Plenary Assembly – “Building the Transnational Feminist Movement in Times of Anti-Gender Attacks”

Europe is burning. Across the continent, authoritarian, anti-feminist, anti-queer, racist, climate-denying, and neoliberal forces are rising—and taking root at the heart of political power. Their strategy is clear: to name scapegoats (trans people, migrants, Muslims, racialized and precarious communities…), suppress social movements, undermine human rights, silence dissenting voices, and consolidate a political order based on patriarchy, nationalist identity, and authoritarian control of populations.

This is not a mere return to the past. What we are witnessing is an organized, transnational backlash—funded, coordinated, and structured across Europe and beyond. It materializes in repressive laws, anti-gender media campaigns, the growing power of the far right in the European Parliament, and the takeover of local, judicial, and academic arenas by conservative actors.

As intersectional feminists, we know this is no coincidence. The bodies and lives of women, trans, queer, racialized, poor people, dissident families, care and health workers are deliberate targets—because they embody some of the most subversive forms of freedom, autonomy, solidarity, and radical imagination. Our lives, our families, our struggles, our knowledge, our media, our sexualities, our spiritualities, and our solidarities are under attack precisely because they shake the dominant order.

But this fire is not one-directional.

Over three days, Margins: On Fire! will have ignited another kind of flame: the fire of resistance, joyful struggle, radical creation, and transnational alliance. Through roundtables, workshops, trainings, and performances, countless voices will have come together to say: we are not alone, we are organized, we have history, strategies, and power. This closing Assembly will consolidate this momentum—to bring our visions together, amplify our strategies, and draw collective lines of resistance and counter-offensive, at the local, national, and European levels.

Objectives of the Assembly:

• Create a space for collective intelligence, political synthesis, and resonance across the festival’s many discussions.

• Identify common ground on the attacks underway, shared vulnerabilities, and collective urgencies.

• Center and uplift knowledge from the margins, grounded in lived experience, activist practices, and situated struggles.

• Map out strategic convergences between movements (health, parenting, ecologies, anti-racism, anti-fascism, anti-gender, media freedom…).

• Lay the groundwork for collective actions in view of major upcoming moments: the June 2025 European elections, 2026 municipal elections, rotating EU presidency, and possible liberty-threatening law reforms.

• Strengthen bonds between collectives, associations, researchers, activists, and artists, so this moment becomes not an endpoint, but the spark for sustained and growing mobilization.

Location: Les Arches Citoyennes, 3 Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, 75004 Paris

Date & Time: Saturday, June 7 | 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM

Participants: Everyone, artistic performance by Anna Rispoli

Language(s): English & French (simultaneous translation)

REGISTRATION NOT REQUIRED