Make a Point
An international community center, established in 2009
Think global, act local
The Make a Point project started off as a socio-cultural association and an alternative cultural space in Pantelimon, on the outskirts of Bucharest. In 2009, at the height of the Global Financial Crisis and shortly after Romania joined the European Union, a group of visual artists (Madalina Rosca, Alma Cazacu and Viorica Bucur) opened the community center Make a Point in a former textile factory. Dozens of artists, architects, sociologists, activists from many areas joined the collective, to bring together hundreds of events, exhibitions, concerts, campaigns, talks, and plans for a better, fairer world.
As the world changed, so did we
In the context of accelerating climate change, the intersection between human rights and environmentalism has become increasingly important, and cultural means alone now seem limited. The climate catastrophe, ongoing armed conflicts and the rise of far right political parties in Europe and elsewhere call for an interdisciplinary, multifaceted approach to activism. And for us, the people, to step in front, to work together and act together.
Act global, think local
As of 2024, we have widened our socio-political scope and transformed our local community center into an International Community Center. For this we have set up a new organisation on the other end of the European Union, Associação Make a Point – faz a diferença. We believe that the challenges facing humanity demand for good people to stand together, to connect transgressing social boundaries and physical borders and in the place of singularity, fear and anger, and the feeling of pointlessness, create community.
An International Community Center. Say what?
Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the world’s poorest 60% – almost 5 billion people – have lost money. In the meantime the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to $869bn (£681.5bn) since 2020, while Oxfam predicts the first trillionaire within a decade, with the gap between rich and poor only ever expanding.
After the peak of the COVID pandemic had passed, many of us hoped that things would get better. However, we found ourselves in a new epidemic: the loneliness epidemic. Almost one in four people worldwide feel very or fairly lonely (to quote a Meta-Gallup survey of more than 140 countries; other surveys abound, confirming the result).
It is the most rampant loneliness crisis in our societies to be ever measured.
Housing problems are dramatic and while rent prices are classically left out of the inflation statistics, they are the single biggest driver of the cost of living crisis. Simply put, ever more people almost everywhere can’t find a roof over their heads for the money they have, without becoming poor while literally filling the pockets of the richest amongst us with money they do not have.
Instead of contributing to finding solutions, the moneyed elite of our societies have teamed up with strongmen and dictators and aiming to hold on to power and privileges, are funding think-tanks and right wing media in order to deflect anger and frustration of the masses at refugees, and migration as a phenomenon in general. We are witnessing a classic example of scapegoating in self-interest, orchestrated by billionaires on a massive scale.
The scope is clear, it is to make us forget that all people are equal. It is also to blindfold us in seeing the obvious: that those who need to drastically change their lifestyles, if we want to have a chance to onwards live on the one planet we inhabit, are the few who have a lot, not so much the many who have little.
Instead of tackling the core of the problem, a growing part of our political elites (from the far left to the far right) seem to have bought into the global scapegoating scheme and are rallying, if out of conviction or opportunism, against the scapegoat at hand, the migrants and the refugees. All this, while scientists warn us that, in the years to come, global heating will cause people, mainly in the southern hemisphere, to face inhospitable living conditions. Billions will be forced to relocate, or else they perish. We know today we cannot separate the climate crisis from social, gender and racial injustice.
We do not stand aside and witness the fast-forward breakdown of our life support-systems. We get together and act now.