On Saturday, 31 January, the doors to Folkets Husby community center opened for the highly anticipated Resistance Forum 2026. Over 350 participants flocked to take part in this all day event with an ambitious program of 22 items, including seminars, panel discussions, workshops, keynote speeches, a book fair and a closing party with food and musical performances.
The organizer was the September Rebellion coalition, which brings together 76 organizations under a common platform, and of which Socialistiskt Alternativ (ISA Sweden) is an active part. The urgent need for activists to meet and discuss the political situation in Sweden and the world, forge ties, exchange experiences, and set their sights on a year of continued resistance was reflected in a turnout that exceeded all expectations.
A Movement of Movements
Resistance Forum 2026 is the natural continuation of a collaboration that began in the spring of 2025 with the initiative to organize a broad demonstration at the opening of the Swedish parliament (Riksdagen) on September 9. The September Rebellion brought together over 2000 demonstrators under one all-encompassing slogan: “Against warmongering, genocide and racism – For welfare, Palestine, peace, equality and climate justice”. Immediately after the demonstration it became clear that the coalition must continue its collaboration and the building of this “movement of movements”.
The decision was made at the subsequent coalition meeting to continue the demonstrations, with the next one taking place on 28 October in defense of asylum rights, freedom of expression and the right to demonstrate. But we also needed to offer an opportunity for all interested and committed people to deepen their understanding of the political issues the September Rebellion was set up to defend, and to take advantage of the wealth of expertise and centuries of combined experiences of struggle that exist within the coalition. The result was a spectacular success.
The swarm that ensued after the opening ceremony, when hundreds of forum participants poured out of the large hall to find their meeting rooms, was extraordinary. For most of the resistance forum, four parallel program items took place every hour. As soon as one seminar ended, preparations for the next meeting began, and no two meetings were alike. It is a source of pride for the September Rebellion that the Resistance Forum 2026 was able to showcase such broad organizational diversity and provide space for so many political issues in a single day.
A compact agenda incorporated, among other topics: The future of the climate movement, Swedish election year 2026, the fundamentals of socialist feminism, student protests against militarism, organizing the unemployed, Latin American struggles against US imperialism, lessons from building Your Party in Britain, history of the peace movement, housing as a human right, trade unions against warmongering, pro-Palestine boycotts, leftist solidarity with Ukraine and indigenous defense against exploitative mining.
Against the Government’s Racist Migration Policy
However, the highlight of the forum was the panel discussion “The dangerous refugee policy”. It combined valuable, informative contributions from several asylum rights activists on the very real situation for migrants and refugees in Sweden, with something concrete to rally around: the launching of a new campaign titled “For a Humane Migration Policy”.
The campaign is a much-needed initiative, the combined effort from nine different organizations to build a movement that can defend the rights of migrants and refugees from the conservative government’s barrage of attacks, most of which are legal or bureaucratic.
The spark that ignited the idea to combine forces came in the autumn of 2025 when the petition “Hands off the permanent residence permit” was launched, which so far has gathered 73,000 signatures out of the target figure of 75,000. The racist government proposal to revoke all permanent residence permits, replacing them with temporary ones and making this the new norm is one of many upcoming legal changes that will be voted on in parliament this spring. Close to 100,000 people will be affected if the permanent residence permits are revoked.
Parliament will vote on what is effectively a barrage of racist proposals from the government, including the so called “snitching law” that would force employees at six government agencies to report undocumented people to the police, the “law against uncivil behaviour” which infringes on freedom of expression and allows deportations on arbitrary or non-criminal grounds, as well as proposed stricter requirements for becoming a Swedish citizen and the possibility to have one’s citizenship revoked.
Since 2022, the government, consisting of the Moderates (Conservatives), the Liberals and the Christian Democrats in coalition with, and de facto under the thumb of, the racist Sweden Democrats, has rapidly transformed Sweden into an unsafe space for immigrants, refugees and undocumented people. Racist policies are meant to separate “foreigners” from “Swedes”, to make access to healthcare or benefits conditional, to make family reunification impossible, to increase income requirements beyond realistic goals, to put the hope of becoming a citizen behind bureaucratic obstacles, and to be a deterrent to anyone coming to Sweden, whether for work, school or family or to flee the horrors of war and persecution.
What Now for the Campaign?
The campaign for a humane migration policy builds resistance against all incoming attacks, but also aims to remove laws that have already been introduced, including the “lane change” that previously allowed asylum seekers to apply for a work permit if denied asylum as well as reinstating “particularly distressing circumstances” as a criterion for being granted a residence permit. This would have previously allowed someone to be granted asylum on humanitarian grounds despite not qualifying as a refugee or someone in need of protection from persecution or conflict. The new criterion “exceptionally distressing circumstances” is practically not in use.
Globally and in Sweden, there is a trend of higher walls, racist rhetoric towards immigrants, brutal laws, and life-threatening refugee policies while the fundamental reasons why people flee their home countries – financial crises, persecution, oppression, conflicts and war – are escalating.
But there is also resistance, vividly illustrated by the massive protests in the US against the homicidal migration police (ICE) which forced the Trump administration to back down, or in Sweden where 136 out of 290 municipalities have turned down the government’s request to cooperate on “voluntary remigration” programs. Struggle pays off. As was clearly demonstrated when staff at Södersjukhuset (Stockholm South General Hospital) protested with help of the Healthcare Union to prevent their two coworkers Zahra Kazemipour and Afshad Joubeh from being deported, granting them an asylum permit re-evaluation.
Now the struggle continues. Closest in time are the preparations from the campaign for a humane migration policy to organize a weekend of demonstrations on March 14-15, with the key event being a mass demonstration in Stockholm on March 15.
