 So thank you, Miriam. And thank you all for joining us today. And I'll just briefly introduce the series that is brought to you by Global Tapestry of Alternatives and Global Dialogue for Systemic Change, Dialogue on Alternatives and the Times of Global Crisis. So very similar to the working group, the emergence of global tapestry of alternatives lies in recognizing that we are currently dealing with multiple forms of global crisis, aging from biodiversity loss, climate change, excessive pollution, resulting in very severe inequalities and deprivations, also resulting in many conflicts and rise of authoritarianism, and this increased and continued project of colonization and homogenization, which is of course resulting in a lot of personal crisis of alienation and depression, meaning lessness in lives. And with the COVID pandemic, which is very closely linked to these other global crisis, we see these crisis even more starkly and people who have been blinded to look at the repercussions of these crisis can see it more clearly. But these crisis are being responded to in a form of resistance, like what is happening currently in India with farmers resisting against state policies, but also in other parts of the world which we saw with Black Lives Matter and what's happening in Latin America. And basically these all movements in many ways articulating different ways of being, knowing, working and dreaming, not just through their resistance but also through their constructive alternatives, which we see across the world, emerging in forms of various cosmologies, issues and philosophies of how we can organize ourselves in different ways and different social lives. So, the global tapestry of alternatives is not a project, it's not an organization, it's a process, which is, which intense to create the spaces of collaboration and exchange among these radical alternatives across the world, creating a space to offer active solidarity whenever they're threatened. Importantly creating a visibility to alternatives, which we don't really come to know about, we don't see them often, we don't get to know about them and hence creating these spaces of dialogue as well, supporting and inspiring on other alternative initiatives, and creating a critical mass for a macro chain, something that concerns all of us, of how do we really bring about this macro change, and hence creating that group of, or collectives of people to actually bring that about, and and stimulating collective visions of just world, through dialogue, through more collaboration, can we actually get together in collective envisioning, and you can read more about the global tapestry and what we're doing on this website, and we have been organizing these webinars to actually bring a lot of these visions together, which started with our colleagues from South Africa sharing about potential for just transitions and their work during COVID pandemic. Two new agriculture movement that's emerging in Bangladesh towards common future from Europe, how indigenous communities in Mexico are responding to COVID pandemic from Freud rebellion resistance and alternatives emerging from that responses of Kurdish women's movement. And what are the technological visions that are emerging from the Americas, community from Peru potato park defending their past envisioning the future and how they're responding to the crisis, very interesting interventions from, from Europe on well being and about the Europe and also for, and what can be the cross learnings from other parts of the world. We had a very interesting dialogue from Finland about sharing their 10, 10,000 years old of inter fisheries, and how the responses from the polar north matter to what happens in the global south. We were joined by women farmers and collectors from India of how they responded to the COVID pandemic. And what are the alternative models that they are, they're imagining and creating in these times. And the last one was of self determination and coping with COVID pandemic from our colleagues from Bolivia. And the latest one are 14 dialogue which is being organized with global working group beyond development Rosa Luxemburg Brussels office and global tapestry of alternatives. And you're really looking forward to this very exciting dialogue on urban transformations around the world. And to just introduce this dialogue I would invite Miriam and Mabruka to take it forward. Thank you. Thank you very much Trishti and thank you to all the GTA team for co organizing this and also of course to the Rosa Luxemburg Brussels team. We are also very happy to be co working with you. And I just posted in the public chat, the website of the world global working group for those who would like to know more about it. And now I would like to introduce my co moderator. Today, my broken barric. She is also co editor of the book we will be talking about and part of the facilitation team of our working group. She lives in Indonesia where she was part of the constituent assembly after the 2011 revolution. And she currently lives in the USA where she studies a PhD in sociology at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst. So, I now hand over to my broker who will introduce her work to you on the book. Thank you so much Miriam and thank you Trishti. It's a massive honor to work with Global Tapestry of an Alternative Rosa Luxemburg Brussels office to weave our energy and built synergy and share knowledge and create knowledge. And this reminds me of a person a friend of mine, he's a geographer and he does documentary happy buy it from from Tunis. We brought his documentary seeds of dignity, I have to say his documentary kind of gave me a little bit of inspiration for the, the title of this book, cities of dignity. And he said, you know, solidarity, it's about sharing struggles, and from sharing struggles, we can acknowledge us and know each other. So I think like what the global tapestry is doing and the global working group beyond developments doing is to give voice to give a platform for all these extraordinary transformative processes that are happening right now. And, and just to connect and just to a knowledge, we might not change the world but we know that some parts of people are doing extraordinary work during the day to day life. So it's a massive honor. Thank you. First, I want to talk about the book, but first I want to thank my co editor, because this was a massive work with. I think it's involved about 32 people from all different countries with all the case studies so I'd like to, a special thank to your ghost vela gricas to Raphael hotman and to Anna Rodriguez who is with us today. And, you know, I wanted to briefly explain how this book came, you know, and as a global working group beyond development this space where we're trying to talk about systemic transformation. We realized that we were easily gravitating around rural places. And every time we're thinking about transformation, it was easier to just think about rural places and we wonder why. Some of us thought, well, maybe because rural places are far from economic and political center where agendas of domination are brewed and centers of cities, or maybe because rural areas do have strong concepts, like food sovereignty, for example, or land. The land is so essential and caring for land, which is more possible in a rural place might be a way to create more transformation. So we decided that we need to dig a little further and investigate on urban area, because urban transformation is not just about urban gardens, right. So as we investigated, we got in touch with amazing, you know, activists and popular educator and people doing amazing work from all around the world. And we put this book together. So let me tell you very briefly what the book is about. So cities of dignity alternative urban alternatives around the world. It begins with an analysis of the political economy of the urban commons, which was drafted by Mauro Castro and Mark Marty Costa. Chapter two is a survey of all the existing transnational initiative and trans solidarity platforms in support of local urban transformation. And this was drafted by Marianne Manhattan and Maria Cristina Alvarez, who are here with us and will present the findings. The book then presents seven case studies of such urban transformation towards more democratic sustainable socially equitable and anti patriarchal relation from below in a series of case studies. The first case studies is the Sun Roquette Market of Quito, Ecuador. And that's a fascinating case that explains how markets are more just places of exchange of commodification or commodify goods. But there are place of community building and strategy for transformation. And this was written by Anna Rodriguez, who is with us today, and Patrick Allenstein. The next chapter is the urban resistance of the Isadora community in Belo Horizonte in Brazil, which was written by Isabella. And today we have Juliana, who is going to comment on this kind of transformation and urban resistance in Brazil, in light of what you all heard about this police killing that is happening right now. The fifth chapter is a learning journey about the US, and it's not what you would expect. It's about a travel of a North African person, me, and an amazing person who just transitioned. And she, and they became an ancestor. Two months ago, Elendria Williams. This was an amazing chapter because we travel together in Mississippi, in Birmingham, and in Detroit to meet her community and to see what they're doing. We were honored to talk and meet with people from the Smithfield Dynamite Hill Land Trust, the Automative Freak Clinic, the Cooperation Jackson, the Cass Corridor Commons, the Box Center in Detroit, the Detown Farm. And, and I just wanted to say a word about Elendria that she was she was an incredible person grounded in reality. She impersonated black feminist thoughts, and she challenged my thinking about what knowledge is. And she taught me that knowledge is produced every day. It doesn't have to be written. And every day life people are doing some small act of resistance. So I think that this book carry her spirit and her wisdom. And I just want to honor her memory. And, and for this chapter, I invited someone from her community in Detroit and Bryce Detroit and artists and activists in Afrofuturism and fighting against gentrification is going to talk about his amazing work in Detroit. The next chapter is, we have two chapters about slum dwellers. One is about the community, the slums of Makoko and Mariko in Lagos, Nigeria, which is written by Asume Isaac Osweka, who