The Progressive International’s Summit opens today (Thursday), beginning four days of public and private speeches, panel discussions, debates and deliberations. The PI has called its second Summit since founding in May 2020 The Summit at the End of the World. In a keynote speech today, PI Council member Jeremy Corbyn is set to explain that the Summit will “take stock of this dying world, and to build the new one that will replace it — brimming with life, bound by love, powered by popular sovereignty.”
Spread over four days, the Summit agenda includes:
- Keynote speeches from Indian journalist Rana Ayyub, Cuban medical activist and daughter of Che Aleida Guevara, member of PI’s Council and UK Parliament and former leader of UK Labour Jeremy Corbyn, and International Relations Secretary of the CUT Brasil, the largest trade union federation in Latin America, Antonio de Lisboa;
- Panel discussions on Resistance Beyond Apocalypse? With Srećko Horvat, Ece Temelkuran and Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, on Can Democracy Defeat Fascism? With Harsh Mander, Tooba Syed and Dilar Dirik, on Can Imperialism Be Defeated? With Vijay Prashad, Vivi Camacho and Alicia Castro, and on How Can International Solidarity Help Brazil? With Dilma Rousseff and Jeremy Corbyn;
- 55 shorter speeches and interventions from leading political figures and movements around the world, including Rafael Correa, Christy Hoffman, Ahdaf Soueif, Zarah Sultana, Ernesto Samper, Baba Aye, Chantal Mouffe, Aruna Roy, Leïla Chaibi, Chuy García, Eli Gomez Alcorta, Rogelio Mayta and Ken Loach;
- Induction of six new member organisations including CUT Brasil, the largest trade union federation in Latin America with nearly eight million members across most sectors of Brazil’s economy, Partido Libre, the party that defeated the coup regime, restored democracy to Honduras, and brought its first woman president, Xiomara Castro to power in elections last year, and the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), a Bangladeshi union representing garment workers;
- Induction of eight new members to the Council: Silvia Federici, Guilherme Boulos, Walden Bello, Anyang’ Nyong’o, Milena Ochoa, Antonio Lisboa , Zitto Kabwe Ruyagwa, and Aya Chebbi;
- Deliberative meetings for the PI’s member organisations;
- A full session of the PI’s Council;
- A press conference organised by PI members MeRA25 and DiEM25 with PI Council members Yanis Varoufakis, Ece Temelkuran and Jeremy Corbyn to announce their Athens declaration on peace and non-alignment.
In his keynote address opening the Summit at the End of the World, Jeremy Corbyn is expected to say:
“The end of the world is already here — it is just unevenly distributed.The image of apocalypse — bombs and raids, oil spills and wildfires, disease and contagion — is reality for peoples across the planet.
“The periphery is the future, not the past. We were told that developed countries give the developing an image of their future. But the periphery sits at the vanguard of history — where the crises of capital hit hardest, the consequences of climate collapse arrive quickest, and the call to resist them rings loudest.
“The Summit is a site of construction. We convene the second Summit of the Progressive International to take stock of this dying world, and to build the new one that will replace it — brimming with life, bound by love, powered by popular sovereignty.
“How do we do that? First, we unite Progressive forces on the need to come together across borders and across issues to mobilise and organise to confront the crises of capital, climate and empire.
“That means the task facing each and every one of us is two fold. We strengthen workers and rural workers in their struggles against exploitation, people and communities in their fights for dignity and progressive forces to mobilise state power. And we bring them all together into powerful peoples’ alliances with the capacity to remake the world.
“Our movements must make life better for most people with: secure livelihoods, housing, healthcare, more time to spend with friends and loved ones, power over their own lives and a clean, safe and sustainable environment.
“If we do that, we will breed hope over despair. And we will give life to a new world out of the ashes of this one.”
Junputh is a member of PI Wire. For more information please contact James Schneider via james.schneider@progressive.international.
