How Technology Is Rewriting The Way We Write
Danica Tomber – Photo: LA Progressive
07-23-2026 ~ As keyboards and touchscreens replace pens and pencils, the decline of handwriting raises questions about cognition, culture, and creativity.
When was the last time you wrote something by hand? Was it a stylus signature at a checkout stand, a kitchen calendar reminder, or a note jotted down on a scrap of paper? These days, writing largely lives in the digital realm. Despite its advantages, handwriting has been pushed to the fringes of everyday life.
Historian Christine Rosen, author of The Extinction of Experience, explains that handwriting is a vital embodied experience that allows us to make sense of our world. In a Guardian article, Rosen points to calligraphist Bernard Maisner, who “argues that calligraphy, and handwriting more broadly, is ‘not meant to reproduce something over and over again. It’s meant to show the humanity, the responsiveness and variation within.’”
Is the decline of handwriting an inevitable loss or a harmless evolution? To answer this question, we trace the historical significance of handwriting, investigate its cognitive impact, reflect on its cultural meaning, and explore its future relevance.
A Brief History of Handwriting
Unlike speech, which is an innate capability of the human brain, writing is an invention. Just like modern digital tools, such as computers and the internet, writing systems—from logographic to alphabetic—were invented, albeit thousands of years ago. The oldest form of writing known to us is cuneiform, a script developed in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 3400 to 3300 BCE, with Egyptian hieroglyphs likely following around 3000 BCE.
Although cuneiform was most commonly imprinted on clay, Egyptian hieroglyphs appeared on a variety of media—carved on stone and written in ink on papyrus. Much later, in medieval Europe, scribes trained on wax tablets before moving on to parchment as they learned textualis, a Gothic writing style.
Throughout history, writing has maintained an aesthetic component. From calligraphy to Spencerian script, penmanship is a form of artistic expression that encourages writers to wield their creativity to capture detail, contrast, curvature, and negative space. In describing Platt Rogers Spencer’s inspiration for Spencerian script, master penman Michael Sull says:
‘You should be able to create visible language on paper that has so much personal expression that whoever reads it could understand how you felt, what you meant. Because everybody is different, it allowed people to write the way they wanted to write.’
Other techniques prioritized function over form. The Palmer Method, first proposed in 1894, facilitated speed, legibility, and ease through fluid arm movements rather than finger movement, making it a helpful method for people with fine motor challenges.
Around the same time as the introduction of the Palmer Method, a new technology was transforming the world, ushering in a significant shift from handwriting to typing. With the typewriter, speed and efficiency were prioritized yet again—this time to meet the demands of industrial growth. But within a century, typewriters were surmounted by word processors and digital computers, solving several issues, including the ability to revise, store, and share written information more easily. In the 21st century, mobile technologies have come to dominate; people now use laptops, tablets, and smartphones to type.
Handwriting and the Brain
On the surface, the written word is valued for its role in sharing and recording information, but it serves a multitude of cognitive functions. In addition to improving fine motor skills, writing by hand stimulates greater comprehension and neural connectivity. A 2024 study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that, compared to typewriting, handwriting showed more “widespread brain connectivity” in areas associated with learning and memory. Speaking about the study, neuroscientist Ramesh Balasubramaniam told Science News, “It shows that there’s more involvement of these brain regions when you’re handwriting, which might give you some specific advantages.” He added that the reasons for these differences in brain activity warrant further research—an opinion echoed in a 2025 commentary on the study.
A greater understanding of these mechanisms will also better inform educational policy. Handwriting’s link to literacy is another reason why researchers recommend that early childhood education programs include handwriting instruction. A 2025 study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology revealed that the development of reading skills is critically dependent on handwriting. “[T]he physical act of forming letters by hand enhances the mental representation of those letters. Writing by hand involves coordinated movements, attention to shape, and sensorimotor feedback—all of which seem to reinforce learning. Typing, by contrast, requires only pressing a key, which may not engage the same cognitive or neural processes,” states a PsyPost article, referring to the findings of the 2025 study. Literacy encompasses a range of skills, from letter formation and spelling to reading and writing. Although handwriting is typically thought of as a single skill, research indicates that it is a combination of two separate but related skills: fluency (how quickly and smoothly someone writes) and legibility (how well it can be deciphered). Read more
Participatory Economics. An Interview With Michael Albert
Michael Albert – Photo: nl.wikipedia.org
Louis Bourgeois ~ In preparing for this interview, I’ve read various descriptions of your economic theory of Participatory Economics. It is a rather complicated theory, and I was hoping you could describe the theory for the average reader.