is going to be with us today, and Obidun Arumu. We do have a chapter on a communitarian currency experimentation written by Marion Kovey and Ruth Mwangi, which is happening in Kenya. Chapter, the chapter seven, I believe, is this extraordinary story that is happening in war torn Syria. Ansar Jazim tells us about the 15th Garden Food Sovereignty Network, which despite the food siege, and despite the many imperialist interventions in Syria, people were able to build food sovereignty and solidarity to feed people and this was this is incredible case, I urge everybody to read. And last but not least is the case of the self-determination and self-organization of the slum dweller of Borsh, India, and we have today Asim Mishra and Sandeep Vermani who will tell us about this extraordinary transformation. The last chapter is a collective reflection. And we took all of these cases as in all the participants of the global working group. We're thinking about this case but not to try to find the strategy that will work for everybody, but some strategies or some lessons or some issues that we find out. And so these you can find them in that last chapter, collective reflection. You can download the book for free, and we will put this link on the chat. And now, we will have in order our presentator, we will start with Marianne Manahan and Alvarez. Then we will have the case of, I believe, Asim Mishra and Sandeep Vermani from India. The third presentation will be Bryce Detroit, and the fourth will be Asume Osweka from Nigeria. Let me now present you the next presenter. Marianne Manahan, she is a feminist activist researcher and academic assistant and a PhD student in the Department of Conflict and Development Studies at Gantt University in Belgium. Prior to her post at the department, she was she has worked in various social movement and civil society group on different national international campaigns and initiative that demand equity, environmental, gender and social justice. Just as an alternative in the last 17 years, outside of academia, she was involved in women's and peasant movement in the Philippines. She is a co-facilitator of the Beyond Development Working Group, and she works on diverse platform of activism. And she holds an undergraduate degree in sociology, University of the Philippines, and a master degree in globalization and development from these two developments, police policy management at the University of Antwerp. And her co-author, Maria Christine Alvarez, she's a PhD student at the Barthel Development Planning Unit and the University of College London. She's the recipient of the 2018 Anniversary Doctoral Scholarship Award, and she won a thesis award of the American Association of Geographer. Her PhD research examines how a resilient Metro Manila is being built in the aftermath of the 2009 flood disaster and she has published theoretical and empirical articles in the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and Radical Housing Journal. Without further ado, I invite the two speakers to present their case. Thank you very much, Mabruca. Our intervention will have two parts. First, I will share about the importance of transnational solidarity and learning platforms for radical urban transformation. While my co-author team will talk about what we mean by radical urban transformation, especially in the light road appeals to retrofit urban spaces. So we want to highlight that, and we've written that in our book chapter, that there is a rise in expansion of transnational solidarity and learning platforms that are deeply rooted in popular struggles for the right to the city. So around housing rights, right to water, energy democracy, food provisioning and mobility, right to education and other essential services. The right to the city for us is a political ideal and slogan that centers on the power of collective action to simultaneously transform urban spaces, urban life, urban citizens and even urban-rural relationship. So these transnational solidarity platforms, and you see in one of the slides, I will come to that in a bit, are locally embedded, but internationally network initiatives that share a common political project of resisting the impacts of neoliberal urbanism, such as massive dispossession and displacement of communities and peoples, as well as privatization of communal spaces on one hand, and on the other, they share an impetus and fundamental desire to envisage and create spaces in cities where people live in dignity and harmony with their nature. So one concrete example that is already shown in your slide is the Transformative Cities Atlas of Utopia Initiative, led by Transnational Institute, HIC, RIPES, Global Coalition for the Right to the City, Ecolists and Friends of the Earth International, in which they show how cities can be sites of radical urban transformative practices, as well as an initiative that builds and aims to build an Atlas of real utopias, you know, and make them make these experiences viral, as well as share learnings that come from implementing and building these experiments. A common case is the reminicipalization of privatized water and energy systems, in which citizens, people's organizations, or public authorities have taken over and claimed back their water and energy systems in a radically democratic way. While these reminicipalization struggles are waged at the national or local context, they have an important internationalist dimension that is, many of them have one connected and learned from each other, much as what we're doing right now, especially how transnational private companies work around the world, what strategies have worked, what strategies have not, and secondly, they have exchanged ideas and lessons in reclaiming and rebuilding public services that are anchored on principles of radical democracy, direct democracy, principles around solidarity, equity and even common. So for example, the Jakarta reminicipalization that is being waged in the last 10 years has learned a lot from experiences in the Cochabamba water wards in 2000 in Latin America, as well as the takeover of Udipari that took over the French water transnational ownership of the water system in 2010. Mabruka, can you go on to the third slide, please? So the graphic that I will show you shows the mapping, the amazing mapping that was done by Transnational Institute and its many partners, which shows that around 1408 reminicipalization of public services were more than 2400 cities in 58 countries have brought public services back under public and community control since 2000. So it's not merely a trend, but actually a counter movement of radical urban transformations and against privatization. So they involve well-focused, politically engaged approaches which aim to build horizontal and vertical alliances as well as forge translocal and transnational solidarity to reclaim space and civic participation and even radicalized participation or the very concept and practice of participation. Over to you, Tin. Yes. So in closing, we just wish to emphasize our key point, which is not only underpin the cases of urban transformation discussed throughout the book, but also resonates more loudly in the wake of broad appeals in recent months to retrofit or redesign cities. And the takeaway is urban transformation is enabled by a radical urban politics centered on upholding human dignity. It is the people who drive and lead urban transformation, and by people, we mean urban citizens. And by urban citizens, we pertain not simply to a registered population, but importantly to marginalized and impoverished groups of people who reside in cities and may hold the status of a legitimate citizen, but are nonetheless denied the right to thrive. Urban transformation is not about retrofitting a space, redesigning landscapes or reconfiguring the city. It is never simply about building more parks, more bike lanes, or more recreational spaces. Without fundamental changes to access rights and political participation, design-led and infrastructure-focused interventions risk perpetuating and even creating more inequalities. Cities of dignity are neither brought to life by superstar architects nor designed by urban planners. Rather, they are created by practicing a radical urban politics that is centered on human dignity and grounded in principles of emancipatory social justice. That is to say, urban transformation is in the hands of the people. You put urban citizens in the driver's seat. Concretely, this means you let people determine the agenda. You don't just aim for inclusivity or participation. You let people set the terms of participation. And I will push this further by saying that you don't just radicalize participation, but perhaps importantly, foster what anthropologist James Hosten calls insurgent citizenship, which is capable of building a corresponding insurgent urbanism. I think these are the ideas that by the cases we discussed in our chapter and also those presented in other chapters. And I guess I will stop there and let that idea simmer. