The Social Movements for an Alternative Asia is a coordination of social movements in Asia. Convened by a multi-sectoral set of social movements and organizations, representing women, peasants, migrants, workers, water warriors, anti-debt movements and environmental and climate justice movements, this coordination has three goals:
- to be in solidarity, to support and strengthen, each other’s str
uggles, whether local, national or regional;
- to develop new common struggles for key issues or targets that will allow us to challenge the dominant system and to build Another Asia for the people and Mother Earth;
- to build a common vision and concrete proposals for Another Asia that reflect the priorities and aspirations of social movements in Asia. In Asia, the Asian social movements have a long history of working together and a brilliant expression of this solidarity was demonstrated with a massive multi-sector mobilization against the 6th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Hong Kong in December 2005. And this momentum, to some extent, continued on for several other key mobilizations in the region, such as the G8 Summit in Hokkaido, the UNFCCC climate negotiations in Bangkok in 2009, the G20 meeting in Seoul in November 2010 and when we all came together to extend our solidarity and help to the Japanese people in the wake of the devastating tsunami and earthquake that hit their country last March 2011. In these new times though, we can only defeat this process of reconfiguration of capitalism if we join forces. No social sector alone will be able to succeed. We need to strengthen our solidarity and our common struggles. We need to build a platform of multiple social movements in Asia that unifies and amplifies the struggles of each sector. We need to go beyond borders to confront the power and impunity of transnational corporations. We need to show that no social sector is alone in Asia. Workers, peasants, migrants, women, unemployed, youth, popular sectors - we are all part of the same movement. We can have different problems but the root causes are the same: the capitalist, racist and patriarchal system in crisis and reconfiguration. We need to unify forces to go to the offensive and not only be defending ourselves from the neoliberal agenda. To succeed, we need to not only be able to defeat this system but to also build a different one, a new Asia and a new world for humanity and Mother Earth. We believe that this is our moment and that with our collective strength, we will win. In our struggle to challenge the dominant system and build another Asia, we will continue and strengthen each other's struggles and we have identified and are developing common and cooridnated struggles and campaigns against our common targets -- Fighting Corporate Power, Ending the Neoliberal Regime of the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Agreements, and Fighting for Environmental and Climate Justice. And in all these struggles, we will always be putting at the forefront the Peoples Alternatives. Our proposed principles for the building of Another Asia with Peoples Sovereignty, Economic Justice, Social and Cultural Justice, Feminist Alternatives and Environmental Justice can be found in our Common Platform.
