"Love is an action, never simply a feeling."

bell hooks’ powerful statement calls for love to be understood not as a mere emotional experience, but as a deliberate, transformative act grounded in action, accountability, and resistance to oppression. In this view, love becomes a radical tool to challenge systemic inequality, alienation, and exploitation, inspiring collective action for justice. It transcends personal affection, manifesting as a commitment to solidarity, mutual care, and shared humanity. By framing love as an active practice, hooks emphasizes its potential to heal divisions, unite people across borders, and dismantle unjust systems, fostering a more just future through collective struggle.

This vision of love as both a practice and a catalyst for change is at the heart of the four-day Transnational Summer School from June 12-15, 2025, organized by European Alternatives Berlin as part of this year's Wiener Festwochen. The gathering will bring together community organizers, frontline activists, artists, academics and educators from across Europe snd beyond to explore how love can drive resistance and help build powerful transnational networks of care and justice, particularly within the struggles for migrant justice, care, labour rights and climate. 

Love is essential in these struggles because it fosters the deep connections and solidarity necessary to confront interconnected crises.

• Across the globe people fighting for migrant justice call for solidarity with all people, especially those displaced by violence, poverty, and environmental degradation. It is time to challenge the systems of oppression, exploitation and dehumanization. 
• In the fight for climate justice, love motivates collective action to protect vulnerable communities and the planet. It is time to care for Earth and each other as much as we would like to. 
• In labor struggles, love drives the fight for workers' rights and dignity, inspiring a commitment to mutual care and respect within and across communities.

We believe that solidarity crosses borders, and that change must be global. Through this Summer School, we aim to build strong transnational alliances, fostering connections that extend beyond national boundaries and into shared struggles for justice.

Amid growing isolation, this in-person gathering emphasizes the importance of physical spaces for meeting, sharing experiences, and building relationships. Coming together reaffirms the value of human connection in strengthening our collective struggles and strategies. Over four days, participants will engage in workshops, panels, reflection sessions, and community-building exercises focused on exchanging experiences, developing strategies, and sharing skills for organizing around migrant justice, labor rights and climate justice.

The Summer School 

The Summer School will start with a two day exclusive event bringing together 60 actors from the across the globe discussing key best practises and deliberating on strategic foresight.The public will have access to the programme on Saturday (workshop formats) and Sunday (People's Assembly). The Summer School will touch on a range of strategically relevant topics.

• How can we connect struggles for migrant justice, labour rights and climate justice?
• How can we include undocumented people in our organisisng?
• What can we learn from transnational domestic worker organising?
• What learnings can we draw from Eastern European struggles in times of growing authoritarianism across the world?
• How can we include our bodies in our political work?
• How political is art ? How art is political?
• How can hydrofeminist perspectives expand our vision for water justice?
• How can we learn from land-struggles decolonially fighting for a just world for all?

The program will feature panels, interactive workshops and provide space for networking, exchange and the collective imagininary. Cultural events and creative workshops will complement the educational activities, deepening our understanding of solidarity and the role of emotions in our organising work. 

Join us at Funkhaus Vienna for the public days of the Summer School, together shaping days of dialogue, resistance, and love in action.
 

REGISTER NOW!

The People’s Assembly will take place on Sunday 15th of June from 10:30 - 14:00.

We will bring together over 200 organisers, activists and engaged citizen to deliberate how we can create change from our different positions and functions in the ecosystem of change.
Your voice counts! Let's showcase how love, care, and collective action can overcome alienation and build a future grounded in justice, solidarity, and mutual care.

How can we strategize together to win? In the face of deepening inequalities, rising authoritarianism, pervasive structural racism, climate injustice and a surge in narratives that threaten the existence of marginalized identities, organizing across struggles has become more urgent than ever. What roles can our organisations play in shaping a long term strategy? How can we build strategic and unlikely alliances?  

The People’s Assembly brings together migrant workers, organizers, artists, caregivers, researchers, and cultural practitioners to reflect on our different roles and functions within a wider social change ecosystem. We will come together to explore and share strategies and tactics on how we can progress — together.

At the heart of this assembly is the understanding that every organisation matters: from those speaking out, to those building structures, to those holding space. Recognizing and respecting these different contributions is what allows movements to grow and endure. Through artistic interventions, short inspiring talks, interactive group discussions, and a collective reflection, this Assembly opens a space for critical dialogue and shared imagination across borders, languages, and backgrounds. 

This assembly will delve into key tactics of migrant and labour justice, including the fight for political participation and voting rights for migrants, and the pressing impact of climate change as a driver of displacement and labour injustice. We will also explore the importance of building long-term structures for migrant labour organising, while reflecting on the diverse roles we each play in these struggles — from disruptors and strategists to caregivers and artists. Through this collective reflection, we aim to strengthen our efforts and find ways to progress together, recognizing the unique contributions of every individual and organisation in the social change ecosystem. 

Whether you’re deeply involved in organizing or just beginning to explore your place in collective action, this space invites you to connect, think, and contribute. Join us in building transnational solidarities.

📢 Join us — because movements are built when we recognize our interdependence and grow stronger through it.

Language: English (with whisper translation in Spanish and French)
Accessibility: Wheelchair accessible | Childcare available

REGISTER NOW!