João França presents “Yes, It’s Possible! A Handbook for Building Power from Below”

2:00 pm

Presented by Red Emma's

A handbook for achieving social change through collective action based on lessons from a revolutionary movement’s struggle for housing justice in Spain.

Founded in Spain in 2009 as an immediate response to the devastating effects of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca – PAH) has since grown into a nationwide movement with over two hundred local chapters. Together, they have stopped thousands of evictions, negotiated with banks, forced legislative change, occupied fifty buildings, and, most importantly, rescued thousands of people from the edge of the abyss. It achieved all of this without backing from any party, union, or major NGO, and without full-time staff or external funding.

João França

João França (Brasília, 1990) is a researcher and journalist based in Barcelona. His work is focused on social movements and collective action, and his projects have been devoted to subjects such as the right to housing and the right to the city, queer history, migrants’ rights, collective memory, and the challenges posed by disinformation. He is currently working at the Social Anthropology department at the University of Barcelona, where he is developing a dissertation on coalitions and alliances within social movements. He is involved in different movements and organizations, and since 2023, he has also served as the president of the Progressive Summer University of Catalonia (UPEC).

The Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH)

The Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (Plataforma de los Afectados por la Hipoteca–PAH) is an assembly-based housing justice movement established in Barcelona in early 2009 in response to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent housing crisis in Spain. In 2013, PAH received the Premio Nacional de Derechos Humanos, a national human rights award, and the European Citizens’ Prize.