What does it take to act for a better now, acting for people and planet? After their publications in the global street-newspaper Arts of the Working Class, Ingo Venzke engages acclaimed Turkish journalist and writer Ece Temelkuran in a conversation about the possibilities for action in view of overlapping global crises—of the climate, of democracy, of social justice.

Today, there are more than enough ideas about how to change our political and economic reality. Discontents press for political change. But the political will to action is still missing. Why? The lack of faith in us and others stands at the bottom of inertia. We don’t believe in humanity anymore. At the same time, we are supposed to hope. How did the word hope and the search for it replace our need for conviction, and why do we continue to confine ourselves to the cauldrons of hope?

Today, the largest togetherness is a must for overcoming interconnected global problems, such as the climate crisis. This is the time that humanity has no choice but to imagine itself as one, if it is to stop final extinction. And to enable such an imagination on such a large scale, we need to have faith and stop asking for hope.

María Inés Plaza Lazo, co-editor and co-founder of Arts of the Working Class (AWC) will open the event.

About the speakers

Ece Temelkuran is an award-winning Turkish novelist, a political thinker, and a public speaker whose work has appeared among several international media outlets. She won the Edinburgh International Book Festival First Book award for her novel Women Who Blow On Knots and the Ambassador Of New Europe Award for her book Turkey: The Insane and the Melancholy. She is the author of the internationally acclaimed books How to Lose a Country and Together: A Manifesto Against the Heartless World. She is on the advisory board of Progressive International and Democracy Next.

Ingo Venzke is Professor of International Law and Social Justice at the University of Amsterdam, Director of the Amsterdam Center for International Law, and Fellow at The New Institute in Hamburg. His academic work focuses on international law and different dimensions of sustainability and the possibility of a different law. He co-directs the research programme on Sustainable Global Economic Law. Recently he wrote the essay “Tragedy and Farce in Climate Commentary” for the European Review of Books.