Who we are
Global Balkans is an activist research, media, and organizing network that works in solidarity with Balkan social movements to investigate, publicize and impact political, social and economic struggles in the former Yugoslav and wider Balkan region.* As individuals, we are either members (often reluctantly) of the various Balkan diasporas or committed allies.

Why Global Balkans?
We view the Balkans as not just a geographic category, but through a historical and social lens running directly counter to former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of a Global Balkans – a pejorative characterization he extends from the Balkans to the entire region from Egypt to Afghanistan, a frozen zone of eternal conflict and quagmire that requires a reluctant but benevolent United States to act as a stabilizing hegemon and global policeman. We counter such persistent visions of the Balkans (or "balkanization from above") from the perspective and history of anti-authoritarian social movements working towards socio-economic justice, autonomy, and interethnic solidarity both in the region and globally ("balkanization from below").

Our politics
Global Balkans is an anti-nationalist, anti-authoritarian network with a pan-Balkan and internationalist outlook. We view and analyze the Balkans in the context of other global incursions by interventionist forces, now and historically. In this 'new' era of integration, we believe that the Balkans are still presented and projected to world opinion as the historical residue of 'primitive nationalisms', again and always a threat to European bureaucratization and economic integration. Operationally, our basis of political unity is founded on anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and opposition to all forms of oppression, along with support for a diversity of tactics and strategies in struggle, organizing and activism.

Our goals
Global Balkans aims to organize within social movements and left organizations and networks both inside and outside the Balkans. Inside the region, we work in solidarity with existing pockets of resistance and attempt to widen them. Outside the Balkans, we aim to act as liaisons with and a reliable information source about Balkan left movements, striving to counter dominant Western accounts of the region, current and historic, as well as the nationalist neo-liberalism of Balkan elites. Similarly, we aim to inform and outreach to various local media (independent and corporate), publics and Balkan migrant and refugee communities.

How we work
Global Balkans is a transnational network operating through local, geographically determined collectives or groups. Local groupings are autonomous, but work in co-operation through the network, and all participants are members of their local group as well as the network. Decisions affecting the network are to be made on a modified consensus basis. As Global Balkans grows, we envision the evolution of a spokescouncil structure to facilitate network-wide work and decision-making. We collectively maintain a website at http://www.globalbalkans.org and other blogs, listservs and forums as needed. For work across the network, our core working languages will be English and Yugoslav (meaning Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian), with translation wherever possible to Macedonian and other Balkan languages, as well as French, Spanish and any other language necessary or available. Local groupings will operate in the language(s) of their choosing, reporting back to the network in English.

Specific current and future initiatives
1. Building a speakers’ network on the Balkans.
2. Collaboration with local grass roots groups in the Balkans on specific action campaigns.
3. Outreach, writing and media production and circulation.
4. Global Balkans website, globalbalkans.org
5. Collaborating with production of tranzicija [transition], a documentary film project on neo-liberal transition in Serbia.
6. Co-editing the book project Tranzicija: Serbian Voices of Transition from Below.
7. Fundraising in support of Balkan social movements, including the maintenance of an urgent action fund. 8. Working to organize a summer gathering (inspired by the idea of a revived Korcula summer school) in the Balkans to provide a space for encounter and ongoing development of a radical Balkan praxis.
9. Investigation and reporting on ‘democracy promotion’ initiatives in the Balkans.
10. Anti-deportation support work for Balkan im/migrants and refugees facing deportation in North America and Europe.
11. Ongoing presentations and participation in a range of activist, cultural, academic and community panels and events.

*Our current membership is composed of people with roots in various republics of the former Yugoslavia. We see this as a starting point and are interested in working with activists in other areas of the Balkans, and members of those diasporas, with the eventual aim of broadening our participant base.