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your presentation. I have to say this is a great transition, Tim, because one such insurgent citizenship and transformation in the hand of people happened in Borsh, India. And we have with us Sandeep Virmani, who is based in Western India, and he has worked in the field of housing planning infrastructure. He has used two important methodology in his work based on participatory solution building by combining the vigor of modern science and established community knowledge. And second, every solution, he thinks that every solution should help reduce emission and increase bio indicator of ecosystem. He has worked in the Urnarshala Foundation, which has built thousands of home reviving and modernizing technique of building with earth, wood, stone and bamboo. And he has worked on a process called Sanjivan, which has helped the government recognize the science of pastoral animal husbandry toward a sustainable economic production system that increased the biodiversity of grassland, torrent forest and mangrove ecosystem. We have with us also Asim Mishra, this was the alarm, who is a radical urban planner, and he works for the program Homes in the City. As a program director, as a matter of fact, home in the city is an innovative program coordinated by five civil society organization having similar philosophy, working on diverse theme in the city of Borsh. And it's a, it's working with issue based collective citizens and several other organization. We are collectively developing Borsh to be a city where citizens, particularly the urban poor, improve their social economic condition and access basic service through political participation and local governance. Prior to joining this program, Asim has worked in various civil society organization, governmental departments and academic institution, and take it away. Thank you. Am I audible. Yes, you are. Could you share your screen. Yeah, my host will have to allow my video to come on. Okay. Asim in the meantime, can I ask you to put the presentation on please. Yes. Now somehow my video is not coming on, but I can start the presentation. If that is all right. I can start by thanking my broker you and Merriam for giving us this great opportunity to one be part of this book, and now to be part of this wonderful seminar that you have organized this webinar that you have organized. I also need to actually thank Ashish and Srishti for actually recommending our case to both of you so that we could become part of this entire process over the last one year, and we really thoroughly enjoyed working with all of you. I will start by talking to you about the city of which what I see in the next slide. City, the city of which is a small city, we are about 250,000 people in this city on the border of of of India and Pakistan. This is an arid area, and but it's a very old city it was a capital of a kingdom 500 years ago. But over the last few years, especially over the last two decades after we had a big earthquake here. Our city has grown from just being six square kilometers to being 56 square kilometers now. And 30% of the small city actually live in informal settlements, mostly centered around the north of the city. And this has become a kind of a north south divide for the city, where all the municipal resources tend to go to the south, while the north is always facing deprivation kind of a reverse situation globally I guess the and these 30% are the people who obviously like in every other city provide the services to the rest of the city. Yeah, next. So, to, you know, our cities are such complex creatures, and to try and see how we can have an equally complex response to this, we got five different organizations to come together. With very different skills. We also set up many CBOs community organizations in this entire process. And the objective was that we must empower the vulnerable communities strengthen people's democracies. And through decentralization of municipal municipal powers get women in the driving seat, because they are so good at getting getting consensus built amongst people. And of course, look at ecological justice, which is really held by a lot of these communities that have come from rural areas into our cities and they know how to do it much better than we have done in our cities. So, democratic decentralization equity and ecological interventions is the, the three pillars on which we have tried to build this entire program. So as I said we have five different organizations one working on water management and other working on urban governance. We have a fourth working on biodiversity conservation, a fourth working on gender equity and justice, and the, another working on on urban issues and urban building and infrastructure. So the five organizations came together. And over the last decade or so, we have been able to create several people's organizations. So for example, Saki Sangini is a collective of over 3000 women living in the slums. This is really the bedrock of a lot of the work that is happening in the in this program. We also have an organization of assorted people from across the city, who are working on the issue of water management will discuss that in a short while for with you. We also have actually, you know, we have sung at a collective of people who hold animals and who provide milk and needs to the city. And they are living in our slums, they provide almost 40% of our food to the city, but are totally unrecognized. We also have a migrant workers association street vendors association and sex workers association. And the whole thing is coming together in a world, you know the city is divided into 11 wards, and they are legal bodies they are the real bodies that are expected to actually do their planning and run the programs in the municipal organizations are supposed to provide them the funds to be able to take control of their own situation. And these, see we can you go back a little one slide back yeah. And so, all of us, the organizations the CBOs and the NGOs are basically helping the wards and their committees become more powerful. We actually began with a situation where what they were no ward committees, and over the last few years we've been able to make sure that this gets set up. And now we're trying to see that the powers are actually decentralized from the state and the municipal corporations to these ward committees. We have a unique way of functioning what we have done is we provide fellowships, we provide fellowships to individuals within organizations or even public fellows who have an idea who want to see how this can be converted into a pilot, and be demonstrated in the city, which works with the broad aims that we laid out in the beginning of our program. Yeah, next. So this is just to give you an idea of the different types of fellowships that are being that are being implemented there are a huge diversity of people working on very diverse subjects. The ones highlighted in yellow is some is are some of the three case studies that we will give, we will present to you so that you get an idea of how we function on any particular subject that is taken up. So, yeah, so I'll ask a seam now to give you an idea of these three case studies. Thank you. I see me or Mike is off. So now we will share absolute transformative demonstration that we are able to demonstrate here over last one decade. So water is a precious resource in areas like food, and therefore our ancestors has developed food on a hundred square kilometer equipment, which was recharged through a complex system for large lakes, along with over 70 pounds were developed with three rivulets connected with divergent channels and equity to fill these lakes in order to fulfill the water requirement of the city. The system was functional till 60, but as deep bore wells and pipelines laid down to transport water from 1000 kilometers away. This system was ignored. And this centralized water system further marginalized this poor area with unequal distribution of water as per a city water enough water from the rainfall and it can fulfill the required water requirements if the old system is restored and recharge facilities we developed 70% of the channels and systems have been repaired by the program. This is a colony which got flooded during monsoon as drainage. Projecto durante el monzón y pudimos mejorarlo. Water recharged pits in the. Aquí podemos ver las distintas imágenes para eliminar improved the water quality. But also improved water quality as well as quantity by recharging the equipment below the colony. This photograph is from a informal settlement water where water pump from a well to water tank and then distributed in the settlement and this entire system is managed by the community, the person standing in the first photograph is Mr. He is an HIC fellow and he works for water stressed area. The support technical support of a city and monetary support from HIC, which municipality and from community contributions, many deprived areas have been benefited due to his efforts. There are over 30 municipal schools have been installed the roof rain water harvesting systems and children from water stressed areas are known to fill their water bottles and then take back their hands for their parents. More than 40% of water comes from this repaired and recharge water equipment now. And these marginalized communities are managing their own water systems irrespective of municipality. Housing is another major issue for poor in our city about 30% of population lives in slum area without having adequate housing and basic services. A slum city plan of action has been prepared by the program for the city that shows everyone can be housed with ground plus one structures with sparing 30 hectare land in the city. And to demonstrate this approach of three slums having about 314 houses were selected to demonstrate in the first phase in the slums where SHG self-help groups were active and willing to take up this process. The lady in the first photograph is a community leader and she's also a member of Saki Sangini and she helped a lot to organize people engage people and ensure the process. These are some of the photographs so I seem perhaps could you wrap up so that we can hear we have and during the dialogue session. Okay. Go to the end now. I seem just show the pictures then we can go ahead. So these are some of the photographs of the redeveloped site. And we also work for the for the woman empowerment and. So you can go to the last slide. Can you conclude Sunday. Take it to the last slide. Yeah. So basically what we are while we have been able to, you know, show that it is possible to have decentralized ways of working. One of the major challenges we face is how to upscale, because in a right wing centralized corrupt polity, which is increasing over the years in the last few years. We have a challenge of how to scale up these ideas, which we are still trying to work with the only way we are trying to work with on that is to make sure that the people, the CBOs are powerful and are taking the help of the judiciary in making sure that their powers and their rights are given to them. Thank you. Thank you both of you. I'm sorry to cut it short. And I hope that we will be able to talk more during the question answer dialogue, especially because maybe people did not fully grasp how amazing this experiences because it was the people of who just decided enough, we're going to take over that city planning, we're going to do this, and they did it with, you know, with just the people organize self organizers and not waiting for the local government, and the challenge of scaling this transformation from the grassroots is something very interesting that we could address the next our next speaker is Bryce Detroit. He is an Afro futurist artist, activist, and a pioneer of entertainment justice as a cultural designer. He's an award national award winning music producer performer and creator. Through his practice Bryce Detroit demonstrated the power of using music entertainment arts and native legacy to design cultural infrastructure for preserving producing and promoting new diasporic