Michael Albert ~ Economics affects stuff – combining and refining inputs into outputs, distributing them among all members of society, and then consuming them. Economic production, allocation, and consumption affect people via directly changing their fulfillment, consciousness, social relations, etc.
Participatory economics, or parecon for short, treats all actors equitably and meets needs and develops potentials as its guiding theme. It fosters solidarity and diversity via its implications for interests and behaviors. It conveys self-managing decision making power to all in their economic lives. To attain these goals parecon delivers classlessness since you can’t have self-management and solidarity, for example, if you have a class takes the lion’s share of social product and power, violating equity and all the other aims as well.
To accomplish equity, solidarity, diversity, and self-management means that parecon must reject current defining economic relations such as having private owners of productive assets, using corporate divisions of labor, remunerating for power, property, or product, having top down decision making, and using markets for allocation, because these institutions by their intrinsic requirements viciously violate the sought aims.
Parecon instead proposes having no ownership of productive assets, workers and consumers self-managing councils, a division of labor that conveys to all workers a fair share of empowering tasks and responsibilities via what parecon calls balanced job complexes, remuneration for duration, intensity, and onerousness of socially valued labor, and finally, for allocation, participatory planning, which is workers and consumers councils cooperatively negotiating inputs and outputs.
In other words, parecon isn’t a blueprint of all features and even their details, but instead just a minimal list of a few very central features which a new economy must have – albeit with many more detailed variations – and conversely a few that it must reject, if it is to be classless, honor diversity, foster solidarity, and convey self-managing power. Of course we could go into more detail about each broad aim, and about why some institutions must be rejected for violating those aims, and about the institutions claimed able to fulfill those aims, but this has been done in many places already.
You’ve been instrumental in establishing the independent political press in America, having created from the ground up such presses as Z Magazine and South End Press. How has the independent political press changed over the years?
That is a hard question because I don’t think there was ever much of a definition of independent press. In other words back in the mid to late seventies, and even earlier, there were independent presses – meaning not owned by large corporations and thus not directly controlled in their content by those large outfits, and thus independent – of diverse kinds. Some were unapologetic profit seeking entities with very little other than the good will of an owner or two to distinguish them from mainstream outfits. Their independence was a matter of policy and was subject to being eliminated by a single boss – and in most cases that is precisely what eventually happened, to ensure greater profits. There were other independent outfits that were nonprofit, but otherwise not so different in structure and internal dynamics from more typical mainstream media. They were better than the privately owned examples, on average, but also limited, in my view, both as models and editorially. All those involved in such media were affected by their position in a typical corporate hierarchy and the implications of that for their values, thoughts, and behaviors, and particularly their ability to address many class issues, were and remain deadly. Then, back then, there were also far more collective operations, finding ways to avoid internal class hierarchies, and to ward off, as well, sexist and racist structures – thus achieving for their content a far greater level of independence from the pressures of existing institutions – as well as themselves being a model for a better way to do things.
Well the same picture exists now. There are what are called independent media operations that are freer of impositions from existing relations, and others that are less free of those impositions, or even totally subject to them. While instances of all these types might label themselves independent, what follows for me is that we should have something more in mind than liking a few essays online or in print when we label their source organization alternative and point at it as an example of what we seek. To earn that label, a media project should not only have independent and inquiring editorial policies that meet real needs, it should also have internal organization and structure consistent with – rather than constantly impeding and finally obliterating – such values. Indeed, its structure should not only serve its functions, but also be a model that others can emulate. An alternative media institution should be part of the process of planting the seeds of the future in the present, meaning it should reject classist, racist, and sexist structures and opt, instead, whenever it can and to the degree it can, for classless, feminist, and intercommunalist’s policies and structures.
Has Socialism, as the word is commonly understood in the Western world, become more of a reality in the 21st century, or less?
As the word socialism is most widely understood, institutionally it means that the government owns everything and decides everything for workplaces that are very nearly indistinguishable internally from those we now have, plus using central planning or retaining markets for allocation.
