Living Memories: Justice, Truth, and Local and International Solidarity

This event will bring together two eras and two collective projects around the same question: why and how should we fight together for justice and dignity for future generations?

The Global Solidarity Network of Mothers, Wives, Sisters, Daughters, Relatives of Abducted and Disappeared Persons (2000-2009)

Created by fourteen women: Lebanese, Moroccan, Argentinian, Chilean, Mexican, Sahrawi, Kurdish, Turkish, Yougoslav, Rwandan, Senegalese and Belgian during the fifth edition of the Festival Voix De Femmes (2000), the network has given rise to solidarity actions, theatrical and visual creations on forced disappearance, and the inauguration in Liège in 2007, of the Trees of Memory, a memorial for the victims of forced disappearance.

We will discuss the history of the solidarity network with some of its members, as we hear fragments of archives narrated by Laalia Pépin, Mahaut Lambrechts, Lina Miftah, and Giulia Rzewski.

Front de Mères / Mothers’ Front (since 2016)

Founded in 2016, Front de Mères (Mothers’ Front) is a political organisation that fights against discrimination and violence suffered by children, through collective action by parents within schools, and a self-organisation project in working-class neighbourhoods.

Front de Mères leads very concrete actions, engaging in popular ecology, knowledge transmission, the fight against police violence and in support for Palestine.

Currently active in Bagnolet, Rennes, Strasbourg and Brussels, one of its priorities is to help other mothers from working-class neighbourhoods who wish to do so to organize themselves into a local parents’ collective, starting with all the issues that seem urgent or a priority to them.