What is The Peoples Want?

The Peoples Want began as a series of transnational gatherings initiated by The Syrian Canteen, a collective based in the Paris suburbs, in 2019. The gatherings brought together revolutionaries from across the world to share their experience of the struggles in their territories and collectively think about what a people’s internationalism for the 21st century could look like. An internationalism that prioritizes peoples’ struggles over states’ interests.

At the fourth gathering in 2022, participants wanted to deepen our connections and create a network that could support collectives and individuals to work together on common issues, “from below”, and reinforce solidarity and mutual aid among us. A group was formed of people from diverse geographies and struggles who were tasked with building the infrastructure for the network, developing a programme of work and a set of proposals to go forward. At this point The Peoples Want network became autonomous from The Syrian Canteen.

Building links across struggles is at the heart of what we do. Over the years we have strengthened our relationships with collectives and individuals from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas. In the future, we aim to continue to provide opportunities to meet and get to know each other, to share our experiences and learning and collectively develop our capacities to engage in a genuine revolutionary internationalism.

We seek to encourage practical solidarity (political, material, financial) and foster a culture of mutual aid among network members and beyond. We aim to establish a network of self-organized places (called Mujawara) which will act as the physical base for the network’s activities and organizing together across borders. We also aim to foster a revolutionary internationalist culture. To that end, we have gathered the lessons from our experiences in recent revolts and started to imagine the time to come. We published a manifesto that grounds the network’s political orientations. At the last gathering, and in the presence of a large and curious audience, rich discussions took place between activists and revolutionaries from the world over, reminding us of the power of our struggles as well as the obstacles that they face today.

It is early days. The road is long and there are many challenges ahead. But there is also much work to be done and a lot of enthusiasm amongst the network’s community. We hope you will join us on this new and exciting journey.