The word socialism also, however, has a values meaning – and that is very different. People should have a say over their lives, get a fair share of the social product, enjoy worthy work conditions. The trouble is, the institutional view, if implemented or even just seriously influencing thought and actions, trumps the second values view and even makes the values unattainable. So the first view has to be replaced, meaning, advocates of socialist values need to be in favor of institutions that can actually deliver the values they espouse, rather than institutions that will obliterate those values.
Indeed, I think applying the label socialism to systems that combine public ownership, remuneration for output and power, corporate divisions of labor, top down decision making, and markets or central planning for allocation, is the real error. These systems do get rid of the basis for capitalists to even exist, much less to rule, but, in the capitalist’s place they elevate what I call a coordinator class – the set of employees who do overwhelmingly empowering work, thus lawyers, doctors, engineers, administrators, etc. – into a dominant position above workers who are in turn left with rote, repetitive, obedient labor like before. Instead of calling such systems socialist, therefore, I call them coordinatorists.
So that’s where parecon enters. Parecon’s claim is precisely that it delivers an economy that meets the most advanced and enlightened socialist and anarchist desires for economic life – their values that economics be classless, equitable, diverse, solidaritous, and self-managing, serving people real needs and potentials, and attending to environmental effects and needs as well. Thus, socialists and anarchists could adopt parecon as the economic part of their overall social vision – and perhaps they might even call that overall vision participatory socialism. Read more
Backing For UBI Is Growing. Let’s Push For The Most Progressive Version Of It
Nancy Folbre – Photo: en.wikipedia.org
07-20-2026 ~ Universal basic income is not a panacea, and some versions are libertarian — but a good version is worth fighting for.
The idea of a universal basic income has been around for decades, but it is now growing in popularity as artificial intelligence threatens to make our economic future under neoliberal capitalism even more precarious. Yet, no one would argue that a universal basic income is a panacea to capitalism’s evils.
Moreover, there are different proposals for implementing a universal basic income, as renowned feminist and socialist economist Nancy Folbre — the author of several books including Making Care Work: Why Our Economy Should Put People First — points out in the interview that follows.
Folbre, who is professor emerita of economics and director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, acknowledges that, given the balance of power between capital and labor in today’s world, the obstacles to implementing a fully progressive version of such a plan are enormous. Yet, societies must care for the well-being of citizens if they are to continue sustaining themselves. As Folbre says, a philosophy of every person for themselves philosophy “is a recipe for extinction.”
C.J. Polychroniou: Support for universal basic income (UBI) has grown rapidly over the past several years across Europe as well as in the United States. Of course, the idea of a universal basic income has a long history but has made a major comeback as a response to growing inequalities and concerns about the effects of automation. Still, no country has yet to implement a full UBI system, and there are many variations behind the idea. What are the defining features of UBI, and what would be the core arguments in favor of it?
Nancy Folbre: This concept implies just what it says — universal (everyone would get it) basic (not very much) income, to be provided on a regular basis, like once a month. The strongest ethical argument in its favor is that some basic level of support should be a human right. The strongest pragmatic argument in its favor is that it would buffer the effects of sustained high levels of unemployment that some (including the world’s first trillionaire-for-just-12-days Elon Musk) see as a serious threat from the expansion of artificial intelligence (AI).
What are the potential risks and complications behind implementing a UBI system in contemporary capitalist societies?
UBI and AI have something in common — they both have great potential to make us all better off, but their effects will be largely determined by who designs and controls them.
A UBI could be deployed in ways that reduce poverty, reward unpaid care, and increase the bargaining power of wage earners but it could also be used to co-opt dissent, justify cutbacks in public services, and enhance control over the population.
Historically, employers disliked the very idea of UBI because they thought it would reduce the supply of labor to employment, creating a permanent class of “free-loaders.”
In recent years, however, a number of privately funded small-scale experiments have explored the impact of a short-term “guaranteed income” on the community level, offering a relatively small payment (such as $500-$1,000 a month) for a year or two to a random sample of low-income persons in order to assess their effects. Reductions in employment that took place were small, and benefits to physical and mental health and subjective well-being were significant — especially for children.
However, it’s not clear that CEOs in the tech sector are enthusiastic about these social benefits, since they seem to believe that human workers will soon be redundant, anyway. They keep saying that a publicly funded UBI could compensate for job loss. If AI produces enormous wealth, concentrated among a few firms, some mechanism for redistribution might be necessary to avert political revolt. Hence the “benevolent oligarchy” strategy — give the masses just enough money to keep them alive and in line.
