NEW DELHI: Progressive International on Sunday concluded its first ever two-day summit which brought together the organisation’s council from around 70 organisations from over 40 countries to plan collective actions. The council’s members include activist Aruna Roy, Rafael Correa, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Yanis Varoufakis, Arundhati Roy, Wang Hui, Katrin Jakobsdottir, Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor, Achille Mbembe, Carola Rackete, John McDonnell, Vijay Prashad, Vanessa Nakate, Alicia Castro.
Speaking at a virtual press conference after the summit, Roy said that discussions in the summit revolved around ecological, democratic and authoritarian regimes. “Democratically elected governments go authoritarian and alienate people by centralising power. There is xenophobia and hate in large amounts and the governments come out with false arguments and information to promote hate. Hence, there is a need for a global alliance to stand with the hungry, poor and marginalized people of the world,” she said.
The summit, according to Roy, also discussed how there is shrinking space for freedom of expression and protest and also how many peaceful dissenters are in jail. “We must rally around political prisoners. We at Progressive International have a commitment to support political prisoners. Mexican actor and activist Gael Garcia Bernal said, “This experiment invites us to eradicate the sense of non-connection by authoritarian regimes. Such regimes are using the pandemic as an excuse to close the doors and hence we need to talk about it globally,” he said.
Srecko Horvat, renowned Croatian philosopher said that the world today is faced with the three horsemen of apocalypse. The three Es - expansion, exploitation and extraction, Horvat said, is what we face today. “The expansion of capitalism, the exploitation of indigenous people, women and people of colour, and the extraction of value from natural resources is leading us to the E - extinction. Progressive International is to unite and mobilise resources against this on a planetary scale.
Like how capitalism and fascism is international, we need to be trans-national as well,” he said. Human rights activist from Guatemala Renata Avlia said, “People have done it in the past but we are doing it at a time when the youth feels that there is no future for them. We hope to give them a possibility of a utopia while not hiding the problems,” she said and added that the next summit is likely to be held in Argentina.