Categories
All posts

A letter from a Georgian student – Georgian youth deserve better

The recent period in Tbilisi saw the streets being swept up in waves of demonstrations against the law on “transparency of foreign influence”. The oppositional media constantly regurgitates the idea that the youth of Georgia, Gen Z, unequivocally upholds protests. I have seen claims that this is a “Children’s revolution”, and that the demonstrations have […]

Categories
All posts

There’s more at stake in the fight against the Foreign Agents Law than liberal NGOs: Why the left should show solidarity with the protests in Georgia

We co-wrote this article at the beginning of May. On May 28, the Georgian parliament overrode the presidential veto and finally adopted the Law Against Foreign Influence. Although written at an earlier stage of the protests, everything that happened since then has largely confirmed the conclusions we drew back then. Since early April, Tbilisi, the capital […]

Categories
All posts

Unrest in Georgia over the “Foreign Influence Transparency Law”: “Whichever Way We Go Is a Step Back”

The outsized role that foreign-funded NGOs play in Georgia’s politics, policy-making, and public services has led the country into a chronic crisis of its democracy.  There is a massive problem at the heart of Georgia’s peculiar political economy. It goes back a quarter of a century, predating the 2003 Rose Revolution. The late president Edvard […]

Categories
All posts ELMO

“Our office is an international hub where the international language of exploitation is spoken”

Note from LeftEast editors: This interview with Goran Lukić of the Counseling Office for Workers, Ljubljana, was conducted and translated within the framework of the East European Left Media Outlet (ELMO). The original will be published by Mašina. The illustrations included in this article are from Ivan Mitrevski’s comic book about the Counseling Office for […]

Categories
All posts

Sovereignty, foreign influence, and the search for the Georgian dream

In an effort to regulate foreign influence in Georgia, the Georgian parliament, People’s Power, as it is called, introduced two bills in late February, “On the registration of foreign agents” and “On the transparency of foreign influence.” People’s Power broke away from the ruling party, Georgian Dream (GD) so it could be more open about […]