"The world is experiencing the biggest displacement of people since the Second World War, with more than 22 million displaced from their home countries. More than 1 million people arrived in Europe in 2015 alone.
This map, posted on metrocosm.com and based on estimates from the UN Population Division, gives a remarkable insight into the extent of global migration.
It shows the estimated net migration by origin and destination
between 2010 and 2015. Each yellow dot represents 1,000 people, while
blue dots indicate positive net migration, and red negative net
migration."
Read more from source here.
“When we moved into city hall, there were only paintings by men,” Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau tweeted
in March, attaching a picture of her current office wall, which now
featured portraits of eight prominent Catalan women—including the
legendary anarchist leader Federica Montseny.
“Redecorating the walls, that was the easy change,” Colau’s second in
command, Gerardo Pisarello, joked when we spoke with him in late June.
“The other ones take quite a bit longer—they are more difficult and
don’t just depend on us.” Pisarello’s office, too, features
black-and-white photographs: one of a woman celebrating the proclamation
of Spain’s Second Republic in 1931, and another taken at the country’s
first LGBT protest after dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, a
demonstration that, as Pisarello proudly points out, happened in
Barcelona.
Colau and her team were unexpectedly swept into the mayor’s office in May 2015.
Barcelona en Comú (“Barcelona in Common”), the progressive political
platform Colau and others founded less than a year before the elections,
won by the narrowest of margins, with a mere 11 of the 41 seats in the
city’s council. It was just enough to form a minority government.
Still,
the BeC platform—a coalition that includes the Catalan branch of Spain’s new anti-austerity party Podemos,
the United Left, and the Catalan Green Party—has faced a difficult
challenge. Their aspiration is not just to alleviate the severe social
and economic consequences of the Great Recession. They also want to
reinvent how city government functions, from the ground up.
“I think what’s happening in Barcelona is unique,” Laura Roth,
who teaches political science at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and runs
BeC’s neighborhood assembly for Ciutat Vella, says. “There are struggles
everywhere. There are movements everywhere. Some are more democratic
and others are less democratic. Some are more active and successful and
others are less. But I think that there aren’t many movements today that
are rethinking how to do politics.”
Read more from source at The Nation here.
"EUROPATS is a new initiative to call for Full Rights for all European
Citizens, to represent those Europeans who reside in other EU countries
which are not their own; to ensure that their voices are heard and to
champion their rights in Brussels as well as other centres of political
influence at a national, regional and local level.
EUROPATS was started in June 2016 when the UK voted to leave the EU.
EUROPATS stands for all disenfranchised Europeans living in the EU."
Read more from source here.
