External Actions
This month:
DiEM25 and the Progressive International (PI) expressed solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn; interpreting the decision of the current Labour Party leadership to suspend Jeremy Corbyn as a cynical attempt to purge the Labour Party of any force capable of turning the Labour Party, as Jeremy did between 2015 and 2019, into a serious threat to the oligarchy’s hold over power
On 18 October, the PI’s electoral delegation criss-crossed the cities of La Paz and El Alto to observe Bolivia’s democratic process and witnessed the victory of Luis Arce!
The Coordinating Collective of DiEM25 condemned the violent crackdown on widespread protests in Nigeria.
DiEM25’s Taskforce on Feminism, Diversity and Disabilities strongly condemned the recent court ruling on restricting abortions in Poland.
Yanis Varoufakis testified in a Spanish court case against UC Global on 27 October – a security agency that spied on Assange and his visitors, including Yanis, during his time at the Ecuadorian embassy. See his statement here.
DiEM25’s thematic group on Peace and International Policy commented on the new Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union – pushing for the EU to promote more sustainable, small-scale agriculture.
DiEM25 celebrated the banning of the Greek Golden Dawn party, but with the awareness that the seeds of fascism live on.
Our local group of DiEMers in South Holland called out the xenophobia present in policy towards the housing crisis in the Netherlands.
DiEMers in Belgium continue to demonstrate for Julian Assange’s release every first Monday of the month!
DiEM25 activists part of Luxembourg local group protested as part of a coalition for the right to housing in the Grand Duchy.
Internal Actions
The Coordinating Collective started discussing DiEM25’s plan forward for the next 5 years, by looking back on our successes and failures. Watch our recorded CC call here and tell us your opinion!
Monthly coordination calls are being organised by the CC with members from all corners of Europe! Here is the schedule for the calls (please keep the days in mind, as these calls will recur on the same day every month, using the same link):
Italy: Zoom on first Monday of the month
Spain: Zoom on first Tuesday of the month
Germany: Zoom on first Friday of the month
France: Zoom on second Monday of the month
UK (+Ireland): Zoom on second Tuesday of the month
Greece (+Cyprus): Zoom on second Friday of the month
Belgium (+ Netherlands and Luxembourg): Zoom on third Monday of the month
Portugal: Zoom on third Tuesday of the month
Austria, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Switzerland (even months) OR Scandinavia and Baltic States (odd months): Zoom on the third Friday of the month
Turkey: Zoom on fourth Monday of the month
Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria Zoom on fourth Tuesday of the month
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia: Zoom on fourth Friday of the month
The option to reform the NCs is being presented to the membership. The first part is in the form of an all member vote (AMV). It includes a proposal for a list of prerequisites, to ensure that all elected NCs will be formed in conditions that will be favourable to the tasks they will be asked to undertake. In this forum thread you can find the AMV text and space to discuss the text, before the vote will be started in about one week from now. The other part is a reconfiguration of the internal workings of NCs: number of members elected, roles, how they are integrated in the greater DiEM25 ecosystem, priorities etc. This is a conversation that we invite you all, due to your extensive experience, to contribute to here. In the next few weeks, we will work at developing a new AMV, renewing the role and structure of NCs, taking into consideration the feedback we will receive in this thread.
Continuing to build on our citizen engagement campaign that sets out to build national programmes in collaboration with Europeans for DiEM25! The work for the questionnaires of 11 countries nearing the final stage. Here you can find more information on the current status of the project, while in case you are interested in volunteering for it, please register your interest here. Finally, if you are from, or live, in one of the following countries, please consider filling out this form to help us develop a questionnaire for it: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey.
DiEMers that played, and continue to play, central roles in the establishment and development of the PI on behalf of our movement have been updating DiEM25 members in a webinar. You find a recording of the video linked here.
We developed “Election participation guidelines”. Here, you can find the guidelines.
We updated our volunteer page. And our volunteers translated the newly designed page into German, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Czech and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian!
On the ground: new DiEM25 Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs) were founded in the Suisse Romande area in Switzerland, as well as in Corinth in Greece and in Bucharest in Romania! Find the latest DSC news here!
This Month in DiEM25: November!
We will continue developing our citizen engagement campaign that aims to reach out to our grassroots members in line with our working plan. If you have already registered to be a volunteer for the project to develop national programmes for DiEM25, get ready — we will contact you soon!
Campaign Accelerator: Soon to be presented, a more systematic and empowering approach for targeted, local campaigning! The history of activism shows that the most famous examples of change were not at all planned actions. Rosa Parks probably didn’t wake up in the morning of December 1, 1955, thinking she would become a symbol of courage and civil disobedience by the end of the day. The protests her actions sparked, ended up improving people’s lives. We cannot script success stories, but we can empower courageous and constructively disobedient people, on their path to a potential success story… and that is what this mission will be about. More info soon.
On 5 November at 21:00 CET, the Rent-volution! Campaign will hold a Pan-European call on a housing campaign we’ve been working on for the past six months. This is an urgent matter due to the second wave of lockdowns spreading throughout Europe, and the continued precarious nature of many peoples’ work. Register here.
On 11 November at 20:00 CET, a francophone presentation on the Green New Deal for Europe will take place. Register and find out more here!
You can also look forward to several events! Yanis Varoufakis meets Owen Jones on 7 November at 19:30 CET. Register here.
And in December, The 2020 Holberg Debate: “Is Global Stability A Pipe Dream?” — Yanis Varoufakis vs John Bolton 5 December at 15:00 CET.
Stay tuned and keep an eye on the announcements of the new series of Movement Coordination Calls! If you have joined DiEM25 in the last three months you can expect an invitation for the teleconference where we will get to know each other and the way DiEM25 operates.
If you wish to send a point to be included in the next newsletter, or want to help to draft it, please contact us at axelle.van.wynsberghe@diem25.org.
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