African narratives. And cultural literacy and cooperation neighborhood based economy Bryce Detroit is the 2019 new museum ideas city fellows and the 2017 night art challenge award winner. A prominent community activists and advocates. Bryce Detroit grows intersectional self determined communities as a founding member of Oakland Avenue artists coalition co founder of Detroit Community wealth fund, director and center for community based enterprise and international delegate for the East Michigan environmental action Council. Bryce is going to tell us about his campaign, which is hood clothes to gentry fire which I have this sweater here, and please do check his website I will put it on the chat and his latest album, structured water. Take it away Bryce. Awesome. Boom, and there's a video I'm going to see if this screen share works. Is my screen being shared. It is yes. Okay, awesome. Okay, peace everyone. I am Bryce Detroit. This is called entertainment justice. Well, first off before going there. Let me put my timer on because have a tendency to speak long want to bring my ancestors into the space. First, I'm going to acknowledge my maternal grandmother Susan Sapo Chavis, I say my maternal grandfather, Alonzo Clemens Anderson, I say my paternal grandmother, Mildred will it be small. I say, and my paternal grandfather. Wilbert Franklin small senior. So my, my practice is called entertainment justice and approaching created this practice for myself 10 years ago, as a record producer songwriter performing artists. Extracting myself out of a corporate music space, corporate entertainment space, knowing that my skill sets existed in the realm of behavior science. Being responsible for creating content, producing content that effectively influences particular points of self identity, as well as influences for certain points of behavior modification, particularly the consumer. So extracted myself from that career track in 2009 to bring my skills to service for my people. In particular, looking at what is the way that entertainment art can intersect from a racial justice perspective can intersect with social justice, climate justice and economic justice. So these movements in a very concrete way. So, one way that supporting movements, particularly as it relates to place keeping and place making in my Detroit neighborhood, which is called the north end. One way that that's looked is have been doing programming for the last six, seven, well in my neighborhood for the last seven years for sure but throughout Detroit for the last 10 years. And this entertainment programming with the emphasis on using entertainment art to create opportunities. For entertainment art at the intersection of design and architecture as well to create opportunities for diasporic African people to investigate question a firm celebrate points, positive points of masterly rooted identity and lifestyle. So looking at that as a prerequisite for a person being able to be in their agency present in their own agency, and then self actualize to their heart's desires. I'm going to go back to this slide right here Detroit African. So created this phraseology for myself in 2012 as a decolonizing mechanism. And one thing that personally have acknowledged one of the things that makes it challenging for a diasporic African born in America to actually see themselves as the custodian of their built environment, the architect designer of their built environment. The determiner of their reality is a colonized point of self identity that exists within their imagination. It is a very common phenomenon where many diasporic African born in Detroit born in America. The image that we hold in our imagination of ourself is usually it starts off as a descendant of slavery. A human citizen who exists as a part of a global slave class that only has five to 600 years history that primarily start in America. A self image and identity that that shows themselves usually being on the short end of all of the proverbial sticks. The oppressed, the disadvantaged, starting from there and starting from that point of identity and that point of narratives, then it makes it challenging for many to actually get to a point in their life where they see themselves in their imagination as the champion as the successful being as the determiner of their reality as one who has perfect agency in how they self actualize so being very clear on that then doing programming that supports the self identity cultivating healthy, radiant points of self identity. And then it's from there that we can present new ideas through music and through architecture, new ideas that inspire new imaginations, and in these new imaginations, we can see ourselves in these affirmed ways of imagining ourself actually taking control of our built environment actually leading processes in our in our communities in our neighborhoods actually directing and guiding the course of our own life and manifestation of our own reality and putting that as a context, because this conversation about gentrification that I'm having through my new project called the project is called road work and the first installation in the road work series is hood closed to gentrifiers. And for me, this project was just recently launched in September, have a minute left launch in September. The point of it was for me to officially broadcast my own personal politic. I'm not effectively scrolling through my slides, but for me to project my own personal politics in my neighborhood, in particular, on the, in the places where my own land use strategies are being deployed like where my own neighborhood development work is happening. Put this sign there, so that the writing is on the wall, so to speak, as a point of neighborhood diplomacy, making it clear what are the codes and cultural standards that we have here. The hood closed to gentrifiers is also the second part of an affirmation. The hood is closed to gentrifiers because first, for the past 1015 years, there are people in my neighborhood including myself who have opened up new opportunities and avenues for self development, collective development, as well as bringing in our own resources to purchase underserved underutilized land and then develop it based on our own indigenous cultural context. So that's the full sentence. We have opened up new opportunities to develop our own places in our own neighborhoods based on our ancestrally rooted points of identity and lifestyle. Therefore, we are closed to conventional business as usual, which typically looks like outsiders coming in, inserting their imagination, invisibilizing and displacing culture and economy, inserting a white body architectural imagination on our scenario, and then constructing environments that do not serve us socially, culturally, politically or economically. My timer went off, so I'm aware that that was eight minutes. This is a very full conversation. I'm grateful for this space and look forward to more time during the discussion part. Thank you, Bryce, and we're so grateful to have you here and hear about your campaign. The next is Asume, who is going to tell us about what's going on in Nigeria, in Lagos, Nigeria. Asume coordinates the social action international and organization promoting resource democracy, climate justice and human rights in West Africa through research and monitoring popular education and advocacy and solidarity with communities, activists and scholars. Asume's research and advocacy focus on energy, oil and gas, climate change and conflict, trade and debt. Asume previously served as coordinator of all watch Africa, a network of organizations supporting communities impacted by the petroleum industry in the continent. Asume holds a doctorate in environmental studies from York University in Canada, where he has been a member of faculty and visiting scholar. Asume is also a participant of the global working group beyond development. To you, Asume. Thanks, comrades. I appreciate the opportunity to be part of this, this collective, and to have contributed together with my comrades, I remove to this volume. Our chapter focuses on Makoko in Lagos. Lagos is the commercial capital of Nigeria, the largest city in Africa. And my colleague who co-authored this chapter with me is actually more rooted in the community in Lagos and he has been, he has had an intimate relationship with what we would discuss in the chapter. He has been part of movement for housing rights. He has struggled with slum dwellers from the late 1980s and 1990s and he's still very much involved. He has worked together in the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria, continued to work together promoting popular alternatives, promoting Pan-Africanist understanding and anti-colonial education in Nigeria. And Makoko, the community that we talk about is described as a floating slum. And there are some people, particularly Western tourists and Western journalists have described it as the Venice of Africa. And such romanticization makes it attractive to tourists from Europe, especially who make sure to visit Makoko anytime they are in Lagos. However, the story of Makoko is more than that. It is a story of solidarity, story of struggles and stories of contested visions for social change and for urban transformation in Lagos. The story of Makoko speaks to the reality of marginalization and dispossession of the poor in urban planning. It is about a community which are the most impoverished people in Lagos who are making a claim to being a legitimate part of the city, a legitimate part of the population and the landscape of the city. Fundamentally, the story of Makoko shows how colonialism shaped and continued to shape urban development and how the character of former colonists like Nigeria remain fundamentally unchanged. So urban development in Nigeria from the colonial beginnings was part of the process of the plunder involving the addictions of indigenous communities to make way for the needs of corporations and the powerful elite. So what we will find with the story of Makoko, that the character of the state remains unchanged. Makoko is a story of radical transmission in practice, which is beauty and many imperfections. So I will see this story of the rural poor standing up to the state and insisting on the right to share the state. Makoko is an indigenous community, an efficient community that survived the creation of Lagos. Lagos was, as a city, was created by British colonialists that sought to build an administrative center and a port for their commerce, for their trade, and also for their colonial project. And in the process