ABSTRACT
The development of global resistance movements has been filled with an expansive spatial imaginary and vocabulary. This has been particularly true since the multiplication and spread of these movements after the first officially declared “Global Days of Action” in 1998 (see People’s Global Action in n. 7 below). The multi-issue and transnational nature of this movement, a “movement of movements” (Bergel 2002), reflects its amorphous and flexible nature (Graeber 2004). Central to these movements has been an intense networking and exchange of ideas and practices among movement groups striving to generate an alternative spatial politics of public and private lives (see Ortellado 2002; Marcos 1997; Katsiaficas 2004). Examples of this generative spatial thinking include: issues of “scalar sensitive” politics and the links between the “local,” the “global” and everything in between (Prokosch and Raymond 2002); the creation/production of spaces such as the World Social Forum and its unique grassroots popular global diplomacy (World Social Forum 2005); the occupation or reappropriation of spaces through squats, land takeovers, temporary autonomous zones and Reclaim the Streets actions (Notes From Nowhere 2003); and reinvigorated ideas of opening new commons and anti-enclosure struggles (De Angelis 2003; Midnight Notes Collective 2004).
