Paper short abstract:

As conveners we will support the roundtable to frame the work, ongoing partnership development, and overall learnings of the Translocal Learning Network as we address social, economic, and environmental crises, build mutual solidarity and non-hierarchal learning.

Paper long abstract:

In an effort to encourage connection and mutual learning between local movements, the Translocal Learning Network (TLN) serves as an effective social justice framework that attempts to build and maintain local to local (i.e. translocal) non-hierarchical connections between movements. The overall goal of this research partnership is to catalyze and animate translocal learning as a means to build capacity among localized movements in their struggles for a climate just and anti-capitalist future, and in so doing trace the contours of a theory of translocal learning – learning based on local to local learning as opposed to top down learning that mimics the very problematic of global dominance these movements contest. Key to this process is an insistence that movements and groups rooted in local social change efforts are crucial authors and actors of a climate just and anti-capitalist future. The members of the TLN address ongoing and emergent injustices to claim rights, assert agency, and demand representation and the redistribution of resources for marginalized communities in South Africa, Ghana, Guatemala and Canada. Creating shared spaces for connection, support, and learning through the ongoing struggles of each social movement has provided continuous moments of solidarity and opportunities for reimagining being in the world. This roundtable gathers partners to share experiences that illustrate these struggles, learnings, and successes and as a chair I will help to frame the work, ongoing partnership development, and overall learnings from this.