of doing that, many of the indigenous communities were evicted from their settlements and moved to the margins. Many of those people moved to areas like Makoko or Maroko, which were at the margins and these places were not actually part of the original city plan. But there they existed, doing their thing, mostly existed as fishermen, as the population of Lagos grew, particularly following independence, you know, so-called independence in Nite City. More people continued to flock into the city of Lagos, and those who, because of their economic status, because of their low income or unemployment, could not afford to rent a room in the, in part of the planned city, ended up in places like Maroko or Makoko. And what people did was to actually go dive into the water with a bare hand, with buckets, and reclaimed, dredged the land, reclaimed soil, and build on top of it. So it was a self-reclamation project, getting land to build on, and that continued for a while. But with more people moving into the areas, people now started to introduce a kind of architecture that was already common in the mangroves of the Niger Delta, you know, where people build houses on steels. And so the houses are above water, and that is why Makoko is referred to as the floating slum. And this continued into the 80s and the 90s. And while hundreds of thousands of people were subsisting and living their lives in Makoko, in Maroko, and other slum settlements, the coastal slum settlements, the states basically ignored them. There were no social amenities, state infrastructure did not touch the areas. The people had to provide everything for themselves. Many of these people, of course, didn't just exist in Makoko, some of them, the major occupation of the people in these areas is fishing. And so there was, there's a major fishing industry in the area, people involved in processing of the fish. There are those that go to catch fish, there are those like the women we see on the screen smoking the fish, and the fish is sold in the city of Lagos and in other areas. There are those that are also involved in Kenu making, the Kenu, the craft that is used for fishing, the people carve it with wood in that area. There are people that provide services, hairdressers, barbers, those establishments exist in the community. There are many people in those communities that actually work outside of the area, you know, even civil servants, even police officers who cannot afford polypaid workers in the factories, who cannot afford accommodation elsewhere, end up in slums like Makoko. Things began to change for these communities from the late 80s, particularly from 1990, following the construction in Lagos of the 10th mainland bridge in Lagos. This bridge that connects two sections of Lagos carries very heavy traffic. And, you know, there are a lot of people that move between the mainland and the island of Lagos for work each day, you know, with millions of people actually, and the sculptors, you know, the building of the bridge that was commissioned around 1990, exposed the community, exposed Makoko, Maroko and Makoko and other similar communities to the people that did not see those places before. And so it presented a stark picture, you know, the Makoko did not seem to fit into the picture of what a city should look like. It seemed poor, it seemed dirty, and all of that. In the beginning from 1990, the military government at that time started a process of demolishing the slums, beginning with Makoko. So there was major demolition in Makoko. People were basically forced out, their homes were bulldozed without any notice. And it was like, you know, a day or two notice was given to them, and the next thing the bulldozers came in, and that was the major tragedy that resulted in the first evictions of hundreds of thousands of people. Those that were evicted from Maroko without compensation ended up in Makoko and continued to live their lives until 2012, when an eviction program was commenced by the Lagos state government, post-military government in Lagos. And it's important to point out the impact of neoliberal economic practices that was introduced via structural adjustment originally in the 1980s, and how this led to restructuring of the economy in favor of free market, the so-called free market privatization, and the increasing inequality that ensued, the loss of jobs, particularly public sector jobs, due to retrenchments, following privatization of publicly owned enterprises, all those contributed to the swelling up of the population of cities like Makoko. But the rich that emerged, the wealthy that emerged, you know, as part of that privatization process, those that took advantage of public wealth were the ones who now targeted the land that the people had created for themselves in places like Maroko and Makoko, and sought to promote a new vision of urban renewal that involves, you know, western-style waterfront development that had, possibly in which the people in places like Makoko were not part of that picture. So a struggle started, particularly people remembered what happened in 1990 when Maroko was demolished, and this time they said, look, they were not going to accept, they were not going to allow. So there was mobilization, there was solidarity, and the people stood up, there were a lot of protests and insisted that it will not happen this time, that Makoko will not be evicted. Thank you, Asumi. I'm going to ask you to wrap up, and also, you know, maybe in the dialogue we can talk about Makoko, Maroko, in light of the recent police killing during the dialogue session. So I'll ask you to wrap up. Thank you. So just to wrap up, I remember the points that Maria made earlier in presentation, even Bryce just before me pointing out that in having visions of urban transformation that it is important to consider what works for the people in the area that urban renewal, urban transformation should not be based on the outsiders inciting the architectural imagination into the environment. This is exactly what we saw in Makoko at the end of the day in the process of collaboration, partnerships to try to see, to protect Makoko. We saw a situation where alternative ideas, particularly architectural ideas, sometimes supported by international development agencies, came to dominate. And sometimes these ideas didn't find, you know, get traction in the community and ultimately some of the pilots that were constructed did not last because they were not rooted in the local knowledge and understanding. And so that is also part of the things that we understand going forward in these discussions, where solidarity, where partnerships are important to protect housing rights. It is important that the power of the victims or the power of the people, the marginalized should be protected in the processes. Thank you, Asume. And like I said, in the question and dialogue, I'm sure a lot of people will have answered a question about what's going on right now in the struggle of Makoko and Mariko. Next, so I would like to thank all our speakers and introduce Juliana Morez de Guz. She has generously accepted to comment on the book. Juliana was a member of the regional articulation of Afro descended from Latin America and the Caribbean. She's a PhD student in sociology at UMass Amherst. She holds a master degree in political science, a BA in political science for University of Brasilia. She has published articles, the success science and epistemology situated knowledge. In the feminist review, as well as to your theoretical and analytical approach on prostitution. Currently, Juliana is working on a book manuscript called Du Bois on Latin America and the Caribbean, trans-American pan-Africanism and global sociology co-author with professor Agustín Laumontes and Dr. Yorge Vasquez from UMass Amherst. Additionally, Juliana is studying the connection between decolonial praxis, urban politics and black movements in Latin America. Her dissertation theme, which is her dissertation theme, Juliana also works in a wide range of social movement in the Americas. In particular, she has collaborated with sex workers organization in the struggle for workers rights with urban land settlement organized by black and poor people and with anti-prison movements. In the last three years, she has focused and strengthened the connection between black movements and the Americas. Thank you, Juliana. Hello. Good morning, at least here it's morning. I would like to thank you, especially my broken room for the invitation. It's a pleasure to comment this book that I come that I think comes in a very important moment, right? So, um, we know that recently, population and world population is becoming more urban, in that the urban has its specificities about how we can create another world in urban spaces. So, I have, when I was reading the book, our authors of the book, they already show quite clear the connections between urban spaces and cities as results and facilitators of capitalism. So, taking this into consideration, I will appreciate to be able to comment this book. I'd like to add a little bit and connected, especially for Latin American Brazil, that in from Brazil, so there's requests to do that beyond being connected with urban with capitalism, cities has been defined by academics and politicians as this patient representation of western modernity. We can take things from the beginning of urban studies, for example, being urban is associated with being more than with body, individualistic, competitive capitalist culture. And we can, in Latin America, especially we have seen the six is very strong development discourses that promoted urbanization as the way to reach a kind of colonial mindset of what development is. And it poses global north cities as models to the global south. So, even nowadays, you have organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations, pushing kind of good practices in urban planning that are that are rooted in this kind of idea. In Latin America, this has been particularly strong. We had, and I'm going to focus on our indigenous and black movements. We have security, the aid is more or less more than a lot of the whites to territory, especially based on the recognition of ancestral groups so we have something like an hour a little bit larger than Mexico recognize it as territories of indigenous and indigenous movements in Latin America. Most of them protected by the Convention 169 that is the Convention of tribal people. But most of these communities are in rural areas. And although this and how many of the institutions look at us. It is the savage the