Our Vision
European Alternatives is a citizen-powered transnational grassroots organization imagining, demanding, and enacting democracy, equality, and culture beyond the nation state. Operating from our local hubs in Berlin, Paris and Palermo, we are dedicated to the democratic and solidary transformation of our political institutions, our economic system, and our civil societies that many people in Europe and around the world are striving for.
Otherwise, we will not be able to truly understand and address the most urgent political, cultural, and social issues that Europe is facing in our time: the pandemic and the climate crisis, human rights violations at the European borders, socio-economic inequalities, democratic deficits, new wars and global conflicts, as well as the emergence of right-wing forces leading to violence and a backlash on fundamental rights of all marginalized communities.
European Alternatives was founded by young people from around the world in 2007 in London on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. Since then, as a transnational team together with our progressive community of transnationalists from activism, academia, and the arts, we have acted in the belief that only when people have democratic control over their lives and futures do they feel safe and free to care for themselves and others as they would like to do.
Our Mission
European Alternatives' Berlin Hub is running the »School of Transnational Organizing«. A popular school where everyday people, social movement builders, trade union organizers, migrant workers, climate justice activists as well as marginalized communities meet to learn the tools and skills to master the lost art of organizing solidarity and together shape the landscape of what we think is possible.
We create brave spaces involving different people: allowing us to overcome the deep sense of powerlessness many of us share and enabling people "to turn the resources they have into the power they need to make the change they want" (Marshall Ganz). With a wide community of trainers, facilitators, and educators, we inspire, train, and support new popular pioneers, organizations, and movements to spread political hope, courage, and joy in their countries, cities, and communities.
Our offline and online educational programs and classes are free of charge and do not require prior academic knowledge or political experience. So everyone can become part of the next generation of organizers and movements caring for people and the planet – united across borders and struggles. Because only when people see more and more people acting collectively and building capacity for a common future can we keep believing in democracy and solidarity.
Our Values & Principles
Both externally in collaboration with partners, collaborators, participants, and funders, and internally as a team and with our community, we are guided by the values that "everyday people have the power to make progress." This guiding values are also reflected in our 10 principles:
1. We are grassroots as it has always been the movements on the ground who made better worlds possible when everyday people organized where we live, work, and care for each other.
2. We think popular because we take a side and do not want to promote any kind of disempowering elitist styles, exclusionary jargon, and ideological clichés so formal education, theoretical expertise, and activist engagement are met by lived experience and popular knowledge.
3. We see the intersectional dimensions of the struggles against racial, gender, and class discrimination, exploitation, and violence we citizens, workers, and communities face – because single-issue lives do not exist.
4. We create brave spaces for all people involved to not be afraid of our differences so we feel safe and free to speak up, emotionally engage, and relate with each other – and make diversity and inclusion more than just empty slogans.
5. We trigger emancipatory processes which allow all of us to become different, to carry hope for a better future, and to move each other to action.
6. We believe in egalitarian political environments and educational arrangements where the people involved meet on the basis of shared values and interests to fight for equal rights for all.
7. We understand democratic ownership, responsibility, and accountability as key not only for the educational and political work we do, but also as the foundation for the lives, workplaces, and societies we strive for.
8. We trust in solidary relationships which allow people to build trust and relationships leading to mutual aid and communities of passion, courage, hope, joy, and generosity willing to share resources, skills, and tools together.
9. We act on a transnational scale as we do not only understand the crises of our time to affect all people on the planet, but also the unequal struggles to be more rewarding, resilient, and effective when we unite across borders with people inside and outside Europe.
10. We foster transformative change on the individual, relational, communal structural, and systemic level as our collective efforts should not just be focused on merely symbolic democratic participation but also confronting the inequality of powers.