Lefteast
In this edition of Free City Radio, we hear from activist Stoyo Tetevenski in Sofia, Bulgaria. Stoyo shares some reflections on social justice organizing today in the Bulgarian context. Free City Radio explores the intersection of social activism and the arts. The weekly program features interviews on contemporary political currents in Montréal, Canada and around the […]
Statement on the adoption of an anti-LGBTI+ law in Bulgaria by Levfem, a socialist feminist organization based in Bulgaria Conservative and far-right forces scored a huge victory on Wednesday, 7 August. In Bulgaria, MPs from all political parties voted in favor of banning the “propaganda” of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Few MPs […]
Since the beginning of March, there has been an unprecedented campaign of violence against refugees and foreigners in Sofia. Polarising and racist statements by politicians and uncritical, sensationalist media coverage have unleashed a wave of attacks. The Bulgarian capital, which is where most institutions and facilities dealing with migrants are located and where most economic […]
Note from Lefteast Editors. We repost Vladimir Mitev’s interview with sociologist and left feminist activist Lea Vajsova, which originally appeared at Crossbordertalk on 13 February 2023. We saw the conservative insistence on the “traditional Christian family” around the Istanbul Convention debate as a metaphor behind which a process of re-traditionalisation was taking place as an […]
This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series Transnational migration in CEE from intersectional perspectives of race, gender, class and citizenship. Recent limitations to the freedom of movement imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 led farmers’ organisations (as well as other employers’) across Europe to sound the alarm, lamenting the sudden dearth of workers […]
Editorial note: This text is a contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s “After Extractivism” text series, and was originally published in English on Mediapart; the German version is available on Berliner Gazette. You can find more contents on the English-language “After Extractivism” website. Have a look here: https://after-extractivism.berlinergazette.de In April 2022, the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water […]
Note from LeftEast editors: In conjuncture with Allegralab we publish this video and transcript of LeftEast collective member Mariya Ivancheva’s talk from the annual conference “Why the World Needs Anthropologists” of the Applied Anthropology Network (AAN) of European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). WWAN took place in Prague in September 2021, under the topic “Mobilizing the Planet.” Earlier […]
Note from LeftEast editors: We reprint this article, which appeared in the Black Box East section of the Berliner Gazette in German on December 2, 2021. After the post-1989 shock therapies imposed on “communist” regimes forced countless workers to move to Greece, where they became essential to the country’s economy, Troika’s austerity measures imposed on Greece at […]
The EU recovery plan is reinforcing an idea of welfare and economic reconstruction which reproduces patriarchal and racist hierarchies and exploitation, while some EU member states like Italy and Greece are already promoting measures – like divorce regulations and child allowances laws – that materially make Istanbul Convention void of any meaning. But women have not been silent in these months and are organizing their counterattack. During the last E.A.S.T. public assembly we started to discuss the multifaceted dimensions of these patriarchal attacks and the struggles we can build together towards a big transnational mobilization. This interview with Kalina Drenska, member of E.A.S.T. and LevFem (Bulgaria) is the first of a series of texts that wants to start from Istanbul Convention to explore ongoing fights against violence against women and lgbtqi+ people, in their connections with the struggles against racist and exploitative policies. Kalina talks about the stratified political meanings attributed in Bulgaria to Istanbul Convention and shows the links between attacks on women and lgbtqi+ people and the policies of cutbacks that lead many women to find better living and working conditions abroad. Furthermore, she unveils the hard pathways that feminist struggles must take – in Bulgaria and beyond – to overturn isolation and accumulate power on the transnational level.
Note from LeftEast editors: Towards the transnational mobilization on July 1st against the attack on the Istanbul Convention and the patriarchal backlash that is hitting women and LGBT+ people all around the world, we republish a text which first appeared on the website of the platform Transnational Social Strike (TSS). The text, written by Stoyo Tetevenski, member […]