Would UBI necessarily replace all existing welfare programs?
Different answers to this question highlight the issue of design and control. A “progressive” UBI is framed as an add-on, complementing the provision of public services. A “libertarian” UBI is framed as a reallocation, using cash transfers as a replacement for public services.
Libertarian support for something like UBI has a long history. In his 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom, the conservative economist Milton Friedman advocated for a negative income tax that was the forerunner (in spirit, if not precise design) of some UBI proposals today. He argued that cash assistance should replace much of the existing welfare bureaucracy, including many categorical assistance programs.
This argument lingers on in different forms. In his 2020 U.S. presidential campaign, Andrew Yang outlined a kind of compromise — a detailed UBI proposal that would have reallocated some but not all funds away from other programs. At least his proposal took financing and design seriously, unlike what followed.
Elon Musk — despite his happy talk regarding a future Universal High Income (rather than a merely basic one) — has offered no details whatsoever regarding its design. However, given his actions as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE (which would have been better titled the Department of Government Eradication), it’s pretty clear that he sees cash transfers as something between a sop and a bribe.
The progressive case for a UBI, by contrast, sees UBI as a universal income floor layered on top of existing social programs, rather than replacing all of them. While it would justify elimination of means-tested income transfers, it would not replace social insurance (such as pensions) or public services. Indeed, the most compelling vision of programmatic change to the “welfare state” calls for both UBI and Universal Basic Services (UBS) which would include health care, child care, and elder care.
These versions of UBI typically rely on progressive taxation — imposing higher taxes on those with higher incomes or wealth. Even the very rich would be eligible for a basic income, but it would be more than canceled out by the higher taxes they would be required to pay. This is what makes the net transfer strongly progressive. Read more
Writing Is Great For The Mind—And So Is The Process Of Revision
grammar-lion.com
07-20-26 ~ Principles from writing instruction, journalism, and professional editorial practice illuminate how revision clarifies ideas, strengthens critical thinking, improves communication, and transforms first drafts into stronger writing.
Most people think that a strong first draft reflects good writing skills. In practice, this is rarely true. First drafts are often messy, uneven, and incomplete because initial drafting is where thinking begins to travel from the brain to the page. Writing, at its core, is a process of discovery. Revision is where that discovery comes into focus.
To revise is not simply to polish what is already there. It is to reshape ideas, test assumptions, and reorganize meaning. In the classroom, students often want to complete an assignment by trying to “get it right” the first time. As revision becomes part of the writing process, students begin to see that clarity usually emerges through iteration. In journalism and editorial work, the revision process is even more explicit. Drafts are expected to change, sometimes dramatically, as arguments sharpen and become more structured.
Seen this way, rewriting is not a secondary step; instead, revision is as essential as creating the first draft. As Ernest Hemingway famously put it, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.” The point is not stylistic perfection; it’s that clarity and meaning emerge through revision, not despite it.
Once we let go of the expectation that first drafts should be polished, a different question emerges: What is a first draft actually for? In reality, experienced writers often produce faster—but not cleaner—initial drafts. They understand that the first draft serves a different purpose: it captures ideas that are still being fully formed. Through revision, writers deepen their understanding of both their subject and their readers as ideas become clearer, thinking becomes more precise, and meaning takes shape on the page.
Professional editorial work depends on revision to ensure clarity, coherence, and impact. Editors rarely expect a first draft to be publication-ready. Instead, they ask whether the piece fulfills its purpose: Is the argument clear? Does the structure guide readers naturally from one idea to the next? Has unnecessary complexity been removed? Each round of revision brings the writing closer to serving the reader, which is the ultimate measure of effective communication.
Why First Drafts Are Supposed to Be Imperfect
Writers often assume that strong work begins cleanly, but as Anne Lamott writes in her New York Times bestselling 1995 classic Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts.” What matters is not the quality of the first draft, but what happens after it. The first draft is not a finished product—it’s a record of thinking in motion. Ideas arrive unevenly. Some are overdeveloped, others only hinted at. Transitions are rough and arguments incomplete. That’s not failure; it’s the raw material for eventual clarity.
Drafting, in this sense, is a way of getting thoughts out of a writer’s head and onto the page, where they’re transformed into concrete elements that can be worked with, as a sculptor works with clay. On the page, we can question, rearrange, and refine our words. Without that first lump of clay or that initial, imperfect written expression, there’s nothing to give shape to.
