WASHINGTON, DC — The First Ecosocialist International Convocation was held from October 31 to November 3, 2017 in the state of Yaracuay, Venezuela, where mainly people of African descent live. The Convocation sought to undertake the collective construction of a program for the salvation of Mother Earth.
Of the roughly 100 delegates to this Convocation, the indigenous community of the Amazon was strongly represented, joined by a representative of the Lakota tribe of North Dakota. Other participants included a representative of the Kurdish people, along with delegates from Argentina, Bolivia, Tanzania, Kenya, Indonesia, and Switzerland.
The Convocation recognized that this Convocation was only a first step, looking forward to bringing in strong representation from Africa, China, India, Japan, Vietnam, other countries of Asia, and Europe. U.S. groups represented included Cooperation Jackson, the Labor Community Strategy Center (LCSC), and a new black arts movement in Brooklyn. Organizers of this Convocation included Quincy Saul of Ecosocialist Horizons.
Participants joined five working groups to consider goals focused on the short-term (the time of struggle), medium-term (the time of construction) and long-term (the time of utopia).
I joined our FIRE group, working along with delegates from indigenous communities as well as Manuel Criollo, the Director of Organizing of LCSC, and Kali Akuno, Co-Director of Cooperation Jackson, joined by Professor Julio Escalona, an elected member of the Constituent Assembly. Our group focused on strategies and actions to reclaim our economies of mutual aid, our ecologically and social appropriate and appropriable technologies, and our sources of renewable energy.
The other groups considered strategies and actions “to reclaim control of our cultures, models of civilization, and ancestral cosmovisions” (AETHER), “to reclaim the management of our liberating education and communication, for the defense of peace, rights, and living the good life (AIR), “to reclaim the management of our water and other common goods” (WATER), and “to reclaim management of our food and health” (EARTH).
As an example of short-term actions, the Convocation committed to launching campaigns of information and concrete action all over the world against fracking and nuclear war, as they endanger Mother Earth, the human species and all life.
Mid-term, the objectives included expanding solidarity exchanges/cooperatives promoting a transition to an ecosocialist economy. The Convocation made a commitment to advance an international solar energy project, focused on collectively raising funds to finance three to four solar farms every year, between the organizations and communities who form part of the First Ecosocialist International.
Further, this Convocation proposed to the people and the revolutionary government of Venezuela that she should lead a transition to 100% renewable energy in Latin America, using its oil as a source of energy to create this alternative.
On November 4 in Caracas, Blanca Eekhout, minister of women and gender equality, welcomed the creation of this International, as a step forward in fulfilling Venezuela’s Plan of the Homeland, by taking it to the necessary next level: a Plan for the Planet.
You can find out more at Ecosocialist Horizons, (ecosocialisthorizons.com/) as well as from Quincy Saul’s article, (telesurtv.net/english/opinion/From-the-Plan-of-the-Homeland-to-a-Plan-for-the-Planet-20171208-0010.html).
David Schwartzman is Professor Emeritus, Department of Biology, Howard University, Washington DC 20059, dschwartzman@gmail.com