group who live in this room. There are many of these areas, and which it's not not does not mean that communities and ancestral communities do not exist in urban areas indeed in Brazil. We have many of our own communities in big cities recognized by the state, but often when we claim the right to our land. How countries have pictured us that if you're in an urban space you cannot access the politics that that ensure rights to ancestral communities. So, again, this is just one of the examples of the importance to consider the specific city of the urban for the search struggles for social justice. And I want to add here I'm not saying that. I'm being you but that the urban space it's a little, it's above the rural areas not. And I think the book makes a great one of the contributions to this of this book is to make great connections between urban and rural struggles. I understand if you don't if you understand the specific cities of what engage create alternative word create another word in the space, we hardly can build strategies that are successful. So, this is one of the biggest contributions of this book. I would like to challenge bring some challenges in dialogue with what we have read and how the presentation the presentations have talked about so that is the importance to understand the connection between race and the denial of a special existence. So, since it's slavery. Part of the how black people have been dehumanized it is denying to us rights to spatial dimensions one of the basic dimensions of the of human being right. This has happened with displacement, this has happened with murder, this has happened with imprisonment. And in particular nowadays, cities has been tight of transformation but also one of the biggest sites of violence, especially of homicides and police killings. And this is a phenomenon that happens in the United States but also in Brazil and other countries of Latin America, a big part of population in prison is also coming from urban areas. So, when you think about that, in some of the chapters, really bring the idea of how like human development policies. They talk about cleaning the space. Cleaning about to hide make the most from this space and I'm a hygienic space. Many people have denounced it how the ideas of cleansing are connected with the idea of erase blackness of race, white in the space. That is what has guided. We cannot talk about gentrification as separated from that. And you cannot talk about talk about placement as separate from that. In some of, in the particular chapter on Brazil, for example, many communities that are struggling to create another world in urban spaces are mentioned. And it's important to say that I know, I know, I know in person, many of them, they are majority black, and led by black woman. And I think also about what is to create a new war in urban cities. We are certainly with extremely with the increasing of public security policies increases surveillance, incarceration, and violence, and these kinds of violence, right, because you have all the kinds in urban communities, literally denying to us not on your neighborhood, but the right to our own bodies. Right. So that's when we're talking about the spatial existence. It's important to think that we're not only saying, Oh, I want it's important to have my neighborhood save. Nowadays, this situation has come to the point that we're talking about having our, our body, not murder, not rape it, not putting present. Right. So, I put my timer here so I'm sorry that I look out at the time to decide, but I'm trying to, I have a tendency to talk too much to turn trying to be short. So to conclude, because I'm close to eight minutes, the book brings amazing contributions for us to think about exactly what is the connection between the rule in the human how can we challenge this patient representation of Western modernity how can you any kind of association between being you but and being white or being you but an incorporated capitalism and be you but and in body development this development this courses and this is central for the struggles nowadays. It's also important and to come to continue to talk and to embrace and to reflect on how race has coordinated many of the transnational policies that has been implemented nowadays. It's time for everybody from wash our bodies, not only blacks, but for all wash our bodies, any access any to the basic dimension of being human that is space. Right, so I conclude by saying that and saying that it's a quite important book and I recommend everybody reading I was very pleasure with all the amazing by all the work that was done and congratulate the co workers for this amazing work. Thank you very much Juliana especially for pointing out the dimension of racialization and. Yeah bridging with prices, and also as a mess talk on this. Thanks for the great comment. Now I would like to ask all authors of the book and members of the core group of the global tapestry of fraternities and of our working group and of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation who are in this inner room to turn their cameras on so that people can see us all for a moment. And I would like to invite. First, we are going now to dialogue about what we have heard, and we already have some questions some interesting questions in the questions and answers. Anyway, I invite you to put some more in there if you have any comments also they are very welcome. And we would know first have a quick round of comments or questions between these organizers of the event on and part of the processes who have brought us here. So, yeah, welcome. Anyone who wants to speak. Yes, Ashish. Maybe you just briefly introduce yourself before speaking. Thanks. I'm Ashish Kothari I work in India with an environmental action group culprits and I'm also a member of the global working group on beyond development and core team member of global tapestry of alternatives so it's been a pleasure to help organize this. I think I was an amazing. I mean, what I felt most was that eight minutes simply didn't do justice to the kind of complexity and depth of each of these case studies, but I know we have limited time on these webinars. Fantastic introduction and I especially like the sort of you know the kind of combination of what we heard was cities of dignity but also cities of indignity and what are the sort of contestations between the two. Any question follows a little bit from what Juliana said towards the end, which is much of the discussion and the case studies as presented have been on the urban. I'm wondering how the panelists or the authors would like to look at the relationship between the urban and the rural, which are often seen as binaries as being two completely different completely opposite kind of situations. Whereas we know that that's not necessarily the case and in fact trying to build towards both cities and villages of dignity. I'm asking whether in fact that kind of a binary should be broken down. What then would be the relationship between the urban and the rural that could lead to dignity in both places of any of the panelists would like to reflect on that. Thank you. The next question that comes up for me immediately is the rural context in for me as a black body man a diasporic African in America, the rural context for me starts with the place where my ancestors come from my mother side, her people are from Kentucky. And Mississippi, my father side. His people are from North Carolina and South Carolina, small rural towns. To that point. The rural context is, it's in the rule where a lot of our ancestral and indigenous points of identity and cultural practice still exists and can be found in terms of like legacy. So, there is an intentionality for sure. In my environmental and climate justice work. We have this initiative called up south down south, where we have been intentionally deepening our bond with folks from Jackson Mississippi, because so many people in Mississippi are people migrated from Mississippi. And doing that one is the, as a point of decolonizing an ancestral, like re ancestralizing another is to more deeply to be more sophisticated in the way that we actually look at the systemic issues. And in particular, trace back the real origins and roots of what we think we're addressing or fighting today. And that's the one thing that both places tend to have in common, especially as it relates to black black body people indigenous people in America is poverty and lack of self determined economic and socio political infrastructure. So, even though a rural scenario, it may seem it may appear on the surface that there may be deeper challenges in creating economic infrastructure or socio political infrastructure, and they're in it's a bit easier in an urban scenario because you have more. There's an easier, there's a more convenient access to technology. In fact, the policies that are on the books and places like Detroit, our policy that stem from the top of the 20th century that the end of the 19th century policies that were reflective of the 19th century in America, which was a time replete the slavery economy. So, we'll stop there but just really noting that on the first two points of connecting the rule to the urban one is to deepen ancestral connection and to reconnect with indigenous culture and practices. And then another is to be able to see the commonalities, the socio political and economic commonalities of both places, knowing that it's in that type of solidarity that that trans local and trans national solidarity where hyper local solutions will will be birthed. Thank you, Bryce. And we have another author of the book here who has not been on the panel, but would like to answer to that question. This is Anna Rodriguez, she will talk in Spanish. So, I invite you to use the interpretation button at the bottom of your screen, and just switch to the, so that you, I think you don't have to do anything right, the interpretation will come to this room in English, I guess. Anyway, I just wanted to warn you that she's going to speak Spanish. Anna, please. Go ahead. Anna is an author and co editor of the book just wanted to say. That's right. Thank you. Gracias. Thank you very much for this presentation with of this book, which has been a global effort. I think it's important. That's what we are saying. Consider what the colleagues from India and others have said regarding rural issues. Certainly, to include the question about informality. This is like keto in the global south, and many of the cases of this book, cities of dignity, give visibility to something that is