Internationalism from Below / Leila Al-Shami & Benjamin

The manifesto was a response to the wave of revolutionary uprisings that began in around 2010: a big wave with the Arab Spring and to austerity movements in Greece and Spain, the Occupy movements, of course, and then another large wave in 2018, 2019 in places like Chile, Hong Kong, Iraq, Lebanon. The manifesto was an attempt of people to come together to share their experiences and share their learnings. That's how The People's Want began as a series of international gatherings in 2018: people coming to ask these questions of “what could internationalism look like in the 21st century?” The text is our putting down those learnings to share with a wider audience.