

Similar to previous activist fora, discussions during the summer school were opened with the question on what is Left and how to think and act Left, providing an overview of the political and activist left in Croatia and the region of southeast Europe.

In Rijeka, each of the clusters was given a theoretical background while discussing topics such as truth in politics, and how social movements are formed around certain issues of social justice, a fair and equitable distribution of resources, the use of public spaces, labor relations, environmental protection and other far reaching topics. Participants gave different insights of their respective contexts, while trying to cross-reference the possible overlapping issues in the different countries of the region.

Once again our partners from European Alternatives contributed with an episode of their Talk Real series which can be found here.

The #DL18 process and activist fora will continue over the remainder of this and well into next year.