In collaboration with community organizations of the Northern Coast of Rio Grande do Sul and militant geographers of the UFRGS’s Campus Litoral, we are creating a crowd-sourced online map that visualizes solidarity-networks and facilitates the creation of new ones. It shows where people can donate foodstuffs and other everyday materials or engage themselves, as well as where those in need can access these materials. It also visualizes public institutions where emergency social assistance can be accessed. Besides the data collected by community researchers, content can be added by anybody through this form.
This collective mapping and its integration in local struggles is possible only due to the long-standing militancy of geographers – students and professors jointly – with local communities. It’s based on a commitment to non-hierarcical relations both inside academy and between academics and local community networks. In the context of the health crisis and particularly reckless governments, more then ever, it is crucial to bring academic tools to the hands of popular struggles. This map’s content is built in continuous dialogue with urban and rural communities, quilombolas, indigenous reposessions and fishing communities a.o., whose demands are regularly missed or violated by public policies and institutionalized non-profits.
In an unequal world, in the wake of the pandemic, let’s practice radical solidarity!
