DEMOCRACY IN MOTION II IN BARCELONA

1. INTRODUCTION AND DESCRIPTION   
   Democracy in Motion II (DIM II) born after the first project Democracy in Motion (DIM I) developed in Hannover, Germany, in August 2012. It brought together young people from different countries: Germany, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Palestine, Israel and Greece.                                                  During the first DIM was talked of democracy worldwide. It showed the various public and private institutions working for democracy in Germany. In about ten days of project, the conference focused on launching ideas and developing actions to create new synergies and campaigns to bring together a worldwide action under a joint struggle. The premise was to bring together young people committed to reach common conclusions.                                                                                                        
   Now is the time to develop all that was created there. Thus, DIM II will go in depth to the existing social tools to achieve real democracy.
   Barcelona is a city with a known history of social fighting. Here are many alternatives to current system and, in many cases, these alternatives are exported to other parts of the Spanish state. For this reason, the DIM II in the Catalan capital makes sense. It will show the options for building a real democracy from below, from civil society.
   Moreover, the idea of creating a second DIM comes from the need to address the growing unrest among civil society, especially among the youth, against political corruption and the disappearance of social policies. Thus, DIM II will show which measures have begun to take social movements in response to this situation.
   DIM II is the continuation of a path begun in Germany. A process of empowering young people to participate actively in social and political change. To this end, we will have the cooperation of the 15M people and other movements arising from the collective outrage embodied on May 2011 in Plaza Catalunya. Your support (which will be implemented in stimulating workshops and development of joint actions) will help set an agenda of activities focused on four topics:
   • Nonviolent strategy for social change (theory and action). The opinion of some promoters is: “This is very important because history has shown that violent actions and social movements are to fail. For this reason, we suggest to create a database with books or articles about non violent actions & non violent theory”.
   • Alternative communication against mainstream manipulation
   • Political corruption and social services privatization
   • Social Economy (social entrepreneurship, environmental sustainability and alternative consumption).
   In this path, the participants of the DIM I become promoters. They will be responsible for forwarding their knowledge, motivations and expectations to the participants of DIM II. In addition, they carry the weight of the project from the start, since this application was created through assemblies, using new communication technologies that allow the direct connection of the promoters in Europe. A truly collaborative project, which depends directly on young people. All this with the support and advice of some organizations (partners) with experience in creating Youth in Action projects: Nexes, Nova-Innovació Social, Proterra, Pavillon, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Mediterranean SOS Network, (add the others too).
   DIM II involves in the same manner and with the same opportunities to all participating groups and promoters, taking 100% of decisions horizontally. Thus, through Skype sessions (explain what it is) and the creation of a group on the Facebook social network of more than 20 members, it has been decided on the purpose, the topics, the participants profile and with which objectives we have to work.
   As for the participants of DIM II, the intention is they learn new forms of active citizenship and social and political change. Thus, the profile will be young people aged 18-30 years, who are not very involved in social movements and / or social platforms, but their intent is to change their local context. That is, the part of youth that despite feeling that you have to change the current system, they don’t know the options for doing so. The empowerment that will give them this project will help the anger becomes specific actions of social transformation in their immediate environment. Moving from anger to action. They will be convinced that they are very important for a political and social change, that the change from the bottom up is possible.
   It is necessary to point that it was decided to approach this project in an European context (unlike DIM I), since the characteristics between the different problems in the first project gave a greater intercultural environment but, in turn, due to its great contrasts, it was difficult to go deeper in each specific case. Therefore, it was decided to treat the European countries in the DIM II and provide with Arab countries another DIM-Congress.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
2. Objectives
   – Providing the young Europeans with methods and tools for the effective social transformation
   – Promoting the founding values of the european citizenship and improving young ties with the Culture of Peace and Human Rights.
   – Fomenting the creativity and the critical thinking in the young European
   – Empowering the youth discussions and the future action to transform the indignation feeling into the effective action
   – Making aware of the geopolitical situation of the countries that participate in the program
   – Motivating the youth to the active participation in the change processes
   – Convincing of the existence of the possible alternatives to the actual capitalist system
   – Promoting the cooperativism and collaboration between youth.

3. Results
– Consolidation of the young activist network created in DiM I project.
– Internalization of tolerance, diversity and inclusion
– Empowerment of the young european
– Assimilation of the social justice and direct democracy relevance
– Awareness of the alternatives to the capitalist system (cooperativism, associationism…)
– Motivation to participate in the political change

Brainstorming to possible local actions after the September meeting:

–Theatre and / or street performance related to the importance of citizen participation in democracy
·Organization of the yearly-Festival of committed performance by inviting amateur groups to present their own pieces of committed performance.

–Communication guerrilla actions
·Importance of graffity as a tool for transformation (with special regard for arab spring)
·Creative and colourful forms of demonstration: guerilla gardening, clowns army, samba groups etc.

-Workshops related with young participation in political change in public centers and/or local associations

–Workshops that will explain actions and activism in other countries in local associations or youth organizations.

-Long term initiatives concerning community awareness among their own environment
·Special regard for children and schools: PEDIBUS (in order to avoid the massive use of the car schools can organize a walking-route with different stops within the neighborhood with an operator accompanying the children).
·Public Spaces Awareness in order to raise awareness about the care of our green public areas we can involve different school groups in the weekly-cleaning of such spaces.

– Cineforum
·Set one day a week in which a film is projected as well as a discussion concerning the topic.
– Photographic exhibition about social activism gathering photos from individuals that portray the reality behind all forms of social activism in Barcelona (or the involved respective cities).

– Workshop about Nonviolent actions
·Round table “How to avoid unfair laws by applying law leaks”: invite legal experts who can give counsel on how to surround the law when possible.
·Critical mass bike rides. we can promote different topics and use it as a tool to get attention plus it’s fun. And can be organized parallel in different cities at the same time