linked with something showed by the covert something that was there, and that was put forward as a struggle, global in demanding rights of what those struggles meant. In our case in keto we worked from a huge market of fresh food, gathering thousands of workers in a red in a network, articulating rural and the city, but not only from the economic point of view, or distribution of food, but also as a way of organizing life in the city, we cannot consider the relations in one way from the rural to the city, but rather, we have to consider the space of the space of popular market, not only as a space of food, but as a place of social reproduction, kitchen language, of knowledge, ancestors knowledge that have been there for centuries. So during these times, when we think about that, when we think about this book, we didn't have a lockdown. It was just a little group, so like ours, the global working group, but nowadays it's a problem affecting a lot of people, it's more visible, and it becomes a policy question. How can we, from those small cases, showing that the rural problem becomes a problem for the cities in the case of keto, more than a third of the population eats fresh food from those production systems and is conditioned by two factors. They're not measures. So there's no measurement. They are criminalized as our colleague Juliana from Brazil was saying, and from the other side, they are reinventing themselves. They are able to build the economy, the economics of the family in the rural and urban area. So the issue now is much more visible. How can we, in this role as intermediaries of that knowledge, how can we interact? Left, new trends, we have elections in different places in the world that are surprising. What is our role as intermediaries to recent the problem of rural, urban and informality and to include it in the agenda of a new city in the case of this dialogue that we have. We talk about a new proximity, how local can be reproduced at a global level in exercises like this dialogue, how we can do it when the global has been unable to answer those problems. What is the role of these spaces? Juliana, very briefly, please, before we go to the questions. I have a brief comment because I was sharing here on the chat about how amazing is the connections that have transnationally. So Bryce was talking about how these connections with the ancestors. Indeed, the MTSB, for example, one of the movements quoted in the book, there's Logan's Let's Make Palmaris Again. And Palmaris was a maroon community in Brazil in the struggle against slavery. And most of maroon community design were areas, but it also is a connection between how ancestrality and our connection with our families who are still there in rural areas. And our communities are still there where areas also feed and inspire even in connection with struggles in urban spaces. So it was just a short comment about the amazingness of these connections in between different countries. Great. Thanks, Juliana. So we have a question, a very interesting question from Hans Lee Juliano, who is actually connected to what Anna just said. And he says, or she says, the intro to the book highlighted the argument that struggles are not limited to the local or national level, but also fought on a global scale. How do you see the likely conduct of transnational action on this issue under the COVID-19 pandemic? Whether or not a vaccine is forthcoming? Do you find that our current new normal communication setup is facilitating it or highlighting further resource inequalities for cross country campaigns? How can they be addressed? So who of you would like to answer to Hans Lee? Yeah, if I may. I answered Hans Lee very briefly in the chat as well. I think from what I observe and also being involved in with different social movements that are engaged transnationally, we've been adjusting to the new normal communication in terms of either recalibrating our strategies as well as maximizing existing technologies, even though they're very also unequal and also suspect because they're owned and controlled by the big corporations and big tech. And I think one of the key things here is that movements are already trying to internationally network, share learning, share solidarity. I think this initiative is one of them in terms of trying to learn what's happening with different parts of the world. However, I think the main challenge is that there indeed is no substitute to face-to-face and people-to-people interaction in which many of the cases that in our book have already in fact surveyed because it's being with another person sharing that energy as well as learning from the histories. There's no substitute in that except the face-to-face interaction. And unfortunately because of COVID-19, we couldn't do that. And the other challenge is that many of the grassroots communities, I think both in the North and the Global South, still suffer from inequalities and asymmetries in terms of connections to the internet. And this is one of the main challenges I think in many of our communities here in the Philippines because it's mainly privatized as well as connections are very bad. It's hard to get them to even join webinars or calls because of the inequalities that exist. So, I mean, I don't have a sort of like a black and white answer to the question of Hansley, but I think social movements are trying to maximize as much as possible what's existing. And as well as continue the struggle in terms of exposing both how inequalities are filtering down to different aspects of our daily lives and at the same time continuing the work of building alternatives by writing stories, by, you know, whatever form to be able to show that indeed there are some movements happening despite the COVID. We have a question for the whole panel. And it comes from Zach Hayden, actually, who's out in Montgomery, and he's involved with the Automated Free Clinic, which I briefly mentioned. So please do check his work and it's featured in the book, Chapter Five. And Zach has a very interesting question. He's asking all of you, can we discuss the role of popular education in your work? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, so for me, and many others in the movement community in Detroit, Parmium, taking this bread out of my daughter's hair as well as talking. So yeah, but for many of us, we acknowledge that we have, in a Western context, in a colonizer narrative, only a narrow range of intelligences or expressions of intelligence are acknowledged or validated. And in only particular modes of education, information dissemination are validated. It just so happens that these methods and modalities are always outside of our indigenous and ancestral cultural context. Popular education, what we call popular education is really for us, just organic, indigenous, native learning, collective learning. It is vital because one of our major issues to resolve in this 21st century, or in this particular lifetime that we share together, is the implications of colonial thinking and colonial points of identity that have been implanted in diasporic African and indigenous populations around the planet and how that is one of the main inhibitors to us fully, not only fully self actualizing, but just on a more basic level, being able to orient properly and in a synergistic way with our built environment with the land and with our people. So, yes, the phrase popular education is what's used to describe these ancestral and indigenous modalities for communicating and shared learning. Yet that's really at the core of what's going on, is that it's ancestral and indigenous forms of communicating and sharing information with each other. Thanks, Bryce. Then we have a question here for Asume from Ananta Krishnan. I lived in Nigeria for four years just wondering how the much reported floating school of Makoko has been adopted by the Lagos state government as a model that will be used for developing the houses on water in the community. At the same time, poor quality water mosquitos which thrive in nearby lagoons and dangerous jobs all serve to impact on people's health in Makoko. So the question is how are these issues addressed by Lagos government and the community and the UN agencies in Nigeria. Asume, please. The floating school was one of the most celebrated developments in the whole Makoko, the partnerships between the community and different groups, including a few NGOs and international development agencies. The floating school was celebrated as an architectural wonder of some sort. Kuleh Adeyemi, an architect designed the school. It was funded by a consortia of development agencies as a pilot. The interesting thing is that while the floating school was celebrated outside Makoko, the people in Makoko themselves were a little bit hesitant about the school, about the structure, the structural integrity of the building. These are people who had better knowledge of the geography and they didn't feel that the school was going to be secure enough in difficult weather and they were right because the school collapsed. It completely collapsed and it was a good thing that there was nobody at the time in the building and so nobody was hurt. The collapse of the floating school basically ended that idea. That is why it is important that even as there is need to consider innovation, there should be participation of the community people even in design, in the design process. If the architect had considered the views of community people, it is possible that a different structure, a different will have a margin to have a more durable building but that is not the case. The collapse of that pilot, the floating school seemed to have ended a lot of discussion about that kind of possibility. In terms of what is happening now in Makoko and similar places, the hand life from our perspective, if you are outside, you are looking and you see that people do not have access to health infrastructure, health services, to even the kind of schools that people elsewhere are used to, that remains the same. In the response of the legal state government, it has been pretty much the same. The people in places like Makoko do not really matter to the government. There are NGOs and international agencies that still continue to have a presence in Makoko and are implementing different projects sometimes in solidarity and partnership with sections of the community, and that is still ongoing. But what is fundamental from our point of view is the need to go beyond incremental amelioration and project development, like the floating school represents, to