For over a year, we’ve been working closely with our international partners to prepare Peoples For Forests — a gathering of 90 activists from across the globe, dedicated to thinking through healing and solutions amidst the deep crises that define our era.

Time — that sovereign force — unsettles everything, relentlessly.

I’ve often said that the cognitive environment of the world feels diminished. Whether it’s due to the brutal concentration of wealth — something that became even more evident during the pandemic — or the actions of groups that wield chaos as a political weapon.

The result is a lowering of our dreams. A widespread imaginary of impossibility that wreaks havoc on people’s lives. Just look at the record-breaking suicide rates — one life interrupted every 40 seconds — or at how entire societies are medicated to prevent the collapse of mental health.

The way forward must be collective.

There is no other choice but to gather people and build movements.
To connect networks as a counterforce to every model of monoculture.

Because monoculture suffocates, monoculture kills.
It’s a hegemonic and petty model — made to control and profit. At the expense of others.

And yet, there are so many living experiences in the territories. People creating and breathing everyday solutions, because they have no choice but to face problems head-on, in the light of action. And more often than not, simplicity is the cement of the solution.

We live in times that demand the evocation of such values.
Like the serenity required to look into the eye of the storm we’re in.
Anxiety and despair will not help us find cracks in the complexity surrounding us.
Only calm will help us sail these turbulent waters.

And that is what the People’s Forum intends to be.
A space for exchange and encounters, among people of struggle.

Because I always say: Struggle is like wild grass.

You can cut it, pull it, try to rip it out — but it grows back freely. Because that’s the nature of life.

There is hope,
even in the most desolate landscapes,
where darkness seems to have taken hold.

Hope is a stubborn girl
who insists
on being reborn, organically —
with us, or despite us.One thing is certain:
The grass will grow again.
With time.