In journalism, early drafts often act as scaffolding. A reporter might begin with a loose structure—key facts, fragments of narrative, partial analysis—and only later recognize what the story is really about. The lede—traditionally, the introductory sentence or paragraph, comparable to the thesis in an essay—might change entirely. The angle might shift. What begins as one story often evolves into another through revision.
As media and communication specialist Adrian Dearnell writes in Forbes, “Experienced communications professionals know that first drafts can never be final. They need editing.” This reflects a broader understanding: Early drafts are not meant to be finalized—they are meant to be revised.
Likewise, the thesis of an essay—the main idea to be discussed and proved—as conceived and written in a first draft, might need reshaping as the revision process brings new light to the original statement.
Writers who feel comfortable with the drafting process accept mistakes as part of the work. Those mistakes may range from spelling and grammar to major shifts in structure, organization, and ideas.
For developing writers, the goal may be to start and finish with a single excellent, complete first draft. But only rarely does a writer achieve that. More likely, this goal inhibits rather than encourages writing.
Writing involves composing (writing) and editing (revising), two related, complex cognitive functions. That may sound evident, but it is important for writers to allow themselves to separate and then recombine these cognitive functions. They can accomplish this by writing first and editing second.
Expecting perfection too early shifts attention from generating ideas to judging them. We get stuck trying to find the perfect word rather than writing the next paragraph, or endlessly rewriting one sentence instead of moving on.
Setting out to compose a draft rather than a finished product helps get ideas onto the page and provides a foundation to work with. This is especially useful for student writers or any writer who freezes at the start of a project.
Writing Outside the Lines
One practical way to cultivate this mindset is through freewriting, an exercise that allows and even encourages “messy” drafts. With or without an assigned topic, writers put their pens to the page or fingertips to the keyboard and write nonstop for a predetermined number of minutes (10 to 20 minutes works well). During this time, they keep the writing flow going, with no backtracking or self-editing permitted.
When the time is up, they stop writing and read what they wrote. Though much of the writing may be “trash” to be discarded, the freewriting process, inherently free to make mistakes, successfully halts inhibitory self-editing.
Getting a first draft onto the page is a major milestone. Once ideas exist in written form, they can be explored, expanded, reorganized, and refined. That shift—from expecting perfection to expecting revision—allows writers to keep moving forward. Read more
Why House Members Came Together To Pass The Bipartisan Workers’ Bill
Roxanne D. Brown ~ Photo: USW.org
07-19-2026 ~Terry Stickles supported the successful union drive at JSW Steel in Mingo Junction, Ohio, in 2025, then went to the bargaining table eager to hammer out his first contract with the company and set a course for the future.
His coworkers, also new members of the United Steelworkers (USW), felt the same urgency. But JSW chose to play around instead, offering few meeting dates to union negotiators, taking hours to review even basic contract proposals, and cutting bargaining sessions short for no good reason.
“It’s almost like kids’ games,” Terry, an Army veteran and millwright, explained of a bargaining process that continues to drag on because of the company’s stonewalling.
This kind of dithering is how spoiled-brat executives retaliate against hardworking people for exercising their labor rights. It’s why it takes workers, on average, almost 500 days to negotiate their first contract after joining a union.
Negotiations over health care coverage, workplace safety, and related issues are no place for juvenile antics—and that’s exactly why Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. House joined forces recently to pass the Faster Labor Contracts Act.
The legislation, now before the Senate, promises to fix a broken system that allows employers to flout labor law and run roughshod over workers’ rights.
It would require companies to begin negotiations within 10 days of workers’ vote to form a union and require mediation if the two sides prove unable to reach a contract within three months. If mediation also fails to bring consensus, a panel of arbitrators would step in and set the terms of the first contract.
The legislation forces a company’s negotiators to roll up their sleeves and get down to business. That makes perfect sense to working people. It’s what we do every day.
“Show up,” Terry said, referring to JSW’s negotiators. “Let’s do our job. Let’s get this over with.”
Sadly, many executives view empowered workers as a threat. Read more
Albania’s Flamingo Revolution Tests The New Western Order
07-17-2026 ~ A major investment project has left Albania caught between diverging US and European interests. The increasingly autonomous protest networks that the West spent decades building in the Balkans are further complicating matters.