work with the people, not just in Makoko but in other marginalized communities to build real popular power that will translate into political change, to translate into the kind of system, the democratic system that will be more representative of the aspirations of all people. It's only when we have that change at the political level, I'm not saying that incremental change is not needed. It doesn't need an incremental change in the sense of responding to the direct environmental needs. And to look also at the participation. And that brings to the question about popular education. Popular education in the case of Makoko and other such locations all over the country is something that is ongoing, that will try to promote understanding that popular education shouldn't be something that is thought based on a template and that is co-learning and mutual learning. There has to be from our perspective some idea of history, an idea of anti-colonial messaging and anti-capitalist messaging. In the context of popular education, some of the challenges that we face is how to determine what to be the subject, what to be the focus of education. What is the alternative? We have a situation where some of the people that are part of the popular education process, including my comrade who co-authored the chapter is very, very active with the Amilcar Cabral Ideological School in Lagos. In fact, he is the founder, the coordinator of the most probably the most active popular education organization in Lagos, the Amilcar Cabral Ideological School. Part of the challenges we are facing is that we have, all of us, we have not been able to identify to point to a concrete set of alternatives in terms of what the future, the future, the society that we want to build. People have come from backgrounds in all kinds of machisms and all kinds of autodogsies and sometimes the attitude creates even the ideas and ideas in terms of what we see for the future. That is something that we still work in progress that we need to do to deal with the theory, even as we deal with the practice. Thanks, Asume. So I would like to ask, to take one last question from the public, asking the panelists to check what is there, what else, and maybe respond in writing what we cannot respond orally here. So Milun Kotari says, thanks for the great presentations. Are you all familiar with the detailed work that has been done by the UN NGOs, academics and so forth, using the human rights approach in analyzing the global urban crisis and in promoting the mobilization of movements and campaigns. The number of standards have been developed on the rights to housing and against displacement that can be of use. Also, the work on racial discrimination as a determinant of your urban polarization. A number of UN mechanisms are very focused on these issues. Are any of you using these standards and mechanisms and do you find the human rights approach useful for your work? That was from Milun Kotari, I guess from India, and I would like to ask Marianne first to answer this. Yeah, thank you very much, Miriam and Milun for your answer. I haven't been following closely this development around the human rights approach in analyzing the global urban crisis, but I do know that many of the human rights that we know of right now are actually rooted from many people's struggles and in fact human rights in itself are evolving concept. The very idea of right to the city wasn't even imagined maybe 10, 20 years ago and now it's one of the key things that the UN and even the United Local and City Government Council have been talking about. So that's one way in which the human rights is being pushed both by movements and being adopted by the UN. So in a way, at least in our book chapter in the survey that we did, we found out that many of the people's movements and popular struggles are using human rights in their work. They might not use human rights as in the normative sense of the UN, but they are referring to people's rights because as we know many governments don't recognize human rights in a sense and even with the rights of right-wing populist governments, you know, human rights has become a taboo. But I think the movements are also saying and many of these radical urban transformations are going beyond human rights. It's the floor. It shouldn't be the ceiling. It's just the floor. It's the basic things that you should have, but you have to go beyond that. And I think that's where I suppose the limits as well as the potential of human rights are in terms of pushing for radical urban transformation. It's a starting point, but you have to go beyond it. Juliana, you seem to want to add something to this. Am I right? No, I actually don't feel, I do have some experiences with the UN and the United Nations, but I think that Mary said very clearly. I was just really happy to hear the thanks. I'm going to abstain today. Great. So now this would be an invitation to our panelists. If anyone of you, we won't do a last round. I'm just inviting if maybe Sandy or anyone wants to have last words. And then we will have an announcement from the Global Tapest Tree of Alternatives. And we will say goodbye. There is the, I don't know if Bryce could respond to this question about the last, when you wrap up, if you can respond to Anantia, who says Detroit is the city is regenerating itself from decline after the issue of the auto industry, is a model using art and culture contributing to commercial and cultural vitality, urban streetscapes, accessing and convenience and ethics and social diversity while preventing gentrification. I think probably is asking, is it enough to prevent gentrification? Thank you. So, yeah, so. Every brief price. I don't know how we have two speakers. Super brief. Yeah, and then we pass to you, Sandy, okay. Yeah. Thank you, Sandy, and many of them. No, no, it's not enough to stop gentrification. Which is why I'm doing this project hood closed to gentrifiers. To me what's most important in this moment in the 21st century is to create a container or sophisticated conversation where we thoroughly unpack economic socio political and architectural violence and the modality, which has been engineered, which we call gentrification to perpetuate those things. In the context for what are the new stories and the new narratives of self determined diasporic African and indigenous land use neighborhood development like let's uplift those stories so that we're present in the new models and the new practices. We can start to acknowledge our own wins, so to speak. And then from there. We're cultivating our identity, more deeply cultivating our identity as the architects as the designers, as the custodians of our environment. To me that is the thing and being able to do that work and scale it across hyper locals, trans nationally that work at scale is what for me will move the needle and begin to shift the paradigm. Dot dot dot. Thanks. Sunday, please. Yeah, so I just wanted to try and put the whole thing into kind of a perspective again in terms of why are we doing this we are doing this because we believe that there is another way or the world can be a farm or human place to live in. There are a lot of the values that the communities that we work with. Especially those ones that are talking about building social capital or constantly looking at the end product as building relationships at a spiritual level, looking at the ways in which we see God in one another. It's, it's completely dramatically opposed to the way the markets and the capitalist systems have developed these cities today, which is off of looking at end products as material gains. And very often the communities in the cities that we live with and work with, they also need to be sometimes reminded of the origins from which they have tried to come and develop a new different kind of way of living in this world today. And so, at all times if we are reinforcing a very different value system, it doesn't matter who holds it. Very often today you find a lot of very young urban people who are so so to speak from the richer communities are actually beginning to realize the, the, the democracy of the way this world has been has has has been built, and they are sometimes actually moving more towards the poorer communities and their values, and some of the young people in our slums, or those communities are moving towards material gain. So it's really a question of holding on to the values and not the people and the constituencies that we must constantly remind ourselves when we are doing this kind of work. I very much agree with those last words the struggle is about what do we understand by quality of life by a good life, how do we better our relations so that we can thrive. Thanks. Thank you very much, Sandeep. So, yeah, I think this is the moment to thank you all to have joined this webinar, also the people who have joined it through the Facebook accounts, for example, of in Delhi of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. And to hand over to Ashish Kotari, our colleague and comrade from the GTA who wants to announce where else you can have interesting subjects to participate in dialogues. And of course I invite you to download the book please from the web page we posted maybe my book how you can post it again in the chat, if someone got in late. It is totally free for download and we hope that you put it into circulation and that you use it in your processes because this is what it's for. Ashish. Thanks Miriam. This has been a wonderful collaboration but I think the ending from our side is going to be by Shristi. Oh, okay. Sorry then. No, it was been a great conversation so thank you for co-organizing this dialogue. It was such a tremendous learning and Sandeep Ji has anyway given it a very beautiful conclusion. So just want to announce that our next dialogue will be on the 17th of December by a group of academics working towards alternatives to capitalism. We are talking to us about how do we conceptualize alternatives and grounding themselves with several examples from across the world. So do follow us here on this link for upcoming webinars and hoping to see many of you who have joined us earlier also joining us today and in the future webinars. Thank you so much everybody. Thank you very much Shristi. Thank you again to all the people who have made this happen, especially to the team of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Brussels. Thanks to the authors for having created this great book and see you soon again in some creative spaces, hopefully also in person. Thank you everybody. Bye. Thank you.