ManiFiesta 2019, tenth edition of the solidarity festival in Belgium

This year we are organizing the 10th edition of ManiFiesta, the largest solidarity festival in Belgium, organized by Solidaire, the PTB newspaper and Médecine pour le peuple, the PTB network of people’s clinics. On the weekend of 21 & 22 September, the small town of Bredene on the Belgian coast will be the meeting place for all forms of resistance and struggles for a change of society.

In the new political framework following the elections of last 26 May, when we sent workers' representatives to all parliamentary assemblies, and elected our first Member of the European Parliament, we want more than ever to invite you to participate in our celebration to strengthen the unity of workers in Europe and in the world. And of course all this with music, in a festive atmosphere of solidarity.

We can already announce some international guests:

• Dilma Rousseff represents the exact opposite of the current far-right Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil's first female president (2011-2016), she, like her predecessor Lula, built a social program for the country. Thanks to it, 36 million Brazilians have been lifted out of poverty. In 2016, however, Dilma Rousseff was deposed by a parliamentary coup d'état.
• Juliana Lumumba, daughter of Patrice Emery Lumumba, former Minister of Culture of the Democratic Republic of Congo, President of the Chamber of Commerce of the African Union, Lumumbist and convinced Pan-Africanist, will speak on pan-Africanism and on the relations between Europe and Africa.
• Vivek Chibber is a professor of sociology at New York University. He is involved in the American magazines Catalyst and Jacobin, which bring a new, authentic left-wing wind to America. He has also written Postcolonial theory and the specter of Capital.
• Rachel Holmes is the author of a recent and exciting biography of Karl Marx's youngest daughter, Eleanor (Eleanor Marx: A Life, 2014). In 2019, she published a book on a famous communist feminist and activist for women's right to vote at the beginning of the 20th century: Sylvia Pankhurst. She is also one of the pioneers of the Palestine Literature Festival.
• Aminata Traoré is a Malian writer and politician and former Minister of Culture in Mali. An important voice against neoliberal globalization who travels the world to denounce the domination of Africa by the West. At ManiFiesta, she will speak about the cultural struggle for the decolonization of Western thought.
• A journalist, Jean-Baptiste Malet wrote for Charlie Hebdo, L'Humanité and Le Monde Diplomatique . His most recent book is "The Red Gold Empire. World survey on industrial tomatoes", a best-seller in France.

To be kept informed of the program and to order your tickets: www.manifiesta.be