After Miami-based firm Affinity Partners secured their first building permit for major developments on Albania’s coast on April 29, outrage in the small Balkan country has steadily grown.
Within weeks, a video of a protestor being beaten and dragged away by private security guards went viral, helping ignite what has become known as Albania’s “Flamingo Revolution.” On July 4, tens of thousands of Albanians marched in the capital, Tirana, with other demonstrations taking place across the country.
The movement is driven by two planned projects: a $1.7 billion luxury resort on Sazan Island and a $4.6 billion development around the Zvërnec Peninsula and Vjosë-Nartë wetlands. Similar developments have triggered protests elsewhere in the Balkans in recent years, often tapping into wider economic and corruption concerns.
The Flamingo Revolution has no single organizer. It draws from a loose network of environmental groups, anti-corruption activists, and ordinary citizens, many connected to civic organizations that Western governments helped build over three decades— but now operate independently of their original sponsors.
The primary financiers of the two projects have especially made these demonstrations notable. Both are being led by Affinity Partners, headed by Jared Kushner, son-in-law of US President Donald Trump and his informal adviser. Since its founding in 2021, the firm has been backed largely by sovereign wealth from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Qatar.
Gulf states have increasingly been investing in large tourism projects over the last several years to diversify beyond hydrocarbons. But sovereign wealth investments are “more frequently also used to extend political reach,” states political economist Karen E. Young. Designed to cement relationships with foreign governments and business elites, Affinity Partners now acts as an informal bridge between Middle Eastern capitals and the White House.
For investors, Albania’s path toward EU membership would dramatically increase the value of planned tourism and other infrastructure developments. Sazan is, meanwhile, located in a strategically important position at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea, and new ports, marinas, and other developments could have dual-use applications for security purposes in a crucial area.
But as relations between Brussels and Washington have deteriorated during Trump’s second term, Albania’s EU ambitions have made the projects increasingly sensitive. On June 17, the European Parliament condemned the 2024 amendments to Albania’s Law on Protected Areas, which cleared the way for the development of these projects, and asked that they be withdrawn. It also called for construction to be suspended in protected areas and compliance with EU nature protection standards. Several EU parliament members also warned that Albania’s accession could be jeopardized if the projects proceed.
The EU has strong reasons to defend its standards in a candidate country. Failing to do so would weaken its credibility and encourage future projects by foreign powers approved through questionable means. Yet Brussels has stopped short of joining calls by many protestors for Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign. Many demonstrators also reject the mainstream opposition, suggesting political instability could remain regardless of who governs the country, complicating the EU’s wider expansion plans in the Balkans.
Albania’s EU ambitions now conflict with expanding American commercial and security interests, as well as investment from Gulf states. As divisions have grown in the Western alliance, countries that previously sat comfortably in its orbit have become areas of competition and instability.
The Serbian Precedent
Albania’s protests have also highlighted the growing autonomy of the transnational civil society network that the West spent more than three decades building in the Balkans. NGOs, such as the European Endowment for Democracy, and agencies like USAID helped strengthen local institutions, watchdogs, and media networks to encourage integration with NATO and the EU. When institution-building failed, Western support also extended to protest movements to promote leadership change.
Serbia, another EU candidate, became the first proving ground for the “color revolution” model—widespread public protests seeking revolutionary political change—despite the term becoming more closely associated with former Soviet states. During the 2000 overthrow of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević, USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives explained how it sought to “fund programs and media outlets that could disseminate messages pushing immediate political change.”
After Milošević was toppled, the number of Western NGOs in Serbia rose dramatically in the 2000s, building local civic capacity. A 2015 article in the Law Explorer, however, pointed out how contrary to the beliefs that these nonprofits were “a major progressive force countering the crude nationalism of the general public and leading Serbia on the road to eventual European Union membership. … much of the sector has in fact played a compromised, coopted, and at times destructive role in preparing the ground for and reinforcing neoliberal restructuring.”
Although relations with many Western governments deteriorated after Kosovo’s independence was recognized in 2008, the nonprofit networks remained. They resurfaced during anti-government protests in 2011 in Belgrade, and again in demonstrations against the UAE-backed Belgrade Waterfront redevelopment from 2015, foreshadowing Albania’s current movement. Protests against Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić have meanwhile erupted repeatedly since 2017. Read more